Page 96 of The Girl in the Forest

“Yes.” Her eyes fluttered closed.

I wished we had a way to reach Levi. He woke more often, moaning. But then, a vampire came to pull the bolts from Levi’s body. He had someone with him. They held Levi down, working slowly and not out of kindness.

Laura and I watched. She gripped my hand, and each time Levi screamed, her fingernails cut into my skin, drawing blood from wounds I thought I deserved—and I deserved far worse. I’d asked Levi to come with us. I’d asked Laura. Their suffering was my fault.

Brin was silent, but I supposed torture wasn’t something anyone wanted to talk through, or about, after it was done and Levi was quiet again.

When another vampire arrived to treat Levi’s wounds, we decided it was a good sign. At least Brin thought so. She said we all were valuable enough to keep alive.

For now.

CHAPTER 30

Noa

Light bulbs flickered, burned out, and no one bothered to replace them. The shadows deepened, and I told myself it was a blessing because the dark made it easier to sleep. Easier to shut out the grated black hole. The stony prison with rusted bars.

I could ignore the cold in the dark, and the vampires who came and went. Some brought the bowls of thin soup. Others tossed bottled water, laughing when the bottles bounced off the cell bars and rolled beyond reach. I learned how to retrieve them when the vampires weren’t around. To syphon small surges of energy, then zap at the bottles.

Brin was better at it than I was. She said to aim at the backside of the bottle, spin it closer. But she’d had more time to practice, and I supposed she had more faille ability than she wanted to reveal.

Still, I was uneasy around Brin. I didn’t want to doubt her when she’d done nothing wrong, and perhaps my anxiety came from the wolfbane, a drug not fully out of my system. Brin said the vampires wanted to see if she was freak enough to be useful, so it made sense that she’d keep secrets, hide the ability she had. I should, too, and since I’d never met another faille before, other than my mother, judging Brin wasn’t fair.

Leaning back, I kept my thoughts from my expressions. The chill from the rough stones against my spine made me shiver. The runes on my arm itched with the healing. Gently, I rubbed at the skin, missing the magic I’d once wondered about, if it thought me worthy enough for protection.

So long ago.

The lights flickered again, and my attention shifted to the vampires sauntering down the hall—they weren’t the vampires who usually came to change the buckets of stinking brown sludge. These were new, and Brin said, with her lips barely moving, “Stay quiet. Don’t call attention to yourself.”

She’d pulled her knees toward her chest, and I matched my posture to hers. I still wore the jeans I’d pulled on at the watchtower house. I’d lost the knitted hat during the fight in the house cellar, and the leather vest had disappeared when they’d sliced my shirt to get to the runes. I refused to think about the dead girl whose shirt I now wore.

But Brin had warned me to stay still. I didn’t move, but, watching them, I fought the urge to syphon energy and wipe away the smirks on their faces. Each time they picked up a bucket of the brown sludge, they deliberately spilled it on the overly soiled straw, laughing as they kicked through the mess.

I would deal with the mess in our cell, but I tried not to bristle when a vampire opened Levi’s cell—Levi didn’t move fast enough. He could barely crawl with his injuries, and when the vampire grew angry, kicked out, I heard Levi’s muffled grunt.

“Fucking vampires.”

The vampire snorted, grabbing Levi’s ankle, dragging him from the cell. Levi struggled. He lost his grip on the rusted cell bars, and as his fingers scraped against the sharp edge of stone, he left smears of red behind.

In the flickering light, his clothes looked blood-stained and dirty; it was hard to tell the dark stains apart. A reckless power pulsed through my veins, driving me to my feet. I shouted.

The vampires ignored me.

I swore. Over and over. But when the vampire dragged Levi toward the grated black hole, panic exploded. All I could think about was the screaming banshee girl. Being dropped into the dark, a permanent way out.

My hands scraped around iron bars that were ice-cold, crudely made, meant to hold the soon-to-be dead.

“You freaking, fucking monsters!” I blubbered, choking, gripping the skin-shredding bars, reaching for the trace energy, pulling it… pulling it into my hands. The trickle that moved like thick, reluctant molasses.

My entire body was shaking with the effort to turn the vampire’s attention—turn his vindictiveness toward me. Force him to take on someone who wasn’t writhing in agony. Someone who could fight back.

The bars vibrated from stone floor to stone ceiling. Bits of dirt fell from overhead like black rain. Soggy straw juddered around my feet as if trying to escape. Laura stumbled to my side and put her hands on my arms.

“Noa,” she hissed. “Noa, let go.”

“It’s Levi. The grate…” Sobs mangled my words. Levi was moaning, and I was hissing, “Bastards!”

“Hey—asshats!” Brin yelled, clattering her empty bowl against the bars before she threw it toward them. I counted three vampires—one with Levi, one still in Levi’s cell spilling the sludge, and one watching. “Come fight someone who’s not comatose.”

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