Page 23 of Born Free

Santiago questions me again. When I don’t give him the answers he wants, he stabs me through the heart.

Next, I’m definitely on an airplane.

He drills me about my ability to overcome death.

He kills me again.

When I wake once more and we’re in a dark room with elegant curtains and it smells like spices, I realize I am staying out far, far longer than my normal twenty-minute deaths. I think it’s actually been hours in between each death.

How is he doing it?

Where the hell is he taking me?

When I next wake, I’m alone in what I think is again, a train car. I’m slumped in a seat, alone in this tiny space. With a pained groan, I sit up, my chest screaming in pain.

I look out the window to find it’s nighttime. I am indeed, on a train. It races down the tracks, and it looks like we’re going through a canyon. Steep, mountain walls rise on either side, trees lining nearly every surface around me. There are patches of snow here and there, signs of the passing winter.

“Where the hell am I?” I breathe out as I look for any signs, any billboards or… anything to give me any indication where I’ve been taken.

I’m nowhere near Chicago anymore, not with these mountains. There’s snow, so I haven’t gone south.

A train ride. A plane ride. And another train ride. And who knows what else in between?

Keeping my feet silent, I go to the door, only to find it locked.

I could break it, no question there. But what am I going to find on the other side?

I press my ear against the door, my eyes sliding closed.

It’s mostly quiet. I hear the rattling of the train and little else. But then there are footsteps heading my direction. Not just one set, but two.

I take two steps back, adrenaline and fight coiling in my blood.

The moment the door slides open, I kick out with everything I have, connecting with a jaw. Santiago goes stumbling backward, falling into the man behind him. I jump over them both, stepping on a hand and then a face as I go.

Fingers wrap around my ankle, and I fall flat to the ground. Curling around, I find Santiago gripping me with white knuckles.

I coil a leg back, ready to crush his face in. But before I get the chance, the other man jumps. He grips me by the front of my dress and flips me over into the aisle of the train.

A vampiric roar rips from my throat, and I feel my eyes flash red. I flip around, taking my hands straight for the man’s throat, squeezing with everything I have. But his much larger hands grip the front of my dress, and he pulls the both of us to our feet.

I rear my head back and crack my forehead into his nose.

He drops me, and I catch myself with bent knees, whipping around to search for Santiago.

Except he’s there with a dagger in hand, and he plunges it into my chest.

Lights out.

“What are we going to do?”

I feel so groggy. The edges of everything are fuzzy. My brain weighs a million pounds. My hands feel tingly.

“There is someone out there,” Santiago’s voice floats through the fog in my brain. “It’s not a coincidence our car died before we could get to the town.”

“You’re being paranoid,” a voice I don’t recognize says. “But maybe it’s for the best. This plan… Are you really feeling so confident to just walk up to the castle and hope he listens to us before he chops our heads off for fun?”

A different kind of cold starts spreading out over my skin at those few choice words.

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