Page 25 of Owen

“But it isn’t as if she’ll remember any of this later,” Iris pointed out, a smirk tugging at her lips. “What difference does it make what she goes through now, if she’ll have no memory of it once we’re finished with her?”

I looked at Hecate. “You cannot mean to do it.”

Dallas laughed. “This is not to be believed. Do you mean to say you disagree with what needs to be done? You must see there isn’t a choice. We can’t have a human walking through the world with knowledge of us.”

“I have to see her. Now.” I shook off any attempts at holding me in place. “Either tell me where she is, or I’ll tear this place apart with my bare hands.”

10

In all, it was the most memorable camping trip I’d ever taken. No doubt. Between the hurricane and this living nightmare, I could’ve made a living appearing on talk shows and writing a book about my experience. I’d be set for life.

If I thought they would let me live through it.

A tear trickled down my face, from the corner of my eye to my temple. It soaked into my hair, just like so many other tears had since Hecate—another interesting name—left me on the bed.

A comfortable bed, anyway.

I only wished she would’ve let me have control of my body again. What difference did it make if I was able to move around or not? It wasn’t like they hadn’t locked me in. I had heard the lock click, loud and clear. There was no getting out.

God forbid they let me use the bathroom like a civilized person.

This had to be hell. That was it. I had died during the hurricane, after all, and now I was suffering for every bad thing I had ever done.

Only I never thought of myself as a bad person. I had always tried to do the right thing. I had tried to be decent and kind. I’d always let people merge into traffic in front of me and I never even held it against them when they didn’t wave in thanks. I was the sort of person who used to go out of my way to hold doors open for others. I even volunteered at the food bank every holiday season, packaging meals for families in need.

I was hardly a saint, but did a person as nice as me deserve to go to hell?

If this wasn’t hell, I didn’t want to know what was. The sensation of not being able to control my body, no matter how I struggled to move, was torture like I couldn’t have imagined. That and the feeling of having another consciousness in my brain, sort of pushing me aside so it could go through my memories.

I would’ve shuddered if I could have, but then that wasn’t possible. I couldn’t move anything but my eyelids and mouth, just like before.

The room must have been soundproofed—no, the entire compound. Was that the right word for it? My eyes had been open and looking back and forth throughout the entire climb to the cave mouth, then the long and winding tunnel which led back down to the heart of the mountain itself. So far beneath the surface.

And there were others here! Lots of them! I hadn’t seen many—a blonde girl, a redhead, even a little boy, but I’d lost count of all the doors we passed on the way to this room. So, so many doors. Did each of them lead to a room like this? If so, how many people were housed here?

Not just people, either. Hecate was not just a person. She had to be some kind of sorceress.

My mind tried like crazy to reject the idea, but I couldn’t keep from coming back to it over and over. Sorceress. Did such a thing even exist? It had to. I was living proof. No normal person could do what she had done to me.

What she was still doing.

It stood to reason, then, that Owen knew who she was. What she was capable of. Fat chance of a person keeping something like that a secret. Heck, he was staying here, in this underground bunker or whatever it was. That right there was a red flag. Who lived inside a mountain if they weren’t completely nuts?

He knew it, and he must have been okay with it. What was he doing here otherwise?

What if he was one of them? Like her? I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea, though I had to admit there was a good chance of it. He wasn’t like anyone I had ever met, that was for sure. Maybe he was a sorcerer.

Just saying it to myself made me want to laugh. But I couldn’t.

Another tear leaked from the corner of my eye, instead.

How long was she planning on leaving me like this? And what would she do once she was finished with me?

Maybe being left alone wasn’t so bad, after all. The alternative made me sick to my stomach. No way were they going to let me go free after this. How could they? I already knew too much.

If I wasn’t dead already, I would be before long.

I wasn’t a praying person, at least I hadn’t been for much of my life. Funny, how situations like this brought out even the most latent spirituality in people.Please, don’t let me die like this. Please, there’s so much more I wanted to do with my life.

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