Page 29 of Taken to the Deadlands

"Did you see something?" she asked.

Damn it.Maybe I should just come clean. Whatever was in this house wasn’t a fucking ghost. And the more I tried to pretend it was, the more danger I could be in.

"Listen, I have to tell you something. I?—“

My throat clogged and the blood in my veins froze when I caught sight of a flash of white behind her.

Chapter 13

Mia

This one was so much worse than the one in the auction house.

Yes, she was skeleton-like, but the skin that she had left on her was grayish. The hair that had once covered her head stuck out around her on all sides and flowed as if she were underwater. There was a cloth wrapped around her arms, chest, and waist that seemed stained with blood. That, too, was floating around her.

My attention was fully focused on her, and when Aris moved to look back at whatever I was seeing, I got a full look at the girl's mutilated body and ripped-up face. I could just make out her eyes and gaping mouth, but everything else was unrecognizable.

I tried to push myself back as far as I could and yelped when my back slammed against the headboard.

"What is it?” Aris asked. “Do you see what it is? What do you see? Is she here? Cara?"

She looked around the room, not noticing the being that was right behind her.

Aris can’t see her.

"Cara, is that you?" she tried again, but the being paid her no mind. Instead, she just stared straight at me.

“Hel—,” she started, and her voice came out gargled. "Help me.”

"Shit," I muttered under my breath. "What does Cara look like?" I asked Aris, not daring to take my eyes away from whatever the apparition was.

"Yellow hair, green eyes," Aris forced out, still frantically searching for the ghost that was staring directly at me.

Disappointment hit me straight in the gut. Even with her changed body, I could tell this was not Cara.

"It's not her," I forced out a scream that got caught in my throat when the being pushed forward and put her bony hands on the bed.

“What do you mean it's not her?" Aris asked, her voice dropping.

"Don't come closer," I warned. Aris’s gaze snapped toward me.

"What happening? Where is she?” she asked in a growl her eyes searching across the room.

The moan that came out of the being's mouth caused all my hair to stand on edge.

"Help me," she pleaded again.

When her hand shot forward to wrap around my ankle, I opened my mouth to scream, but no words came out.

Memories that weren’t mine forced themselves into my head. Memories of a human life so unlike my own. I saw her with her family at home. The eldest daughter simply on the way home from work when the demons had taken her.

I watched as she spent months on end at the auction house, being assessed by potential buyers as if she were some—thing. They looked at her, watched her as she slept, made comments on her body shape.

It had been hell for her. Until the day of the auction.

I can’t watch this.

I saw Aris in her mind. She looked so much like she had the night she bought me. Then a flash of Aris’s bloodstained face and red eyes hit me. The frenzied version of her was attacking me.No—she wasattacking the girl.

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