Page 34 of Wild Ivy
Darkness pulsesaround me like a living thing, pressing against my skin with an almost physical weight. The void is nothing like I expected—not empty space or swirling chaos, but something worse—something hungry.
I can feel them out there, the souls I once commanded, now twisted into something feral by this place. Their hatred radiates through the darkness in waves. The hunter becomes the hunted. There’s probably some cosmic justice in that.
A whisper of movement to my left catches my attention. I spin, reaching instinctively for my chaos magick. I have a feeling it will be feared more. At least, that is my hope.
“Come on then,” I mutter, backing up against what feels like a wall, though I can’t actually see it. “If you’re going to?—”
The attack comes from above instead. Claws rake across my shoulder before I can dodge. Pain flares, sharp and real, too real for a place that supposedly exists outside of reality. I kick out blindly, connecting with something that feels like smoke but hits like concrete.
A familiar laugh echoes through the darkness. Marcus. Of course he’d be here, waiting. How many other of those I’ve assassinated over the years are lurking in this nightmare?
“Not so powerful now, are you,Poison?” His voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. “No one to hide behind. Nowhere to run.”
“I never hid behind anyone,” I snap, trying to track his movement through the darkness. My shoulder throbs where he caught me, but I can’t tell if I’m actually bleeding. Everything feels different here.
Another whisper of movement, this time accompanied by multiple voices - more souls joining the hunt. They’re toying with me. They could have swarmed me already, torn me apart. Instead, they’re drawing it out.
The darkness shifts again, and I know I have seconds before they attack en masse. I’m not helpless. I never was. I refuse to be now.
Taking a deep breath, I have one option right now.
Run.
I sprint through the darkness, letting instinct guide me. My chaos magick may not work the same here, but years as The Syndicate’s assassin taught me other skills. How to move silently. How to become a shadow. How to survive. How to kill without a trace.
“I remember how you killed me,” a voice whispers. I turn my head to see Dominic, a dark warlock who’d been trafficking supernatural children. “You made it look like a rival’s curse. So clever. So artistic.”
“Nothing artistic about this,” another voice joins in - Selena Winters, a blood witch who’d been harvesting vampire hearts, closes in, forcing me to a stop. “We get to tear you apart now, piece by piece.”
I duck behind a column, controlling my breathing. The void shifts around me, making it impossible to tell if I’m actually moving forward or just circling in place. But staying still means death. Or whatever passes for death in a place like this.
“You’re just prolonging the inevitable,” Marcus calls out. “We know all your methods, Poison. You killed most of us in different ways. We talk, you know.”
“Nice, you’ve got a mother’s meeting going on in here,” I call out. “I’m honoured to be the topic of your conversations.”
“Don’t be,” a soul hisses right in my face, and I rear back. It’s the vampire paedophile I coaxed into biting me after injecting holy water into my veins.
A tendril of something cold wraps around my throat. I surge forward, barely avoiding the spectral fangs that snap through the space where my throat had been. The movement puts me in a more open area - vulnerable.
“Remember me?” A new voice, closer. Andrew Cliff, my very first hit. A vampire who’d been turning too many humans to avoid suspicion. “You were so uncertain then. But you learned quickly, didn’t you? Became Death’s perfect weapon.”
I spin again and run in the opposite direction.
They’re herding me. Each attack is pushing me in a specific direction. But why? What’s worse than what’s already hunting me?
“All those careful plans,” Selena taunts. “All those creative deaths. Bet you never thought you’d end up here, did you?”
I need to think. The void operates on different rules. Rules I don’t understand yet. But there has to be a way out. Life wouldn’t have trapped me here if escape was impossible. She wants something from the others, which means I’m leverage. Which means...
A flash of movement. I dive and roll, but not fast enough. Pain explodes across my back as ghostly claws infused with darkmagick find their mark. The darkness seems to pulse with their satisfaction.
“Found your limits yet, Poison?” Marcus laughs. “Or should we help you discover what true supernatural torture feels like?”
Getting to my feet, I press deeper into the darkness, following the thrum of energy I can feel all around me. The void isn’t just a prison. It’s something else. Something is changing.
“Where are you going, little assassin?” Dominic’s voice echoes. “There’s nowhere to hide that we can’t find you.”
He’s right about that. They can sense me here just as easily as I once sensed them in the living world. But sensing isn’t the same as catching.
