Page 77 of The Reveal
I feel a weight pressing into me, digging into my side, and I don’t have to reach over to know that the cards have wedged themselves there in the vicinity of my hip. Just in case I want to reach over and grab them from this ridiculous position.
In my current state, I have to admire the cards’ continuing optimism that if they keep on presenting themselves, I’ll surrender to them.
Right now I feel like I’d surrender to anything, but it takes too much energy to reach for the deck.
Ty and Maddox are still sparking at each other. They’re probably touching, too, because they usually are. I find myself thinking about hands on throats, and I wonder what’s happened to me that I now unambiguously find that hot. Both when I saw it and when it happened to me.
Surely someone concerned with her own longevity would think better of responding the way I did to a grip like that.
Though the fact that Ty mentioned Ariel’s mark floats up then, dancing around in what little mind I have left that’s not taken over by the searing pain. I spent a very long time in the shower before I finally went to bed last night, scrubbing myself everywhere. Wishing I could reach inside my brain and scrub out some of the images in my head, but in lieu of that, I did the best I could with what I had.
But apparently the damn mark stayed put.
I should probably feel grosser about that than I do. This is becoming a tired theme. I should feel a lot of things, yet I don’t.
What I don’t know is if that means I’m already too far gone.
Face down in the dirt on Mount McLoughlin, chasing a nasty ritual sacrifice under an ominously full moon, it feels a little late to be worrying about such things.
The pain in my head seems to bloom then, brighter and hotter.
It takes over everything. It blots out any other line of thought I could possibly have, until I’m scrabbling around for a rock to start bashing my own face in—
And then I see it.
It’s like an entire map suddenly drops, fully formed, into my head.
I sit up, even though it makes everything seem to lurch, and wipe dirt from my face. I’m vaguely aware of Ty and Maddox off to the side of me, clearly testing the limits of that push-and-pull thing they have going on.
“Hey,” comes Ty’s voice when I start to move, “where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“Winter? Are you okay?”
But I don’t answer Maddox either.
Maybe I think that attempting to speak will take more energy than I have left. Maybe I’m not thinking anymore.
I walk. I leave the trail and start picking my way across the mountainside. I can hear that they’re following me, thunderclaps and all, though I don’t turn around to check.
After a while, I start climbing again, and the great part of the continuing headache is that I don’t really pay any attention to how my quads scream at me or how tender my feet feel in the damn hiking boots. I just keep going.
And it’s not too long before I see those rock formations that look like goblins, leering down at me as if, if it were up to them, they’d devour me here and now.
I stagger past the rocks and then, finally, I see the trees that have been haunting me for what feels like a brand-new forever.
I hear a growl from behind me and know that it’s Ty. It’s so deep it sounds like a Harley engine, which maybe explains the whole werewolf/biker connection, but I’m too messed up to follow that or any other line of thought.
Besides, he’s not growling at me.
I don’t know how I know that—I just do.
“Blood,” Maddox says, like she’s agreeing with something he said. I’m surprised that she’s not in her wolf form, not that I turn back to confirm that. Her speakingisthe confirmation. “I smell it too.”
I make myself keep going, putting one foot in front of the other until the pounding in my head nearly knocks me over. I sag against the nearest tree in despair, until I realize I’ve made it to the clearing.
Theclearing that’s been haunting me.
I made it. We’re here. I force myself to look around and see ...
