Shadowed

XXIII. Sacrifice

My ears are ringing. My heartbeat's become so loud and fast that I'm shocked Delia can't feel it right through my skin.

On the Hunter's other side, Angella's face is steely. She doesn't struggle. She walks as if she knew all along that this would be her fate.

They drag us up the eerie wooden hall. Our shadows flicker over the holes cut into the floor, and if anyone below us in the cells notices, I can't tell. They're all but silent, save for a mad, detached scream every now and then.

Delia shivers every time a scream tears through the air, almost like it gives her strength. Vitality, even. 

I fight the urge to gag. Who are these creatures? Violence is more than a habit to them—it's everything they are. It's in their veins. Cruelty fills their minds and their voices and controls their actions, puppeting them and dousing them with power. 

It's bitter and twisted and evil and it's long since consumed these two girls. Maybe they never fought it. Maybe they welcomed its tight grasp, letting it wash over them, relinquishing control, happy to descend into something far past human.

They're so young, too. Delia looks barely twenty, and Jade's not much older. What happened to them? What line did they cross that made death and pain and torture something to be reveled in?

Delia steers us sideways, through a door in the wall that had been completely invisible only seconds before. Her grip tightens on my shoulder, and I tense. I can feel the blood on her hand soaking through the bandage onto me.

I draw in a shaky breath as the room comes into view. Rows and rows of shiny knives, of all shapes and sizes, hang on the wall. Handguns, revolvers, pistols, and even wooden rifles cover a table on the far side of the room, surrounded by mounds of ammunition. And on a rack next to the door hangs an assortment of strange weapons—a deathly sharp axe, a cutlass, some kind of metal chain contraption, and several more that I don't recognize.

"My favorite room," murmurs Jade, releasing Drew and Abby and kicking at something on the wooden floor. With a jolt, I realize it's a puddle of blood. Nearly the entire floor is stained red.

Delia shoves me and Angella to the center of the floor, her dark eyes alight. "How should we start, Jade?" she asks, her voice low and delighted.

I glance at Angella. From all angles it looks like she's completely detached, her face carefully blank and disinterested. But her fists are balled at her sides anxiously, and her jaw is clenched, displaying a pulsing vein at her temple.

She stays silent and distant, though, revealing nothing to those who don't look closely. I'm not so restrained. The mask I used to hold in place has long since fallen away. 

I'm kicking myself for not being a little faster, a little defter, a little quieter while we tried to escape this place. My thoughts are a tangled mess, snarls of guilt and shame and terror. It was me who followed Angella and James. Me who dragged Abby and Drew into this. Me who got the four of us stuck down in those cells. Me who let my curiosity take control.

And yet, after all the havoc it's caused—the urge is still there. No matter how many times I tell myself that I need to let it go, that same nagging voice at the back of my mind whispers into my ear. Impossible to ignore.

What do they want from you?  it asks.

I don't care!  I want to scream. Abby and Drew are about to be tortured. Angella will almost certainly be murdered sooner or later. And I'm stuck here with no way out. I don't care what they want with me anymore.

I shudder, my eyes following Jade's wiry frame as she saunters over to the table covered in heaps of guns.

She studies the pile, her blue eyes cool and calculating, and finally selects a small black handgun.