Where Dark Things Wait: Night Creatures Book One

Chapter Thirty-One - For Now

Leaving Dunstan in his room, she slipped into his bathroom, turning on his shower and hoping she might manage to make herself feel... if not clean, at least cleaner. Her body seemed to creak and groan as she stripped off her clothes again, and she wondered if she'd ever dressed and undressed so many times in one day before. Somehow, the day had been a carousel of dressing and undressing, and her aching bones would have like to just sit for a while, to not bend down to peel off her leggings, but she so desperately wanted to cleanse herself. She felt sullied. Tainted. Polluted by the fingers that had touched her.

Unfortunately, even the warm water and lime and mint scented soap she found in the shower did nothing to ease the sense that she had been dirtied; stained beyond salvation. She scrubbed at her skin, but the bruises and burns seemed to mock her; the truth written into her flesh and declaring her to be marked, fallen, irredeemable.

Why hadn't she paid more attention at the bus stop? Why, after five years, had she let her guard down? She knew the answer to that, of course. She'd let her guard down because leaving Dunstan behind had set her so completely off kilter. Somehow, she'd let him in and he'd made her more vulnerable than she'd been in years.

Even though that was true, it wasn't the full story. Why hadn't she escaped Lapis sooner? The power had been in her all along, so why had she let him do what he'd done? Why hadn't she been smart enough to prevent it? Why had she failed so completely? Kalyna hated herself for that failure, for letting herself become a thing, a fleshy bag of bones and blood that Lapis had used like a piñata at first, and then as a twisted game to feed his hunger for inflicting pain.

Her nails cut into her skin as she scrubbed and scrubbed, wanting to remove every mark. She couldn't even remember where some of them had come from. The days she'd spent in that dungeon had blurred together, an endless stream of injuries, and when she noticed the scabbed over imprints of teeth her thigh, she realised she had no memory of that bite. How much had she blocked out or lost to the daze caused by blood loss and agony? Had even her own mind turned against her?

She scrubbed harder, tearing open existing part-healed cuts and gouging out new ones. Her blood dripped into the bath, swirling down the plughole at her feet. It didn't matter. She wanted to remove her skin; skin that her abusers and groped, or hurt, or hosed down. Let her blood flow. Maybe if enough leeched from her, she would let out all the venom that lingered inside her, whispering that she should be ashamed and that she had no worth, or that it was all her own fault.

She had drawn the ire of both Lapis and Price.

She had chosen to leave the compound.

She hadn't kept her guard up.

She hadn't escaped sooner.

Tears fell, mixing with the shower spray, and Kalyna sunk to her knees in the tub, shivering despite the warmth of the water. Somehow, she still felt cold, a chill sinking so deep that it seemed to be in her marrow. A sob shuddered from her, surprising her, because she couldn't understand how she hadn't yet run out of tears or broken whimpers. She felt too exhausted to cry, and yet her body went through the motions anyway.

Still under the spray, she curled up in the far corner of the bath. Yet her nails continued to scrub at her legs, at her forearms, at her chest and face, tearing at her still healing flesh and spilling yet more gore into the bath. Why did she keep bleeding? How much blood could her body give before oblivion took her far away from this harsh, heartless world?

A knock rapped against the bathroom door, and Dunstan's voice asked, "Kallie, beautiful? Can I come in?"

She didn't want him to see this, and yet he had seen everything else, so why feel precious about her fracturing sense of calm now? He could feel her falling apart in his bathroom and so it made no difference if he came in or not. Yet, as her nails cut into one of the half-healed cuts on her thigh, reopening it so that scarlet bloomed over skin that seemed too pale despite the bruises, she felt a fresh wave of shame. She didn't want him to see her.