THE FREE FALL ⇘ Bellamy Blake. [1]

| li. HELLHOUND

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CHAPTER FIFTY ONE;

HELLHOUND.

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ONCE UPON A TIME, AMIDST THE SHADOWS OF THE DROPSHIP—Haven had found herself captured by the hands of John Murphy. Muffled cries lingered beneath a gag, her wrists cruelly bound behind her back, her body shivering with an uncontrollable storm of rage, horror, and fear. The veil between reality and illusion had slowly thinned, and before she knew it—phantoms began to flicker across her weary eyes.

        Dax. Charlotte. Wells.

        Their spectral forms had cruelly haunted the dropship's first floor, ephemeral as smoke. Below the groaning floorboards, where she frantically worked alongside Raven and Jasper to save Bellamy's life above . . . the specter of Dax had emerged yet again, threading a ghostly echo through the dimly lit underbelly of their home.

She never saw Atom.

Not since he had died.

But here, now . . .

        The familiar form of the first death Haven had truly witnessed on Earth was staring right back at her.

        Covered in seething, radiation-induced welts, his eyes the same ghostly, milky white as they had been in his final moments—Atom shifted eerily from the darkness beyond Lincoln's shoulder. He materialized starkly against the window, his scarred hand pressing against the glass. His lips moved in a haunting pantomime, and though Haven was frozen, paralyzed by the sight of blood seeping from his neck—the very spot where Clarke had mercifully slit his jugular—she heard nothing.

        Until . . .

        ". . . Kill . . . me. . ."

        Haven flung herself backwards.

All eyes in the car flashed to the Smith girl as her spine pressed as far back into Bellamy's chest as possible, desperately seeking distance from the spectral form of the dead boy lingering just outside the car window. When it became evident she wouldn't speak—or couldn't speak—Orion and Octavia glanced to Bellamy for some clue, some explanation . . . but, he, too was lost in the mystery of her fright, unable to see the ghostly figure that so clearly tormented her.

Lincoln's stare was murderous.

As much as Bellamy longed to unravel the mystery of whatever the hell had terrified Haven so deeply, he knew they didn't have the luxury of time—especially as her sudden jerks prompted Lincoln to peer more suspiciously through the fragile window that divided them. He could feel the trembling in Haven's body pressed against his. He could see her pupils blown with fear as they fixed on the empty air beyond Lincoln's shoulder and, most unsettling of all . . . he could hear the erratic, sharp breaths she fought to control.