I Am A Monster

I Am A Monster : Chapter 44

Chapter 44

I lean into the bars, my head angled down, my hands on the bars on either side of my head like I'm the Monopoly person in jail. Amari is in the cell across from me, glaring at the bars on her cell like it's a personal crime to be imprisoning her.

Or maybe she's glaring at me. I don't know.

"I'm sorry..." I croak. My voice is thick and I blink back tears. I want to moan in despair.

Amari waves her hand away like she's not looking for an apology. "Bree, it's not your fault. They caught you. It's their fault we're in this mess."

A part of me knows that, but it's a small, insignificant part of me. I shake my head. "No....You're just saying that to cheer me up....It's my fault...."

"Bree," says Amari. Her tone is so steely and exasperated that I can't help but look up. Her green eyes show with righteous anger. They blaze with such fury that I automatically take a small step back. "It's not--your--fault."

I sigh shakily. "Are they going to come for us?"

"Of course they're going to come for us!"

"Quiet, girlies," says a voice; it's an agile vampire with reddish-brown hair, large, pointy ears, and cold gray eyes. She looks about twenty-five. "Or I'll have to gut you."

"Thalia!" another voice, deep and masculine, protests. "Master said--"

"Master said they could not be killed," says Thalia, a steely edge in her voice. She looks out of my vision, and my head flicks sideways, Amari's doing likewise, but it's on my side and I can't see anything. "She never said anything about hurting--"

Amari snarls fiercely, shaking the bars so hard that one of them bends.

"Shut it, girlie," says Thalia. "Or I'll bring you to an early death."

"Whose death do you mean? Yours, or that"--Amari says a certain curse word that makes Thalia's eyes narrow--"of a master?"

"Don't call him that," says the male voice, sounding outraged. "Don't you dare--"

"I did, and I will!"

"She asked for it," says Thalia. Amari snarls menacingly, and Thalia, about to open the cell door, pauses. "Josh, go get some guard," she commands.

"Aye," says Josh. I hear the sound of his feet as he walks down the hall.

"Meanwhile," says Thalia, eyeing Amari warily, "I'll have you moved to a cell farther down, so you can't talk to her." She gestures towards me. Then she presses a button on the wall that I hadn't noticed earlier. The wall disappears between Amari's cell and the one farther right, and suddenly the left wall is closing in. Amari backs up quickly, looking at the wall with wide eyes, and then the wall closes off and she's one cell down.

"The faster you cooperate," Thalia says, laughing coldly, "The faster you get this done."

Amari snarls in return, giving Thalia an icy stare, but Thalia ignores both the snarl and the stare.

Soon Amari is forcibly pushed right until she's out of sight, snarling malevolently and morphing between her human and wolf form as she pounds fruitlessly against her cell bars.

I look down so that no one can see the tear tracing my cheek. This is all my fault.

* * *

A few minutes later, Amari is brought down the hall, passing by my cell. Her hands are shackled and chained. There is a bruise blossoming on her left cheek, like a dark shadow. One of her eyes is black. Blood drips from a gash on her collarbone. But her air is of a stoic defiance, such a raging spirit that it could never be broken. Her eyes are blazing, she's struggling furiously even though it's hopeless, and she's baring her teeth at the guards ushering her forward, standing on either side of her and blocking the view of most of her body, so I don't see all of the damage they have inflicted on her.

"Amari," I croak, "I'm sorry...."

"It's not your fault, Bree," she mutters. "It was never--"

"Silence!" says one of the guards.

Amari gives them a withering look and then says, "Shut it, moron."

Immediately, he punches her so hard in the shoulder that she flinches. I hear her teeth snap together as she grits them, her lips pursed, trying to withhold a wince.

I blanch, and one of the guards looks over at me. A small smile forms on his face. "Bring her, too," he commands.

Thalia steps into view. "Don't try something," she mutters as she unlocks my cell door.

There are three of us and two of them, Alexa tells me. We can take them.

No, I admit. Amari's hands are in shackles, and I can't take them all at once.

You have to try, Alexa argues. This is your only chance.

It's not, I insist.

She sees the idea in my head, and I feel her breath hitch in her throat. Then she exhales slowly and says:

You sure it'll work?

No, I admit.

Naturally, she mutters.

"Come on," says Thalia impatiently, tugging on my wrist.

"Fine," I grumble, not quite looking at her. Amari gives me a sidelong glance before looking forward again.

We're brought into a huge room, the size of a football field, huge and echoey.

"Why have you brought us here?" Amari demands.

I realize the guard has taken his hand down without consciously thinking about it, and I stifle a sudden urge to snicker as he blushes and hastily smacks his hand against her mouth again. As a response, she growls, but the growl is low and muffled through his thick hand and pudgy fingers.

"None of your damn business," says Thalia, glaring pointedly at the other guard, who unsheathes a knife strapped to his belt. "Give her something to think about...on her." She flicks her head lazily at me, a faint smile playing at her lips.

Amari's eyes widen as she realizes what Thalia's planning, and I look back with wide, pleading eyes. Amari stares at me helplessly as the guard draws nearer, struggling, but the first guard holds her in check.

I hate this feeling of helplessness, hate knowing that terrible pain has yet to come in only a few seconds' time and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

Then the blade sinks into my arm.

The scream escapes through my motionless lips with a sudden lurch, as though I'm screaming with everything in my body--which I probably am.

The pain that rips through my arm is unbearable--like a hot iron is being pressed to it. The agony that fills me is so sudden that I sink to the floor, gasping as the blood seeps through my shirt. I never thought pain like this could be physically possible. Waves of it roll over me, gut-wrenching and impossible. I look at Amari, and, finding my voice, plead, "Kill me!"

Even though I shouldn't, I feel weak. Amari has been stabbed before like this, but she did nothing besides grunt in pain and move on with her life.

But the pain has caught me so suddenly that there is only one conscious thought in my head, and that is: I need to die. But the pain is too much. Before I can stop myself, I find myself slumping sideways, my vision going dark.