The Merciless (The Merciless #1)(51)

“Riley!” I shout. “You have to untie me!” The ropes rub away the top layer of skin around my wrists as I twist and pull against them. I hardly even notice the pain. A flicker of orange appears in my peripheral vision, eating its way closer to me. I take shaky breath after shaky breath, ignoring the smoke coating my mouth and tongue. “Riley, you have to let us out. Riley!”

Riley presses herself against the attic door, searching the floor for something to suffocate the fire. But there’s nothing up here except for the discarded toolbox. Even the bottle of holy water is empty.

“Help! Help us, please!”

Riley’s shoulders tense. She shifts her eyes to me.

“Don’t,” I beg her. All around me, the fire presses in. It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to imagine it crawling over my skin, eating away my hair and my fingernails until there’s nothing left. “Don’t leave me. Please.”

But Riley’s eyes glaze over, until it no longer seems like she sees me. “The exorcism . . .” she says.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I say. Blue tendrils stretch over the wood, reaching for us like fingers. I tug my legs apart, trying to loosen the ropes at my ankles. But they hold tight.

“You can’t leave us here!” I shout. Of all the ways I thought I might die in this house, burning alive is the most cruel. “You can’t!”

Riley hesitates. There’s a loud crack, and a ceiling beam splits in half and swings to the floor, spraying sparks as it falls. The tiny embers land on my arms and legs and eat through my jeans, stinging my skin.

“Oh, god,” I beg, squeezing my eyes shut. “You can’t leave us here.”

Riley’s face turns white, and her lower lip trembles. “Lord, forgive me,” she whispers. Her head disappears as she ducks out of the attic, the ladder creaking beneath her weight.

“No! No!” I scream for so long that my voice goes hoarse. Smoke fills my lungs, and my sobs dissolve in a fit of coughing. The air around us thickens. It clouds my head when I breathe it in, making me feel dizzy and sick to my stomach. We’re never getting out of here. We’re going to burn to death. We’re going to die screaming as flames eat away our faces.

Fire crackles, and another wooden beam drops to the floor. It crashes in the corner, lighting more of Riley’s tower of Vogue magazines on fire as it sparks. I cough and cough, unable to catch my breath as I watch the flames grow and move.

“Sofia,” Brooklyn says, her voice eerily steady, “we can get out of here, but you need to help me.”

I choke back my sobs, but I can’t slow my rapidly beating heart. “How?” I ask, my voice shaking.

“Can you walk?”

I clumsily try to stand, but my legs are angled in front of me, and without using my arms I can’t keep my balance. “No.”

“Then crawl if you have to,” Brooklyn insists. “Crawl to me. Hurry!”

Crawl. I breathe in and then out, focusing on that one word. The fire is so close that I can feel its heat flickering at my ankle, but Brooklyn’s not far away. I can make it to her before the fire reaches me. I push past the fears growing in the back of my head. I can crawl. I will crawl.

I rock my weight to the left and bite back a groan when my shoulder crashes into the floor. Now I’m lying on my side, my legs curled next to me. Brooklyn’s boots are two or three feet away. With my arms still tied behind my back, I can’t use them to pull myself, so I dig my heels into the floorboards and scoot across the attic. The fire reaches Riley’s nail polish and the bottles explode in a burst of colorful glass, showering me with sparks.

My shoulder aches as I push it over the floor, past Brooklyn’s combat boots and blood-and-soot-covered legs. I push myself farther, and then I’m beside her arm.

“What do I do?” I gasp when I’m close enough to see her face. She turns her head so she can look at me. In the crackling orange light, her eyes glow red.

“You need to get the nails out.” Brooklyn cringes, and the skin around her eyes crinkles. “You’ll have to use your teeth.”

Teeth. If I stop and think about what I’m about to do, there’s no way I’ll go through with it. So I don’t think. I rock my body to the side until I roll onto my chest. I pull my knees up, using my forehead to balance my weight against the floor. Brooklyn steadies me with one leg, and I pull myself up to a crouch. I edge myself closer to Brooklyn’s hand.

The nail is wedged deep into her palm, and everything—her skin, her fingernails, the nail itself—is coated in a thick layer of blood. I lower my face to her hand and work my mouth around the nail head. Brooklyn gasps as my teeth scrape over her skin. I bite down on the nail and pull.

The nail digs into my teeth and gums, but it doesn’t move. Blood fills my mouth, and it tastes sharp, metallic. I don’t know whether it’s mine or Brooklyn’s. Probably both. I try not to breathe it in as I pull again. The nail bites into the enamel of my teeth, and blood trickles down my throat. I start to gag.

“Sofia, come on,” Brooklyn says. “You’ve got this.”

I bite down again, this time wiggling the nail head with my teeth before I pull. It comes loose in my mouth, and I rock backward, nearly losing my balance. Brooklyn releases a strangled cry and hugs her now free hand to her chest. Before I can even spit the nail from my mouth, she reaches to her other hand and digs the nail out herself. It clatters to the floor when she pulls it loose.