Underland(43)
“There you are!” A familiar voice called out, and Holly stepped out of the darkness, hands on her hips. “Did you get Remus’s gift? I spent all morning baking it. Potions, spells, and poisons are my specialty.”
A sharp stabbing pain pierced through Kira’s side. She sucked in air through her teeth and tried to hold back the cries she desperately wanted to release. Biting her lip, she pulled herself up the door. She had to lean against the wall to walk, but she did it. Away from Holly—which direction didn’t matter.
“Where you going?” Holly teased. Someone else stepped out of the darkness. A muscled Cyclops cracked his knuckles and grinned, showing his overlarge flat teeth. “I didn’t say you could leave yet.”
Kira took off. She wasn’t in a fighting position. She could barely walk, cramps making her gait unsteady. Sweat ran down her face, and she couldn’t stop shivering. But they didn’t seem to be chasing her.
She heard Holly call out.
After a few blind turns, Kira made it to a door that seemed to lead out. She stumbled, fumbled, carelessly made her way down a path that she’d been down days earlier—toward the car graveyard.
Where was everyone?
Kira moved along, trying to not look towards the wreckage of the bus. She slipped and fell into a car, bruising her hip. She grunted and pushed herself up, trying to ignore the pain. A nearby car had an open trunk—an old Buick. The trunk was plenty large.
She painstakingly took her outer shirt off and crawled into the trunk. The carpet was rough and worn, like sandpaper under her palms. But it hardly mattered. She wasn’t picking the car based on the interior carpet. She picked it because she hoped Holly and her goon wouldn’t look for her here. If they passed by, she could slip out and head back toward help.
Kira’s hands shook from the fever, and she had problems getting her muscles to do the simplest task without twitching. But after a few tries, she reached the lid of the trunk. This was it. There was no going back now.
Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she pulled the trunk down until only a sliver of light came through. Immediately, in the darkness, with nothing else to distract her, she could feel her body shutting down, feel the pain in her joints and the fever that raged against her. More stabbing pains came from her midsection, and she could no longer hold in a scream of pain that took everything from her. Wadding up her outer shirt she placed it into her mouth to muffle her whimpers.
A creaking noise came from above. Holly. “Where’d your fight go? Guess you’re not much of a champion. Oh well, I guess that’s what happens when you’re out of your league.” She smiled cruelly and reached in to grab Kira’s arm band. With a few keystrokes and a touch of her own band—and then a transfer to the goon next to her—Holly wiped out her winnings. She dropped Kira’s limp wrist like it was garbage.
Kira turned weakly and saw a bunch of zeroes across her wrist screen. All of her freedom tokens, gone.
“Thanks for sharing the wealth.” Holly waved cheekily, and the trunk came down with a loud thud. Kira heard the lock click.
She was too weak to pound on the lid, and no one who cared was nearby anyway. Kira was going to die.
Normally, this would have bothered Kira, but when she considered her options, she was out of choices. Besides, it seemed reasonable. She was slotted to die anyway, Den had said it. Warrick confirmed her fears, and Remus was just finishing what Madame Fortuna had warned would happen.
Pain seized her suddenly, consumed her, and she cried into the gag, which she now spit out. Her body spasmed, and her foot launched out and kicked the trunk.
Kira would have thought her last moments of life would be spent replaying her happy childhood memories, but no. Her life unfolded before her in monstrous mini-episodes—stabbing her stepfather, running away from her mother, stealing food and wallets from unsuspecting vendors and marks. She revisited every memory she’d ever regretted.
The images played across the darkness of her mind like a horrific kaleidoscope. Then they turned darker: images of Creeper leading a mob of monsters on the hunt for her. She heard a whimper. Was that her? The trunk was so, so cold. She’d been suffering in the darkness for hours. Why hadn’t she died yet?
Her head pounded with such intensity, she moaned. Maybe she would see her father soon. The pounding would stop and she’d see his face again.
Wait. No. That pounding was really happening—outside the car. Someone was outside the trunk of the car. They must have seen her get locked inside and were trying to get her out.
“Please, no,” she cried out. “Go away so I can see my dad.” But her voice was so faint and weak, she doubted they heard.
The pounding became more insistent.
The trunk bent, and a crack of light pierced the darkness. A worried voice told her she would be okay, and the pounding continued again. The light filled up more of the trunk. Kira squinted against the pain.
“No!” Her lungs burned and she coughed into her hand. When she pulled it away it was covered with blood.
“I’m coming!” Someone shouted and reached their hand through and tried to touch her arm. Kira rolled away from the touch; she found it hard to breathe and had to concentrate on every burning breath.
Just when the latch on the Buick broke, and the trunk was filled with unnatural fluorescent light, Kira stopped breathing.
Chapter 20
Chanda Hahn's Books
- Fable (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #3)
- Chanda Hahn
- UnEnchanted (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #1)
- The Steele Wolf (Iron Butterfly #2)
- The Silver Siren (Iron Butterfly, #3)
- The Iron Butterfly (Iron Butterfly #1)
- Reign (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale, #4)
- Forever (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale, #5)
- Fairest (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #2)
- Fable (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #3)