Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy #1)(105)

The shaft was dark, plunging down into nothingness. I stood at the edge, pressing back against Jeremiah, shaking my head.

“Please,” I whispered. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”

I shuddered at the touch of his breath on my ear. “Good-bye, Raelynn. Go now, to God.”

He shoved me down, into the dark.





I hit mud, tumbled, slipped off a ledge, and fell until I plunged into icy water. It was so cold that I choked, my muscles cramping as I tried desperately to swim. I broke the surface, flailed, and realized my feet could touch the thick mud below. I trudged forward, utterly blind, my arms outstretched in the dark. The water grew shallower, and I crawled out onto wet, pebbly ground.

My glasses were gone, lost in my fall. Above me, the entrance I’d been pushed through was a pale gray square in otherwise total darkness, dripping rain into the pool I’d just climbed from. As I watched, even that pale light began to disappear with the sound of hammers.

They were boarding up the shaft. They were sealing me in the dark.

Shivering, watching my only source of light disappear, I let myself cry.

I sobbed, despair gripping me so hard that for a moment, I only wanted to curl up there and wait. Wait to die, to waste away in the dark or be taken by whatever monster lived down here. I wept until the hammering stopped, and then the silence was so much worse.

I was alone. Completely and utterly alone.

Leon must have died in those woods where the Reaper left him. My protector was gone, his life given up to protect mine — and for nothing. The Libiri had made their final sacrifice. The God was going to be set free. Perhaps it was better this way, that I would die before I could see what became of this world under the rule of an evil God.

But as my tears stopped, and the minutes passed, I realized I couldn’t just lay down and wait to die. Not when Leon had fought so hard for me. Not while I still had some strength in me. Not while I still had a weapon.

I fumbled at my boot, reassuring myself that the dagger was still there. It was just one small knife with unknown magical properties, but it meant I wasn’t entirely helpless. My vision was shit without my glasses, but I tugged my lighter out of my back pocket and after a few tries, managed to get it to light. The cavern around me was a blur of dark shapes with few defining features, but at least now I’d be able to see enough in front of me to know if I was about to walk into a pit.

In the flickering light, I realized there was something lying in the mud beside me, half-submerged in the murky water. I held the lighter a little closer, frowning —

And realized I was looking at Victoria’s muddy, naked corpse.

I scrambled away, and gagged but there was nothing in my stomach to come up. There was a tunnel at the back of the cavern and I stumbled toward it; anything to put distance between myself and the body. Leon had been right: Jeremiah had killed his own sister, and thrown her down here to rot in the dark. I was shuddering violently, and had to lean against the mouth of the tunnel to swallow down my panic. Even knowing that Victoria had intended to kill me, seeing her dead was horrifying.

I’d eaten with her, drank with her, laughed with her. Villain or not, I’d once thought she was my friend.

I had to pull it together. I had to keep moving. Somewhere, surely there would be another way out. I wasn’t going to end up like that. I wasn’t going to be a forgotten corpse abandoned underground.

No. Fuck no.

The caverns were eerily silent. The shuffle of my boots echoed as I trudged down the narrow tunnel, with only my lighter illuminating the way. I paused at two branching tunnels, trying to steady my rapid breathing. There was a trick to this, wasn’t there? Something like, if there was a breeze coming from one tunnel, then that was where the exit was? But I held up my lighter to both paths, and neither seemed to make a difference.

I went to the right.

The tunnel was so cold, my clothes were soaked, and I was shivering uncontrollably. The smell down here was odd: damp and musty, fungal, and faintly oceanic. The tang of brine was in the air, and so was the pungent smell of rotten fish. The deeper I went, the more I felt as if I was wandering through one of my nightmares again. These black tunnels seemed endless. With every step, I feared my flickering flame would illuminate something in the dark. With every breath, I feared I wouldn’t be able to get enough oxygen as I went deeper, and deeper.

The tunnel narrowed, and sloped steeply downward. I edged myself down the slope, slipping to a halt as my boot touched water. The way ahead was flooded, the water too murky to see how deep it was. If I wanted to go on, I’d have to swim, and completely submerge my head.

I had no idea how long this tunnel was, or when I’d be able to surface again. If it kept leading deeper, then there was a chance the rest of the way was entirely underwater. It wasn’t worth the risk, it would be too dark to see. I’d have to double back, take the other branching tunnel and hope it led me further up instead of down.

I turned to go back, and abruptly stopped. I could hear something moving in the tunnel behind me. Sniffing the air, walking slowly — stalking.

I held my breath, too frightened to make a sound, and held out my light. It barely penetrated the dark, the blackness beyond its glow utterly complete. But slowly, a long, thin, boney limb stepped into the light. A skeletal canine head. A rotten, fur-covered body.

The monster opened its mouth and howled, and I had no choice. I shoved my lighter into my pocket, and plunged into the water.