Liar (Madison Kate #2)(94)

But he wasn't here now. I was alone. Completely alone and no one knew where I was.

No one... except whoever had dumped me here.

That thought alone helped me push through my terror, if only to replace it with new fears. He'd locked me in the trunk of a car, drugged and half-dead. What were his plans for me? Leave me here to die? Or come back and finish the job with his hands.

Frantic, I tried to shift my position, searching for a release handle on the inside. All modern cars had them; they were a standard safety feature in case someone accidentally became locked in the trunk. But... what if this wasn't a modern car? What if...

Even in the pitch blackness, my head spun with dizziness, and I sucked in a shuddering sob as I tried to get myself under control. Everything hurt—my stomach was twisted in knots, my limbs all ached, and I was coated in a cold sheen of sweat. Most of all, my head was pounding.

I called out again, but my voice was weak and thready. Pathetic. No one was ever going to hear me. No one would find me until it was too late. Until my oxygen ran out and I suffocated in this metal coffin, and even then it wouldn't be until my body decayed that anyone would open the random, abandoned car trunk in the parking lot of some shitty reception hall in the middle of nowhere.

A panicked moan tore from my throat, and I thrashed around, striking out with my hands and feet, desperate for some way out of the trunk. It was totally futile, of course, and just left me bloody and bruised, gasping for air and positive my real death was on the horizon.

Something tickled my bare leg, and I froze. It happened again, and I looked down on reflex. There was still no light, but somehow now I could see my legs. I could see my legs and the hundreds of spiders suddenly crawling all over them, swarming my body like they planned to smother me.

I screamed, then. I screamed and screamed as their tiny legs crawled all over me, touching every inch of my body, burrowing under my clothes. And then they started to bite me. Over and over and over and all I could do was howl in agony and terror while their venom flooded my bloodstream and paralyzed me.

Light flared above me, burning my retinas. I was already screaming, though, and the pain of the light was nothing compared to the spiders all over me. There was another sound now, though, something more than just the hollow sound of my own terror. Something deeper. Something not coming from me.

Searing heat brushed my skin, and I shrieked, my voice cracking as I sobbed uncontrollably and moaned. "Please stop," I cried, praying to any and all deities ever created. Surely one of them would help me. Surely. "Please, please, please, make it stop," I sobbed. "Get them off, get them off me, get them off." My words were all slurring together as my mind slowly cracked and the dark void of insanity called to me.

"...she can't hear you," someone said, their words reaching my ears as I gasped for air and whimpered. A sharp, stinging pain jabbed my upper arm, and I moaned as heat burned through my muscle.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I recognized that I'd been found. Someone had found me... but they were too late.

My panicked words dissolved into mumbles as I pleaded for them to get the spiders off. Just get them off me!

Huge hands stroked my face, over and over, brushing my hair back. Soft, low, familiar murmurs rumbled through my ear, grounding me and slowly, ever so fucking slowly, bringing my elevated heart rate down. I knew that voice. I knew it. I trusted it. That wasn't the voice of whoever had dumped me in that trunk.

"...need to get her to a hospital," someone was saying. Someone farther away. The murmuring in my ear didn't let up, though, and I clung onto it like a life raft. The crawling sensation of spiders was fading away, replaced with uncontrollable shivering.

"Hey, hey, hey, shhh, come on baby girl, don't do this," the voice whispered in my ear, so close I wondered if I was imagining it. The voice was almost inside my head. "Kate, baby, come on, stay with me. We've got you. We've got you. We've got you."

I couldn't stop the trembling, though. Something was still so very wrong. Suddenly it was like my whole form lost all density. I was weightless, floating, incorporeal... my feather-light eyelids fluttered open, trying to fix on my surroundings. I hadn't even realized they were closed, but as I blinked the shadows and glowing orbs away, I found the face of my rescuer.

And screamed.

But the fear was only momentary as the macabre, decaying clown's face flickered before my eyes like an out-of-tune television set and reformed as a face I knew. A face I fucking trusted now, despite all the secrets.

I threw my arms around his neck and pulled my whole body tight to him, as much as I was capable of with my shaking, pain-filled limbs. My chest heaved and gut-wrenching sobs wracked through me as I buried my face in his skin, inhaling the heady scent of oaky wood and subtle florals, with gasping breaths.

"Shhh, Kate, I've got you," he whispered in my ear, his huge hands stroking down my spine over and over, his arms holding me tight and totally erasing the crawling feeling of insects. "You're safe, I've got you," he whispered. "I'm never letting you go. Not ever."

Someone else was talking, but I wasn't listening. My head was still swimming, my balance completely shot and my skin hurting all over... I wasn't okay.

"...needs to be checked out," the other person was saying, and another pair of hands touched my shoulders. I howled at the touch and shrunk myself smaller in Archer's embrace, shuddering and crying. I didn't mean to, but I wasn't in full control of my own actions. He just held me tighter, though, quietly cursing out whoever had just touched me.