Kings of Chaos (Dirty Broken Savages #1)(26)

I feel like I’m going to break as they put me through these horrible things, hurting me, touching me. Trying to break me. Every noise I make is a triumph for them. Every time a tear rolls down my face, they laugh. One of them licks the salty drops away.

I can’t see which one does it. All of their faces are interchangeable, shifting and swapping like a fucked up game of musical chairs.

But it could have been any of them. Any one of them would have done it. Has done it.

It’s a dream, but it feels so real. I feel that trapped, suffocating feeling that I remember so well. The one that makes me wake up in the middle of the night even now, thrashing under the covers in a desperate attempt to get free from anything holding me down.

I can feel the scream building in my throat, and I fight so hard to hold it back, biting my lip until it bleeds. I feel like I’m going to break, like each lash, each cut, each touch is driving me closer to the edge, and I’m just going to shatter into a million fucked up pieces.

Then the dream shifts again. The room clears, and I’m not chained up or being flogged anymore. I’m standing in the middle of the room, taller, stronger. More powerful. I’m the woman I am now, tattoos and silver hair, a gun in one hand and a knife in the other.

I can feel the difference, and the fear and desperation that were clinging to me before are now determination and righteous fury. With savage delight, I murder each of the men. I take pleasure in it. It’s not quick and painless either. I shoot out their kneecaps, driving them down to the scuffed wooden floor. It’s already stained with blood, and there’s satisfaction in that.

Here in this place where they made me bleed and hurt and wish I was dead, I’m going to do the same to them.

I take my time, drawing out the torment, sending each one screaming to their deaths.

It’s different from what they did to me. Hannah and I paid for the sins of someone else, but these six? The punishment they get is for their own crimes. Their own sins. The things they did with their own hands.

I stand over their bodies, out of breath but triumphant. There’s a blazing light in the room, and I realize it’s coming from me. As if I’m lit from the inside by what I’ve done.

For a minute, I’m the brightest thing in the room… but then I notice the shadows growing and changing. They’re not just at the edges of the room. They lengthen across the floor until they’re standing like people, solid and firm.

I can’t make out any faces or forms. It’s like a mass of people, a group I can’t identify, reaching for me.

My heart stutters. I grab for my gun, but it’s not there. The knife is missing too.

All I have is myself, but in the back of my mind, I already know that’s not going to be enough. I feel helpless all over again, a sinking sensation in my chest that threatens to drag me down.

I still try to fight, lashing out with my fists, my feet, my elbows. Anything I can do to keep this new threat from overwhelming me. But it’s not enough. They close around me, grabbing on to me.

Inky fingers of darkness wrap around my wrists, holding me tightly. My arms are wrenched behind my back, while another hand covers my mouth so I can’t scream. There are fingers in my hair, running up and down my arms, ghosting over my face.

I feel just as helpless as I did when I was a kid, unable to fight back.

The hands keep pawing at me, the darkness swallowing all the light in the room. My heart is pounding again, and I feel like I can’t get a good breath. My skin is clammy, and fear is sour in the pit of my stomach and the back of my throat.

It’s like drowning, watching the surface and the light of it get farther and farther away as they drag me under.

I wake up with a start.

My heart really is racing, and I can feel the cold sweat on my skin. I struggle against the feeling of hyperventilating, trying to get a good, deep breath so my lungs stop burning.

It takes a solid twenty seconds for me to get my bearings. This isn’t my bed back at home. If I was in my apartment, there would be a little light cast by the hanging paper lantern on the other side of the curtain that separates my bed from the rest of the studio.

Here, it takes my eyes some time to adjust to the darkness. The only light there is filters in dimly from the window and the streetlamps outside.

Right. I’m at the house with the four guys I’m working with now. Not in a basement, not chained to a wall.

I let out a shaky exhale, dropping my head back down to the pillow, then jerk in surprise when I realize I’m not alone in the room.

At first, all I see is a shadow near the door, and I flash back to the dream with a sickening lurch of my stomach, but then I make out the shape of Ash, standing on the other side of the room as if he’s been watching me sleep.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I demand. My voice comes out raspy, but with a sharp edge from all the chaos swirling inside me right now.

I feel like he can tell, like he was looking into my head and watching the nightmare play out. That’s impossible, I know, but even the thought of it makes me uncomfortable.

“Nothing. Just standing here,” he replies, flashing that charming grin at me, as if it’s perfectly normal to sneak into someone’s room while they’re sleeping. “I just wanted to make sure you were settling in okay.”

“Normal people do that when the person is awake,” I snap back. “Not while standing over the person’s bed like a creep. You must not get many houseguests.”