Violet suddenly makes a pained sound, and her heartbeat becomes easier to hear, steadily thrumming as she freezes on top of me, moving one hand up my side.
I’m half horrified and half relieved when her head moves over mine, and wide, really fucking creepy pale eyes stare into mine.
She squints like she’s trying to see in the dark. She clumsily moves a hand over my face when she’s unable to, as though she’s trying to identify me by touch.
I’m completely fucking motionless, too confounded to even react, when a second hand joins her search. Her hands move to my hair, and she sucks in a sharp breath.
“No,” she says on a pained rasp. “No, Emit! No,” she says as she bends quickly.
I stop breathing when she presses her ear to my chest, listening for my heartbeat, presumably.
“Emit?” she asks, her voice getting a little shaky as she starts darting her gaze around and curses when she hits her head above us.
“Emit, wake up,” she shouts.
Just as I open my mouth and struggle for what the hell to actually start saying at this particularly…fucked-from-every-angle moment, she shouts at me again.
“Emit!” Then she hiccups out a scared sound before she slaps me hard across the face, enough to jar my entire head to the side and force a surprised grunt out of me.
She’s nowhere nearly strong enough for that smack.
“How the fuck can you hit that hard, and what the actual hell are—”
“Where are we?” she asks on a shaky sound, moving her hands around the top of the casket that keeps her pressed on top of me, giving her only a few inches to push off.
It’s wide, full of pure silver panels for the strongest burn, weakening me every time I move just wrong. She tries to climb off me on those sides, certainly not burning. But not even one of my wolves could have survived a throat slit that deeply.
I’m not imagining that.
“We’re…currently being buried. Is that a problem? Are you a vampire somehow? Does your blood mask the scent? How? I know you’re a Portocale gypsy—”
“Emit, I can’t be here. I can’t,” she says, her voice shaking more as she starts shoving back, crying out a little when she hits the top too hard.
“Hey,” I say quickly and soothingly, lifting my hips and forcing her to slide forward, putting her over my face as she shakes all over.
“Vance is going to be here real damn soon. Okay? Can you suffocate?” I ask, ready to start narrowing down any of the gypsy freak mutations she could also be. If, by some miracle, I’m not just already hallucinating during the suffocation process.
I worry I’m dreaming all this up.
“Hey,” I say again when she whimpers, shaking her head and rocking forward and back, as she squeezes her eyes shut.
“I can’t handle spaces this small. I panic. I always panic. You can’t be here if I panic,” she says almost like she’s checked out, slamming up again.
The steady splatter of liquid slapping the surface above us tells me the cement has started pouring, and Vance still has a while before he’ll even start looking.
“Violet, I need you to calm down,” I tell her as she makes another pained cry and slams up and into the casket.
This time, I feel us jostle, and I hear the metal groan.
I tense under her when she slams back again. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. You can’t be here,” she says in a more panicked tone, her pupils so small I can barely see them, even though they should be dilated to the fullest in the dark.
She rocks hard again, groaning in frustration. “I can do this,” she says, though it sounds more like she’s saying it to herself.
“Violet, I really think I need you to calm down. Tell me what you are. Tell me what’s happening right now. Talk to me. Just focus on—”
Her head pops back over mine, and she grabs the metal clamps holding down my wrists. Awkwardly, she starts pulling hard, and in the next instant, I hear the metal groaning next to both sides of my face as her heartbeat starts to steadily slow down even more, pattering lower, and humming quieter.
“Violet,” I say again as the metal snaps and my arms fly forward.
I grab both sides of her face the second I’m free, even as my elbows slap the silver panels of the coffin, sizzling over the vast space. “Focus on me.”
I’ll figure out how the fucking hell she broke them that easily later.
“Don’t move,” she says in that same shaky tone. “Don’t move. And don’t speak. Don’t let me see you,” she whispers like she’s pleading with me as her heartbeat continues to drop.
She pulls all sorts of little vials out, putting them in one of my hands and closing my fingers around it. “Don’t let me see you,” she repeats. “Throw all of that at me if I do, and then run.”
She yanks out of my grip, and works her body around to be facing the other way. I watch, too dumbfounded to process what’s going on, as her heart continues to click down like it’s a timer.
I hear the last three beats spaced farther and farther apart as she slams into the top over and over, her back staying to me.
When no fourth beat plays, I hold my breath and go perfectly still, because she pushes up so hard that I hear things breaking above us. Cement suddenly crumbles in in partially settled pieces, and then a splatter of liquid rains down behind it, spilling into the casket like rough, cold slush.
I hear a small, short, broken cry of effort as Violet pushes up harder, and the whole casket lid buckles as it flies off at her end. The force propels it so hard that it bends it back and stabs into the ground beside us, just barely staying over my face.
More cement pours in, and I realize she’s also freed my ankles from their restraints at some point.
She’s already gone. One second she’s there, and the next she’s not.
With a lot of maneuvering, I pull myself up, hearing the sounds of someone screaming just as the cement stops pouring, and something massive and heavy groans as it slams into something else.
I think that was the cement truck…
A series of cracks ring in sequence before a loud crash creates background noise for the shouts, screams, and whirring motions above.
“What the fucking—” The shouted words are cut off, and an incoherent roar of shouts start right after that.
I hear more screaming, the bloodcurdling kind, before something wet splatters in the distance. A whisper of air whirs, as those same telling bloodcurdling screams erupt from one place to another, the last screams coming so fast that it’s impossible for them all to be dying at once.
The cement laps at my waist as I hold myself against the wall of the hole, remembering her warning.
The desperation in her tone as she told me not to move. Not to let her see me. The panic and fear in her eyes as her pupils turned to pinpricks…
The stopping of her heart just before she lost all control...
I hold the breath that tries to release, as a cold, sickening chill of realization hits. The thought of suffocating hallucinations cross my mind again, as the screams patter on, because there’s absolutely no way I’m right.
It only lasts a matter of a few minutes before all the screams cut out. The loud crashing of things above me continues, and the silent killer leaves only a whirring of wind in her impossibly fast wake.
It isn’t until it’s gone utterly silent that I risk releasing my breath.
That’s when I hear the soft sobbing from above, and I close my eyes, shaking my head slowly, exhaling much harder than I did when I learned she was a Portocale.
Without giving myself time to process, I jump up, grab the edge, and heave myself over it.
I end up hovering over the edge when I simply freeze, staring at everything around me in stunned silence.
“Why were there so many?” I hear Violet whispering, but I don’t move my head.
I can’t.
There’s too much I can’t look away from.
Wolves in fur and wolves in flesh…they’re all torn apart. On estimation, I’d say there are at least twenty…all ripped apart with sheer brute force.
Blood is splattered on every single surface, painting the barn’s insides red.
Everything is painted red.