Another strike, this one so cold and hard my skin split over my kidney, tickling me with blood. “Speak!”
As the music grew louder and louder and Master A’s strikes hit faster and faster, I made a decision. He wouldn’t let me walk away tonight without hearing my voice. And I wouldn’t remain living the moment he heard it.
We were both at the end of our patience.
Tonight, I would scream.
And then, I would die.
“Speak!”
The chain lacerated me. I became ribbons of flesh. Each strike pushed me closer to the blackness I so craved.
Yes, let me die. Please…
“You don’t want to speak? Then scream.” Master A hit faster until the blur of connection on my back and the sting of air in the moment’s reprieve melded into one.
I was dying.
I’ll be free soon.
Knowing he could no longer hurt me, that another few more strikes would be the death I needed, I opened my mouth.
The music crescendoed with cymbals and flutes, and I threw myself into nothing.
I screamed.
My throat burned.
My eyes shot wide.
The scream was otherworldly and wrong.
My jaw ached from opening so wide. My ears rang from the noise.
Just a nightmare. Only a nightmare.
Instantly, I began to sob. My scream cut short, and somewhere deep inside me, I realised this was the first time I’d broken my silence unwillingly.
My sadness crested, doing its best to mute the outside world. But something tickled my ears, something harsh and hated and harrowing.
No.
Music.
Classical music.
The notes threw me headfirst back into my nightmare.
He’s here.
He’s not dead.
He’s come back for me.
My back bellowed. My skin sticky from dream-blood and sweat. I couldn’t stop my body or the instinct to run.
My legs bolted from the bed before my mind even knew I was standing. I flew across the suite, charged into the corridor, and galloped.
I ran and ran, down plush carpet and past expensive artwork.
I careened into walls and clamped hands over my ears for silence.
Yet the music chased me. Threatened me. Warned me that it would catch me, and when it did, I would die.
Sobs interfered with my breathing. I bounced into another wall, shredding my shoulder on an intricate gilded sconce. My blood smeared the neutral paint as I stumbled forward.
I didn’t know where I was going. My brain wasn’t cohesive. All I could think about was the music.
Music.
Music.
I came to a door. The door opened beneath my fumbling fingers. My bare feet flew up the stairs. Up, up, up. Away from hell. Fly to heaven. Where there was no more music or the devil.
Hitting a deck above, the rhythm and classical notes reached a level higher than ever before. The instrument weaving and ducking, playing with me in its sinister way.
I couldn’t think.
My hands remained clamped over my ears. My breath sticky in my sob-coughing lungs.
Stop!
I ran down another corridor.
But instead of the music growing quieter, it grew louder, louder. It ricocheted in my ears; it reverberated in my skull.
I want it out.
I want it to stop
Please, make it stop.
My arm bled faster as my heart pumped to keep me running.
And then the corridor ended. A dead end. I was trapped.
Alrik's chuckle danced on a cello’s string.
I lost it.
Ramming my bleeding shoulder into the door at the end of the corridor, I exploded into a room.
A room where the music lived and breathed.
And in the centre of the music sat the maestro and creator of my worst enemy.
Elder.
The world went black.
SOMETHING PALE AND bleeding soared across my threshold.
Part of me noticed and twitched to stop, but the rest of me was captive to my cello. I couldn’t stop until the final beat. I couldn’t end so suddenly.
My body shook as my fingers held the sweetest note, my bow singing over the strings, the music building louder and stronger and so damn alive it killed me to murder it all in the name of a song.
But I’d reached the end.
It was over.
I tore my callused fingers from the strings; my bow hovered, barely kissing the instrument.
Silence shattered over me.
I looked up just as the midnight interloper collapsed in a jumbled pile, unconscious.
My cello twanged as I caught a string with my bow, launching from my chair.
Pim.
It took three seconds to gently deposit my cello on the floor, two to cross the suite, one to slam to my knees, and zero to gather her naked, clammy body into my arms.
What the fuck is she doing here?
How did she find my quarters? What the hell happened? Violence painted my thoughts. If any of my staff had hurt her, they’d be meeting Moby Dick tonight.
“Pimlico. Open your eyes.”
She didn’t.
Her lips were slack, her face gaunt and haunted with shadows. Her blood streaked my arm where a small graze on her bicep wept. She was as frigid as ice and as lifeless as a corpse.
“Wake up.” Keeping her in my embrace, I climbed to my feet. For a girl with long legs and such fire, she weighed next to nothing.
What was she doing here?