Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
I flinch, try to move my face away, but she laughs. It’s a mirthless laugh, one that tells me she comes from that same black space as the thing inside me.
“It can be so hard to be someone else’s puppet, I know,” she says, tapping at my cheek, harder and harder and harder. “But it must be done. It’s our destiny, and it’s just over the horizon. When it’s all over, then you leave. Leave this place again. You’ll be free for the first time in your life, Abraham Van Brunt. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
She takes her hand off my cheek and presses the back of it against my lips.
“Give me a kiss. It’s only polite.”
I press my lips to her hand. It tastes like poison.
She smiles at me. Pure malice. “You should go and retrieve Katrina. She’s run off. You know what you have to do, don’t you, good soldier? You know what you’ve been bound to.”
I feel myself nodding.
I have to get Kat.
The witch leans in to my ear. “You’re a giver, Brom. I know you’re so good at giving. But this time, you’ll be taking. Taking what is owed to you, taking what you deserve. Go and get my daughter. Help us bring Goruun’s wishes to life. Help us usher in a new age.”
I will do no such thing! I scream, pushing her away. I am not your puppet! I am not your soldier! I am a man who is in love with your daughter!
Except the words don’t leave my mouth, and I don’t push her away.
Instead, my feet move on their own. I go past her into the living room, the candles lighting the way to the door.
God help me.
God forgive me.
God save me.
There is no God, the voice inside me whispers.
There is only me.
Chapter 31
Kat
I’m barefoot, running through the cornfield behind my house, the stiff, dried-out stalks scratching at my skin, tearing at my nightgown.
My throat burns from his touch, my lungs are gasping for air, my legs ache, the soles of my feet bleeding from twigs and rocks, but I have to keep going, I have to.
Brom will be coming after me.
Brom who isn’t Brom.
Brom who has turned into a monster.
Tears stream down my face, blurring my vision, and somehow, I keep going, pushing the stalks away as I run toward the road. I don’t know where I’m going; I just know I have to get away from him.
Behind me, I hear a horse whinny, then hoofbeats.
He’s going to hunt me down in the rows of corn, just as he did to Joshua Meeks.
The monster inside him will hunt me down and hold me down, and he’ll rape me, and then he’ll kill me.
Looking into Brom’s eyes and watching them change from the man I know, the man who said he loved me still after all this time, into an evil force is something I’ll never forget. I don’t know if I can shake it. I don’t know if I’ll survive it.
But first, I have to survive tonight.
I’m running to Mary’s, to ask for help. She’ll understand—they’re good people. They’ll help me. I know if I run across the cornfields, I’ll hit the road, and that will take me up to her farm.
I keep going, unable to see above the stalks of corn until the ground slopes up slightly, and I’m pushing through, stumbling onto the road, stones biting into my feet.
I whirl around, looking for a light, someone’s lantern. There’s nothing but darkness and the light of the half-moon, and I’m so disoriented I don’t even know which way to go.
Brom’s face flashes in my head. The sorrow in his eyes when he said he needed me.
The tenderness in his voice as he told me he missed me.
The way he shook slightly when he told me he loved me.
It twists and burns in my head, dissolving like paper in a fire, the smoke giving way to the emptiness in his eyes, the crush of his fingers on my throat, the sneer on his lips when he told me he was going to put me in the grave.
I feel deceived, so deceived that I think my heart might shatter if I give it more thought, but I can’t, not now. I can only think about survival.
I run up the road until I see Mary’s farm. In the distance, I still hear hoofbeats and the sound of rustling corn, and I know he’s close.
The monster on my tail.
I scramble up the path to the front door of the farmhouse and start banging on it with my fists.
“Mary!” I scream. “Mary! Open up! Please, it’s me, it’s Kat!”
I try the door, but it won’t open. They’ve never locked their doors before.
There hasn’t been a murderer on the loose, I think. One that’s after you.
I rattle it violently, but it won’t give, so I start banging on the door again, smacking it with the heel of my palm, panic clawing up me like a wild beast.