The facesscreechin unison. An eruption of pain and rage, deafening, distorted, and impossible to escape. I clap my hands over my ears, but it doesn’t help, it’sinsidemy fucking skull. The sound shakes the walls and makes the water churn harder. I cry out, nearly tipping over as I curl inward, wishing it would end.
And then, deadly silence.
I lift my head, my entire body trembling as the boat eases into a calmer stretch. My ears are still ringing when I turn around, and there he is.
Suddenly so fucking close he could leap into my boat.
He stands there like a nightmare come to life, blood slicking his skin, his wild eyes locked on mine. Spiraling and wide. He’s body screams he’s ready to lunge and I instinctively reach down, fingers brushing the cold steel of the gun by my feet.
I grab it, clutch it with both hands, rising to my feet even though my legs are swaying beneath me. He’s still, too still, like he’s letting the tension build just so he cansnap. My hands shake harder, but the second he shifts, just slightly, my finger jerks against the trigger without thinking straight.
BANG!
The gun kicks and the sound explodes down the tunnel, bouncing off the blood-slick walls like thunder. Wrath jolts back, a single step, his stare never leaving mine. But then he falls back into the water with a splash.
“WRATH!” I scream as if I didn’t just shoot him my fucking self, stumbling forward, heart punching through my ribs.
I drop to my knees at the edge of the boat, eyes scanning the surface, but the river’s too thick and dark, it’s just endless ripples and red.
“Wrath…” I whisper, tears filling my eyes as I reach into the water, waving my hand beneath the surface, desperate to feel him.
“Shit, what have I done?”
My watery gaze flicks right, locking on to a clearing coming into view. A large area with chains dangling from the ceiling and piled in thick knots across the floor like sleeping snakes. It looks big enough to climb onto, and I don’t hesitate. I throw the gun up first, then brace to leap across.
But before I can move, something wraps around my wrist from under the water and a startled gasp rips out of me, then I’m yanked, hard.
My scream cuts short as I’m pulled clean out of the boat and slammed into the water, lungs filling with panic, my body tumbling into the depths in a blur of bubbles and blood.
Pieces of sharp metal slash at my skin like shrapnel, and severed body parts slam into me with force as darkness collapses around me, my limbs flail wildly. The current grabs me by the waist like claws, dragging me deeper, spinning me in its chokehold.
I twist and kick until finally I break the surface.
I come up gasping and coughing violently, the taste of iron coating my tongue. The boat’s gone and there’s nothing but this hell river and the strong current pulling me toward an edge, toward a fucking drop into a void.
“No…no, fuck…”
I try to swim, my limbs screaming, my soaked clothes weighing me down. The water pulls harder, dragging me with it, but I fight it with everything I have, my vision darkening at the edges. I’m not strong enough. I’m not fast enough.
Then my hand catches on something cold, hard and heavy under water, bolted to the wall. I latch on, wrapping both hands around the thick chain, clutching it tighter, and slowly start to pull.
With teeth gritted, I shift my weight, hauling myself sideways until I can slam one arm onto the ledge. My fingers scramble over the floor for something to anchor myself with until I find another chain and use it to drag my torso up.
I give one final grunt until my body fully is flat on the hard surface. I collapse on my front, breathing heavily, my blood mixing with water as it drips from my arms and the gashes in my skin.
With trembling and weak limbs I push myself up, desperate to find Wrath, to make sure I haven’t gone and killed him.
But as soon as I lift my head, two feet step into view. Right in front of me. I pause, watching blood dripping steadily from above, landing in wet splats beside them.
Every part of me screams to look up, to face whatever I’ve done to him, but my body won’t obey.
Without warning, something coils around my ankle, thick, cold and metallic.
I’m yanked violently backward, my body scraping over the floor. A scream tears out of me as I’m pulled off the ground and flipped upside down, leg hoisted into the air by one of the many chains.
I dangle, swinging like fresh meat, and from the corner of my blurred, upside down vision, his feet remain still, watching me as I suspend limply.
When he crouches in front of me, his stare hooks onto mine, steady… too steady,as if we haven’t just clawed our way through hell. His expression doesn’t shift, but a glint’s there, that shimmer of something savage behind his calm, and it shoots heat straight through me, twisting deep in my core.