I promised!
Bren clasps my wrists and gently pulls them down. “Emme, we have to keep moving,” Bren tells me. “Come on, baby. There’s nothing we can do for her now.”
A harsh wave knocks me down when I try to stand.
Merche stops screaming.
Except for the increasing rush of water, there’s only silence.
Bren lifts me, steadying me when another wave strikes us and leaves us in waist-high water.
“We have to go back,” he says. He positions himself in front of me, moving us through the freezing enclosure as fast my feet will allow.
My teeth are rattling so hard, dull pressure builds along my jaw and head. I stir my healing touch awake, beating back the hypothermia setting in.
We cut left and then right, the rising water bites across my shoulders.
“I can’t change in here,” Bren tells me. “There’s not enough space. But if this place fills up with water, grab onto my neck. You hear me? I’ll get us back to where we were.”
I don’t question his tactics or ask him what we’ll do if that cell is gone, too. Bren’s fighting to get us out. I won’t distract him with stupid questions or blatant fear. Even if this fear is unlike any I’ve ever felt.
Bren rounds another corner and we force ourselves up an incline. The entire labyrinth has reformed. If it weren’t for his sense of direction and ability to reverse our steps, we would have perished where we last heard Merche.
“Do you think Merche is dead?” I ask.
“The mouse?” he asks. “I don’t know. She sounded hurt and this place is falling down around us. It doesn’t look good for her, Em. The vamp? I’m guessing that thing definitely found him.”
“If so, I can’t imagine he survived her,” I say.
“If it came down to a fight, probably not in his condition. ‘Cept it’s hard to tell anything in here for sure. Everything echoes in these tunnels and I lost track of him when he went after the mouse. All I know is that we’re on our own and we have to get out before that thing tracks us down.”
My body is trembling out of control when we finally reach the other cell. The shift in the wall caused the opening to widen, but it also allowed more water into the small space.
Farrah is gone and the pool has flooded the area in waist-deep water. Bren lifts me and places me on a section of stone wide enough to stand. He looks around for something he can work with, but there’s nothing. Just rock and water and sand.
I glance up at the clear ceiling when he does. A school of fish jet by, frightened and eager to escape from something more vicious and larger.
“She’s out there,” Bren says.
I nod and grip the side of the wall for balance when that touch of evil spirals into a storm of terror. “I can feel her. She’s coming.” I start to climb down. “Should we hide?”
He shakes his head. “No. She knows we’re here, just like she knows we’re trapped. I can get us to the surface, Emme. But I’m not sure we’ll make it before she sees us, and no way will she just let us swim to shore.” He meets me square in the face. “We’re going to have to fight our way out.”
In the water.
In the deep.
Where I can’t swim.
I don’t blink. “All right,” I say. “Let’s do this.”
My head shoots up and Una appears.
Una isn’t exactly an octopus. She’s a nightmare. Given our current situation, I’d prefer an octopus. In fact, I’d prefer an entire octopus consortium wielding knives and machine guns.
Every other limb that stretches out before us holds the hand of a different witch. One is sickly yellow like the underbelly of Una’s suction covered skin, another is a grisly pink to match the color of her exterior. The two that remain are darker, one a deep olive, and the last like spoiled milk chocolate.
I don’t remember a hand touching me when she initially dragged me into the cell. It must have been one of her four tentacled limbs. They’re longer than that of a regular octopus, a combination of cephalopod and human parts.
“Aw, hell,” Bren mutters.
He’s watching her bounce along the ceiling, practically mesmerized. It’s understandable. Una is grotesquely beautiful, the manner in which she moves reminiscent of a bride lifting her gown to dance.
Except Una isn’t the blushing June bride. She’s evil and dangerous, her dexterity and unique style of locomotion adding to her lethality.
She pauses as if suddenly noticing us, stretching her limbs and adjusting her gangly frame to peer down at us.
“Oh,” I groan over Bren’s very audible, “fuck me.”
The faces of the witches who make up the creature that is Una merged into one. Four sets of eyes stacked into rows blink back at me from the top of her large forehead. She doesn’t have a nose, but she does have several chins crowning her lower jaw. She smiles with her large mouth, giving us a good view of the rows of dagger teeth stacked on top of one another.
“We should have hid,” Bren says. He cracks his knuckles as he takes another good look at Una. “Yup. Definitely should have ran away like bitches and hid from this shit.”
He starts to back away. He doesn’t quite reach me when a tentacle punctures through the bubble and slams Bren into the opposite wall, pinning him.
I jump into the water and splash toward him, shoving the first hand that reaches for me away with my force.
Uma’s limb feels heavy as well as strong. She’s also absurdly fast.
My hands shoot out as I slap the next limb away. The rejection angers Una, she clicks her fangs, her gestures and whale like sounds, pulsating through the air.
“Go, Emme,” Bren yells. “Yes!”
The dodging, the scooting, and the hammering I avoid must look pretty kick-ass from Bren’s perspective. He believes me agile and that I’m averting the
