Page 67 of Endless Anger (Monsters Within #1)

Tears stream down my face as I continue sitting on my hands and knees, staring at the ground.

Images of everything from this semester—Celeste’s gang rape and murder in the forest, the corpses in my dorm room, the blood in the Obeliskos.

Seeing Willa shot right before me, and now Foxe going through unimaginable horrors…

Asher’s going to come down here and die too.

My fault.

I put everyone’s life in danger, all because I thought this school was worth it.

The tears splatter onto the ground beneath me. A single sob, something inaudible, pulses through my chest, but then my entire body is shaking, my own pain mixing with Foxe’s terror and making me sick .

“Please,” I sputter, my vision blurring. “Please, I can’t… I don’t want to listen to this.”

Tiernan snorts, having reappeared at my side. “Aw, that’s too bad. I don’t give a shit. We’ll call this a little parting gift.”

Foxe’s wailing continues. He yells for his mom, his dad.

Me.

I bite my lip until it slices open, and the coppery taste mixes with the salt of my tears. Sadness, deep and ceaseless, settles in the very pit of my soul. So deep I don’t think I’ll ever be able to reach it or clean it out.

Not that it appears that will be an issue after tonight.

“Please,” I say once more, whispering it. “Let him go. I’ll do?—”

Tiernan kicks me again, and this time, I choke on a cocktail of blood and vomit. His foot lifts in my peripheral for a repeat, but I don’t have the energy to dodge.

At least the pain distracts me from Foxe, if only for a second.

Before he does anything though, the noises coming from somewhere else in the cave system end.

They drop off entirely, like a record slipping off the track.

Beckett pushes his mask into his hair, his face paling. The three of us wait, listening for more.

It doesn’t come.

Laughing, Tiernan lets his foot fall to the ground. “Well, well. Guess the big bad rock star couldn’t hold out as long as the others.”

The others. Eli and Willa.

Dead.

Everyone is dead.

More vomit spills onto the ground beneath me, and I let out a strangled sound, something caught between a whimper and a howl. An attempt to expel the anguish from my body, though it seems keen on living in my bones.

“ Tiernan ,” Beckett barks, shoving his shoulder. “Go check on them. ”

Grumbling under his breath, Tiernan grabs his gun from the card table and stalks out.

Beckett paces some more, hands on his hips, muttering to himself about his brother not liking the turn things have taken.

I’m not paying attention though, really.

I just keep staring at the fucking ground, wondering if I glare hard enough, will it open up and swallow me whole?

That would be preferable, I think, to the abyss inside me.

Tiernan doesn’t comes back, and eventually Beckett stops. He turns and looks at Willa’s corpse. My eyes are swollen from all the crying, and he becomes little more than a blurry blob.

“Okay. Okay .”

I manage to lift my chin a little bit when Beckett’s rambling gets louder, and then he whirls around, coming toward me. Bending, he pulls a pair of scissors from his hoodie and cuts the rope still dangling from one of my wrists, then grabs my jaw and forces me to look at him.

I blink through the tears, gritting my teeth. I don’t want to make eye contact with him when he kills me, but I guess I don’t get much of a choice.

Not that it matters anymore.

Not that it matters at all.

“You need to go,” Beckett says, shaking me roughly.

He jabs his thumb over his shoulder to where the white sheet hangs.

“Head through there, take the first right and the second left, and eventually you’ll come up at Lake Lerna.

Stick to the trees and get back to campus, then call the police.

Not Avernia security or the dean. Fury Hill . They’ll come much faster.”

I try to wrench myself from his grasp, but I’m too weak to do it. “Someone’s going to ambush me as soon as I leave.”

Beckett’s jaw shifts. “No, they’re not. I’m risking everything by releasing you, all right? But this… It wasn’t supposed to be a fucking bloodbath down here.”

“You just wanted to kill Asher. ”

“Mortui vivos docent. Some things are just bigger than us, Lucy. But if you get out of here, you’ll get to live at least.”

Snot runs down my chin. “I can’t go. Not without Foxe.”

“You can’t carry deadweight by yourself.

Get the fucking cops, and tell them to do it.

” A long pause, and neither of us moves.

“Look, I can’t… I don’t know how long we have before one of them comes back.

And I can’t fucking do anything for you when they do.

This is already way beyond my control. I only came down here to try and clear my name from your roommate’s death and finish the Anderson shit for my old man.

Everything else…” He trails off, swallowing. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

I study him for several beats, noting the glint in his blue irises. He doesn’t look away, though I still can’t be sure if he’s telling the truth.

I heard him that night…didn’t I?

But even if this is some big misunderstanding and he was framed somehow for Celeste’s death, I can’t find it in me to feel an ounce of sympathy.