Page 30

ADRIAN

T he wind was howling behind me, twisting and curling and hissing at the night sky as the branches seemed to reach out from all sides.

Trying to wrap around and grab at my arms. Which seemed heavier than usual.

Because they were heavier than usual, weighed down by the figure currently pressed against my chest. A girl.

She was small and thin. And she smelled and tasted like flowers and copper with long black hair covering her face and deadened limbs that swung with each step I took forward. Like the arms of a clock counting down the time I had left.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I had to hurry. I didn’t know why, but it was important. The reason ebbing and swaying at the back of my mind so quickly I couldn’t grasp it. It was there, though. I could feel it. I could feel everything and nothing.

I was moving through the woods. Somewhere close to home. I could feel that too. No, I was running. Running but standing still as the ground clawed and swatted at my boots. Those seemed just as heavy as my arms, caked with mud and grass instead of a girl, as I glided one foot in front of the other.

I stopped short when I found myself behind the old well at the back of Prescott Estates.

Though I didn’t remember the path I took to get me there.

Here. To this spot. Rain was beating against the crumbling stonework, which was cracking with age, cold droplets dripping off my nose and through the thin fabric of my unbuttoned shirt.

My chest heaved as I tried to focus on what I was doing and why I was doing it.

And why I was in such a hurry.

I hadn’t been to this spot in years. Since I was little and Tate used to tell me stories about the ghost that haunted these woods and this well and would climb up its walls and grab you if you weren’t careful.

But I didn’t believe in ghosts anymore. I didn’t need to. Mankind was much more terrifying.

It didn’t take me more than a few seconds to shove the metal grate aside with one hand before depositing the figure I was holding into the depths of the giant hole in the earth.

I watched her fall, that same black hair whipping around her face before revealing two bright-green eyes.

Eyes I recognized. Eyes I remembered staring back at me when I ran a blade across her carotid artery.

Eyes I watched the life drain out of at the same time her blood coated my hands.

Marisela’s eyes.

Panic had me reaching out an arm, leaning down as far as gravity would let me without toppling after her. One palm gripping the lip of the well, the other swatting at air… and vegetation… before clenching a handful of sheets.

I shot up in bed, throwing on a pair of shoes and shoving my arms through my trench coat before rushing down the hall and out the back entrance.

Following the path I’d seen in my dream.

Nightmare. Memory? Whatever the fuck it was.

Only this time, I couldn’t hear the wind past the beating of my own heart in my chest and nothing clawed at me except from my own conscience.

As soon as I wrapped my fingers around the grate and tossed it aside, I could smell it.

The odor of decomposition that wafted up from the depths of the well.

It was faint. Barely discernible unless you knew what you were looking for.

Bacteria breaking down the tissue on a cellular level.

Hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan. Similar to the stench of rotten eggs and wet cabbage if you were to leave it out in the sun for too long.

I twisted around, leaning my back against the side of the well as I sank into the mud. Because all of a sudden, everything was painfully clear as my mind tried to weave through the distortion of the chemicals in my brain and wrap itself around the truth.

There was a body floating in that water. I’d been the one to put it there. And I knew who it belonged to. Even if I didn’t want to accept it. Because I was pretty certain I loved this woman… almost as certain as I was that I’d killed her.