Page 93 of Satanic Shadow

Wake up. You need to be awake for this to work.

I open my eyes—they’re watering and stinging with pressure behind them. Lifting my head, I look at Dane, who has blood dripping from one of his nostrils, his forehead pressed to mine.

Stay awake.

Keep your eyes on me.

Push through it.

Ten more seconds.

I feel it the moment the last string of the curse is plucked from my soul, and as my body gives in to the exhaustion, Dane manages to catch me and drag me onto the bed, where his own body gives up, and he passes out beside me.

28

It happens again. I’m falling into another dream-like state, but this time, Dane isn’t with me and leading me through the castle.

I’m standing in a dark chamber, a cell, that smells like blood and dirty water. The dungeons. I’ve never been underground, and I have no idea what it looks like, but it seems my mind has built up an entire aesthetic of where creatures go when they’re arrested.

My breaths come out in puffs as I look around. Blood stains the walls, where chains dangle, a hand still attached to one of them. I grimace at the smell and press the back of my hand to my nose and mouth.

When I push open a large oak door, I find myself in the main corridor of the dungeons. It’s dark, with no candles leading the way like in the rest of the castle. Water drips from the old, broken bricks all around. It smells like sewage, beady eyes peeking from the holes in the walls.

And every now and again, as my feet step in the puddles, my surroundings creak and growl, followed by a psychotic laugh that will forever haunt me.

My footsteps are silent in my dream, but I’m drawn to the last cell on the left. I push it open, seeing a small boy hugging himself and rocking back and forth in the corner, claw marks down his back.

His sobs are like echoes, as if he’s trapped at the bottom of an old well.

Hello? Are you okay?

I try to speak, but the words are in my head, a whisper, a thought, nothing more than a breath with no sound as my lips move.

I reach for the boy, who’s covered in tattoos, but a black mass launches towards me, wrapping its claws around my throat and shoving me out and away, chasing me back to the place I belong. The chant is repetitive, the haunting words I’ve heard before.

Death to her, death to all.

I wake with a start, gasping, unable to properly fill my lungs until I drag in a long breath and stop shaking. I wipe sweat from my face, but when I try to move, a heaviness on my side stops me.

I look to see Dane with his head on my shoulder, arm and leg slung over me, caging me against the mattress. His other hand is in my hair, a loose grip.

His snow-like locks are soaked with sweat, droplets sliding down his face and neck and drenching his shirt collar. It’s mixing with a trail of blood from his nose.

“Dane,” I croak, my throat dry. “Dane.”

Nothing.

I blow out a breath and look at my hands, completely free of any of the curse. Usually, when he siphons, he takes as muchas he can before it overwhelms him. But it seems he’s taken so much it’s no longer visible on my skin.

I frown at the thought of him hurting himself more than other days. “Dane,” I say again, shaking his shoulder. His body is hotter than a furnace. I shift to free myself a little as I press the back of my hand to his forehead.

It’s burning. Dane is burning up badly.

But immortals don’t get sick—unless the curse has messed him up?

Dane?I try a different way.Can you hear me?

I push him lightly, rolling him onto his back, freeing myself somehow from the heavy bane of my existence. I say his name once more, but there’s no response. “If you can hear me, I’m going to take your shirt off, okay? I need to try to cool you down.”