Page 12 of The Last Sanctuary

She’d obeyed him, only to watch her mother leave and Zachariah die.

She’d been dead set on leaving this place for good—for months, maybe years. But that was by choice. That was leaving someone healthy and alive, someone you knew would continue to move and breathe and do all the things they’d always done while you were gone.

This was different. This was a giant hand reaching inside the cage of her ribs and wrenching her heart out, squeezing the blood from her veins while she watched. This was a weeping wound in her soul that would never heal.

“It won’t take long, I promise. I’ll come right back.”

“I said no.”

Raven stood. Some dark thing twisted inside her. “You can’t stop me this time.”

“I forbid it,” he croaked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m going.”

His fingers scraped the bed sheets like claws. Tendons bulged in his neck as a wave of agony pulsed through his body. She watched, frozen and helpless, sickened and horrified, but unable to look away.

Looking away felt like a betrayal of both herself and her father. She would watch his suffering because that was the only thing she could do. To bear witness. To be present and unflinching.

The pain released him. He sagged against the mattress, panting. She retrieved the damp washcloth from the nightstandand approached him, intending to press the washcloth to his forehead, but he waved her away.

He pointed a frail finger at something across the room. The tranquilizer gun lay atop the dresser beneath the window, steeped in golden sunlight. “You want to ease my suffering? That’ll do it.”

She recoiled in horror. “No!”

“I want you to do it.” He took several ragged, rasping breaths. “I’m asking you to do it.”

“I—I can’t.”

He worked his jaw, like he sometimes did when he was chewing on words he’d rather keep to himself. The kind of words that cost something, that took something in return. “Let me go out on my terms. Not like… that.”

Revulsion settled in her stomach like a block of ice. She shook her head, tasting acid in the back of her throat. “I’ll be back. With medicine.”

“Raven!” he shouted at her back. “Don’t you go!”

She unhooked one of the solar lanterns from the hook on the wall by the door, brought it to the nightstand, and placed it next to the water pitcher. He’d have light even if she came back after dark.

They saved the generator for critical items, like the electrified fences, to keep the carnivores inside where they belonged.

“Don’t you dare leave!”

She headed for the door. Her throat tightened, frantic to escape that claustrophobic room rancid with sickness, shadowed with grief and bitterness and regret. Once she brought the painkillers back and eased his torment, he would forgive her. He would.

“Raven.”

She stilled, one hand on the door handle.

“Take the tranq,” he said behind her, defeat in his voice. “For protection.”

She stiffened. Then she pivoted, seized the gun from the dresser, and fled her father’s bedroom.

Rushing through the shadow-darkened living room, she paused to grab her dad’s key fob on the shabby coffee table so she could use the battered Camry. It was a hybrid. Her father used the precious generator to keep it charged for emergencies.

Frantic thoughts churned through her mind. Her father was dying. He’d begged her to kill him. She hated thinking about his suffering; she hated thinking of aiming a gun and pulling the trigger even more.

That it was a dart and not a bullet didn’t mean much. The result was the same: death.

She pushed those thoughts out of her mind. She needed to focus. Step A led to Step B, which led to Step C.