Page 27

ZOEY

T he world around me tilts. The walls of my cell stretch and shrink, warping like a funhouse of horrors. My skin is clammy, and my breath is rapid and slow. Every nerve in my body burns from the inside out. The feverish heat clashes with the icy sweat that clings to my skin.

I try to sit up, but my arms tremble and refuse to hold my weight. I collapse back against the cold concrete. My body is too weak. Too slow. A puppet with its strings cut.

The voices around me blur into noise. Shouts, curses, desperate pleas that I can’t respond to.

Benji yells out, but his words melt into the static of my pounding heartbeat.

Damon snarls. The sound edges with panic and fury, but I can’t make out the words. All I can understand is the loud clanging of his ring hitting metal, which only happens when he slams his palm against the bars. It happens over and over again. He’s going to hurt himself if he doesn’t stop.

Everyone is yelling. I think even Cole’s voice adds to the mix, so something must really be wrong.

The whispers of the dead are turning into the shouts of the living, and I can’t join them .

The fog thickens around me. Then a familiar voice cuts through the haze. It’s sharp and cruel, like a blade against bone.

A blade. I have one of those, but I can’t move my body enough to reach for it.

“Feeling a little off, little mouse?”

I force my head up. The motion is slow and agonizing. Every movement is like dragging myself through molasses-thick exhaustion.

A dreg I’ve seen a couple of times before stands just beyond the bars at the edge of the dim light that stretches from my skylight. He twirls a small glass vial between his fingers. My heart lurches with a violent mix of hope and dread that crashes over me in a tidal wave.

The dim light catches the vial, and even in my dazed state, I recognize it in an instant.

Insulin.

So close.

Although, in his hands, it might as well be a thousand miles away.

The dreg crouches. His eyes glint with amusement, but his grin stretches slow and cruel. “This is what you need, isn’t it?”

Laughter follows. It’s mocking, sharp and cruel. He’s not alone. “Good one, Barnes. Play with the bitch.”

I hear the footsteps, the sneers, the whispers of the other dregs watching the show. “This little thing,” Barnes continues, holding it up like he’s admiring it, “is the only thing keeping you alive.”

Another vial appears in his other hand. Tears blur my vision and spill down my cheeks.

Please. Don’t do this. The words touch my tongue, but I can’t get my voice to work. All he has to do is pass it through the bars.

He doesn’t need to say it. The power he holds, the game he’s playing, it’s written all over his smug, self-satisfied expression. A single motion. A flick of his wrist. That’s all it would take to save me. He holds all the power, and he taunts me with it.

The water I drank wasn’t drugged. I never passed out.

This has nothing to do with that. Which means I have to endure every second of this slow, creeping torture.

That agony is nothing compared to this moment.

Watching him dangle my life between his fingers while he savors my helplessness is a new low, even for him.

I try to glare at him, to summon some semblance of defiance, but my body betrays me. The scowl I manage is too weak to be considered more than a twitch of my lips, but in my mind I’m scowling so hard that it feels like a million daggers going into his spleen.

What a shame. I knew I could only last so long in this apocalypse with this condition. Still, I didn’t expect it to happen like this. I didn’t even get to see their faces first.

Barnes’s grin widens when he tilts his head. “Not feeling chatty today? That’s too bad. I was hoping for some entertainment.”

He stands and twists the vial between his fingers. His gaze locks on me like a hunter toying with wounded prey. A flicker of anger sparks in my chest, but my body is too far gone to act on it.

“So much power in such a small vial,” he muses. Then his grip loosens.

No.

The vial falls and shatters. A strangled whimper escapes me. My heart is too broken to even think about flipping him off or strangling him.

“Whoops.” His lips turn up with a grin to rival the Devil’s.

My low whine is drowned out by the rising threats from the guys.

My guys. I try to look for Damon, but of course I can’t see him.

He was right, after all. Barnes doesn’t care as much about keeping me alive as I thought.

It’s a shame I won’t get to tell him he was right.

He deserves to know before he growls himself to death.

Barnes lifts the second vial to the light.

He twirls it with a casualness that should be odd considering the situation, but his smile stretches wide and cruel.

“Bet you’re wondering how long you can last without this,” he taunts while watching me sink deeper into the abyss.

“I guess we’ll find out. All you have to do is?—”

A sound rips through the corridor. A low, guttural roar. Primal. Animalistic. The air shifts, and a new kind of tension floods the space.

My head lolls toward the noise. My heart pounds weakly in my chest.

Barnes freezes, and his grin falters. “What the hell was that?”

Another roar, louder this time. A heavy metallic crash. The sharp, sickening crunch of bone that punctuates the screams. The groans of rotters outside the walls grow frantic, as though the noise has stirred them into a frenzy.

Barnes is ripped off his feet and tossed into the shadows. The door to my cell slams open and crashes against the wall with a deafening clang. The sound reverberates through the room.

My vision blurs in and out of focus, and I struggle to stay present. Maybe this is a hallucination.

A shadowed figure moves through the open doorway, filling the space with a towering presence.

Barefoot. Bare chested. Bruised ribs and wild, unkempt, long black hair. His chest rises and falls with heavy breaths, but it’s his vivid green eyes locking onto mine with a feral, searing intensity that steals what little air I have left.

My breath stalls. The room is chaos, but he is pure stillness and focus. A figure of rage and protection. He moves fast. He crouches beside me, but it’s the object in his hand that draws my attention away from him.

The last guaranteed vial of insulin. In the other hand is a syringe. My lips part, but no sound comes out. I can’t think. My body is too weak, my mind too foggy to form words.

He slides my shirt up only enough to expose my stomach, then uncaps the syringe with his teeth. The whole time, his eyes never leave mine, until he shoves the needle into my abdomen and presses the plunger down with careful precision.

I barely feel the sting of the injection over the overwhelming relief flooding through me. The fog lifts. My lungs expand, and I suck in air. My body still trembles with weakness, but I’m alive.

“C-Cole…”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. I don’t need to have seen his face before in order to know it’s him.

His calloused fingers cradle my face, with his thumb stroking my cheek. His green eyes search mine, checking me over, making sure I’m still here. There’s something wild in his gaze. Fierce. Something painful, protective, and desperate. Something that shatters me.

I lift my hand and reach for his face, but fall short. My fingers rest weakly on his wrist instead. I offer a breathless smile. “You’re beautiful.”

A small smile cracks through the agony in his expression, and it soothes my soul in a way I didn’t know I needed. “You’re not allowed to die on me.”

“You should speak more often. You have a wonderful voice.”

“Only if you stay alive long enough to keep hearing it.”

The man before me looks feral, but he holds me with such tenderness that I almost can’t believe I was ever in any real danger to begin with. Near death experience aside, I could stay in his arms like this all day .

There’s movement behind him, and the shouts from Benji and Damon finally reach my ears right when the dreg with the black eye and bruised jaw reaches behind his back to produce a flash of metal. “Behind you,” I croak out.

Cole doesn’t move. He doesn’t even turn his head. His focus remains entirely on me, his hands steady and gentle while he holds me. His eyes remain locked on mine. Every breath he takes feels like a growl, his chest rising and falling like a predator ready to strike, or even defend.

“Cole,” I try again. Panic claws at my chest. I finally got him, I can’t lose him already.

“I know, sunshine.” His tone is calm, almost dismissive. His hands never leave me.

He can’t know, because if he did, then he would do something to block the man with the knife. I think he’s called Greg. Greg is a bad, bad man. Greg needs to die.

Time seems to slow down when I force my hand onto my stomach, and then slide it up my body and beneath my shirt.

Cole’s eyes still never waver from mine, even when I reach into my bra and pull out the knife that hides there and throw it at Greg.

In hindsight, I should have given the knife to Cole because it tumbles to the ground, and Greg steps on it with his big, muddy boot.

“Cole,” I plead, but his only response is to wipe the drying tear trails from my cheeks with his thumb. His hands leave me, and I feel the loss of his touch like a physical ache.

With a sudden, explosive motion, he spins around.

His body moves like a coiled spring that’s been released.

His hand shoots out and grabs Greg’s wrist mid-strike.

The knife trembles in his hand, but Cole’s grip doesn’t budge.

His vibrant green eyes turn into black pits of despair and he becomes death himself.

He breaks the guy’s arm and is about to break his neck next when Barnes emerges from the shadows with a punch to Cole’s bruised rib.

When that doesn’t faze Cole, Barnes grabs the knife and shoves it into Cole’s side.

I let out a weak cry of protest, but Barnes stands over me, blocking my view of Cole’s bleeding form that crumples to the floor. My living nightmare glares down at me with a look that turns the blood in my veins to ice. “What a mess you always seem to make.”