Page 29 of Lies That Bleed
Then, like magic, Liana disappeared, beneath me onesecond and gone the next, and instead of falling I was consumed by the wall of fire.
With her wisdom in my head, I slashed out like mad as the fire tried to consume me. It was like a living beast with arms and tails of flame and eyes of smoke. It tried to suffocate me, but I hacked and cut as its fiery appendages were separated from it and then disappeared. I was sweating, burning; everything hurt and yet this bastard didn’t know that I was too stubborn to die.
“Come on!” I screamed, continuing my slashing, blindingly fast and repetitive. My arms strained from the action, but each time I cut into the fire, it grew smaller. I wanted to give up, I wanted to drop this sword that weighed a thousand pounds and go back to floating in the darkness, but somehow I knew it would not be like that again, that if I died this time it was real. Every time I cut off one of its eyes, or tails, another popped up.
My arms were so heavy, so battle weary, and yet I dug deep down inside of myself for that place that every warrior has, that small pocket of reserve energy.
“You can’t have me!” I screamed to the fire beast, spinning in a full circle with my blade, cutting more and more of it until the heat ceased, and I was suddenly staring at a four-foot ball of fire perched above a cloud.
It had only one eye left, and a fewfiery feathers, and I slashed through it with ease. “Just die already!” I commanded.
The fire monster dissolved to nothing then, and I collapsed backward onto the cloud, which somehow supported my weight.
I panted, looking up at the crystal-clear blue sky, and that’s when the cloud ceased to exist and I fell.
I screamed, and the sudden weightlessness caused fresh hot fear to seize me.
Then everything went black.
My eyes flicked openand I gasped, panicked to find that I was still in darkness. I thrashed around, and then heard a strange male voice scream.
“Help me!” I shouted, and then rolled to my side. Bad idea. I was on top of something and fell down, hitting the floor and my right shoulder hard.
I was trapped inside of something, like a sleeping bag…
The sound of an opening zipper pulled my attention to the top of the bag as light splintered into the space and I stared into the horrified expression of an older man with wide eyes and shaky fingers.
He unzipped what I now saw was a body bag and I fell out of it, onto the tile floors of what I was pretty sure was the Riverine City Morgue.
And I was naked.
Awesome.
“M-m-miss Everhart?” the man mumbled. I recognized his voice from my dream, the one where my father and Elaine were talking about me like I’d died, except I now didn’t think it was a dream.
“Can I have some clothes?” I covered my chest and the man snapped into action. He rushed across the room and grabbed me a lab coat. It was freezing in here, probably to keep the bodies from decomposing. A charming thought that made bile rise in my throat.
Then he gave me his back while I dressed in the long white coat that hung past my knees, and tightened the waistband.
“H-how is this possible?” the man asked, clearly trying to figure out how the chick from the body bag had just suddenly come to life.
I wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t exactly know the answer to that myself,” I told him honestly. “But thank you for your help.”
There were dead bodies everywhere, some of which I recognized as my fellow candidates. I wanted to get the hell out of here.
“I’m gonna go now,” I told him, a puff of mist coming from my mouth from the cold temperature in here.
He spun around. “No. Let me call your father.”
“I don’t think that’s nec?—”
“I’m calling your father,” he warned.
Crap.
He walked over to a phone on the wall and spoke into the receiver. “Hello, operator, I need to be connected to the emperor immediately. This is coroner Davis.”
He paused, flicking a nervous gaze over to me. I took this moment to step in front of a mirror he had hanging on the wall and check my appearance. No doubt my skin would be burned and bruised.
