Chapter 146

Without the light, I had no idea how long I drifted in and out of consciousness. It grew colder in the silence. The blood that had soaked into my clothing turned stiff and cold, but that wasn’t the worst part.

My stomach cramped with hungry. My mouth was dry. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself trying to focus. No matter what Ian said, I knew that Candido would find me. He’d find a way to get out of wherever Ian had put him and he’d come for me.

I knew that.

I had to believe it because there was no other way out.

I thought I heard Shiloh or Messiah’s voice.

“Can you hear me?” I called. “Let me out!”

My voice echoed, then the world started to move around me. The darkness turned oppressive and my heart quickened. It felt it like a dark blanket over my senses the same way it had in the caves. The weight grew heavier, crushing my mind until I could barely breathe—barely think. All I could do was scream as the pain mounted in my skull. My ears were ringing and I could feel something at the back of my changing, but I didn’t have a word for it. I just knew that something was about to happen. I knew it would only get worse the longer I was here.

“Candido!” I screamed. “Candido, help me!”

The ground beneath my vanished and I was falling and falling through darkness. I reached out and flailed. Pain exploded across my forearm. Sharp surfaces cut me, scraping, and tearing through my flesh. My head was still pounding. The pressure wouldn’t let up. Then, I felt my head get jerked up.

My scalp burned as if someone had yanked my head up by hair.

There was so much light shining in my face that I couldn’t see who it was, but I knew it was a man.

“Let me go,” I croaked. “You’ll… be sorry.”

He scoffed and released me. Then, I was falling forward as if down a tunnel. The darkness shifted around me, tumbling me around, batting me back and forth like a child’s toy. I braced myself, knowing that something was coming though I couldn’t say how I knew.

I slammed into a hard wall of what felt like water. I held my breath as the bubbles rushed past. Then I was spinning or twirling, caught in a riptide and ripped through the dark.

I opened my mouth to scream and water rushed in as I was tossed out and through a frigid cold. I landed and slid against a frigid patch of ice that made my skin and clothes stick to it. I lay there, panting, my eyes burning with tears I couldn’t even shed as I choked.

How much longer would it be before Candido found me? Had Raven had to go through something like this? Was it because I was only half? Did he really hate me so much that he was going to let me die like this?

Did Candido know now and that’s why he wasn’t coming?

I thought back to Wolf Fang. Lilian could never love me; she couldn’t even manage to care about me a little because I wasn’t her daughter. Steven didn’t care about me at all even thought I was his daughter. Did he resent me because my mother was a vampire? Did he know? Did he find out later and that’s why he treated me that way?

Was I always fated to just suffer?

I had never believed much in the Moon Goddess. Maybe that was why my life was turning out to be this way, but I thought that since she’d led me to Candido that meant she cared about me. That someone cared about me.

I was so scared.

I was so alone in a way I’d forgotten I could be.

“Candido,” I whispered to the dark. “Where are you?”

I lost consciousness for a while. My mind drifted through darkness until I could see Candido. He was walking away from me, and no matter how hard I ran after him, he seemed to only be getting farther and farther away.

“Come back!” I screamed. “Come back! You promised!”

He vanished and I was thrown head first into a storm. Lightning struck around me. On the summit of the cliff, I saw Candido in his wolf form. The ground shock and cracked around me. Silver, molten and steaming, shot up around me. I tried to run, but the barrier pushed me back.

“Let me out!” I cried. “I’m not a vampire! Let me out!”

The moon turned read above me and I saw myself running across the pools of molten silver. Her eyes flashed with moonlight. She leaped toward the cliff and she was struck down by the crack of a gun. She fell through the air and disappeared into the chasm below. I turned to find out who had shot that other version of me.

It was Steven, holding a gun. He turned and aimed at me. I felt the pain explode in my chest and felt so small, so young. I saw water above me. Red light filtered through the blood in the water.

Was this a memory? Sometime I couldn’t remember.

“She’s still alive.”

“What is she?”

“You promised to make me luna, Steven! Kill her!”

Someone hissed. I shot up out of the water and lunged at the nearest person. I didn’t recognize the person beneath me, but I could taste the hot gush of blood on my tongue, metallic and a little sweet. I rushed forward, dragging my claws through any person I came across. I heard a baby crying and turned, sharply towards it. In the bassinet was a small blonde baby. I hung over her reaching into the crib.

I screamed, “No!”

But the baby was fine. My hand turned gentle as it stroked the baby’s head with a smooth, clean hand. Then, there was light and a humming song. I felt the darkness coming and dragging me under as he light circled around her. Pain exploded in my chest and I crumpled.

The last thing I heard was a set of footsteps coming towards me. The last thing I saw was the golden light slowly fading and my lips moved.

“Hedy…” I heard. “Live.”

Pain shot through my head, and I was pushed out of the vision and into the darkness.

I opened my eyes and found the light outside my cell on again. I saw Candido outside. I heard his voice as he rushed to the door. Then, Ian walked through him like a hallucination and sat down.

“Candido,” I gasped.

“Hallucinating, now, are you?” Ian sat in the chair of stone and focused on me. “You saw her last moments, I take it.”

I couldn’t move, but the stone shifted and brought me closer to the cell door.

“Who?”

“Who else you, idiot? Your mother,” he shook his head. “At least now you know your sire is not to be trusted.”

“Shot…”

“Twice.” He tapped his head. “Her last thoughts were of you.”

“How… do you know—”

“We were twins, Hedy. I know the moment you were born and every painful moment after,” he said. “If she could see you now…”

He shook his head. “Never mind that. I’m only here to share this with you. I heard Moon Shadow’s Pandora likes to keep up to date.”

He slid a phone through the bars. On the screen, I saw a video as it began to play. It was a video of the ruins of Full Moon’s capital and surrounding area.

“Blue Moon’s compound has been taken, by the way,” he laughed. “Be glad I decided to scramble the mainframe or Damian would be hunting down every awakened bloodline in the database. Honestly, why wouldn’t you or anyone else think to code the information behind more than just a password? Did you really think that vampires were living in caves without any exposure to technology?”

I said nothing, blinking at the scenes of people being dragged around and devoured on television. I didn’t recognize anyone, but the fact that I might at some point set me on edge.

“How long do you plan to stay in there crying?”

I growled and lunged towards the bars. The spikes rammed straight through my shoulders, but I swiped my claws through the bars at him.

My nails shattered and popped from my fingers as my hand slammed into a hard wall of magic. I pushed back with a shriek as my wounds started to burn and cradled my hand to my chest.

Ian sighed and stood. “Hedwig escaped within a week, six days after I did. You’ve already wasted three days. Maybe if you focused more on your current predicament than your hormones, you could speed this up a little faster.”

He turned away and headed down the hall. “I challenge you, for a moment, as hard as it is, to think.”