NightWhere

Chapter Forty-Four

Breaking Down

Rae cried. But every tear hurt. Her body was racked with pain so extreme she couldn’t move. She curled up on the stone table and called for Kharon. After Mark had run, the room had emptied, all except for Rae. As her face pressed against the cold stone, she felt her heart pumping louder in her chest. Struggling.

Her breath came in short, hard gasps.

While Kharon had been in the room, she’d felt electrified with power. Now she could feel her life slipping away. It was hard to keep her eyes open, and when she stared at the blood-drenched walls, her vision fuzzed and faded.

She blinked and forced herself to breathe.

A burning hand stroked her hair, drawing the sweating, bloodied strands away from her eyes.

Rae looked into the black eyes of Yvonna. The Night Mother smiled faintly at her, with blackened lips. Then she leaned down to kiss Rae.

As the strange woman’s lips touched her own, Rae felt her pain and fears melt away. A heat built in her mouth and bled like a wave of honey down the back of her throat. The excruciating pain in her abdomen slowly turned to a pleasant burn; at the same time the acid-hot burning in her crotch and across her back where the skin had been ripped away faded to a pleasant hum of feeling.

Rae felt adrift on a buzz of pain and pleasure, mixed up and cross-wired. She sighed as Yvonna’s face pulled away.

“I’m dying,” Rae whispered.

“Not yet,” Yvonna promised. She pressed two black fingertips, each one emblazoned with a tiny snake, to Rae’s eyelids, nudging them closed.

“Sleep,” she whispered.