worried for a moment it was going to pop off, but I maintained my furious hold on him. I could feel a tingle of my own in my hands, likely from the fact that he was depriving my brain of oxygen. I dug my fingernails into his skin and I saw faint trickles of blood well up beneath them, even as I started to feel a sensation of lightheadedness percolate through my being.
“What…what are you…doing…?” Wolfe’s words were choked, his eyes wide. I felt his grip slacken on my neck. I didn’t dare loosen mine, and the lightheadedness I had experienced was growing into something more. The light in the room seemed to be brightening, amplifying.
“It…it BURNS!” He let out a howl of pain and batted at my hands. His claws dug into my wrists, scratching at them, drawing more blood that trickled down his fingers. I looked down to see it pooling in little drips on the concrete and then looked back to his face, awash in agony, and felt his weight start to drag me down. My hands were clutching his throat; my skin was hot and my head was throbbing, rushing with blood. I felt a heightened sense of…everything.
I suddenly realized the room reeked of blood and fear, and I drew in another sharp breath. Faint thumping noises upstairs were audible to me for the first time, and I could hear noises in the pipes and sirens blocks away, and all this over the whimpering and screaming of Wolfe. My skin was on fire with the heat of his throat in my hands, and I could feel the veins in Wolfe’s neck pumping blood past my fingers.
“PLEASE!!” His voice shrieked, begging, pleading, filling the air in the basement. It was at that moment that I realized that if he could speak, I wasn’t choking him – at least not effectively. “It hurts…SO…MUCH!” His words came out in a whimpering shriek. “Wolfe is sorry, little doll, please let him go, pleasepleaseplease…”
A few more wails of agony, one last whimper, and a death rattle filled the air. I held Wolfe by the neck and there was a bitter taste in my mouth as he went slack; his black eyes rolled back in his head, now truly lifeless. The lightheaded sensation filled me and I felt like I was floating, then flying, but not like I had when I went unconscious…instead it was like I was flying at a hundred miles an hour, even though I was still there in the basement, looking at Wolfe’s dead eyes.
Though he weighed several hundred pounds, I held him up by the neck for several minutes, afraid to let go and empowered by the rush of whatever it was that was causing my head to spin. I finally let him slip from my grasp, and his body fell back, knocking over the box, which landed on the ground with a horrendous crash. Wolfe’s body rolled off the side of it and slid to the floor, unmoving.
I took two steps back and slumped against the wall. My head felt like it was about to explode. My mind was so jumbled I couldn’t control it; leaping in every direction, thoughts I could not have conceived of just a few minutes earlier were dashing through my head so quickly I couldn’t even track them all.
I looked back at the two objects of my greatest fear and a heady feeling settled over me. I kicked Wolfe’s shin with an outstretched leg. He didn’t budge, didn’t blink. He was dead.
And I was free.
Twenty-four
I leaned against the wall, trying to catch my breath as thoughts whirled in my head. The creak of a floorboard focused me. I saw a foot appear at the top of the steps and tried to stand, then collapsed when I saw whose foot it was.
Reed tiptoed down the stairs and froze when he caught sight of Wolfe, then charged down the last few steps after he saw me, dropping to his knees at my side. “Sienna!”
“Yes?” I looked back at him, still wobbly.
“Thank God you’re alive, you look…” He frowned in concern and his hand patted my forehead. “Uh…you…uh…”
“I think Wolfe did a number on me before I killed him,” I replied through bloody lips.
He nodded agreement, looking somewhat gray in the face. He shifted from me and eased over to Wolfe on his knees and felt the monster’s cheek. He looked back to me with an expression of fear and amazement. “He’s dead.”
“I just