Don't Touch My Men - Helen Scott Page 0,18

were slightly different shades of dripping scarlet.

For some reason, I felt sick as I moved closer to them and read the words aloud. “They’re watching me. Always. Death. The devil. Destruction. They’re coming for me. They won’t let me escape. They say I’m sick. Sick inside. But they don’t see. They’re just blind. Death. Devil. Destruction. Coming for me. No escape. Death. Destruction…”

“This was a mental institute.” She sounded chipper as she told me.

“How the hell were the patients left alone long enough to write something like this on a wall?”

She grinned. “They only had room for five hundred people. They ended up with over two thousand and five hundred patients. They had to put them in cages. They ended up just roaming the halls. Many were locked in the subbasement floors. Food was thrown down at them, and they fought over it, killing and hurting each other. Now those floors…those floors will give you nightmares.”

I shivered, fully believing her.

“What’s with the building outside?”

She shrugged. “Prisoners. Each day, His Majesty gives them a choice, bow to him or die. The most powerful creatures are given several chances to bow before him, but the weaker creatures are killed if they refuse.”

“A reign with a foundation of blood and terror. Sounds like a good start.”

“It’s the way all good reigns start,” she said, smirking.

Then we continued walking. She showed me a few rooms of cages. Then a section of the institute with rooms that could’ve only been used for torture. By the time she told me we were getting to the good stuff, I was ready to get the fuck out of there. This place wasn’t just sickening, it seemed to chill something down to my very soul.

“I think I’m going to get some fresh air.”

“Good idea.” Her eyes seemed to glow. “After the executions, the air tends to smell of death.”

I turned and walked away from her.

If this was the dark side, it wasn’t anything I wanted to be a part of.

9

Mae

I couldn’t help but meander back to the cemetery. As much as I wanted to avoid it, it was also where I’d seen Ellis in that connection thingy, and it was where the headstone with the name of my grandfather was. A small, almost childish part of me hoped that Ellis would just be there waiting for me, but I knew that was naïve. However, that didn’t stop my disappointment when I found the graveyard empty.

Logically, I’d known Ellis wouldn’t be there, but the part of me that needed the sense of reassurance and safety I’d found with these men ever since leaving the mirror realm…that part was crushed. I didn’t want to be the Horseman’s bride or queen or anything, I wanted to belong to Ellis, Grim, Hunter, and even Alastair. The mage and I hadn’t spent a lot of time alone together, but I was still drawn to him just like I was with the others.

As I walked, I began to look at the gravestones. Some were just numbers, which hurt my heart to see. How could you care enough to give someone a gravestone, but not enough to put their actual name on it?

The more I looked, the more I felt like I began to see a pattern. The recent, well, relatively recent gravestones had the numbers, but after that were a few rows where they actually had names, and then everything started to look older and was more overgrown, making the engraving difficult to see. They still had names, but not first and last names. These were the names of creatures. Banshee. Red cap. Pixie. Vampire. Hob. Dhampir. Kelpie. Wolf. Siren. Minotaur. The list went on and on.

I moved over the ground like a ghost, my body barely registering as my mind processed what I was seeing. So many lives lost because of people’s fear and greed. The more I looked around, the more I felt connected to the land somehow. My instincts had always served me well in the mirror realm, had saved my ass more often than not, so I didn’t question the urge to take off the shoes I was wearing and walk barefoot through the grass.

My connection with the land rushed through my veins as I moved. I could almost feel the past rearing its ugly head all around me. Screams seemed to echo in my mind, while other voices yelled, and still more babbled incoherently. Is this what the residents of WhisperWinds went through? Could they hear these same voices and