Stone hands rose from the floor and grabbed my ankles, pulling my feet out from under me.
I fell too fast to react.
I WOKE UP LYING IN THE DARK AND HURTING ALL OVER, but especially on the back of my head.
My ankles were also sore when I tried to move them.
I blinked, but I still couldn't see anything--which is very unusual for me.
I smelled blood, and felt something ridged under my shoulder.
Old sensory memory, left over from late-night studying in college, told me it was a pen.
I waited for more recent memory to kick in--the last thing I remembered was the fae grabbing my ankles.
When nothing more made itself known, I decided that there were no memories to come back.
I must have been knocked out when my head hit the cement.
Odd as it might seem, I was still alive even though I'd been lying helpless before the fae.
I almost sat up, but there was a sound I couldn't place, a wet sound.
Not a drip, but a slop, slop, slop.
Rip.
Slop, slop, slop.
Something was eating.
Once I worked that out, I could smell death and all the undignified things it brought to a body.
I waited a long time, listening to the sounds of something with sharp teeth feeding, before I forced myself to move.
It didn't really matter who had died.
If it was Sam, I stood no chance against something that could kill a werewolf after I shot him three times in the chest--whether his heart was there or not, it still should have hurt him.
If it wasn't Sam .
.
.
either he would kill me, too, or we'd both walk out of the basement.
But I had to wait until I'd considered every possibility before I rolled stiffly to my feet.
The sound didn't change as I shuffled around, crunching glass under my feet until the edge of my shoe caught the edge of the rug.
I used the rug to find the desk and fumbled around until I could turn on the desk light.
It wasn't very bright, but it showed me that the lighting fixtures on the ceiling had been torn loose and were dangling by wires.
The neat stacks of boxes were mostly gone, leaving tumbled books, ripped-up cardboard, and shreds of paper in their place.
There was also blood.