The Sinners of Saint Amos - Logan Fox Page 0,246

alone in this dark.

I’ll never find my way out.

Something follows me. I hear it crawling over the floor behind me.

Nails scratch on the concrete. Skin drags.

My foot slams into a mattress.

Before I can find my balance, I topple forward.

The bedding is wet and warm.

Someone bled here.

You, Trinity. That’s your blood.

I push away the voice as I struggle frantically to stand. The thing crawling after me starts panting. Desperate as I am.

Finally I get to my feet. I surge forward, running as fast as I can.

Straight into someone standing in the dark. Strong arms catch me before I can fall. They drag me close, and hold me tight.

It should have been comforting, but I know who these arms belong to, and I don’t want to be anywhere near him.

My scream gets stuck in my throat. It’s barely a wheeze. Fingers tangle in my hair and drag my head back. My blindfold is ripped off.

There’s a click.

Light blooms, sickly yellow, from the bulb dangling above us.

I’m in the basement of 2142 Maude Street, but it’s larger now. The floor is covered with dirty, blood-stained mattresses.

And there’s a small, curled up body on each. Their shadows shift and dance as the light bulb swings left and right.

Almost makes them look alive.

I stare into my father’s face, and Keith Malone looks down at me without expression.

Nails scrape against the floor. Plastic sheeting now—no longer concrete.

The panting comes closer.

I try to move away, but Keith is holding me too tight.

“You should be dead,” he says. “I told them to kill you.”

Nick and Jess. Are they here? With Keith’s grip in my hair, I can’t turn around to look. I can’t even see how close the panting, crawling thing is that was following me in the dark.

“I will have to rectify that, child.”

Keith’s head snaps back. His mouth opens, but too wide.

Much too fucking wide.

A long, serpentine tongue uncoils and slaps onto my upturned face. I try to cringe away, but he’s keeping me rooted to the spot.

His tongue leaves a layer of slime on my skin as it slithers down my neck, like a slug working its way down my skin. With a tug, he pulls down the front of my dress. I try to collapse in on myself, to hide my nakedness, but I can’t. Not with my hands still bound.

His tongue creeps over my shoulder like a blind, wet snake. Searching. Hunting over my naked skin.

I try to scream, but I can’t draw enough breath. My lungs are too tight.

The panting thing reaches my feet. Ragged nails scrape over my skin as it claws its way up my body.

It’s smaller than me, but it’s angry.

So fucking angry.

It wants to hurt anything, anyone.

Its hands grab my skirt as it tries to lift itself. As it tries to climb higher. My dress slides down to my hips and threatens to go all the way down my legs.

All the while that tongue leaves sticky trails over my breast, a nipple, the hollow in my throat.

The panting thing catches hold of my wrist. Drags itself up. The exertion makes it breathe faster. Like a dog back from a run. Quick and hard.

The sound comes closer as it crawls up my back.

Hair snags in my fingers.

And then I know what it is.

Who it is.

It had been lying on the mattress in that pitch-black basement. Already dead. That’s what I’d been smelling. A girl with short hair, or a boy with long hair.

Dead.

Alone.

There in the dark.

Keith’s tongue finds what it was looking for.

The panting thing claws my face, tearing out my gag.

A slick tongue forces its way deep into the hole in my chest, going all the way through to my back.

The pain is excruciating.

A scream tears apart my throat.

Cold, dead little fingers creep over my face and try to seal my lips.

“Ssh, Trinity,” the child murmurs in my ear. “Don’t let the bad man hear you.”

Chapter Forty-Six

Trinity

My body jerks violently. I clap a hand over my chest, grimacing as I sit up in bed.

I dislodge two arms on the way. Apollo mumbles something under his breath as he turns and goes straight back to sleep.

Cass looks like he’s still sleeping.

I shimmy out of bed as carefully as I can, and hurry out of the room. I pad down the stairs, take a left, and sprint into the nearest bathroom.

If the basin had been another foot away, I’d have missed it. I retch violently, repetitively, my eyes streaming with pain.

I shudder as I rinse out the sink, then my