Endure (Need) by Jones Carrie

Author:Jones, Carrie [Jones, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2012-05-08T05:00:00+00:00

FBI INTERNAL MEMO

Among the missing: fifteen male juveniles, eight female juveniles. Local cattle have been mutilated. Evidence is scarce. —AGENT WIllis

Uttering an almost-swear, I flip around, grab the doorknob, and try to yank it back open. The air reeks of pixie and anger.

“Issie!” I have to protect her. My hand rushes along the wall, looking for a light switch. There must be a light switch. “Hold on, Issie!”

“It’s a trap,” Astley, aka Captain Obvious, sputters into the darkness.

As soon as he speaks, noises buzz through the air like arrows zipping toward us.

I scream his name, trying to warn him and at the same time trying to figure out what’s happening, which is pretty much impossible to do because it’s so ridiculously dark. I reach for my cell. If I can flip it open it’ll give us a little light, but before I can reach it, Astley slams his body over mine, covering it, protecting it with his own. And that’s when the arrows start hitting, one after another, after another. They slice through his parka and into his skin. I can hear the pain of it, feel it as he shudders from the impact. His body starts falling down, pulled by gravity onto the hard floor, which seems made of some kind of stone. Twisting around, I try to catch him, manage to wrap my arms around him a bit before the first arrow slams into my shoulder. Pain spirals out, but I’m so mad I can ignore it, so scared it seems like nothing. Then another hits, and another, and it’s like I haven’t slept in eight hundred years and I suddenly really, really need to sleep. They must have put something on the arrows, something to cause drowsiness. Just drowsiness, I hope, and not death. I don’t know … I just know the darkness is getting darker and my hands can’t find Astley … anymore … and I’m …

Gone.

It’s the smell of my own burning flesh that wakes me. It’s a nasty smell that can rouse you out of unconsciousness no matter how deep that unconsciousness is. My head is drooping and I’m staring at my feet, which are on a stone floor. There’s some sort of fluorescent lighting coming from above me giving everything a yellowish ugly glow. Only one of my boots is still on. My left sock stretches red and woolly as I cautiously move my toes, trying to regain my orientation, trying to remember what happened. There’s an arrow sticking out of my shoulder. There’s another in my arm.

“She’s waking up already, how quick,” says someone with a high, bell-like voice. It sounds familiar. It sounds like Isla, Astley’s mother. Lovely.

Lifting my head so I can actually see the room confirms it. She’s over by the sprawled-out form of Astley. She’s yanking arrows out of him. He doesn’t move. He’s bloody, unconscious, but I can feel his breath as if it’s my own, so I know that he’s still alive, my king. Thank God. I try to calm my breath as I look at the metal door that slammed behind us.

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