Dreams of Sin by Stephanie Gluck

Author:Stephanie Gluck [Gluck, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Puffira Press
Published: 2024-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

‘W

ake up, Octavia,’ Samael’s voice echoed in my ears. I pulled in a deep, gasping breath.

Slowly, I opened my eyes. I felt disoriented and my head spun violently, bile creeping up the back of my throat. Crusty sleep itched in the corner of my eyes, and everything was blurry to begin with. When my vision finally focused, my heart squeezed tight in my chest with fear.

Less than an inch from the end of my nose hovered a person. A small, pale, and unfamiliar face. Her lips tinged blue and puckered with curiosity, while her pale straw-coloured brows were drawn together. It took me a minute to realise the child had her hands planted on my chest. The full weight of her body pressed down against me. Igniting a heavy pain in my sternum. Suddenly, I was suffocating beneath her slight weight, and panic was tightening my airway.

“Get off,” I wheezed. Just barely swallowing down a scream of stress. I wrapped my hands tight around her wrists and shoved her back. “Get off me. Right fucking now.”

The girl was quick to scramble backwards. She swept her matted hair from her face and raised her palms placatingly. Giving me the space I desperately desired. I watched her closely as I sat up.

“Okay,” she said, her voice hoarse and husky as if she hadn’t used it in a long time. “It’s okay. I do not mean to scare you. It just looked like you were waking, and I wanted to be sure you were okay.”

She sounded strange.

Not in the tone or pitch of her voice, but in the way she put her words together despite the round child-like features she possessed. She spoke the way Prudence Heira always had. In full sentences, with an all too formal and aged inflection. As if she were a wizened old woman instead of a tiny young girl. A shudder rolled through me, the hair on the back of my arms standing on end. She was creepy.

I tried to put more space between us. Shifting back, I gazed around the room to take stock of where I was, inching backwards as I did so. Every slight movement left me battling dizziness and fatigue. My mouth had dried out, and my tongue felt uncomfortable.

When I ran into another body, warm and soft behind me, I flinched. Glancing over my shoulder, I found Max grumbling in his sleep, eyes moving rapidly behind his lids. The bulging, shifting movement made my stomach turn. White webs were weaving around his legs. Just like the people upstairs. The webs were wrapping slowly up his body, weaving a soft cocoon to encase him.

Beneath my outstretched fingers, the strands were as soft as human hair, but I didn’t like the look of it and quickly tore it away from his legs. It shredded with ease, disintegrating in my grip. He was now free, yet he barely moved.

“He has been asleep too long…” the child’s soft voice rang out from behind me, startling me. I’d been so focused on Max that I’d almost forgotten the threat at my back.

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