Page 46 of Hellbound

Why was it so fucking dark? She couldn’t see the streetlights out the window like before. Had they gone out as well? The moon was gone, too. There was only suffocating darkness.

Her breathing quickened. She couldn’t see Lloyd.

“Wertz!” Marian gasped. “Wertz, where are you?”

Silence.

“Hold on.” Tori fumbled beside her. Seconds later, a phone light illuminated the ground. It barely burned through the shadows, affording only a few feet of visibility. The traveler raised the light, shining it in an arc around them.

The plastic table with the first aid kit lay on its side. Bandages lay strewn on the floor. Beyond it, Lloyd Wertz crouched on the concrete, only the whites of his eyes visible as thick rivulets of black ichor oozed from his nostrils. His head snapped up, and his jaw opened so quickly and unnaturally wide that the corners of his mouth tore with the effort. Blood spilled down his chin.

The scream was barely out of Marian’s mouth when she spotted the plume of undulating darkness sprouting from his back.

She looked on in terror as the Remnant twisted Wertz’s body into a bloody marionette.

Marian grabbed a fistful of the traveler’s sweatshirt and dragged her away from him.

The Remnant’s presence throbbed behind her. Marian clutched the knife to her chest, ignoring Tori’s garbled protests until Marian clipped the edge of a workbench with her hip. Then came a sound like a thousand pounds of Legos cascading to the floor.

Pain lashed around Marian’s ankle. The next thing she knew, she was hurtling backward, away from Tori’s phone light. She hit the ground shoulder first and looked up to find the flashlight beam illuminating a knot of black tentacles writhing in the space above the pool.

The Remnant was here.

The garage erupted into a symphony of chaos—screams both human and not. Dread drenched her thoughts. You fucking idiot. You just ended this world.

“Marian!”

Something man-shaped dropped on top of Marian, knocking the wind out of her before she could form a scream. Ice cold fingers closed around her neck and squeezed.

Tori’s phone barely lit up the slack-jawed man trying to kill her. Then the light went out, and Lloyd’s weight jerked above her. The traveler shouted as she wrestled with him, but he barely budged.

The sounds of struggle mingled with the constant droning emanating from the Remnant, and the broken, inhuman gurgling coming from Lloyd.

Air rushed around her. There came a loud crash like another stack of boxes collapsing, followed by Tori’s pained cry as she was tossed aside.

Lloyd’s hands returned to her throat as he strangled Marian in absolute darkness.

Her heart seized as the scar on her wrist suddenly blazed white hot, as though she was carving it into herself all over again. The knife in her hand quivered, her fingers pushing through the hilt as it was suddenly no longer solid.

It’s leaving. You’re dying.

Marian would have screamed in agony if she could breathe; his bulk on her chest was too much, he’d crush her windpipe next.

Tori’s shouts echoed behind her as deep red spots bloomed in Marian’s vision.

This is it, came a disparaging voice from somewhere within the knot of panicked thoughts blocking out reason. This was the end. Lloyd—the Remnant—would snap her neck and send her back to Hell. There was no return from that kind of death.

The knife pulsed, solid again in her hand as it telegraphed a single, booming thought into her mind. Just like the voice in Hell that had urged her to flee.

“Mine.”

A gun went off. Lloyd convulsed over her with an inhuman scream. He released her neck and suddenly she could breathe again. She gripped the hilt of the knife tight, its weight cold and unyielding this time. She wanted to run, to get as far away from this evil as possible.

Again, that foreign resonance pierced her thoughts, smothering her panic and cocooning her in certainty.

“Fight.”

Every muscle in her arm spasmed, setting her nerves ablaze. She pushed through the pain, letting it burn away her confusion while that cold command thrummed in her skull. It slid down her spine and pressed between her shoulder blades like a guiding hand. The smell of gunpowder assaulted her senses, staining her tongue. Marian got to her feet, her eyes straining to see Lloyd writhing in the dark.