Page 81 of Hellbound

A war raged inside her body. Marian’s stomach heaved without warning. Tori helped Marian to her knees as she vomited. When it was done, Tori patted her gingerly on the back only to pull her hand away with a strangled gasp. The traveler didn’t share what had elicited that reaction, but the urgency in her voice increased.

“We really need to move. You need help.”

Help? Marian was beyond help. Her body was caving in on itself and her thoughts kept drifting up and up, away from the blood and the gore and the last flash of fear in Roman’s eyes right before he died.

Marian choked through the stomach acids searing her throat. “Feels like I puked up an organ.”

She was suddenly so cold, and everything hurt like hell, but all she could do was whimper as the traveler hauled her upright.

“I think you did. Hang on, girl. I got you.”

An arm slipped around her shoulders. The stars drifted away, and Marian drifted with them. Her consciousness stuttered into darkness, and when she came to next, she was moving. She just wasn’t sure how.

Tori bore nearly all of her weight. Marian stumbled along, but it was the traveler who moved them both. Marian merely hung on for the ride as the young woman practically carried her down an unfamiliar street under the glow of a sputtering streetlight. Cars rolled by regularly, the familiar rumble of passing engines oddly comforting.

“On your left. Your other left,” Tori called out loud and clear in her ear, but not to her. She lifted her head and thought she’d pass out again as the city scene collapsed into a vortex of bright lights and swirling shadows.

“What happened to her?” A masculine voice Marian didn’t recognize sounded from somewhere beside her.

Tori forced a laugh.

“Oh, miss lightweight here couldn’t hold her blue Hawaiians.”

“But those are … blue. She’s red and black.”

“’Cause we’re working on a horror movie.” The traveler fired back. “Wrap party. Mind your damn business.”

The stranger laughed awkwardly. Marian didn’t know what was so funny as they stumbled together down the block. Her very existence had never seemed so precarious. Like she’d just come back from the dead only to die again.

The ties that bound her to this life felt so brittle now. Never had the void been so close on the other side of Hell. As if death would swoop her up if she would. Just. Let. Go.

“Hold on,” a resonant voice sounded from deep within her.

“Keep your head down. You look like a crime scene,” Tori warned under her breath.

The concern in the traveler’s voice only heightened Marian’s fear, drawing her tether to existence taut.

Marian groaned in reply and turned her head into the fuzzy interior of the hood pulled over her head like a coconut-scented balaclava. She had no memory of putting on Tori’s sweatshirt. Maybe she hadn’t.

“Wh-where—” Marian sputtered. She couldn’t finish the sentence; her next breath hurt too much. Like she’d inhaled knives.

“I’m taking you to that bus shelter,” Tori replied with forced calm. But Marian didn’t miss the tremor in her voice. “And then I’m taking you to a hospital.”

Marian rasped. “No. No hospitals.”

“Girl,” Tori said, her voice jumping up an octave. “You are six different kinds of messed up right now, and I have no idea what to do about it. I can see every single vein in your body, and I’m ninety-nine point nine percent sure they should not be black and leaking.”

What?

What must have been lava—dense and beyond hot—burned up her throat without warning. She folded in half and vomited liquid fire on the pavement.

Tori swore beside her as she backed a bent Marian into a wall and slowly eased her to the ground on a dimly lit street. She coughed and wheezed as Tori knelt beside her, wiping frantically at her face with a wadded-up shirt.

Marian’s vision rolled in and out of focus again as she stared at the black puddle at her feet. She lifter her bleary gaze to the traveler’s terror-stricken face.

“What’s wrong?” Was the question Marian wanted to ask.

But her mouth flooded again with yet more foul-tasting liquid. It spilled out of her mouth, dribbling down her chin.