Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I know Josep is gone, I feel his absence. And smell it too, which is weird. I hadn’t realized that deficiency had a smell.
My internal monologue makes me chuckle out loud. Deficiency? Internal monologue? Did the blood make me smart? Because I’ve never used those words in a sentence in my life.
I think about this for a moment. Intelligence, and the lack thereof.
Before Lucia, I was not a smart girl. Which, now that I think about it, was why she chose me. I mean, really she chose my boyfriend, Boyd. But he was dumb too.
I was malleable. She could shape me.
And look—I chuckle again—she did.
I’m here. The concubine of evil. The Darkness itself has taken me as its partner.
“Oh, come on, Echo. You don’t really believe that, do you? Please tell me you’re not that stupid.”
I sit up, then get to my feet and face Lucia. “This is my cave now.”
She shakes her head as she studies her fingernails. “No, sweetie, it’s not.” She looks up at me with that penetrating glare she has. “He’s using you.”
“He’s using me for what? I don’t have anything to offer.”
Her head lolls to the side, like she cannot believe I just said that. “You really are stupid. In my next go-around as an evil, conniving witch I will do an IQ test first.”
“You know what? I don’t have to take your shit anymore. I’m not your bitch.”
“No, you’re his bitch now.”
I nod. “Yeah. I am.” This is when I realize I’m naked, so I fold my arms across my chest. “And I like it, OK? He’s… good to me.”
Lucia bellows out a laugh that echoes off the ceiling. It’s such a hearty laugh, it takes several seconds for the air to still after she’s done. “Good to you? He carved evil into your skin, served you up as food to the halfbreeds, used you to kill them, let them destroy your body until it was nothing but tatters, and then”—she flips a hand in my direction—“brought you back to life so you can be his sex slave. This, my dear, is not what salvation looks like.” Her gaze is trained and focused on me again as she stares into my eyes. “This is damnation, girl. You just don’t have the good sense to understand that yet.”
“Well…” I’m not sure how to respond to that, so this is all I have. But Lucia waits, allowing me to gather my wits. “If this is damnation, you’re the one who put me here.”
It cuts, but only a little. Lucia, from my perspective anyway, isn’t the kind of woman who lets herself dwell on past mistakes.
As I’m thinking this, she smiles. It’s a very small Mona Lisa smile. “You are not, and have never been, a mistake. Do you really think I was after Boyd, Echo?”
I blink. “What?”
“Boyd?” she says again. “Come on. Give me some credit. I wasn’t after Boyd. Is Boyd here?” She pans her arms wide and pretends to look around the cave. “Do you see him anywhere?”
“What are you saying?”
“I was never after Boyd, Echo. It was you.” She gives me a real smile now. “Poor, forgotten, used and abused Echo from Spokane. Do you know where Boyd is now?”
I lift up one shoulder, feigning indifference. Boyd and I were brought to the compound together, but everything up here was so… well, confusing, but exciting as well, that I just lost track of him. And there were so many other men to be distracted by. And Paul, of course.
Paul never took any notice of me until he came back up from the ground last New Year’s Eve, but I sure as hell saw him.
I give Lucia my best guess. “Dead?”
“No.” She purses her lips and shakes her head. “He was stupid, but he wasn’t discarded. He had a family who cared about him, Echo. I can’t turn people into halfbreeds if they’ve got family who will miss them. He left the very first day he got here.”
My eyes narrow down. “No, he didn’t.”
“Name one time, after you came up here to the lodge, that you saw Boyd.”
“Well, I can’t remember right now—”
“You can’t remember because I sent him home. He’s married now, you know. Two kids. Both boys. He married into a large ranching family. He lives a simple, but good life, in Boise. Wears a cowboy hat and everything.”
“Married with kids?” I scoff. “What the hell are you talking about? I haven’t even been up here long enough—” But as soon as this sentence starts spilling out of my mouth, I know it’s a lie. When Paul came back on New Year’s Eve, he had been gone for two years. And I’ve been through several Paul disappearances. I blink at Lucia. “How long have I been up here?”
“Twenty-one years.”
“Twenty-one…” But I can’t finish. I look down at myself. Naked now, but I look the same. Better, actually, after bathing in that magical hot spring after my death. I look back up at Lucia. “What?”