Hellfire | Hayley Marshall

Chapter 55

Eisa was sure this was a hallucination.

And yet, could hallucinations really beat into a person so badly?

Mikael was in front of her, and he'd just backhanded her before tossing her into the wall of the cabin.

"Worthless whelp," he sneered, coming toward her and pulling her up by the hair before slamming her into the wall.

She kicked, she flailed, she even screamed, but nothing she did would get him off of her. Mikael's grip was stronger than she'd ever felt it, and no matter what she was trying, she remained pinned.

She was thrown across the room, landing with a painful crunch in the corner of the room. She cried out and felt her wrist, which had broken on impact. When she whirled around and lifted her hands to face Mikael, she found he was not there.

Lucien was.

"Come now, love, at least make it fun," he said, yanking her up by the throat and holding her in place before he punched her hard in the face, making her nose bleed.

"Lucien, get off of me!" she screeched, kicking him right in the abdomen. He faltered a bit, and she was able to get his hand off of her throat, but when she tried to run out of the house, he yanked her leg, bringing her facedown on the ground.

"Can't get away so easily," he said in a sing-song voice, pulling her back. His eyes glowed red, and she screamed again when he bit into her arm, leaving a bite that looked just like the one she'd acquired five years ago.

"No!" she cried, staring at it in shock. "No, no, please—"

"You deserve it."

Lucien was gone, and he'd been replaced by Aya. She was covered in blood, glaring down at Eisa.

"It's your fault I'm dead," she sneered. "You loved her more. You wanted to be with her, and not with me. I took a bullet for you, and you forgot me."

Eisa tried to protest, but Aya kicked her in the face, and Eisa was sure that some teeth had been knocked out (given the fact she feared this to be real).

When the hallucinations had stopped, she found herself still standing in the abandoned house, but Elijah and Klaus were there, along with Freya.

"What the bloody hell happened?" she demanded, seeing the place was a wreck. "What the—?"

"The Hollow had a hold of all three of you," said Freya gravely.

"But— but why—?"

"It wished for our brothers to kill one another," said Freya, helping her to her feet. "And it seems... you were the object of their anger."

"I'm really confused now," said Eisa. "It brought me here and it— it took out Lucien's venom."

They all went tense. "What?"

"It couldn't extract the cure, but it extracted the venom. It told me it needed me, that I was providing it with a weapon to fuel its rebirth. It had a female voice. It said I anchor it here, because I was the one who had the idea to break the Ancestral Well."

"It couldn't kill you because the cure runs in your veins," mused Freya, "thus, it extracted the venom to kill Klaus and Elijah. It infected their minds and made them see visions of you being hurt... you screaming because you were hallucinating and genuinely thinking someone was harming you. It made them think that the other was the one that did that to you." She was trembling a bit. "We must purify the three of you. Quickly— let's get home."

Hayley threw her arms around Eisa the instant they were in the doorway. "Oh my god— you're okay."

"How long has it been?" she asked, seeing it was night time already. "Have that many hours really passed?"