The Soul Collector

Ch. Eighteen

"No one thinks of how much blood it costs."

- Dante Alighieri

                                                                                 ***

"What did I tell you?"

Everything hurt.

"I told you, didn't I? Why won't you ever just listen to me?"

She was moving.

Galloway whimpered when the motion stopped just long enough for her to be jostled around. Something pressed painfully hard into the side of her neck.

She was cold.

"Just hang on. We're almost there. Please, please."

Her eyes were open and she could make out blurs of light, but nothing solid. She was in a world filled only with ghosts, shapes of people fading in and out, darkness swallowing them just as they appeared to her. The world streaked and swayed in front of her.

Air rattled in her throat, seeping away before it could reach her lungs properly. Instead she inhaled copper, something thick and warm. She coughed and her chest hitched, spasming as she tried harder to breathe.

It wasn't working.

Galloway wanted to blink. Her eyes were burning.

Then she was in a world of light instead of dark. She was startled by the sudden change and took in another shocked breath, just to try and cough away the fluid drowning her.

"Please! Help her, she's dying!"

Galloway wanted to frown. Was that what was happening? She was dying?

She stopped moving though something was still pressing hard into her throat, making it even harder to breathe. God she needed to breathe. She tried again and her body seized as her muscles started protesting the lack of oxygen. An aching pressure was starting to build right behind her eyes.

It was getting dark again. More voices were surrounding her. She didn't think it mattered.

Galloway smiled slightly, kind of waiting for her reaper. Dully, she wondered if her Soul would require something to ferry her to the other side, or if she would just wake up in Hell. She didn't actually know what happened to Collectors when they died. Maybe Hell just sent them to their version of a diabolical retirement home.

She couldn't stop the absurd notion that at least she had gone out like a proper Hunter.

Now she grimaced. No Hunter worth their salt wanted to be taken out by something they hadn't been tracking first. Vaguely, she wondered if her parents would be proud, or if they'd think her careless for letting a vampire jump her like that.

She wished she could have the chance to ask them.

Her chest was growing light and Galloway couldn't see anything anymore. 

Her last thought was to wonder if she could pull some kind of favor for Sirius when she got to Hell. Make sure he didn't wind up back in the pits for her stupidity.

It took a long time for the frantic sounds around her to fade away.

                                                                   ~~~

In the same way that sound was the last thing pulled from her, sound was the first thing given back and Galloway frowned at the annoying beeping sound somewhere to her left. She wondered if this was really how her stint in Hell would begin.