tHE gIRL wITH tHE iRON fISTS

cHAPTER 20

cHAPTER 20

Ivy

The man had taken me to a dark room. The only way I knew was because I just knew. When the man lifted the sack off my head, I spit some rapid-fire French and some very unpleasant words that Chiron said I'm not allowed to say, while Dionysus just patted me on the head. If you haven't figured out yet, this is what we're telling you happened after the drama. This is an audio recording.

Moving on, the man who kidnapped me pulled off the sack. I coughed, cursed, and finally regained my bearings. I looked at the man who was sitting in the corner of the room. He was looking at me pretty evilly.

<Indecipherable speech in the background>

Chiron just told me I can't curse, so I'm just going to replace everything with the not-so-sinful word. "Where the heck am I?" I spat out.

"You don't need to know." Is all I hear before I black out again.

***

Damion

There was a loud crash a while ago. Everyone had run to their fancy cars and driven away, but B and I were the only ones who stayed. We were looking for Ivy like madmen. I say B was about to break down. We ended up on a balcony looking at the garden that Hunter and Mariah had disappeared to. "Is it my fault?"

"What?" I turned to face B. She was looking off into the distance.

"Ivy going missing. All these wounds. Anything. Everything." She bit her lip. "I should have come myself. This was stupid."

"It wasn't." I narrowed my eyes. "Promise."

"But-"

"You know you're showing your fatal weakness, right?" I say quickly. B stops in her tracks. "Trust and failure. Or something like that."

"Oh." Is all she speaks. "Then who's fault is it?"

"I don't know. You don't have to blame everything about anything." I looked back at the garden and saw something glow. I swore. I saw 2 figures and I tugged B's arm. "It's them." B jumped up and squinted. She fixed her glasses.

"Gods, yes." She ran down the steps from the balcony and threw the grand doors open. I saw Hunter holding Mariah up and went to help him. It was then that I saw Mariah's face and I froze. She had cuts littering her face, some small, some large, and one going across her eye. Her whole body was splattered with blood, and I hoped that it was not her blood that was stained and thrown against her clothes. Hunter was covered in blood too. I faintly remember B running to them and her picking up Mariah and running to the mansion. Hunter was grabbing a medical kit and all I did was stand there like a fool, Mariah's face imprinted into my head like a tattoo. I just stared when someone's life was at stake.

I finally realized that I had to move and I walked back to the mansion. But I went a different route, going through another door and walking around until I was hopelessly lost. I kept walking, and I found a tall oak door, symbols and carvings and animals painted gold and shining like the sun.

And I walked through. The room was as extravagantly decorated as the door and sparkled light a diamond. I finally blinked away the numb feeling I had and realized what I was doing. Mariah's probably dead somewhere, and here you are, walking around without a care in the world. I remember scolding myself. But I never turned around. I explored the gold and oak room, taking in every detail. And in every drawing, I saw a snake. There was one on a vase, another on a bed, some more on different objects. There was one wall with a drawing of some sort of lilly with a snake coiled around the stem. That made me shudder. And then I looked at the main wall, which had only one painting on it.