The Beginning Of The End

Chapter 42

I woke up to fire, fire completely surrounding me. I wasn't in my cell anymore, or in any place I recognised for that matter. I was in a room with four red walls and no doors or windows or ceiling. The floor was darkness, as if I was standing on top of an endless abyss. The walls were on fire, tongues of flame shooting out towards me.

"Help!" I yelled, but my voice just echoed around the walls, bouncing back and creating the world's worst choir as it multiplied again and again. A whole wall of flame rushed at me and I screamed, trying to duck out of the way but it was everywhere, all around me. I could feel the heat, feel it licking my face, blistering and burning.

I shot upright with a scream and could still feel it, the fire, the burning. It was on my face, and I screeched, hitting at it with my hand, trying to put it out.

"Louisa!" My father's voice broke through to me in my panic. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

"The fire," I gasped. "It's on me, it's on me!"

"There's no fire," he said, sounding confused.

"It's burning me!" I screamed. I reached my hand up again and felt... nothing. No fire, no burning in my hand. But my face was still burning, only there was no fire, so how was that possible?

"It's inside me!" I gasped, hitting at my cheek like I could kill it somehow, kill that burning sensation. "It's inside me, it's burning me alive!"

"Louisa, there's nothing there!" My father said, obviously trying to help but he was wrong. There was something, something terrible and horrible and oh, so painful.

"You're wrong," a voice said. Not my voice, not my fathers. The same voice that had spoken right before I fell down the stairs.

"You know something, Nico?" My father's voice. Focus, focus on that, I told myself. Focus on anything but the pain.

"It's liquid fire," the voice, presumably belonging to whoever this Nico person was, said. "Ancient torture technique. Remarkable weapon. Very painful. Even worse if it gets into your blood. You can't survive it then, not unless you get the antidote."

"I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die," I whispered. "I'm going to die. But they're coming!"

"Does she usually make this little sense?" Nico asked. My father didn't reply.

"So what happens?" I asked, referring to the liquid fire. "What does it do?"

"It burns like fire, only it's not actually fire," Nico said. "They use splashes of it on your skin to try and get information out of you, usually. I guess you were a special case."

"A special case," I whispered. "Long lost sisters."

"What?" Nico asked, sounding confused. I didn't respond. "Well, she cut you with a knife covered in the stuff, put it straight into your bloodstream. Sorry to break it to you, but that girl wants you dead."

"Jaylon," I whispered, rocking back and forth and trying to ignore the burning. "Lucas. They're coming."

"It'll spread through your entire body, and then you'll just burn alive I guess." I could picture him shrugging like this was nothing to him, like it didn't matter whether this stranger died or not, and I suppose it didn't. Why would it? I'm a complete stranger.

"Distract me," I muttered, and from the silence that followed I wasn't sure my dad or Nico had heard me. I was about to repeat myself when my father spoke up.

"Do you know the tale of the tri-coven?"

"Of course I know it," I groaned, knocking my head back against the wall. "It was like, the first thing I learned."

"Okay, well, uh, then you'll know about the twelve families, I suppose?"

"Yes," I said, biting my lip and trying to think about anything but the burning in my face. Nico was right, it was spreading. Slowly, very slowly, but even since I'd woken up it had moved downward, almost into my neck.

"Nico here, he's from your generation of the twelve families," he said.

"Which one?" I gasped out.

"He's the oldest of the Webber family," my dad said.

"Why is he in here?" I asked, referring to the prison.

"I am in here," he said, making a point of speaking for himself. "Because I wouldn't go along with Felicia and her little schemes."

"Her schemes aren't exactly little," my father muttered.

"Why do the other people never say anything?" I asked curiously, though I was struggling to focus through the pain.

"You talk for a while once you get put in, but there's no getting out so you just don't see the point after a while," Nico said nonchalantly. "It's hopeless."

"How long have you both been in here?"

"Since a couple of months after I was first taken when you were just a little girl," my dad said in a quiet voice. "She was trying to raise Rowyn as her own and I kept interfering and trying to take her and run away. She wouldn't even let Rowyn down to see me until she had poisoned the girl against me, made her want to be evil."

"You've been in here, what, like thirteen years?" I said in disbelief.

"Something like that," he murmured.

"What about you, Nico?" I asked.

"Not sure exactly," his voice said softly. "Probably about five years."

"I can't even imagine what that must be like," I whispered, then after a moment of thinking I added, "If I don't make it till Lucas and the others come, tell them I want them to get everyone in here out."

There was silence for a minute, and then I felt a bony hand, reaching through the bars, take mine.

"We'll do what we can," my father said gruffly. "But you will make it, Ducky. You've got to make it."

I opened my mouth to reply but instead let out a cry of pain when I felt a sudden flare of pain as the burning reached my neck.

"Louisa?" My father's hands tightened on mine but I yanked it away, not being able to help myself as my hand flew to my neck. That pain, that pain was worse than anything. It was agonizing, worse even than phase four of the Witch's End had been.

"Louisa, look at me, talk to me!" My father said urgently, but I couldn't. I shook my head, tears escaping my tightly shut eyes. It was too much, the pain too unbearable. I found myself wishing I could just pass out, be done with this, anything. I wanted the darkness to come.

And it did.