Chapter 203
Chapter 203
Elora
My eyes snapped open.
The footsteps were getting faster now. Not running—not quite—but definitely accelerating. And underneath the steady click of shoes against floor, there was something else. Something I hadn't noticed before. A faint dragging sound, barely audible, like the shoes were slightly too large for the person wearing them.
Ice flooded my veins.
I jerked upright, my hands coming up instinctively into a defensive position, my body shifting to put itself between the approaching figure and my father's bed. My heart hammered against my ribs as I stared into the darkness, trying to make out details, trying to see—
The wind shifted outside. Just slightly. Just enough.
The curtains billowed inward, and for one perfect, terrible moment, moonlight spilled through the gap like liquid silver. It illuminated the figure approaching my father's bed in stark, unforgiving detail.
A nurse's uniform, ill-fitting and wrinkled. Men's dress shoes—comically oversized, at least three sizes too large, flopping around her feet like clown shoes with each step. And a face—
God. That face.
Twisted. Manic. Eyes too wide, pupils blown with whatever cocktail of drugs and madness was currently flooding her system. Lips pulled back in something that might have been a smile on a sane person but looked more like a death rictus on her.
She's completely lost it. Finally escaped—and she came back. Stole a nurse's uniform. Found men's shoes three sizes too big. All of it just for revenge against me.
"Elora!" Sienna's voice cracked into a gleeful shriek. "Time to die!"
She lunged.
The shoes flew off mid-leap, clattering uselessly against the floor as she came at me barefoot, her hand raised high. Moonlight glinted off metal—a syringe, the plunger already partially depressed, clear liquid visible inside the barrel.
I didn't think. Didn't hesitate. My body moved on pure instinct, years of skating training translating into survival reflexes I didn't know I possessed. I threw myself sideways, reaching up to intercept her arm—protecting myself, stopping that needle from piercing my skin—
The wind died.
The curtain fell back into place.
Darkness swallowed everything.
"Elora." Sienna's voice drifted through the blackness, dripping with mock concern. "Oh, sweetie, relax—no need to be so defensive. Ending things this quickly would be such a waste, don't you think?" A breathy laugh, unhinged and delighted. "Besides, I just got so curious about something. This man who made you suffer for three years—I'm dying to know if you'll still be his little hero. Will you?"
"Fuck you, you sick—"
Her trajectory shifted mid-curse. I felt the change in the air—she wasn't coming for me anymore.
The sound of movement, something cutting through space fast and lethal. The syringe. She was going for my father.
I lunged blindly, my hand shooting out to intercept. Pain exploded through my forearm as the needle punched through skin and muscle, the sharp sting followed immediately by a cold burn that told me some of the contents had been injected.
But I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Not when Dad's life hung in the balance.
I pivoted on my heel—muscle memory from a thousand skating routines—and drove my foot up in a vicious arc. My shin connected with something solid. Sienna's ribs, maybe, or her hip. The impact sent vibrations up my leg and a satisfying grunt of pain echoing through the darkness.
The syringe went flying. I heard it skitter across the floor, bouncing off something hard before coming to rest somewhere in the shadows.
Silence fell again. But not the peaceful kind. The predatory kind. The kind that came before an ambush.
I backed up slowly, my hands reaching out blindly, searching for anything I could use as a weapon. My fingers closed around something cold and cylindrical—a metal clipboard, the heavy kind with the clip mechanism at the top. I gripped it tightly, holding it in front of me like a makeshift shield as I positioned myself between Sienna and my father's bed.
"Oh, how precious." Sienna's voice came from somewhere to my right now, sticky-sweet and rotting. She was circling. Hunting. "Just as I thought. He treated you like garbage, and you still throw yourself in front of him. Father-daughter devotion at its finest."
"You sick bitch—"
A laugh, light and musical. "Oh, sweetie. If you want to live a little longer, I'd save that energy." A pause, then softer, more poisonous: "Do you know what was in that syringe, Elora? The one currently leaking into your bloodstream?"
My arm throbbed. The injection site burned with a cold fire that was spreading, creeping up toward my shoulder with each passing second. I tried to keep my breathing steady, tried not to let the fear show in my voice. "Does it matter?"
"Oh, it matters." I could hear the smile in her words. Cruel. Triumphant. "You were half a second away from getting the full dose. One more heartbeat and that entire barrel of concentrated potassium chloride would have been pumping through your veins. Your heart would have stopped before you hit the ground."
My blood turned to ice.
"And since you're so desperate to play hero..." Footsteps again, slow and deliberate, circling closer. "Fine. I'll give you that chance." A pause, then a soft, delighted laugh. "Besides, you and I still have unfinished business, don't we?"
She was moving again. I could hear the whisper of bare feet against linoleum, the rustle of stolen scrubs. She was circling, looking for an opening, waiting for me to make a mistake.
"Remember the fencing match?" Her voice came from a different direction now—behind me, maybe, or to my left. The acoustics in the darkness made it impossible to pinpoint. "You won that day. Barely. Got lucky. But we both know that wasn't the end. It was never going to be the end. Our score doesn't get settled until one of us stops breathing. You know that, don't you?"
"Oh, I know exactly how this ends, Sienna." Each word came out measured, deliberate, sharp as broken glass. "Death will be your ending. And here's the beautiful part—it won't be peaceful. It won't be quick. And it sure as hell won't be dignified."