The dark presses in around me. Giovanni’s footsteps fall at even intervals, growing softer as they move farther down the tunnel. I hear the click and flicker of his lighter, and then an orange glow illuminates the black.
Giovanni turns, wiggling his fingers at me. My heart leaps, and for a moment, I forget where we are. I wave back, smiling, ignoring the jagged white teeth leering at us from just beyond Giovanni’s circle of light.
He blows me a kiss and then disappears around the corner.
And I’m alone.
At first, I count my heartbeats. I don’t have a watch or a cell phone, so it seems like the easiest way to keep track of how much time passes.
After sixty heartbeats, I’m tapping my foot.
After one hundred and forty, all the hairs on my neck are standing up.
After two hundred, I’m straining to hear anything in the darkness.
Maybe that’s why I notice the quick intake of breath. Like someone sighing. Or holding back a laugh.
I press my hand flat against my chest, as though to still the blood pumping through my heart. I hold my breath, listening.
Nothing and more nothing and more nothing. I feel my muscles unclench, my shoulders droop. I drop my hand to my side, relaxing. And then—
A footstep.
I whirl around. My heartbeat—nearly silent a second ago—is now a steady drum pounding in my ears, blocking all other sound. The noise came from behind me.
I creep deeper into the tunnels, eyes peeled for movement. “Hello?” I call. “Giovanni?”
No one answers. But the air here feels different. Charged. I’ve never been the sort of person who believed in witchcraft and auras and all that hoo-ha shit, but I feel something in the tunnels down here. It’s like the energy has shifted.
Someone else is here.
I blink into the darkness, willing my eyes to separate the shadows around me. I smell staleness in the air, and it reminds me of another person’s breath.
“I know you’re here.” I don’t shout this time. Instead, I speak in a low voice, to show whoever’s hiding that I know she’s close. Then, hoping I’m mistaken, I whisper, “Giovanni?”
“I’m not Giovanni.”
The voice is closer than I expect, her breath a warm mist on my ear. She knocks into my shoulder, sending me slamming to the ground. Something blinks on above me: a flashlight.
“Boo,” Elyse says, the light casting her face in an ugly yellow glow. The shadows stretch out her teeth, making them look long and pointed, leaving her eyes deeply hooded. I push myself back up to my feet, and Elyse smashes the flashlight across my face in a crack that sends stars bursting in front of my eyes. Pain flares through my skull, bright hot and burning.
The flashlight flickers but doesn’t go out.
I throw my hands up over my head before Elyse can hit me again, and the flashlight slams into my arm, sending pain cracking from my elbow up through my shoulder. The jolt of it sends Elyse careening backward, about to lose her balance. With a scream I launch myself onto her, the two of us rolling to the ground in a mess of limbs and hair.
The flashlight rolls out of Elyse’s fingers, coming to a stop beside the wall of skulls. The flickering light makes the jagged teeth and snarling mouths look like they’re moving. They could be laughing.
Rage moves through me like an animal. Elyse didn’t just torture me. She enjoyed herself. She liked causing another person pain. She’s sick.
Suddenly my hands are claws, my fingernails digging into whatever I’m able to grasp. I feel Elyse’s closed fist slam into the side of my face and hear something crack. The taste of copper fills my mouth. I hit back, and pain explodes through my fist as my fingers connect with the sharp bones in Elyse’s cheek.
“Vaffanculo!” she shouts.
I find her shoulders and throw my weight into her, using the momentum to roll her onto her back. She’s kicking beneath me, hands grasping, but I have the better angle and I’m able to keep her on the ground by sliding one leg over her chest. I dig my hands in her hair. Anger pumps through my veins, hot and seductive.
She grabs for my wrists, scratching the backs of my hands. I barely feel it.
“Diavolina!” she shouts. She spits, the saliva hitting me in the face, sliding down my cheeks. The anger inside burns brighter. I curl my fingers around her scalp, digging my fingernails into flesh.
The flashlight turns on and off from its spot a few feet away, like a strobe light. It illuminates the wall of skulls. The packed-dirt floor. Elyse’s terrified, blood-streaked face.
I pick her head up off the ground, fingers still curved around her skull, and slam it down again.
Elyse grunts. “Don’t—”
I pick her head up. Slam it into the ground.
A flash of white light illuminates blood pooling in the dirt before suddenly switching off again. I slam her head into the ground again, and this time I feel something burst beneath my hands. Hot liquid coats my palms. Something warm and soft sticks to the pads of my fingers. It feels like peeled grapes.
The flashlight flickers on.
Elyse stares up at me, unblinking. Her eyes don’t move. Her mouth is open, tongue sticking to her lower lip in a slick of blood. There’s something on the ground beneath her, and at first I think we knocked one of the skulls off the wall while we were fighting. The sharp, white fragments on the ground look just like bone.
It is bone, I realize—new bone that’s coated in blood and something pink and glistening that looks like . . .
My stomach churns. It’s brain matter. I bashed Elyse’s head in.
I have no memory of crawling off Elyse or stumbling away from her lifeless body. It’s like my brain glitches, and then I’m wandering through the pitch-black tunnels—alone. My calves ache. I feel like I’ve been walking for a very long time.
I make myself stop and lean against a wall to catch my breath. The wall is made up of smooth dirt—no skulls. Thank God. I look down at my hands, but they’re practically invisible in the darkness. Just the outline of fingers.
Part of me doesn’t want to believe that what happened with Elyse actually happened. It’s been a long night. Maybe I imagined it. I clench and unclench my fingers, feeling for something sticky coating my skin. They feel dirty and grimy—but dry. I fold them together. They’re trembling.
My brain skips again, and now the entrance to the catacombs yawns before me, the spiky black gate swinging in a light wind. The hinges creak as the gate blows open and then closed. The moon hangs in the sky beyond. Bright silver and peaceful.
I frown and look from side to side. I have no memory of finding the gate. No memory of moving away from the wall a few minutes ago.
This is what going crazy feels like, I think. The catacombs are messing with my mind, making me lose my grip on reality.
I close my eyes and flash on the cold, concrete walls of my room in solitary. All at once my lungs feel tight and hot. I can’t breathe. I have to get out of here.
I lurch for the gate, certain Giovanni has already found his way out. He’ll have the truck by now. I just want to leave this crazy village and never come back.
“Bella!”
The voice is desperate. A gasp in the darkness. I freeze, cold fear wrapping around my arms. I turn.
A narrow tunnel twists off to my left, and I never would have noticed it if Giovanni hadn’t called out to me. He’s lying across the ground, his face caved in and covered in a thick spray of blood. Francesca stands over him, a rock clasped in one hand.
She turns her head, slowly, to face me. Her lips split into a grin.
Giovanni gasps, blood spurting from between his teeth, “Run.”