Chapter 57

Somewhere, inside Bane’s head, an unwelcome voice began to pierce the stifling pain.

‘Oh, so that’s what woke you so quickly! Snow White must have finally succumbed to temptation and eaten one of those bloody apples. I didn’t think it would take this long. I watched the courier deliver them two days ago. I don’t think I ever saw her without one in her hand at school, do you remember? She always ate the whole thing, core and all. I hope she’s the only one in the household crazy enough to do that. Everyone else should be safe enough if they only eat the normal parts … I hope.’ Jake was speaking faster than a twelve-year-old girl, laughing and pacing around the campsite, waving his knife around as if to embellish what he was saying.

Bane blinked dirt from his eyes, trying to focus on the other man in the clearing who was sitting with his back against a tree, hands resting on his raised knees. Dallmin met his gaze with serious dark eyes, and Bane breathed out a single word for a hideous concept. Betrayer.

It was the only word that seemed to be able to cut through the confusion and excruciating pain. Lainie’s raw and desperate need for healing was smashing all other coherent thought to dust and fragile illusion. She was fading so fast. Fragmented senses tried to register the pain from his own injuries, pain that was lost in the tangle of instincts that screamed at him to move, to run to her, to sear away her agony. The savage yell that tore from his throat was that of a wild animal. Wrenching at his bonds, he struggled to get to her but layer upon layer of duct tape bound his wrists together mercilessly. Blood flowed everywhere from the gash on his arm and still the tape didn’t loosen even a tiny bit. He tried to sit up to try to reach the knife he had strapped to his calf, and discovered that his ankles were taped together too. The smell of nicotine barely registered, not until he felt the edge of Jake’s blade at his throat. He started to twist, to bite at the hand holding the blade, but had to stop when he felt a new surge of pain. The knife had bitten into his skin. Or was that Lainie’s pain? Or was it just the familiar memory of the last time he’d felt her die, triggered by this new threat? Lainie might not remember what it felt like to have her throat slashed, but he certainly did. It still woke him, gasping, so often that this new experience of it was almost a comfort. It helped to ground him against the backdrop of Lainie’s current agony.

Jake pulled the blade away, laughing. ‘Don’t bother trying to get free, Bane. You wouldn’t make it back in time anyway. This is far better than I’d planned.’

Bane tried to focus on Jake’s face, tried to understand what had gone so wrong. ‘Planned?’ he asked, breathless.

‘Yeah. I’ve been waiting to feel this. To feel her fading … I was hoping to get close enough to watch you work your magic when the right basket arrived—who would have thought you’d be given so many? But thanks to my new friend Dallmin’s suggestion this morning, I have you trapped, so it’s even better. I might even get free from her this time.’ He didn’t seem to have noticed that the bandage on his shoulder was soaked crimson. His shoulder wound had opened again during the fight. ‘She’s pissed me off for so long, but at least I could still function up until recently. But lately? Why her? Why does she have to pull so damn hard all the time?’

Bane froze as he heard himself reflected in Jake’s words, remembering all his anger and frustration at not understanding the reasons for his own actions. He had lived like that for years, and had despised Lainie for it. However, he had no room for pity. Jake had chosen to act on his twisted hatred. Poisoning the apples would have taken planning. The sick bastard had thought about what he was doing and followed through on it, to murder the person Bane loved more than anything in the world.

‘You can feel where she is,’ Bane despaired. He burned with healing heat that had nowhere to go. ‘And you can feel her pain.’

‘Not as much as you can, by the looks of it, and only sometimes. Usually when I’m drunk or high. Maybe now I can get drunk without getting so angry. That’s got to be better, right?’

Closing his eyes, Bane could feel her slipping away. Razor-sharp nerve endings laced her skin with fire as she thrashed in savage rejection of the poison being pumped by her deceitful heartbeat. Her lungs screamed in futile effort as oxygen abandoned her the same way he had. Rent by grief, he felt her lassitude creep in like a death shroud, but she kept fighting, so he did too. Using every ounce of strength he had, he pulled against his bonds, rubbing the tape against the rough bark of the tree and scraping off layers of skin at the same time. He embraced the pain as if it could cut through the encroaching numbness that Lainie was battling.

‘Ho! She’s pulling at you too, isn’t she? Why else would we do this to ourselves? Don’t worry, my friend, soon we’ll both be free of her, and by this time tomorrow you’ll be thanking me.’

Gritting his teeth against a fresh wave of nausea, Bane refused to even speak to the sick moron, and threw his feverish appeal to Lainie’s deceitful friend instead.

‘Dallmin, what have you done? Why have you allowed him to hurt her?’ he rasped with furious tears. He was still so dizzy and all he could think of was her pain. It was enough to crush the sky.

‘He is helping me to keep you both away from the cave. I want to go home. He will release you once I have crossed the Boundary and then you can return and wake her.’

As Bane felt his world breathe out her last shuddering breath, realisation hit that Dallmin had been tricked into revealing the truth about Eden. He tried to care, but as blackness took hold again, all he felt was her death.