Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
What ripe pickings monsters had. So many throwaways to choose from. He looked at that handmade flower again. Poppy hadn’t been a throwaway. Neither had her mother. Not to him.
He used the toilet, flushing just as he heard the clunk of the trays being delivered. He crawled on his knees to the end of his cage and took the tray from inside the shaft where it’d been lowered. There was another white napkin on this tray, and when he lifted it, there was a prayer card below. Grim picked it up, looking at the picture of the blessed mother on the front and then turning it over. On the back was the “Our Father” prayer in Spanish. What the fuck was this? Was someone mocking him?
He read it and then flipped it back over, running his finger over the art. Oh. Yes. There. Those small bumps.
“What do you have?” Cedro asked.
“A prayer card,” Grim murmured. “Did you get anything?”
“The same,” he said, holding his up.
“Can I see it?” Grim asked.
Cedro hesitated, clearly considering whether it was something he should guard from Grim. But then he shrugged, obviously deciding that in their situation, a prayer card was of little value, if any at all, setting it on the floor and flicking it across to Grim.
Grim picked it up. The picture on the front was the same, but instead of “Our Father,” the prayer on the back was the Hail Mary. Grim read through that one, too, and then used his finger to feel the small bumps hidden within the artwork on the front.
His heart was beating swiftly, pumping blood through his veins. Making him feel alive in a way he hadn’t in a very, very long time.
Grim ate the roll and drank the Styrofoam cup of water. He saw Cedro doing the same from his peripheral vision. He sat down, stretching his legs as far as they would go in the narrower direction of the crate he was in.
“Who was in that locket?” Cedro asked after a few minutes.
Grim considered not answering, but again, hell, the kid had sacrificed for him. And by the expression on his face when he’d returned, he’d paid a hefty price. “My daughter,” he said.
“What’s her name?”
“Penelope.” I called her Poppy. Who had known that? “And she’s dead. She died five years ago.”
The kid considered him. “Is that why you’re drinking yourself to death?”
He let out a surprised chuckle that ended in a sigh. Direct. But not wrong. He’d been drinking heavily before that too. But it’d definitely increased after that. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Most of it anyway.”
“What’s the rest?”
That I was responsible. That I’ve seen too much evil to care much about life anymore. All these things were true, but he didn’t exactly know how to express them, especially to a fourteen-year-old kid. The fact that he was acknowledging them to himself was frankly surprising the hell out of him. “I guess I don’t have a lot to live for, kid,” he said.
“Kid,” Cedro scoffed. He pointed his finger at him. “Listen, I didn’t save your eye so you could go and kill yourself once we get out of here,” he said, a clear note of anger in his voice.
Grim almost laughed but held it back. When we get out of here. So the kid had a pipe dream. Or he didn’t get what this was about. The chances of them escaping this were close to nil. He turned his head and then nodded to the candies sitting in the corner of Cedro’s cage. “You didn’t eat your peppermints.”
Cedro shrugged. “I’m saving them.”
“For what?”
Before the kid could answer, the door slid open, both of them turning toward the same man who’d come into the room the day before. Only this time, he headed straight for Grim’s cage. “You’ve been rented.”
Fuck. Fuck. “Fuck you.”
The man barked out a laugh. “You have a choice of course.”
“Fuck you,” Grim repeated. This time the man didn’t laugh.
“Come with me, or I take his tongue.”
His tongue. He didn’t look at Cedro. He didn’t want to see the look on the kid’s face. “Show me the way,” he said to the man. The man looked vaguely disappointed but took the key from his pocket and opened the lock on the top of Grim’s cage, inaccessible and blocked by a square piece of metal. The front folded down, and Grim walked out, half hunched over. He came to his full height once he’d exited, stretching his back.
The man waited for Grim to walk in front of him, holding the Taser, ready to shoot Grim should he make any sudden moves. He didn’t glance at Cedro as he shuffled past his cage.
“Open the door,” the man told Grim once they’d walked along a long hallway and turned down another, eventually ending up at a door.