Without Nash, Sabine has no reason  for...anything. No reason to care, to be careful, to exercise control. She  feeds to numb the pain, and in her wake the bodies pile up, but the police  don’t catch her until she lets them. Until she decides she has no place in  society and no right to freedom.

Then there is broken glass, stolen cash,  and handcuffs she doesn’t fight. Sabine stares through the bars every day,  alone in her private hell while the other prisoners shy away from her. She  doesn’t feed from them. She doesn’t feed from anyone, and I realize she’s  starving herself, just like Nash did. Soon she will be gone, and there will  be no one at her funeral because she is fear itself, and everyone who had  the capacity to love in spite of that fear is long gone.

My heart hurts when I realize that they  are gone—all three of them. Prisoner, patient, corpse, I have driven them  all to their destruction, to ends surely as painful as my own miserable  existence.

But even worse than the tragic ends is the  conspicuous absence. Where is Tod? Why can’t I see him?

When I realize I know what his absence  means, I pray for oblivion, but cognizance plays a pivotal role in today’s  torture. My mind is not allowed to wander....

And when my pain begins to bore him again,  hell changes again. And it never ends.

There are infinite variations, and I think  they will eventually numb me, because how can anyone hurt for as long as  I’ve been hurting, yet numbness never comes. Each revolution of torture  brings its own special brand of hell, and each is more agonizing than the  one before, and this goes on forever.

Years have passed, surely. Centuries,  maybe. I bruise, I bleed, I fall apart, I die, then I am born again, only to  suffer and fall anew, but the pain never becomes routine. It is always fresh  and new, welcoming me to an existence I cannot end.

I am hell’s phoenix, forever bursting into  flames only to be resurrected again in the next heartbeat so we can dance  this excruciating dance all over again.

I’ve forgotten my name. I cannot remember  who I am or where I’m from. I think I was born into this. There has never  been anything else. I am hell’s daughter, and my mind is as fractured as the  Nether-realm itself, twisted and torn. There are pieces of me everywhere,  and I cannot gather them fast enough. Parts are missing, surely. Memories.  Thoughts. Names. Places. They litter the ground and I cannot hold them all  together. I cannot hold myself together.

There is little left worth saving  anyway.

Light is pain.

Dark is fear.

The scent of burning flesh is seared into  my brain—what little remains of it—and I think that flesh is mine. Dinner is  served, and I am the main course, and still I scream.

Scars. Screams. Blood. Fire. Ice. These  are the pieces of me, crumbling between my fingers, and I can no longer  rememberhow they should fit.

I cower in the corner, in drifts of filth,  but I cannot hide. There is nothing left of me. What once intrigued him is  gone. Dead. Scorched beyond recognition, and I don’t know who or where or  why I am, but I know that my time is almost up. I have nothing left to give  him but my screams, and my throat is so, so tired.

His shadow falls over me.

Over the whole room. In the next instant,  I scream, and this time I am lost in the sound of my own madness.

* * *

“Kaylee.”

The voice came from inside my head, because my ears were too full of my own screams to hear anything else.

My eyes opened, and I saw only shadows. A warm, hard hand covered my mouth, and my screaming stopped. The sudden silence was profound. Stunning. Startling.

Disorienting.

Echoes of past screams haunted me, spinning me on edge, hurling me around inside my own head. Reality would not come into focus.

“Wake up, little fury. You’re going to miss all the fun.” The hand pulled me by my arm, and reality tilted around me as I sat up. The world assaulted me with light and color, sharp edges and cruel angles. Outside of my dirty corner, the room flickered with hundreds of points of light—human fat, crudely rendered, burning in bowls of curved bone.

The stench had made me sick at first—how long ago had that been?—but now I couldn’t remember any other scent.

“Kaylee.” He stared at me through red-veined, black orb eyes, only inches away.

My hands shook as I pushed myself across the floor, away from him, cowering from those eyes, fleeing from memories I couldn’t bring into focus.

He reached for me, and I flinched, then lashed out, swiping with hands that had no claws. Words that had no power. “Don’t touch me!”

My voice was raw. My words were slushy. I hadn’t played with consonants in...eternity?

“Whether you remember or not, we had a deal, little fury.” He hauled me off the floor by one arm and I hung there, bare, filthy toes brushing the dirty floor. “You can come willingly, or I will take you with as much force as I like. Either way, I will be paid.”

Was this face different? I blinked, struggling to focus through the pain in my shoulder as I dangled. Did I know this face, the way the flames flickered in his black, black eyes and were shown on his crimson lips? Did it matter? I knew his voice, but couldn’t remember how....

“Who are you?” I croaked. For that matter, who was I? Where was I? Why had the pain stopped?

He set me on the ground and laughed, exposing a tongue the color of my own dried blood, and the sound rolled through me, drawing anger from me like bubbles floating toward the water’s surface. “Today, I find myself in the unlikely role of liberator, but this knight gallant does not work for free. You will pay me for my troubles, or I will leave you here to rot for eternity.”