Page 40 of Wicked Nightmare

"Never better," she replied, her voice tight with barely contained fury. "Let's tear this fucking place apart."

We turned to survey the room in its entirety. On one wall hung rusted chains, another had shelves, filled with jars of weird liquid. A sink was in the corner, brown slosh in the bowl and dried over onto the floor. The color theme in here seemed to be hospital white, mixed with dark brown accents. It looked like a horrible fucking tie die job if you asked me.

“Fuck me, I think that’s skin tissue.”

I turned to gauge Lakey's reaction, but her face had gone pale, her eyes wide with a terror I'd never seen before. She swayed on her feet, her usual fierce demeanor gone.

"Baby? Babe?" I reached out to steady her.

She didn't respond, her gaze fixed on some unseen horror. In that moment, she wasn’t the badass I'd fallen for, but as the broken girl who'd endured unspeakable horrors in this very room.

"Shit," I muttered, moving quickly. Her knees buckled, and I caught her, wrapping my arms around her trembling form. "I've got you, baby. I've got you."

As if my touch had broken a dam, Lakey let out a scream that chilled me to my core. It wasn't her usual playful shriek or even her angry yell. This was raw, a sound of pure agony and rage that echoed in the room. If we weren’t deep underground, I’d swear it could be heard from outside.

I held her tighter. How the fuck do you comfort someone reliving their worst nightmares? I wasn’t exactly the fucking poster boy for emotional support, but for Lakey, I'd try to be a goddamn teddy bear if that's what she needed.

"Listen to me," I said, soothing my voice so it was quiet. "We're gonna burn this place to the ground, you hear me? We'll make them pay. Every last one of them."

Her screams subsided into choked sobs, her fingers digging into my arms hard enough to draw blood. I didn't flinch. Physical pain was nothing compared to watching the love of my life fall apart in my arms.

I realized that in all my years of knowing her, I’d never seen her cry. Her anguish reached deep into my chest and ripped out what remained of my heart. All of me. All of me belonged to her. I’d give her everything if only to stop those heavy sobs that escaped her.

Without warning, she wrenched herself from my grasp, her blue eyes wild and unfocused. She stumbled forward, her gaze darting around the room like a cornered animal.

"Woah, easy there, killer," I forced a lightness into my tone I didn't feel. "What's the rush? We've got all night to play in this little house of horrors."

She didn't respond, moving with frantic energy towards a rusted metal table. Her fingers traced the outline of what looked like some kind of electrical device, and my stomach turned.

Jesus Christ, what had they done to her here?

I hung back, watching as she moved from one grotesque instrument to another. My gut was in knots as I fought back the urge to stop her. This felt like a fucking mistake. Sure, she deserved to know, but fuck, if the look on her face wasn’t enough to send me to my knee’s… I straightened my spine and crossed my hands to stop myself from doing something stupid.

She’d never know what happened if I intervened now.

"You know," I leaned against a grimy wall, "most girls would settle for a nice dinner and movie date. But you? You drag me to the creepiest basement this side of a horror novel. I gotta say, I'm impressed. If you ask nice, I’ll fuck you on that nasty table." I didn’t want to, infection would probably set in, and I’d lose my cock, but if it helped… “The dried blood might work as lube if we spit on it.”

Lakey's lips twitched, the barest hint of a smile. "Shut up, Cam. To be fair… YOU dragged ME down here. You’re the one who found the stairs, so fuck you very much.”

I was about to fire back with another joke when she froze, her gaze locked on something behind me. I turned, following her line of sight, and my blood ran cold.

Shelves upon shelves of glass jars lined the far wall, each one labeled with a girl's name. The contents... Christ, I'd seen some fucked up shit in my time, but this? This was a whole new level of depravity. The weird goo jars had nothing on these. These looked like… body parts? Babies?

Parts of people, that much was fucking clear.

"Well, fuck me sideways," I breathed, a sick need to enact justice curling in my gut. It was a foreign feeling. My urges didn’t usually extend to that level of righteous, but somehow this was far worse than anything I’d have even imagined someone could do. Which is fucking hilarious given the games we play. "Looks like we've hit the jackpot, baby. These sick fucks left us a whole treasure trove of evidence."

She didn't respond. Her face had gone eerily blank, but I could see the storm brewing behind those pretty blue eyes. Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides, and I knew that look. She was about to explode, and it was going to be fucking glorious.

I grinned, dark anticipation coursing through my veins. "What do you say we start making a list of all the people we're gonna make pay for this?"

Lakey's carefully reconstructed facade crumbled, her rage erupting like a volcano. She let out a Goddamn roar that split my ears. Not a pained scream, no. This was unholy fury. And then she was moving, her hands sweeping across the shelves, sending jars crashing to the floor.

The sound of shattering glass was music to my ears, but we couldn't afford to lose our heads. Not until we had all our ducks in a row and all the evidence we could get stored safely on my phone.

"Whoa there, baby," I slowly approached her. "I know you want to destroy it all, but we've got work to do first."

Lakey whirled on me, her eyes wild. "Don't you dare try to stop me, Cam. These monsters—"