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Not the tender inside, that would hurt too much.
What if I killed myself? Slashed deep on purpose, took away their cow to butcher?
But I would have to kill Janice first. Without me, they would use her.
Staring at the woman’s lax face, I let the thought pass through me, weighing the benefits. Would it really stop them? All they needed us for was our parts, and they could get that easily if we were dead. Unless some part of this ritual required us to be alive, which I doubted because wasn’t Mariana collecting pieces of the dead back in that horrible room?
No, us being dead would not stop them.
There was surprisingly little pain as the scalpel slid across my arm. I tried to keep it shallow, but I had no experience with such a thing and blood began to well.
My stomach turned and I had to take a steadying breath.
How much was a quarter ounce?
Glancing at the vial, I tried to measure in my head, but my thoughts were scattering.
Make a triangle, Nora.
I don’t know why it was mother’s voice again, but I listened.
The tremor in my hand made for an inelegant line, but I managed to slice a small triangle into my skin. And then, because there was still muscle and tissue holding that triangle down, I began the horrible process of cutting it away. A burning, stinging sensation followed my movements but if I concentrated on the triangle, I was somehow able to push that pain to a distant part of me.
At last I had the bit of skin as a flap, held down by one final corner of the triangle. Beneath was bloody pink and white, a sight that stilled my hand at the end.
One should never be looking at the inside of their skin.
With one last slip of the scalpel, I severed the flap. It flopped over wetly, blood suctioning it back to my arm. My fingers didn’t want to cooperate anymore, but I set the scalpel aside, lifted the vial, and fumbled until the skin – my skin – was inside.
For several seconds I stared at the vial, seeing the pink, exposed underside as it curled in the tubular glass.
“You’re bleeding.”
Janice’s voice and I blinked at her.
“Yes,” I said. But the word felt distant.
I set the vial aside and cut through my skirt, making a bandage as best I could. It was dirty, but it would do for now.
“Why are you bleeding?”
Because I couldn’t think of any other answer I said, “So that you don’t have to.”
Janice’s brow pinched. “Where’s Derrick?”
Taking up the scalpel again, I tried to steel myself for what was next. Remarkably, talking seemed to help. “He’s on his way. We just have to hold on a little longer.”
And then I glared at my forefinger and debated the best way of detaching the nail.
Chapter Thirty
There was grime under my fingernail, evidence of two days without washing and too much time outdoors. If I cut at the cuticle and slanted down, the scalpel might save me some pain the way it had with my arm. That wasn’t guaranteed, of course. This wasn’t exactly something I’d done before and now that the act was done on my arm, I could feel the burn and sting under my makeshift bandage.
This would hurt a good deal more, I knew.
“I don’t understand,” Janice said, her gaze slipping to where Montgomery Leslie continued drawing runes into the dirt. “Where’s Derrick?”
A rumbling coursed through the ground and Montgomery stepped back, watery pale eyes intent on the dirt. Tremors pulsed under my knees, shaking pebbles so that they bounced across the ground and for several seconds I held my breath, staring at whatever sigils had been scribed into the earth. Vines erupted from the dirt, tall and thick, lashing about the circle as though seeking something.
