CHAPTER NINETEEN
Kate couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been in pain. Agony stretched into the past, filling so much of it that she couldn’t look past it. She couldn’t remember how long she’d been there, couldn’t work out if it had been minutes, hours, days, or years. All she could remember was the pain of a hundred or more different torments.
She burst free of the grip of a masked nun, then ran down a corridor filled with flailing arms, each ending in a clawed hand. The claws slashed at her, burning as they cut through her flesh, making her scream as she pressed forward. The wounds healed instantly, because there was no flesh to wound here, but that didn’t stop the pain.
“Please,” she begged, in spite of herself, “make it stop.”
She had once thought that she was the kind of per
