Chapter 47
My instinct to claw more air down my throat jerked my bound hands behind my back. My lungs screamed. Black splotches dotted my vision, blurring out the faces of the congregation in a pulsing rhythm. Too slow. My heart was beating too slow, and in between, alarms rattled inside my skull.
My world faded to a sliver of light cracking from underneath a dropped curtain. From behind that curtain came a voice, far away yet familiar, comforting but at the same time not. My brain waded through sludge to try to put a name to the voice and to pinpoint why it was accompanied by a loud click and a horse's neigh. And then an enormous boom.
My body plummeted.
A second boom sounded before I'd finished dragging in my first breath.