The last thing Quinn saw before blackness was Caim's eyes widening in disbelief. Then the ground broke out from under her and plunged her into mind-numbing blackness. It attacked her eyes and her lungs, pushing its way through her nose and down her mouth, choking her no matter how hard she fought to cough it out. Somewhere back in her dying mind she knew she had fallen through the ice into the pond and that she was drowning, but the part of her mind assessable to her now was screaming. Mark's jacket was nothing but a straightjacket, pinning her down, dragging her to the depths of this cold hell.
Her eyes fluttered shut and her brain slowly began to shut down, freezing her movements and killing all communication in her head. All except the sensation of warmth around her midsection and the feeling of moving upwards that suddenly enveloped her.
Moving upwards. She was dying wasn't she? Yep. There it was: the big light everybody talked about. And the warmth. So far she liked being dead…
Searing pain in her lungs and up her throat, like someone had lit a fire in her lungs and was having it burn its way out of her body. Her body was heaving, convulsing, and she couldn't remember telling it to do so. Two warm spots, one on her back and one on her shoulder, pressed against her and she rolled onto her side, coughing and sputtering. She didn't like being dead anymore. Everything hurt and there were too many disjointed and cut off voices pounding around in her head like a million drums. She curled up into as tight a ball as she could manage without the pain fighting the movement off.
Warmth surrounded her and something ripped up her throat, escaping her lips, making the warmth disappear. The voices bubbled up again, escalated, then the warmth enveloped her once more. A voice near her ear, but too warped for her to understand anything.
She was being lifted and all she could think was that a demon was carrying her to Hell. That's why everything hurt right? That's why something kept on ripping and tearing at her throat and screams were echoing in her ears. She was being taken to Hell. A small voice in the back of her shattered mind pointed out that it was kind of ironic, Hell for the demon she was.
That thought somehow calmed her, made the tortured screams in her head go away; made the ripping of her throat cease. But the symphony of voices was still there, still around her and torturously incomprehensible.
Turning her head, trying to get away from the voices.
A new light up ahead. The fires of Hell? If they were then she was close; they were getting brighter every second. A quiet, pitiful sound came from somewhere. A whimper, the reasonable voice in her head named it. Someone was whimpering. Quinn didn't know what to say to that. All she wanted to do was run in the other direction of these fires, of Hell. She didn't want to be dead.
The light was coming closer and closer, the whimpers becoming louder until they turned to screams.
Then the fires were upon her.