Page 7

For the first time all night, I listened to it.

I turned and leapt from the moving floor to the outer perimeter. Touching each mirror as I went, I circled the room quickly, doing my best to keep an eye on Bane too.

My hand lurched forward, nothing but air beneath it. Collapsing through the ornate frame, I found myself in another maze. Large mirrored panels were interspersed with huge pieces of glass, creating an endless set of hallways. Purple neon lights ran in confusing zigzags, the only source of illumination.

Thankfully the maze was narrow, so I could touch both sides as I went, avoiding more than one dead end in the process.

A black and tan figure blurred behind the glass to my left.

Bane.

I quickened my steps. He quickened his.

Stopping abruptly, I searched the mirrors for him, straining to hear against the sound of blood rushing in my ears. I couldn’t hear anything. Not music. Not screaming. And not his light-as-air footsteps.

He appeared behind me, safely behind a pane of glass, popping up behind my shoulder much like he had while he was fucking me from behind. Once again, we looked like polar opposites, and yet, the same. His dark hair to my blond. Black jeans to my blue. Blood trails slung across our bare chests, like we’d been flinging fresh blood to and fro as we hacked our way through crowds of people together.

The coppery taste hit my tongue, a memory. Bitter, metallic, salty. Addicting.

It is real.

I clenched my hand into a fist. Like I’d clenched the machete. The feeling of the blade slicing through bone and sinew reverberated through my hand, up my arm. I remembered the way it slid into abdomens so easily, hardly any effort at all. Like butchering a pig at work. That’s all they were. Large, bipedal pigs who screamed and cowered before us.

My whole body trembled. Fear? Adrenaline? Exhaustion? Insanity?

I forced myself to meet Bane’s dark gaze in the mirror. He’d vanished. All I saw was my own reflection staring back at me, haunted. Lost.

Surging forward, I turned another tight corner, nearly crying out when I ran face-first into a black door.

I shoved through it and stumbled out into the purple twilight of a frosty October morning.

Sucking in fresh air, I relished the burn in my lungs and the cold prickling my skin because it meant I was still alive. I hadn’t been slaughtered at some creepy ass carnival by a guy in a mask.

I’d done the slaughtering, the little voice whispered.

I shook my head, refusing to listen. That’s when it hit me—I was all alone.

Spinning in a circle, I realized I was standing in an empty field. In the distance, I could barely make out the shape of the old gas station, its windows boarded up again and the lot empty.

The tents were gone. The people were gone. The carnival was just… gone.

“Malcolm?”

I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled. “Taylor!”

Staggering toward the gas station, something soft and squishy crunched under my boot. I danced back and stared at the ground, my breath coming in quick little bursts of crystal clouds.

A gray rabbit lay dead in the dirt. A real rabbit, not a stuffed animal. One of its eyes had been gouged out, revealing a gaping black hole. Blood seeped from the center of its chest, the matted gray fur punctured by a broken rib from a careless step.

I backed away from the dead rabbit, from the memory of a knife-throwing game and a stuffed animal that looked just like the one at my feet.

“What is happening?”

I whispered to myself, scanning the area again, searching for any clues. My gaze landed on Bane, standing a few yards away from me. My heart spasmed painfully, like my ribs were crushing it. At any moment, they were surely going to pierce it, just like the poor rabbit.

Bane still wore the black skeleton mask over his nose and mouth, but the blood was gone and so was the machete. Had I imagined those too? Had I imagined everything ?

“What is happening?”

I repeated, a little louder so he’d know the question was directed at him.

As usual, he didn’t answer. He merely cocked his head and gave me a slow blink.

Anger surged within me. I closed the distance in long strides, shoving him in the chest as soon as he was within arm’s reach. “What did you do to me?!”

Glimmering with the last of the starlight, his dark eyes crinkled at the corners. His amusement infuriated me.

“I want fucking answers!”

I stabbed my forefinger at the ground, as if that would make him more likely to comply. “And I want to see your face! I want to see what you really look like under there.”

He turned in a small circle and presented me with his bare back. For a moment I thought it was defiance, but then I spied the black straps holding the mask in place. Reaching for the straps, I paused, flexing my fingers, trying to figure out if it was some sort of a trap. His broad shoulders were relaxed and his hands hung at his sides, fingers twitching now and again, not clenched in preparation to strike.

Exhaling a slow breath, I untied the mask.

He didn’t bother trying to catch it. The black jaw fell to his feet and stayed there.

He inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly, probably appreciating the morning air as I had, especially since he’d been in a mask all night. After a moment, he turned to face me, truly, in all senses of the word.

Whatever air was in my lungs vanished as soon as I saw his whole face. The definition of perfection didn’t even come close. Nothing could have prepared me to see someone so stunning. So… otherworldly. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting under that mask. Something grotesque? Malformed? To be disappointed by someone ordinary-looking? He was none of those things. So why did he hide? For the thrill of it?

Bane—or whatever the fuck his real name was—gave me a soft smile, accented with a dimple on each cheek. His eyes glittered like before, this time reflecting the first rays of the rising sun peeking over the top of the cornfield.

“Will you tell me what happened now?” I asked.

His gaze flicked at the corn before returning to me. Instead of answering, he held out his hand, palm up.

If he’d wanted to kill me, he could have done it at any point, I reasoned, so I slid my hand into his. When he took a step toward the cornfield, though, I froze, jerking him to a halt.

He looked over his shoulder, dark brows furrowed, his lush lips twisted into a scowl.

I threw a thumb behind me, toward the gas station. “The road is that way. My car is—was…”

I trailed off, unsure what I was even trying to say. Come with me, mysterious stranger, to my unfulfilling life? What really waited for me beyond the gas station? Sixty hours a week at a butcher shop in the middle of nowhere? Watching my friends succeed in life while I stayed utterly stagnant? I’d been lost for so long, struggling to find my place in the world, that I was beginning to question if there was a place for me in the world.

I looked around the empty field, the trampled grass. I could still smell the fried food, taste that candy apple. I knew I’d held that gray rabbit in my hands before it was a mutilated corpse. Those things had existed an hour ago, maybe two. But the rising sun meant time had shifted. I’d lost hours of my life. Or had I? Had I been dreaming? Hallucinating? Had a mental breakdown? Or had I been murdering strangers in the dark with the gorgeous guy by my side?

My throat constricted, uncertain of what the answer was. Uncertain what the next step was. Uncertain, uncertain, uncertain. Always so uncertain.

Glancing at the gas station, I bit my lip. Did I make a run for it? Rip my hand from his and flee this horrible night? Pretend like I could forget it all with the rising sun? Or did I follow Bane into the corn? Maybe his car was parked out there or something…

I hadn’t even made up my mind when Bane’s fingers tightened on mine, practically crushing the bones in my hand. A second later, my arm jerked out of its socket. I lurched forward, stumbling after him as he walked toward the cornfield.

“What are you doing?”

I tried to pry his fingers off, but he didn’t loosen his grip, nor did he look back. “Stop! Let me go!”

He did neither.

Striding forward, head held high, he dragged me behind him like a petulant child.

“I’m fucking serious!”

I yelled, punching him in the back of the shoulder as hard as I could. It was as effective as a flea trying to hurt a horse. “Let me go! Right now!”

Whirling to face me so abruptly that I slammed into his chest, his dark eyes narrowed on mine. His lip curled and his white teeth were on edge, transforming his exquisite face into a terrifying snarl, though he didn’t say a word.

He didn’t need to speak. His eyes did all the talking for him and at that moment they screamed one word. One word that made my blood run cold and the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Never.

Turning away from me with a low growl, he swatted a drooping ear of corn out of his way and stepped into the darkened row, jerking my arm again.

I dug my heels in like a mule and grabbed the nearest stalk of corn, hoping to anchor myself from getting dragged into the field.

With one swift yank from Bane, the stalk snapped in my hand. I screamed as the dirty golden fibers bit into my palm, tearing through the skin. A streak of blood on the broken stalk was the only evidence I’d ever been there.

I was still screaming when the yellow leaves pressed down from all sides, consuming me.

The end…