Page 51 of From Hell

His lids flicker, and a moan escapes him, sending heart-stopping adrenaline screaming through my veins. Then his eyes fly open, and the horror dies in my throat as his hand whips up and locks around mine. A dark, demonic-rage-filled gaze freezes me in place.

I slash at his neck. He’s not fast enough to stop me. The steel pierces his jugular.

“You bitch—” he gurgles, letting go of me to clamp his hand around his bloody wound.

A pathetic cry leaves me as I pull back, unable to look away as he struggles to stay alive. The stab wound to the neck is unforgiving, and his heart does what it’s supposed to—pumping fresh, life-giving blood out through swollen arteries. It blooms all over the cobblestones and coats his neck, hands, and clothes. It spills onto my trainers. I shuffle back, stifling a strangled sob, one hand clamped over my mouth, the other slick with blood, barely holding the murder weapon in my fist. Panting, nausea lodges in my throat, threatening to expose the contents of my stomach. Time slows, and the life in his eyes fades away until they are dull, empty, seeing nothing and resting on no one.

And just like that, the monster is dead.

20

LAINE

I’ve been asleep only half an hour when I bolt awake. My mouth is dry and my eyelids are heavy. Everything feels drained, me included. Sometimes the dreams aren’t enough to force me out of bed, other times, there’s a sense of dread that I can’t shake, no matter how hard I try. I don’t want to look out of the window, but I get up anyway and trudge over to the sill.

There’s no one there.

The dream spooked me more than I like to admit. Too jittery to return to bed, shoulders aching from hauling earth and digging up dead bodies, I traipse into the bathroom and turn on the bath faucet, filling the tub with boiling water and some salts. I even get a few used candles from the cupboard and place them around the edges. A therapist suggested having a relaxing bath after a nightmare could help. I’ll take anything right now.

When the water is nice and hot, enough that it burns when I dip my hand beneath the cloudy surface, I turn off the water and head downstairs to get a lighter for the candles.

My cottage creaks all the time, but a bang, like someone stepping too loud on the loose board in the bedroom, resounds just as I close the kitchen drawer where I keep the firelighter.

I don’t move.

I don’t breathe.

Nola’s gun is in my bedside drawer.

Heart slamming in my chest, I stare up at the ceiling, unable to do anything else. There are no other noises, nothing to say that someone is there. But I know he is. Nola’s words echo in my mind.

He’s waiting for me to make a move.

Opening the kitchen drawer quietly, I close my hand around a filleting knife inside and draw it out. Then I slowly, shakily, make my way back up the stairs, turning lights on as I go. The bedroom is quiet as well as empty when I groan open the door. Only the drip of the bath taps can be heard over the ragged sound of my breathing.

The bathroom door is closed.

Did I close it? Fuck. I can’t remember. Shadows dance in the gap between the door and the floor. Taking one step at a time, I advance toward it and then jerk it open.

The candles are lit, their flames licking the walls with a soft, romantic glow.

And the steaming bath is spotted with dark red…drops of blood?

Horror scratches down my spine, seizing the air in my lungs. Only as the light moves, flickering over the bathwater, the drops swirl and make sense, becoming familiar shapes, trailing out of the water on the wooden floor surrounding the bath.

Velvet, soft, deep red, perfumed, like a blood spatter on a white cobbled street.

Rose petals.

Hundreds of them.

I don’t know how long I stay like that, staring at the rose petals tainting my bath, watching the flames melt and move over the walls, but the water has gone tepid by the time I drain it away.

And when I finally have the sense to return to the bedroom to get Nola’s gun, I see him out the window, under the streetlamp.

Shrouded in the morning mist, his dark figure is watching me. I’m frozen in place—my heart clenching at the sight of him, nerves coiled tight, nails digging into my palms to wake me up in case I’m still dreaming. But I’m not.

He doesn’t dissolve away. I don’t come gasping awake. I’m already living the nightmare.