Page 68 of The King has Fallen (The Kingdom of the Krow #1)

1. Show Me in the Dark

brIDGET

***SYSTEM NOTE: CHAT ENCRYPTED END-TO-END. ENSURE ALL ACCOUNTS ARE LOGGED OFF BEFORE DISCONNECTING.***

SleepingBeast: Why would you even consider this?

DeadGirlWalking: Long story short: Everyone in my family dies young. Cancer and heart attacks mostly. Somehow, I hit the genetic lottery, and got the genome markers for both.

DeadGirlWalking: I am almost thirty years old. My body is a literal ticking time-bomb. And my life is hell.

DeadGirlWalking: Let me rephrase that. My non -life is hell: No drinking. No drugs. No fatty foods. No elevated heart-rate (so, no sex, or any other form of extra-curricular fun. I can’t even watch a scary movie). Apparently, if I do absolutely nothing, I will probably get to do it for a pretty long time. Except, maybe not. Maybe I’m sitting calmly in the café reading a very unexciting book when I twitch once and fall face-first into my frappucino.

DeadGirlWalking: I am done living in fear of what is inevitable. I need to feel alive again.

SleepingBeast: You think me murdering you is going to make you feel alive?

DeadGirlWalking: No, I think knowing that my day is coming soon will make life a lot more interesting until it does. And then when it finally does, I won’t have to think about it anymore at all.

SleepingBeast: That’s dark.

DeadGirlWalking: You’re homicide-for-hire and you’re calling me dark?

SleepingBeast: Touche.

SleepingBeast: Though, for the record, I’m not for hire. You won’t pay me a cent. And I’m not homicidal. I classify my services as assisted suicide adjacent.

DeadGirlWalking: Did you hear that? It was my snort of skeptical derision. You get off on killing people. Pretty sure that makes you homicidal. Or is there another name for it if it’s a kink?

DeadGirlWalking: Found it. Apparently you’re a Erotophonophiliac (Erotophonophilian?) God, what a mouthful.

DeadGirlWalking: THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID.

SleepingBeast: Nope. I get off on the hunt.

DeadGirlWalking: Well then, let’s be clear: I’m no sub. I just want to run for my life, and lose.

SleepingBeast: We’re clear. I am a Dom. But I’m happy to provide additional services until it’s my turn to die.

DeadGirlWalking: Such a giver. So, will you also be finding some dude on the dark web to knock you off when that time comes?

SleepingBeast: I expect to take my last breath gasping, laying in a pool of my own blood because the FBI finally caught up with me.

DeadGirlWalking: Suicide by cop?

SleepingBeast: More like government sanctioned murder.

DeadGirlWalking: Geez, and you call me dark.

SleepingBeast: No… I call you prey.

DeadGirlWalking: Holy shit. I just got goosebumps. So I guess that means we’re doing this?

DeadGirlWalking: Beast?

SleepingBeast: Go back to your non-life, D. Sweet dreams.

DeadGirlWalking: Wait, are you coming for me or not? Because if you aren’t, I need to find another whacko.

SleepingBeast: Goodnight D.

DeadGirlWalking: Just answer the question. Are you, or are you not, going to hunt me down to primal-fuck me, then kill me?

DeadGirlWalking: TELL ME.

DeadGirlWalking: Beast?

DeadGirlWalking: For fuck’s sake.

DeadGirlWalking: This better be part of the game, otherwise I’m reporting you to the Manager. Call me a dark-web Karen.

DeadGirlWalking: Seriously, I need confirmation here. You said this could take weeks—months? I can’t go through another Christmas alone because you got bashful. If you aren’t coming I need to find someone else.

DeadGirlWalking: I’m doing this with you or without you. You get that, right?

DeadGirlWalking: Would you just answer the fucking question?

DeadGirlWalking: This brings a whole new meaning to “the strong, silent type.”

DeadGirlWalking: Fucker. Or should it be non- fucker?

DeadGirlWalking: Just tell me.

DeadGirlWalking: Is this one of those moments when a guy thinks what he’s doing is foreplay, but it’s not? Because it’s not, just in case you were wondering. I’m being fucked right now. And not in the fun way.

DeadGirlWalking: Beast?

DeadGirlWalking: Fine. I guess I’ll just wait and see. But I’m keeping my options open. If another dude shoots his shot (literally) and beats you to it, that’s going to be your fault for not making your intentions clear.

DeadGirlWalking: Should have put a ring on it. Just sayin’.

SleepingBeast: Stop whining. We’ll meet.

DeadGirlWalking: Thank God. How soon?

DeadGirlWalking: Growl once for “this week” and twice for “this calendar month.”

SleepingBeast: Goodnight, D.

SleepingBeast: Sleep while you can.

DeadGirlWalking: Wait! Don’t you need my address or number or something?

[SleepingBeast has left the chat.]

---

I pushed away from my desk, heart racing so fast I wondered if I was going to pass out. My vision was tunneling.

Holy shit, this was really happening.

Finally.

It was strange blinking back to my real life and my real body. Every time I was online I kind of got lost in the virtual world.

My psychiatrist called it escapism .

I called it relief from existential crisis and the utter fucking tedium of this world.

Tedium? Not for much longer. Not if Beast was really who I thought he was.

Unable to resist, I clicked through to the screenshots I’d kept of his response to my post in the definitely not government sanctioned forum called Weirdos Whackos and Freaks Playground.

I’d been ranting that night, drunk and despairing. The responses had mostly fallen into two categories: Those who were frantic to help me feel better, and those who hoped I would kill myself and were willing to incentivize me.

Not him, though.

He had been a man of few words, right from the start.

I know how to make you feel alive. Then a link.

That was it. I’d assumed he was some pervert hoping to find a desperate woman who’d fall into bed with anything that pretended to care. Or maybe he just wanted to find a woman period and it didn’t matter what she thought about it.

I was open to either scenario.

His profile picture was a muscular guy, standing with his feet shoulder width apart and his hands at his sides, kinda clawed, like he was ready to fight, silhouetted by glowing flames.

I would have bet real money he was ex-military. Or he’d dedicated himself to some kind of organized training.

He was clearly aggressive. Strong. Probably abusive.

Hyper-intelligent. Extremely self-reliant. Definitely a loner. But decent social skills. All the better to lure in vulnerable women.

The only reason I’d clicked the link was because I didn’t give two shits if he hacked me. I wanted to see if there were any clues to whether I was right.

I’d expected to find his amateur pornography—why did men always believe that all it took was a visual of them strangling their own purple-headed wonder worms to make a woman shiver?

I’d figured there was an outside chance he ran a sex club, or some other IRL experience he was selling to the kind of people who looked for things on the fringes. As in, me.

But the link only led to a profile page. That was my first surprise.

Cain.

Experienced primal dom.

Seeking real life prey.

I’d been immediately intrigued. And then I talked to him and got consumed. And then obsessed.

And then… eventually we got here.

Sighing as the adrenaline in my veins slowly faded, I closed all the windows on the screen and began to shut the computer down, but my hands were shaking so badly from the rush that I kept accidentally using the wrong key commands. I had to make myself slow down and focus. But when the laptop finally whirred to silence and I was left sitting in the silent blackness, I still didn’t move away from the desk.

I could see the light-glare of the words from my screen across my retinas in the dark.

Seeking real life prey.

And he wasn’t bluffing. I’d done my homework.

I had to take a deep breath to calm the new wave of flutters in my stomach. It took a moment to put a name to what I was feeling because it had been so long…

I was giddy.

Cain, AKA: SleepingBeast, a primal Dom, probable serial killer, and bona-fide whacko had taken my case. I was now officially prey. The game of cat and mouse was about to begin. I wouldn’t know when, or how. But at some point soon, our paths would cross. He would make certain they did. And if he liked what he saw when he found me, that moment would spark a hunt that might last weeks, or even months.

He’d warned me that he would toy with me. That thought brought a whole new rush of adrenaline, and a hum between my thighs. I was counting on it.

I gave a weird, cackling laugh that sounded way too loud in my dark little closet of an office.

Cain was coming for me.

Life just got very, very interesting.

Thank God.