The monster wasn’t letting go. It was gripping tighter despite the gashes Leon was opening in its limbs. Leon gripped the hands around his neck, snarling ferociously, and snap — the long fingers crunched in his hands and the monster shrieked again, finally falling off of him.
But the moment it let go of him, it came for me.
I couldn’t get away with the tree at my back. By the time my brain processed that the twitchy creature was on top of me, its broken fingers were wrapping around my skull, and the moment it squeezed, everything went dark.
Dark…but there was hard, damp earth beneath my hands.
Dark, but there was a smell of dust in the air, of wet earth.
Dark, but somewhere ahead of me, water was dripping.
I pushed myself up slowly from the ground, reaching out blindly. I felt a dirt wall to my left…and to my right. Nothing in front of me. Nothing behind.
What the hell had happened? Where was I? This wasn’t the forest.
My heart drummed against my ribs, my lungs felt tight. Where was Leon?
Where was the monster?
Raelynn.
I scrambled to my feet, pressing myself against the wall, trying not to hyperventilate, trying not to be too loud. It was the voice from my dreams. The voice I’d heard calling to me in my nightmares.
The God’s voice.
My knife was gone. No matter how many times I blinked, no matter which way I looked, there was nothing but darkness. Panic was sinking its claws in deep. The water, dripping somewhere nearby, was trickling faster now. It wasn’t just a drip. It was a stream.
I took a step, and my foot splashed into water.
My vision jolted, like static cutting through my eyes, and for a split-second I saw the monster again, clinging to me, white eyes staring down into mine as Leon’s hands wrapped it into a chokehold from behind —
Back into the dark. There was water at my ankles now. The trickling stream sounded like a rushing river.
A flood…the tunnel was flooding.
Raelynn. Come to me. Let me help you.
I stumbled forward. I knew the voice was dangerous, but I couldn’t stand here and wait to drown. The water was rising rapidly. It would be up to my knees in a moment. I had to follow the voice. I had to find it. Maybe, somehow, it could help me…
The night sky burst into my vision, and I gasped for air as if I’d been drowning. I was lying on my back, my head was burning, I was so dazed that I couldn’t move. I could only stare through the ragged limbs of the pines, their needles piercing the starry night sky as the clouds swept over the moon.
There were footsteps behind me…closer…closer…
Leon stood over me. Something was smeared on his face; blood or mud, I couldn’t be sure. Slowly he crouched down, scooped me up into his arms, and cradled me against his chest.
His shirt was wet, stained. As he began to walk, it was with a stiffness that hadn’t been there before.
I tried to talk, tried to ask what the hell had happened and if we were safe. But my tongue felt like it was made of cotton, and I realized that my hand was still clenched in a vice-like grip around the knife.
“Just sleep, baby girl,” he muttered, even as my exhaustion swooped in as the adrenaline subsided, and I found myself barely able to keep my aching eyes open. “I told you I’d kill it. You’re okay. You’ll be okay.”
The bedcovers were pulled up over my head, my breath creating a warm cocoon as I lay nestled on soft pillows. My groggy brain knew it wasn’t my bed, but it also knew that something bad had happened last night, and pushing down the covers to see where I was seemed pretty frightening.
There was a shower running somewhere. The sheets smelled freshly cleaned and were crisp, like hotel sheets. I wasn’t wearing my costume from the party, but an oversized sweater that smelled distinctly of smoke and citrus-y pine. Leon’s smell.
I pushed back the covers, blinking slowly. The curtains had been thrown back to a gray day over a sea of snow-dappled pine trees clustered around the roofs of a small town. The room was undoubtedly a master suite, and on an uppermost floor judging by the view. The bed was massive, the walls made of stained wood and the decor like the interior of a modern log cabin.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes before I noticed my glasses, and my knife, sitting on the bedside table. Suddenly, it all came back in a rush that twisted up my stomach — the roofie in my drink, Juniper and Zane, Kent, the Gollum in the woods. My body still thought there was danger, and I could vividly remember what it felt like when the Gollum touched me.
The mine…those cold, flooded tunnels…
I jumped as the bathroom door opened, and Leon sauntered out naked, water dripping down the inked artwork on his chest as he rubbed a towel over his hair. He spotted me awake, smirked, and paused with the towel around his shoulders.