Fated

Prologue

Pr ologue

A bruptly, something tugged me from the depths of sleep, my eyes snapping open to a veil of inky blackness. My heart was pounding heavily in my chest, an unwelcome sensation weighing in the pit of my stomach; it was an uneasiness I couldn’t quite place. A chill crept over my body as my hand reached for the blankets, only to find them bunched up near the bottom of the bed.

Gradually, I became aware of an uncomfortable wetness seeping into every inch of me, from the sodden sheets beneath me to the damp pajamas clinging to my body. Outside, the soft patter of raindrops was drumming against the roof. Had someone opened the window above the bed? Or maybe the roof was leaking. Yet deep down, something told me none of this was the case.

Sitting up in bed, I reached a hand to rub the sleep from my eyes, but before my fingers ever touched my skin, alarm bells went off, a sense of dread falling over me.

An unfamiliar dry and tacky residue was coating my fingertips, but it was the cloyingly sweet and metallic scent wafting from them that stopped me dead in my tracks. The stench of iron.

Frantically, I wiped my hands against my shirt, desperate to rid them of this foreign substance but they only smeared something thick and oily across my upper body. Adrenaline was compelling me to move now, setting me fumbling for my phone on the nightstand before launching myself out of bed, nearly stumbling on the way to the door to flip on the light switch.

Brightness filling the room, the red print left on that switch commanded my attention.

I stared, utterly terrified, at a fingerprint created in blood.

Barely able to breathe, I lifted my hands in front of me, taking in the hue of my skin, catching sight of the bright cherry red staining it.

As I slowly turned my body to face the floor-length mirror, horror gripped me.

My heart thundered wildly, taking in the sight—the blood-soaked clothes, the blood-stained hair sticking to my face. Even my feet had been coated in that vile, slick redness.

Tremors tore through me, my eyes roaming all over my body, searching for an injury, the blood’s source. But there was no wound, not anywhere.

There was absolutely nothing indicating the blood all over me was even mine.

Whipping my head back toward the bed, a jolt of pure terror surged.

The once-white sheets were now stained with splotches of red and rusty brown. But something more concerning caught my gaze, and it felt as though the air in the room had turned too thick to breathe. There, in the center of the bed, a large silver knife lay gleaming in the light.

Instinctively, my hands flung to my mouth to stifle a scream, but it tore from my throat anyway, the moment the blood on my hands contacted my face.

A wave of nausea crashed over me, twisting my insides, making my gut writhe and squirm.

I wrapped my arms around my body, desperate to anchor myself against the rising tide of panic pulling me under. My gaze drifted to the floor, noticing vivid red footprints leading straight to the bed. Heart racing, I forced my eyes to follow the trail back toward the direction from which the steps came, until my eyes stopped right in front of the door.

Ice cold fear gripped me, and I couldn’t swallow, the lump in my throat swelling as if to the size of a mountain.

Mom.

Somehow, I forced my body to move.

“MOM!” I threw my door open, sprinting through the dark hallway toward her bedroom at the other end of the house. As I neared, I skidded to a stop and came to freeze at the sight of her slightly cracked bedroom door and the light leaking from it.

My breath hitched, fear closing in.

I blinked absently at the bloody footprints—the prints trailing from her bedroom toward my own. I stood paralyzed, trembling so violently that my teeth were chattering.

Everything inside was screaming for me to run, or to curl up and hide from whatever nightmare lay waiting on the other side of that door.

“Mom?” The word trembled from my lips.

Nobody answered.

My mom’s face flashed through my mind, and the thought of her being gravely hurt and alone propelled me forward, reaching the door and shoving it open so it banged hard against the wall.

No, God, no!

My heart began hammering against my ribs now, a frantic rhythm matching the terror coursing through my veins upon stumbling into the room.

The odor of blood, metallic and pungent, filled the air, overpowering every other smell. My eyes darted around, scrambling to process the carnage.The walls were splattered with splotchy red stains like grotesque art, droplets even falling from the ceiling.

As my eyes shifted to the room’s center, bile rose in my throat and everything inside of me wanted to recoil, to reject the scene before me. This couldn’t be real, it just couldn’t.

But there, on the bed, lay a figure once resembling my mother, a cruel parody of the vibrant woman I had known. Her skin had lost its warmth and color, now an eerie shade of grayish white. Her usually golden curls were matted with blood and plastered to her head like a sinister halo.I couldn’t tear my gaze from her face, lifeless and frozen in an eternal expression of horror.

As my eyes trailed down what was left of her body, my stomach convulsed. There wasn’t an inch of skin left unmarred, no skin that was not a canvas of jagged and raw stab wounds.

Her gown had been reduced to blood-soaked tatters, strands of fabric barely clinging to the mutilated heap of flesh beneath.

The sound of screaming pierced the air, a raw and deafening cacophony, visceral and barely human. It took me a moment to realize it was coming from me. My legs buckled, and my body crashed to the floor, the impact barely registering as my chilled frame curled into a ball, wrapping my arms tightly around myself. My body shook with sobs, and an excruciating pain erupted in my chest. The reality of my mother’s absence from this world wrecked my soul.

The world I thought I knew—the one full of hopes and dreams, of happiness, and joy—had shattered like a delicate glass, revealing something cold, dark, and terrifying.

A world in which the most heinous evil existed, and someone incredibly evil had done this.

With that thought, adrenaline flooded my veins, and some kind of primal survival instinct took control and forced me to move. My muscles screamed in protest as I pushed myself off the floor and my hands trembled, fumbling with the bloody phone still clutched in my right hand.

After a few frantic attempts, I finally heard, “What is your emergency?”

A flat female voice spoke.

The words tripped me as they came out of my mouth. “My—mom—it’s my mom!”

“What is wrong with your mom?”

“My mom, she’s—dead.” At that last word, a dam broke inside, and a ferocious torrent of tears came pouring out. “Oh my God,” I wailed, my voice raw. “My mom is dead! Somebody’s murdered my mom!” The tears morphed into deep, guttural sobs and then into howling screams, sounds so broken, so foreign, they were barely recognizable as my own.

“Honey, what is your name?”

I gasped between sobs. “Areya,”

“Areya.” Her voice remained calm, steady. “Is the killer still in the house?”

My body stilled.

“Areya, I’ve dispatched emergency personnel to your address. Can you find somewhere safe to go and wait?”

Safe. My mom had always been my safe place, and now … now, she was gone.

I hung up the phone and clutched it to my body, stumbling toward my mom’s closet. I slid the door open, my body shuddering as it fell to its knees, then I climbed into the corner behind a wall of dresses, pulling my knees to my chest and squeezing them until both arms grew numb.

The scent of my mother was all around: the aroma of her vanilla body lotion; the soothing scent of lavender from her favorite soap; and the faint coconut fragrance from the cream she loved to use to tame her wild curls.

I pulled on the yellow cotton sundress hanging in front of me until it fell off the hanger, burying my face into it, craving the comfort of her scent. The soft fabric muffled my sobs, but nothing could dull the agony of the relentless waves of grief battering into me.

Peeking toward the closet doors, a whimper escaped as a memory struck, like a knife twisting in my sternum. No more than six years old at that time, Mom’s closet had once been my favorite hiding spot, right here, nestled behind her dresses.

Her honeyed voice echoed just outside the door.

“I wonder where Areya could be hiding?”

A tiny giggle slipped out before my hand flung over my mouth.

“Did my closet just giggle?” Her playful tone sent another round of stifled laughter bubbling up inside of me.

The door slid open, slowly, wide blue eyes meeting mine, sparkling with feigned surprise. Her face lit up, radiant and warm as she reached in, scooping me up in her arms. She nuzzled her cheek against mine, eliciting a delighted squeal from my lips.

“I love you, Areya.”

Now, my heart sank like a stone in water at the realization I’d never again hear her say those words, never again wrap my arms around her and soak up the love to be found in her embrace.

The warmth of her presence, the love and comfort she had so effortlessly given—it was all gone. She was gone. Mom no longer existed in this world, but I did, now utterly alone.

My eyes squeezing shut, I struggled to breathe through the agonizing pain emanating from the hole in my chest, a hollow ache so deep it was suffocating. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced—sharp, raw, all consuming, as if a vital part of me had been ripped away, leaving a hurt radiating through every inch of me.

How could such evil exist?

What kind of monster could take my mother’s life in such a horrid, brutal manner? Mom had only ever been kind, gentle, everything that was good and pure. Imagining how alone and afraid she must have been in her final moments fractured my soul, leaving it in shattered pieces.

“Mom, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here,” I whimpered as tears fell from my face to my knees, my body rocking back and forth, as though my very essence was bleeding out of me.

The pain was so unbearable, it was though I might die too.

My head lifted, hearing footsteps approaching.

“Areya—are you here? You’re safe now.” It was a male voice.

I squeezed my eyes shut again, willing all of this to go away, to not be real.

How could it be possible to leave this closet and face the reality of life without my mom? I wasn’t sure I even wanted life to go on at all.

But then, as if hit by a freight train, one thought crashed into me, knocking all the air from my lungs. My eyes shot open, my heart pulsating hard as my gaze met my hands.

Why am I covered in my mother’s blood?