Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
This girl—this woman—had no idea what she was asking for. I stalked over to her, my cap tightly clutched in my hand. With a jerky motion, I hung my trademark accessory onto the end of one of the perpendicular beams of my cross frame.
It hung there like some out-of-place decoration, waiting for its owner to climb up and take his rightful spot overseeing the corn fields.
Later.
“Alright, here’s the deal.” I anchored my hands on my hips as I turned to face her. “We’re skipping past all the bullshit.”
She folded her arms in front of her chest, likely defending herself from the chill lingering in the air. I refused to acknowledge that it could have also been a result of my outburst. It hadn’t been my intention to freak the fuck out on her, but—fuck.
This year was not going as I had planned. Every year was the same damn dog-and-pony show. Miss Pumpkin Belle—Falston’s autumnal equivalent of a beauty pageant queen—drew a name from an antique wooden pail. More often than not, we rigged the drawing for a name of our choosing.
At dusk on the sixth day of the festival, the lucky participant would enter the corn maze. The complex path was my domain, filled with deadly obstacles that ensured no one made it out alive.
In all fairness, Corbin and I gave the runner until dawn to escape. If they didn’t make it to the end? We had our fun until their blood soaked the soil, and the Council took care of the rest of the logistics and lies from there.
Whatever darker powers the Town Council engaged in were passed down through the generations, leaving us stuck in this forsaken hellhole, damned to repeat the chase every year.
Now, here I was, staring down the first person in almost a century who threatened to shake up our annual sacrifice. All I wanted to do was grab her hands and reassure her that I wasn’t going to harm her. Not tonight, anyway.
As my hands hovered near hers, I quickly snatched them back with a frustrated growl. I curled them both into tight fists until my knuckles bleached white beneath my fingerless tanned gloves.
Forcing myself to lower my hands, I kept them balled up tight to prevent myself from grabbing anything or anybody.
One deep breath in. One slow exhale.
While I was having my mental crisis of how I was going to explain everything I knew to her, Harlow parted her lips. However, the second I shot her a glare, whatever words she’d been about to speak died on her tongue.
“You’re different.” There. That was a good beginning point, right?
After waiting for me to explain, she finally spoke with a wariness in her tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Stepping closer to her, I leaned over, placing my hands on my thighs so that I was eye level with those maddening mossy hues of hers.
“I know what you are. Do you think I can’t smell it on you?”
She had the gall to look confused as she drew her head back away from me slightly. It pulled a rumbling deep chuckle out of my throat.
“Predators smell other hunters, and fuck if you haven’t been the sweetest one I’ve ever crossed.” I dragged a knuckle across her cheek.
The pulse in her neck was already erratically jumping, breaths faltering in their steady cadence, and I knew I had her exactly where I wanted her.
Predictably, she responded, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bale.”
Dropping my hand away from her face, I sighed and straightened up.
“You really think I call you ‘kitten’ for my health?” I shook my head and grinned. “Everything about you smells like shadows and moonlit flowers.”
It was in that moment that I saw the realization that I knew her secret in her eyes. It confirmed everything I suspected without her having to say a damn word.
Harlow shifted uneasily on her feet; she was considering bolting.
“Relax, I have secrets of my own. If you ask nicely, I may even share a few with you.”
Her fingers drummed against her biceps as she stood there, her pulse still strumming a wild rhythm in her throat.
“Great, you know my big furry secret. So what?” she stated with extra sassy sarcasm.
Ignoring her question, I began to walk the perimeter of the clearing that currently granted us privacy.
I reached out and plucked a dry corn leaf off a stalk.
I studied it between my fingers, finding the texture fascinating.
The way sections of it still held some flexibility, while the rest of it was brittle.
“You’re not as alone as you think you are. It seems this town suits you well.”
After completing one lap around the edge of the clearing, I approached her again. Using the leaf as a makeshift pointer, I gestured to the cross frame behind her.
“Don’t you find it strange that there’s no scarecrow mounted on that frame?”
She looked back at the wooden structure before returning her gaze to me. “Haven’t given it much thought. So, there’s a scarecrow missing. Someone alert the local sewing club. I’m sure they can assemble a stuffed decoration in no time.”
Her response may have been full of edge and snark, but there was an underlying uncertainty to it.
This time, when I reached out for her, I made contact with her hand. My fingers curled around her wrist, gently easing her hand away from its death grip on her arm.
I didn’t rush the movement. Instead, I gradually brought her hand to my cheek—the one with the inked stitches on it. Loosening my hold on her, I granted her freedom to explore my face as she felt inclined.
“This field is mine to watch over. Everything in it answers to me.” I paused. “That includes you.”
The pads of her fingers traced over the tattooed lines on my face, paying particular attention to the one near my eyebrow. Despite the minimal contact, just having her touch me like this had me imagining where else on my body she could explore.
“I’m not sure I understand.” The tip of her nail dragged along my jaw, and it just about undid me.
Forcing myself to sever our connection so I wouldn’t get wrapped up in too much emotional suffocation, I released her hand and stepped back abruptly.
“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
Her hand dropped to her side, and she shook her head. “Try again. You brought me here to see if I could handle all of you. Time to put up or shut up, Bale.”
I loved it when she was a bossy kitten. It did things to my dick that made me want to plow her straight into the earth.
“Try not to scream too loud.”
I’d hate for you to lose your voice before you can scream my name properly.
I strode past her to pluck my flat-brimmed cap from the arm of the frame. After securing it firmly on my head, I smirked at her.
From there, the transition was as smooth as a freshly sharpened scythe culling the fields. My blood thickened into sap, my bones grew stronger than the thickest tree roots, my hair hardened into golden straw, and my flesh turned tan and rough as decaying bark.
In my scarecrow form, I maintained most of my size and shape. However, the finer components of my body transformed into an entity that scared more than just crows looking for a free meal.
As for my face? The cap cast shadows over it, but I knew that one look at it and Harlow would either freeze or run.
My eyes were darker than scorched earth, a twisted grin played across my lips, and my stitched tattoos turned thready on my stretched skin that was as unforgiving as the leather gloves on my hands.
I watched as Harlow took in the vision before her. It wasn’t the fact that she didn’t run that surprised me. It was that she seemed morbidly fascinated, shock warring inside with her curiosity.
If this threw her mind for a loop, wait until she saw my cock in this form. Oh, and she most definitely would if I had anything to say about it.
When I addressed her current state of awe, my voice came out deeper, with more of a scratchy coarseness to it. “Speechless, kitten?”
Pushing to see just how good she was at hiding her nerves, I stepped toward her.
Each movement of my body shook loose a blade of straw from my body like a calling card.
I never knew where they came from, but when you were damned to become a supernatural scarecrow for eternity, it didn’t have to make sense.
Harlow defiantly lifted her chin, putting on an air of confidence. I could still taste her fear in the air exhaled from her lungs. It was intoxicating, calling to the primal shadows within me, especially in this form.
The changes to who I was when I shifted were more than aesthetics. There was no smoke and mirrors here. My instincts to become the deadliest predator in these fields magnified tenfold. I thrived on the fear this form invoked in my prey.
“Does it hurt?” The slight tremble in her voice testified to the fact that she wasn’t as fearless as she pretended to be. But it was the actual question that captured my intrigue.
She wanted to know if it hurt?
I went eerily still, the same unnatural stillness that came over me when I was dangling on my cross frame.
Then laughter erupted from me.
“You want to know if it hurts?” The disbelief saturated my tone. “Which part, kitten? When I swap flesh and bones for straw and sticks? Or do you want to know if my soul feels any pain?”
I dragged a fingertip beneath her chin like one gives an approving stroke to a well-behaved cat. Let her feel the coarse texture of my touch, the abrasive surface of dried foliage, against her delicate skin.
“Both,” she replied. “I want to know where Bale ends and the soul of the scarecrow begins.”
“Pain is irrelevant. There isn’t a part of me that exists without the other.” I leaned in, grinning from husk-formed ear to husk-formed ear. “Sorry to put a hole in whatever savior complex you might have going on.”
She swatted at my hand, still positioned under her chin. Instead of backing off, I doubled down and wrapped it around her dainty little throat. Fuck, it felt more fragile than the dried leaves beneath my boots.
I merely held onto her, firm enough to guide her where I wanted but not putting her in physical distress.
Both her hands wrapped around my forearm, nails dug in, but I felt nothing. It was so much easier to wash away the mess of thoughts she brought to my head when my brain only craved the thrill of watching prey realize they can’t escape their fate.
Instead of her confidence buckling under my intimidation tactics, she held steady.
Stubborn kitty.
Harlow glared at me with those intense emerald eyes; the irises burned fiercely. Her inner hunter vibrated beneath the surface with feline ferocity.
“You’re full of shit. I know exactly what you’re doing,” she boldly accused.
“Is that so? Enlighten me, kitten.” I stroked my thumb over the rapid pulse in her neck.
Pinning me with a look that threatened to light my straw bits on fire in all the sinfully delicious ways, she faintly smiled.
“All this is just your way of showing another piece of yourself, the way you see yourself in the mirror.”
I hummed. “Very psychoanalytical, Harlow. But I will let you in on a little secret.”
Ever so slightly, she dipped her chin, making it clear she was fully listening. My hand readjusted its position on the column of her neck, a reminder of the power of my restraint up until this point.
“When your corpse hits the dirt and your lungs are riddled with straw particles from choking to death on my cock, I think you’ll have a very different opinion.”
Wicked satisfaction filled me at the way her whole body tensed. Finally, I was rattling her resolve.
“You hate me yet?” I raised one stitched brow.
Her denial came in the form of a whisper. “No.”
I smirked. If she didn’t hate me, then I would make her fear me.
Hellfire lit up in the abyss of my eyes, and my hand squeezed her throat just enough to send a dangerous message. If she wanted to see all of me, she was going to get more than she bargained for.
“Let’s put that to the test.”
Forcing myself to release my hold on her neck, I leaned in close. Dragging my nose over the angle of her jaw, I breathed in the scent of her.
My lips brushed over the shell of her ear as I uttered my command. The single word was a hoarse whisper laced with dark intent.
“Run.”