Chapter 19
KENNA
K enna stared after the strange man, before regrouping. “Okay, don’t for a moment think that you can stop me from leaving,” she told the dog, who began barking threateningly as she neared. “Come on,” she told it. “Really?”
And—it seemed like it understood her. It sat down, with an indignant huff.
“Wouldn’t you try to escape if you were me?”
But the question of just what she was escaping from loomed large.
Tarian wasn’t a vampire—he’d been out during the day. And he wasn’t a werewolf either, because moonlight hadn’t changed him. Beyond that, she didn’t know what the else he could be. The only thing she was certain of was that her whole situation was effed up.
It didn’t matter; she had to get out of here. She’d walk to the road and hitchhike, and if she died that way, at least she’d die honestly, like every other red-blooded American girl in a murder documentary.
She walked outside, and the dog let her.
There was sun coming over the wooded hills behind them, and the air held that particular quality of freshness that only redwoods could provide.
The road behind the van swerved up, and she knew if she followed it, it would eventually reach the highway.
She’d been through this area before; there wasn’t much else out here.
Or . . . she could wait for Tarian to come back.
She strongly doubted he’d gone up to the road.
But if he hadn’t—where had he gotten off to? Kenna hovered beside the van, then looked down at the off-white dog that’d been trailing her.
“Well? Where’d he go?” she asked the pup, and the dog danced a bit, as if deciding whether or not to be truthful, before trotting over between some cabins, and into the forest beyond.
Then he raced off, and for reasons she didn’t fully understand, she found herself following.
“Hey!” she shouted at the dog. “Wait up!”
The sun wasn’t high enough to make going through the underbrush easy, and it’d been a long time since anything manmade had cut any of it back.
Plus, her skirt didn’t protect her legs—she was getting scratched, and she didn’t like that, but it also didn’t matter—and she kept picking up speed, more so as the terrain began to angle downhill, until she had to practically fall on her ass to stop herself from going over a cliff that suddenly appeared.
“Fuck!” she shouted—and it was drowned out by the ocean roaring, hundreds of feet below.
The dog was on the cliff side with her, sniffing the air, his tail wagging furiously.
“What the,” she complained, then threw a handful of dirt half-heartedly at the mutt. “You weren’t even trying!” Because, what, Tarian had come down here? And then...thrown himself over?
Her dismay didn’t stop the dog from shuffling back and forth though, sniffing furiously, like he, too, wanted to know what the fuck was going on.
“I can’t believe I wasted valuable escaping time doing this,” she muttered, as she got up and dusted herself off—and then spotted a neatly folded pair of suit pants, along with dress shoes and socks, in a row, not ten feet away, like someone had clocked out for a swim.
“No,” she declared.
Whatever was going on here, she resolved to be incurious.
She had goals. And ambitions. And while she acknowledged that none of this made sense, she wasn’t about to let her straight-A status get endangered because she couldn’t cope with it. This wasn’t going to torment her at night, or when she got drunk, or matter in the least.
She’d come too far in life to be derailed by weird shit now.
Kenna leaned forward and started hiking up the path she’d crashed through to get here, only looking back at the dog once.
“Well? Are you coming?” she asked him, and he immediately caught up.
She decided to head parallel to the decrepit lodge, a few hundred feet back from where she thought it was, hopefully to make it harder for Tarian to find her—with pants, or without.
And the dog followed, sniffing out ahead of her, then sometimes running back behind, scaring off squirrels and hopefully not getting into the poison ivy she could see occasionally peeking through the ferns and redwood needles that scattered across the ground.
It was rougher going, but she’d been on harder hikes around UCSC—and then she heard a masculine shout of surprise.
She opened her mouth to shout back, before catching herself, realizing it might be Tarian, finding the lodge abandoned.
Then she looked down, and saw his dog standing stiff, lips pulled back, teeth out, like he was biting back a growl.
The dog...could just be hating strangers, and who was she to listen to it?
But then again, if she’d learned one thing babysitting half a neighborhood in her youth, was that if you ever heard a strange noise in an unfamiliar house, you looked to whatever their pets did for the truth.
Pets would ignore strange thumpings in attics that might’ve been ghosts, burglars, or raccoons.
But if a pet ever seemed concerned, you’d better be calling nine-one-one—which reminded her that she still had Tarian’s cell phone, in his jacket pocket.
She pulled it out and found one bar.
“Holy shit,” she whispered—at the same time as a voice she didn’t recognize shouted, “She’s not here!” in the distance.
“Fuck!” shouted someone else, back at the discovery. “Spread out! Find her!”
She held the phone up to the sky like she was worshiping a god, and was about to hit the Emergency Call button, when strong arms enveloped her, one around her chest, slamming a palm against her mouth, and another swiped the phone from her hand.
“Don’t,” a voice whispered in her ear.
She knew who it was at once, and she struggled against him.
“I swore not to silence you again. Do not make me regret it,” Tarian said, moving his hand away from her face slowly.
“I fucking hate you,” she hissed, the second she could, just to prove it was possible—and she tasted salt, like the sea, on her lips. “You had better have pants on.”
“I do. But not shoes,” he said, and she quickly glanced down, confirming both these facts—so she picked up her right foot, with its boot, and stomped down on his foot, hard.
He grunted softly behind her, and the arm around her loosened enough for her to get free—she bolted toward the sound of other voices at once.
It didn’t matter. She only got three steps before Tarian tackled her, sending them both to the ground. He caught himself before he landed on her though, so she wasn’t crushed—she was just lightly pressed beneath him.
“Please,” he whispered. “Ser—I mean Kenna,” he breathed into her ear. “Shhh.”
She felt the dog huddling beside her, trembling as if with fear, as she heard men coming through the woods.
“Look at them closely,” Tarian went on, as two of them came into view. “Are they the protectors of your people?”
Neither of them men she could see were in uniforms, or orange-colored safety gear.
They were in camouflage.
Like hunters.
“I swear I fucking heard something!” one of them shouted to another.
“Probably a deer,” another complained.
“But they were here!” said a third.
His voice was far more familiar—and then Cliff appeared.
Kenna felt her stomach drop—an impressive feat, considering she was already on the ground.
“Yeah, they were. But just how long do you think it took him to heal? He’s already taken her away from here. Fuck!”
“More searching, less cursing,” said someone who sounded like they were in charge, and she stayed quiet, using Tarian’s hot body like a shield.
They waited together, and she was afraid to ask questions, but her mind was full of them, so many it was becoming hard to keep track.
Then, after what seemed like an eternity, Tarian rose and set her free. She scrambled to her knees, and dusted herself off, at the same time as he shook his head in mystified fashion.
“That . . . was nice,” he said aloud, and likely not for her.
“Oh?” she harshly whispered. “I’m glad rubbing on me was cathartic for you.”
His eyes flashed, dark and hurt. “They’re gone. You can use a normal volume now,” he said, and then surprised the hell out of her, offering his phone back. “Here,” he said, glancing at it as he handed it over. “You were right. You have a bar.”
She took it. “And what happens if I call for help?”
“The men who are searching for you will hear the call and get here far before anyone normal can.”
“And then?” Her voice barely made a sound.
“They will try to take you from me. And I will kill a lot of them.”
What the fuck? “Is this some psychological test? Where you’re trying to get me to do murders by proxy?” She kept trying to parse things, but they didn’t make sense.
Tarian’s brow quickly rose on his forehead. “Oh, no. You shouldn’t feel bad about me murdering them in the least. Every last one of them would have it coming. I only meant to impress upon you the futility of your current situation.”
Kenna bit her lower lip. If she hadn’t seen Cliff with them.
..there was no way she would’ve agreed.
But because she had—that meant that everything that’d happened between them was a lie.
He’d stalked her for three months, tried to get close to her, and then lured her to a hotel room where he’d been armed.
“Why do they want me?”
Tarian’s shoulders sank. “I am afraid that it is all my fault. Might I take you someplace safer to explain?”
A slightly manic laugh erupted from her lips. “Why do you even bother making it sound like I have a choice?”
He sighed and nodded at that. “I have many regrets...Kenna.” He said her name like it pained him. “And the fact that you do not have a choice is chief among them.”
She shook her head and hugged herself. “Fine. Do what you’re going to do. You were always going to do it anyways.”
The disappointment radiating off of him was almost palpable—but it didn’t stop him from saying what he was going to next. “Close your eyes, Kenna,” he said, waving his hand at her. “And until I tell you you can open them next, do not see.”
Her eyelids snapped shut, as she was forced to do as she was told—and then she heard the unmistakable sound of a zipper’s slide.