Chapter 15 Run! #2
The sharp slice of silence sewn of shock rather than peace, as struggle shifts abruptly into surrender. Breath. A sigh of satisfaction. A yelp of resignation. Quiet detachment. Flesh slapping flesh. Fabric shifting. Earth rustling. Lungs and lips canting.
Groan. Huff. Wheeze. Catch. Hiccup. Smack. Faster. Harder. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing…
She should have kept a shoe. She could have used it as a weapon. Daisy couldn’t recall exactly what the contract said about violence, other than specifically listing several acts of aggression as permissible—for the hunters.
The tributes were given only a safe word and warnings that could lead to forfeiture.
But even the threat of a weapon would have been better than standing there defenseless.
The captured tribute continued to beg, but it only egged the hunter on. They got off on the fight, relished the struggle.
Daisy wasn’t a violent person, but this place shoved her so far beyond her comfort zone, she didn’t know what kind of person she might be by dawn.
The conquest ended as quickly as it began. Like a soldier on the last leg of an invasion, he climbed off her and gasped for breath. But he didn’t just abandon her.
Daisy watched from the shadows, surprised when he produced a small flask and offered her a sip.
She struggled to sit up, and he lent her a hand, propriety ingrained by privilege returning like an unforgettable instinct he’d momentarily misplaced.
She shyly accepted the flask as he lit a cigarette and offered her one.
She shook her head and adjusted her dress.
In utter shock, Daisy watched as they made small talk as if the tribute weren’t just violated. Her acceptance was mind-boggling. She even laughed when the hunter made some sort of joke.
It made no sense. How could she laugh with someone who just attacked her?
It’s a game. None of it’s real.
But it was real.
The cuts on Daisy’s hands stung because they were real. The scrape on her knee burned. The fire in her lungs, the fear in her belly, the wildness of her eyes—it was all real.
She couldn’t detach from it the way others could. Lounging in the aftermath. Spent from exertion—
Run.
Now was her chance, as the hunter languidly basked in the moonlight, smoking his cigarette.
Daisy burst out of the rose bushes, startling both the hunter and tribute, but the man only laughed and yelled something in an accent too thick for Daisy to make out.
She didn’t look back.
Cold grass slipped underfoot, forcing her to step lightly. Running without those ridiculous stilts made escaping much easier—until she stepped on something sharp.
“Ah!” Daisy hissed, hopping awkwardly, but not fully stopping. She swallowed down the urge to moan and kept moving.
Agile and animal-like, instinct drove her across the lawn, slowed only by her gown, twelve pounds of beaded silk determined to restrict her strides and catch on every branch and stone.
The heavy material swished and rustled with every step, announcing her location like a wrecking ball in the silence of distant motion.
Dashing into a cluster of trees, careless of the flowers she stomped on the way, she gathered fistfuls of fabric and hauled the hem to her hips. The beading bit into her palms.
“Come on, damn it.” She grit her teeth and pulled where a split had started to form, but it wouldn’t rip any higher.
Someone is coming.
She didn’t think. She only reacted to the approach of danger. She became a raw nerve. An endless receptor to approaching threats.
Racing through an archway, under a trellis, into a corridor of hedge so narrow her shoulders swiped the vines and leaves, she rushed for cover. A branch snagged her hair, yanking her head back, as a tiny hairpin gave way.
“Shit,” she hissed, her curls unraveling with a sharp pull. Fine threads of hair tickled like spiders, and she instinctively swept the sensation away.
Another bell clanged. Nightcrawlers chirred. Voices howled and hollered. More flesh slapping. More men grunted as women moaned in vigorous defeat.
Daisy kept moving.
The world transformed into a tunnel. Green walls, black sky, the pale ribbon of path unspooling before her.
Her breath raggedly beat out of her lungs, burning her dry throat like a pendulum keeping time. Each exhalation a small violence against the silence that couldn’t be helped.
Her heartbeat had migrated into her throat, her fingers, her temples, and down her legs to her numb toes. Her pulse throbbed wildly at soft hollows behind her ears.
Then…music.
Subtle yet overwhelming as dawn, the melody intruded on every crevice until it penetrated the shadows like the creeping light of the unstoppable sun. It drifted through the fog like a drowned memory of civility, resurrected and waterlogged, until it surfaced with blaring clarity.
Daisy’s feet slowed as her brow knit in confusion. She looked up, wondering where the music was coming from. It clung to the breeze like an acid trip, haunting and taunting, as the evening’s surrealness reached new levels of strangeness.
“What the fuck,” she whispered, trying to find the source. It surrounded her, tampering with the choir of moans and the clumsy fumbles that broke the majestic spell of this place.
What sort of twisted psycho designed this?
Strings purred in a symphony, mocking her and every tribute out there running for their life. A requiem. An epic soundtrack for their inevitable doom.
Classical. Beautiful. A mask, just like the ones covering their faces, blurred cruelty behind gilded facades.
Bells tolled.
Tributes fell.
The melody breathed in waves of sorrow, each phrase a small funeral for something unnamed. It came from everywhere and nowhere, from the hedges, from the fog, from the hollow spaces between her ribs where fear had taken up residence.
A chorus of voices joined the instrumental refrain, chanting in foreign tongues. Their words carried like Gothic prayers. A stunning taunt that stole her breath.
Their sacrifice was a goddamn game to them.
A mind fuck of a race, they knew they would win.
As the music stirred visions of candlelit churches and black-draped coffins, steel hardened inside of Daisy, callous and resilient. She let it galvanize her determination not to fall as another bell rang.
How many hunters had feasted off them? How many tributes had fallen?
Trisha was right. They were the fucking menu. Those hunters, every last one of them, had a power seat at the table, licking their chops and reaching without manners, taking whatever they wanted as if it were their God-given right.
Daisy’s lip curled. An animal response to this patriarchal design, meant to represent a twisted natural selection of order in which might equals right.
She bared her teeth at the sense of countless approaching threats. Masked villains chased the underprivileged out of shadows into the dangers of night.
They were coming for her. It was only a matter of time.
If she stayed on the defensive, she’d never make it to safety. She knew then, she needed to run—not away from evil, but towards salvation.
A path to her right yawned into a courtyard. She stumbled from the shadows, scanning the open space for any sign of danger.
A fountain dominated the center, three bears carved of stone, snaring fish out of the air. Hunters. Water streamed from the basin as their fangs showed frozen in predatory aggression.
Moans of ecstasy bleated nearby. Or was that agony?
A thin pathway opened beyond the fountain. Gravel crunched underfoot as Daisy rushed toward it. Beyond the narrow path was a pasture. A tower of champagne glasses, six feet tall, glinted in the moonlight. The golden liquid called to her thirst, slowing her steps to a near-still pace.
The champagne flutes were arranged with such mathematical precision that it had to be a trap. She swallowed, her parched throat clicking like dry bones.
One sip.
She scanned the surrounding gardens, knowing it was bait to lure them out of hiding. They preyed on desperation, knowing it made them capable of the unthinkable.
She crept closer. Each glass balanced deftly on the thin rim of others below. A pyramid of sweet relief waiting to collapse. The shatter would be startling, she decided, noticing the small stone patio beneath the table.
To the right of the trap, lay a collection of velvet cushions sprawled out in tones of emerald, sapphire, and ruby. An invitation of elegance to cushion another tribute’s defeat.
Not yours.
Daisy drew back, licking her dry lips. Her throat scratched like sandpaper, but it was too risky.
Across the quad stood silver platters piled high with fruit so ripe she could smell them from fifty meters away.
All of it was a trap.
One glass could cost her everything.
She flinched as another bell rang.
She had to keep moving.
Forcing her head down, she rushed on, the soft whisper of her footfalls kicking up pebbles as she scurried through the night.
The occasional scream always preceded a shiver, usually followed by a bell. But nothing chilled her more than the hunters’ booming voices as they claimed victory.
“Get over here,” one growled from the other side of the hedges.
A scuffle ensued, and Daisy stilled, falling back into the nearest shelter. Making herself as still as stone.
“Ouch! You want to play rough, you little slut?”
Daisy closed her eyes at the rip of fabric tearing. A muffled whimper cut off with a grunt. Then the bell tolled.
Daisy covered her ears and crouched low. If there was an escape hatch beneath her, she would have taken it.
The hunter’s animalistic groans punctured the air in a staccato beat as the woman begged him to wait.
Timber…
Timber!
Why wasn’t she using the safeword?
“That’ll teach you.”
Daisy couldn’t listen anymore. Even with her hands covering her ears, the depravity was inescapable.
Keep going.
She abandoned her hiding spot beneath the trees and ran to the next covering.