Chapter Five
In which Luna’s experience bears a striking resemblance to Little Red Riding Hood’s.
Luna…
This cottage is straight out of a fairy tale.
There’s a fire blazing in the little hearth, and the fairy tale part is extremely vivid because this monster materialized from the forest, murdered his fellow mutation of humanity, and dragged me here.
He keeps his wolf mask on as he sutures the gash on his thigh and limps over to the kitchen sink to wash the blood off his arms and leg. I dry heaved a couple of times, holding the sliced pieces of skin together so he could sew the gash, but sorry. It’s my first encounter with a stab wound.
“Do you sleep with that thing on, too?”
He looks up, seeing his reflection in the window over the sink and cocks his head, as if noticing for the first time that he’s still wearing the wolf mask. Pulling it off, he runs a hand through his hair with a slight groan of relief.
Now I almost wish he’d put it back on.
The son of a bitch is beautiful.
His eyes are a deep green, not like the creepy grey-green forest he chased me through, but the color of grass, new leaves on the tree in spring, fringed with thick, dark lashes that are completely wasted on a man. High cheekbones, and a sensual mouth in the dark of his short beard.
I don’t want to find him attractive. He’s a killer. I doubt Red Leather Mask was his first victim. He barely reacted when he snapped his neck.
A vision of that whip-wielding monster dead on the forest floor assaults me. My memory has always been excellent, but this is something I wish I wouldn’t remember in such explicit detail.
While I’m paralyzed by the thoughts of Red Leather Mask's neck being crushed, my captor is casually stripping down.
“What are you doing?” I say, backing away from him like he’s a land mine.
“I have to change,” he says, completely indifferent to the fact that he’s now naked. I childishly cover my eyes. “I’m not going back to the house covered in blood.”
There’s a little bedroom tucked into one corner of the cottage, and when he heads in there to pull on some new clothes, I edge experimentally toward the front door. Someone screams, and it sounds like it’s just outside.
He’s fast, damn it, he’s crossed the room and his hand is already gripping my wrist as I reach for the doorknob.
“Let go of me! We have to-”
“We have to stay in here,” he cuts me off. “You can’t stop what’s happening.”
“But you could!” I snap, trying to pull away from him. “How can you just…”
For a moment, I swear I see genuine frustration in his vivid eyes, and then they grow cold again. “The difference is that they want to be part of the Lord’s crew. You didn’t.” He leans closer to me. “Now that you’re here, what you want means nothing. I can keep you alive if you shut up and do what I say. If you’re too much trouble, I’ll throw you to the wolves.” His smile is cruel.
There’s another scream outside and then wild feminine laughter as he pulls me away from the door. Is it one of the horrible girls chasing someone? Or are they being chased and they think this sick shit is entertaining? That rapturous expression on Theresa’s face makes me think this might be some nightmare combo of initiation and torture.
“You’re so-” I shake my head, wanting to pull my hair and scream. “You’re monsters, all of you.”
He stares at me expressionlessly. “You’re right. We are monsters. But I’m the monster who will keep you alive if you do exactly what I say. Go sit down by the fire and stay quiet. I don’t want to chain you to the hearth, but I will.”
Looking over, I see there is an iron loop embedded in the tile around the fireplace with a chain and shackle dangling from it. “You use that a lot, do you?”
He’s pulling up a clean pair of jeans over his hips and doesn’t bother to look at me. “What part of sit down and shut up was not clear?”
Pressing my lips together, I sit on the shabby chair and lean closer to the flames. The warmth doesn’t really help; there’s a core of ice in me that is impervious. My soul is frozen, and a flood of terror and fury will pour from me if it melts.
He ignores me for a while, moving around the cottage with his phone, sending off text after text. I notice he doesn’t bother to put on a shirt. I also notice how the firelight gleams along his broad shoulders and makes the countless tattoos on his skin dance and writhe. A massive dragon is inked on his back, wings spread from shoulder to shoulder. The scales and glowing red eyes are so vivid that it feels like the dragon is watching me.
The silence stretches taut like barbed wire, scraping along my nerves, but I keep my mouth shut. Whatever he’s reading in those texts is not making him happy.
He heads back into the bedroom. I hear drawers being slammed, and he’s speaking to someone on the phone; his low, urgent voice makes it clear he’s not hearing what he wants. More slamming of furniture. What does he keep in there? A collection of bloody weapons? The taxidermied remains of his ex-girlfriends?
“What’s your name?”
Looking up, I flinch as he takes a picture of me on his phone. “Why?”
His smile is unpleasant. “Always the hard way with you, aye? Let me guess your sad story. Traveling alone, first time for a little lass in the great big world? You’re ready to trust the first person who’s nice to you?”
A sense of shame, like boiling water, pours down my back. He’s right, and it’s humiliating. I thought I was being cautious. I was wrong.
“I may look like a sucker to you, but there’s people who will be looking for me if I don’t call them by morning.” As I’m lying to him, I can see the first, faint light of dawn between the cracks in the curtains. Daylight. If I can get away from him, I could signal someone for help. The channel of water between the mainland and here was busy last night.
No reaction. He’s scrolling through something in his texts.
“I mean it,” I snap. “Just let me and Marla go. Don’t make this worse.”
He ignores me for about ten minutes and then gets a notification on his phone.
“Luna Jones, twenty-six years old from Iowa City, Iowa,” he says, reading off his phone. “Graduated from Cottonwood High School with honors. Works as a waitress and a house cleaner.”
“Wh- where are you getting this?” I say angrily. How did he get my info so fast from just my picture?
“Parents died in a car accident when you were twelve,” he murmurs. “You lived with your aunt until she threw you out of the house the day you turned eighteen. You finished high school while sleeping at friends’ houses and showering in the high school locker room. Very resourceful.”
The shame is back, and my skin feels like it’s on fire. “This is none of your fucking business!” Rising from the lumpy chair, I try to grab his phone. “You have no right-” His hand closes around my throat, not enough to hurt but definitely making it clear that he could. I’d watched him snap Red Leather Mask’s neck within seconds.
“I have every right,” he says indifferently. “I own you until I decide to get rid of you. There’s no one looking for you, lass. You’re on your own.”
This is all true, but it hits like a punch to my chest.
“I can promise you, asshole, that your life will be much easier if you let me go,” I say, trying to sound firm and confident and not like my knees are turning to water. I want to sit down again before my inevitable collapse, but his hand is still gripping my neck. His calloused fingertips idly stroke along the skin over my galloping pulse.
“Maybe I was wrong about you being a fox,” he muses, sounding like he’s talking to himself. “With a heart rate like this, you’re more like a jackrabbit.” His gaze returns to my face. “Do you have jackrabbits in Iowa, lass?”
“This conversation just took a left turn into What the Fucking Hell-Ville,” I say.
His grip tightens slightly. “Do you?”
“I- I don’t know,” I sputter. “Probably. Is this important?”
One corner of his mouth turns up into a brief smile as if it’s too much of an investment to offer a real one. “Other than Iowa being one of those rectangular midwestern states, I don’t know much about it. How did you make enough tips at your bar gig to travel to Europe?”
Because I save every penny I can, asshole.
I live in a glorified backyard tool shed because the rent is cheap, and the nice lady who owns the house brings me cookies when I take out her garbage cans. I haven’t bought a new item of clothing in my entire life.
My folks were poor, but I never felt that way until I had to move in with Aunt Martha. She constantly chastised me for being such an expense, a burden, and that my parents left her with nothing to take care of me. I gave her my checks from my after-school jobs, but it was never enough to make her happy.
It was easier sleeping under the bleachers in the school gym than listening to her litany of insults, so I wasn’t even upset when I came home from school on my eighteenth birthday to find two boxes holding everything I owned on the front stoop. Given our neighborhood, I was surprised they were still there.
I suspect they’d been rifled through, but there wasn’t anything in my personal belongings worth stealing.
However, this is all my fucking business and not his, so I narrow my eyes and glare at him. “Does it distress you to know that poor people sometimes manage to travel? Are you offended that we’re breathing the same air as your rarified self?”
A bit too late, I remember his warning about throwing me to the rest of the wolves, so I shut up as his fingers squeeze my neck again. I’m acutely aware of his hand on my throat. His skin is warm and rough, like he works with his hands, which is, of course, ridiculous. The callouses are probably from crew or polo or some other rich person sport. He’s conducting a thorough visual examination from my muddy sneakers to my (no doubt) snarled hair, and he does not look impressed with what he sees.
“Why did you fight your precious bullwhip-wielding buddy for me?” If I’m going down, I may as well see if he’ll answer any of my questions first.
Arching one dark brow, he says, “He was a fecking arsehole. I just… felt like it.”
He’s certainly scary and evil enough for this answer to make sense, but I keep recalling that brief flash of regret from earlier.
“What’s going to happen when the others find out?” I must have a death wish, but I’ve never been able to shut up, even when it’s in my best interests to do so.
Dropping his hand from my neck, he angles his head toward the bedroom. “Get a couple of hours’ sleep. You’re going to need the rest.”
“Why do I-”
Hands fasten like manacles around my upper arms, and he lifts me like I’m an annoying toddler and puts me in the tiny bedroom. There’s no window, and the only way out is through the door. He watches me look for escape routes with another half-smile. “Lie down, little fox. I have work to do.”
He closes the door, and I hear the deadbolt click into place on the other side. The bed creaks like Aunt Martha’s arthritic knees, but the sheets are clean. I know I won’t be able to sleep. I’ll just sit here and try to come up with a plan.