Chapter 23
I didn’t wait to see who made a move for me first. I just turned and ran.
“Help!” The word tore out of my throat, raw and jagged. “Help me! Someone!”
Gravel slid under my shoes as I bolted between the cabins, the ax dragging heavy in my hand. My lungs seized almost instantly, breath coming too fast and shallow, but I forced it out anyway and screamed again, even louder this time. “Help! Help!”
If the others heard me back at the hall, if anyone just stepped outside a little…
“Don’t let her get back!” Jensen’s voice snapped through the darkness behind me. “Cut her off!”
Footsteps split. Multiple sets.
Fuck. They weren’t just chasing me. They were spreading out.
I veered left, aiming for the open stretch that led back toward the main clearing, but before I could reach it, a shape moved out from between two cabins. Chris.
“Stop!” he shouted, already lunging forward.
I swerved hard and doubled back, nearly slipping as my foot hit loose gravel.
Another set of footsteps pounded somewhere off to my right, and Sutton’s voice called out, closer now. “Go around, Grace! Don’t let her circle back!”
My stomach dropped. They were trying to box me in.
I ran faster, vision starting to blur at the edges as I darted past another row of cabins, searching for a gap, a way out; anything that led back to the hall.
Another shadow moved ahead. Jensen. He stepped out just enough to block the path, not even trying to grab me yet. Just standing there.
“Nowhere to hide, sweetheart,” he said, voice dripping with menace. “Might as well stop running.”
I didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow down. I jerked sideways at the last second, cutting off the path entirely and sprinting toward the only available space left.
The woods.
Branches clawed at my arms the second I hit the tree line, and the ground dipped beneath my feet without warning, roots catching at my shoes. I nearly went down twice in the first few seconds alone, catching myself on tree trunks that scraped my palms raw.
I swung hard to the right, ducking between two trees, and almost ran straight into a jagged rock jutting out of the ground. I dropped behind it without thinking.
As my knees hit the dirt, I clamped a hand over my mouth, dragging in a silent breath. Footsteps pounded past, then slowed.
“Where the fuck did she go?” Chris’s voice, sharp and breathless.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jensen said. He was close enough that I could hear the edge in his breathing. “She can’t have gotten far.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Go. Just go, I willed myself.
But I couldn’t move. Not without giving myself away.
“You’re sure?” Jensen asked.
“Sure about what?” Sutton snapped.
“You said she knows. How much?”
“She doesn’t know any of the details,” Sutton said. “But she knows enough.”
“Fuck,” Chris muttered.
“I’m sorry.” Grace’s voice cut in, pitiful and strained. “I didn’t know she was listening.”
Jensen spoke again, lower this time. “We can’t let her get back to the hall.”
“And when she doesn’t?” Chris said. “What do we tell everyone else?”
“We tell them the killer got her.”
Something in my chest twisted hard enough to hurt. There was no hesitation in his words. No doubt that they’d get away with my murder. Just like they got away with the last one.
“Spread out,” Jensen said. “She wants to get back to the hall, so she’ll probably run for a while and then try to double back to the campgrounds somewhere. Cut her off.”
Footsteps shifted again. Closer, closer, closer…
One of them moved around the far side of the rock.
I didn’t wait any longer. I pushed up and ran.
I zigzagged as I went, cutting between trunks and ducking low branches in an attempt to break their line of sight. My lungs burned, each inhale scraping raw against my throat, but I managed to stay upright, even as my arms flailed and the ax slipped in my grip.
Behind me, the forest exploded with movement. The others were still coming, but not just from one direction. They were splitting up again, probably trying to flank me.
“Alissa!” Jensen’s deep voice rang out, closer than I wanted. “Just stop!”
“You’re only making things worse for yourself!” Chris added from somewhere to my left.
I kept going, blindly sprinting. Footsteps thundered right behind me.
“It’s four against one, Alissa!” Sutton shouted. “You aren’t going to get away!”
God, she was close. Way too close.
They all were.
I veered hard to the right, aiming for another stretch of trees, trying to slip through where they couldn’t move as fast. A branch caught in my hair and yanked, ripping a strangled cry from my throat, but I tore myself free and kept going.
We tell them the killer got her.
The words were echoing in my head now, drowning out everything else. I couldn’t let them catch me. Couldn’t let them get away with it.
A shape flickered through the trees ahead, just for a second. Movement. Someone cutting across. Then Chris was right in front of me. Close enough that if he lunged, he’d have me.
I veered hard to the other side, forcing Chris to adjust his path. “Come on, Alissa,” he called out, voice rough now. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
Something in me snapped then, and I spun around. It wasn’t a clean decision. It wasn’t even a decision at all, really. Just instinct and panic. A flicker of memory from my lesson with Rhys.
I hurled the ax toward Chris.
For a split second, everything seemed to slow. The blade spun once, clumsy and uneven, then hit. Chris made a strangled sound as it slammed into his chest, the force of it knocking him backward a few steps before his legs gave out completely.
He went down hard, crashing into the forest floor. I didn’t wait. I sprinted straight back toward him. I needed to get the ax.
My hands closed around the handle, and I yanked, but it didn’t budge. It was buried deep. Way too deep. The angle was wrong, lodged between bone, and when I pulled again it shifted just enough to make Chris choke on a broken gasp.
His eyes snapped open, and his hand shot up and clamped around my wrist. “Got you, bitch,” he rasped, his grip tightening despite the blood soaking through his shirt. His face had gone grey, but his eyes were still sharp and focused. “You really think you’re getting away from us?”
I wrenched back, trying to pull myself free, but his fingers dug in harder, dragging me off balance. “I’m going to kill you,” he muttered.
A sound crashed through the trees behind me. It was Jensen.
“Fuck, man, what did she do to you?” he barked.
I yanked again, harder this time, twisting my wrist and clawing at Chris’s grip with my free hand. His strength faltered for half a second, and that was enough. I tore myself free.
I didn’t try to retrieve the ax again. I just ran.
I crashed deeper into the trees, no longer caring about direction. Only distance. Soon, I barely even felt the branches raking at me anymore. Everything had narrowed to one thing.
Keep going.
Left, right, forward, weaving between trees without any real thought behind it. The camp could’ve been behind me. To the side. Miles away for all I knew. It didn’t matter, as long as I kept moving.
“Alissaaa…”
The sound echoed through the trees, low and drawn out, and I flinched, nearly tripping.
Jensen.
“I’m not letting you get away from me,” he called, voice carrying in an eerie, sing-song cadence that made my stomach twist. He sounded far too calm for someone who’d just found his friend bleeding out on the forest floor.
“I can see you,” he added.
A lie. It had to be. But it still worked. Panic surged again, hot and blinding, and I veered to the left without thinking, ducking under a low branch and scrambling over a fallen log that scraped my shin hard enough to make me gasp.
A scream tore through the woods then. High, sudden, cut off almost immediately.
Either Grace or Sutton must’ve tripped and fallen. But obviously, I wasn’t going to turn back and offer a helping hand.
Instead, I ran even harder.
My legs felt heavier with every step, and my breathing turned ragged and uneven, each inhale dragging in less air than the last. The trees all looked the same now. Dark trunks, shifting shadows, patches of pale moonlight that barely helped me to see.
Another sound drifted through the forest then, faint and warped by distance. I froze for half a second, head snapping toward it. It was a low, strangled noise. Almost like a cry, but somehow… wrong.
Animal, I told myself. It had to be. A fox, maybe.
I forced myself to move again, shaking it off even as unease settled deep in my gut.
“Alissaaa…”
Jensen’s voice was closer this time.
“I’m coming for you, sweetheart. Ready or not…”
The words sent a cold spike straight down my spine, and a wrenching sob tore out of me before I could swallow it. Shit. I might as well have strapped on a flashing neon sign to announce my exact location.
I pushed on anyway, crashing through undergrowth that snagged at my clothes and tore threads loose like the forest itself was trying to pull me apart. A branch whipped across my cheek, and I tasted copper where I’d bitten the inside of my mouth.
Keep going. Keep—
My foot caught on something, and the ground came up to meet me so fast I barely managed to throw out my hands to catch my fall. As my palms landed jarringly hard on dirt and pine needles, my knee hit something sharp. White-hot pain exploded up my leg.
For a few gasping seconds, I lay there, dazed.
Then Jensen’s voice came again, closer now. “You're not getting away from me…”
I forced myself up, ignoring the pain in my knee, and lurched forward.
My ponytail had come loose, and sweat-drenched strands of hair were plastered to my face. I could barely breathe. Barely see. But stopping meant dying.
A clearing appeared without warning; moonlight falling across a stretch of open ground. I almost sobbed with relief at the sight of it. Maybe I’d gone farther than I thought, and there’d be a track leading from the other side to someone’s property. Maybe even—
The rope took me before I registered it was there.
A loop snapped tight around my ankle, yanking me upward with brutal force. The world flipped, and pine needles and dirt rained down into my eyes as I swung wildly before coming to a stop, hanging upside down from a tree branch.
I tried to reach up and grab at the rope around my ankle, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the knot, but the angle was wrong and the tension was too great. On top of that, my own weight was working against me.
“No.” I said it out loud, uselessly. Blood was already rushing to my head. “No.”
I twisted and writhed, but nothing I did made the slightest bit of difference.
I was totally fucked.
Tears came then; ones that barely made a sound because I simply didn’t have the breath to sob. They fell upward from my perspective, dropping toward the ground below me as I dangled there.
The tree line was still. Silent. Until… it wasn’t any longer.
A masked man stepped out of the woods, moving with slow, deliberate confidence. His mask was white in the moonlight, eerily featureless, and a huge ax hung loosely from his right hand.
Oh my god.
Not Jensen.
Not any of the others.
The killer.
His ax blade caught the moonlight, and I instantly stopped crying. Not because the terror had passed, but because some primal part of my brain understood that crying wouldn’t do anything to help me now.
The man stopped walking, and his head tilted slightly, like he was studying me. Then he reached up and took the mask off.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the face beneath it, given my earlier suspicions, but the shock of recognition still hit me like a cold slap to the face.
Rhys.
Dark hair pushed back from his forehead. Square jaw. Those silvery eyes, catching the moonlight the same way the ax blade did. He was soaked in blood so dark it almost looked black.
He started walking toward me again. Slow. Steady. Ax swinging loose in his grip.
“I knew it,” I said, voice shaking. “I knew it was you.”
He didn’t answer.
The ax came up, and he swung it right at me.
I scrunched my eyes shut, bracing for the blow. It didn’t come. Instead, a sharp crack split the air as the rope above me snapped, and I dropped. Hard.
Pain jolted through me as I hit the ground, air escaping my lungs in a broken gasp.
“What…”
That was all I could manage to get out.
Rhys stood over me, watching. “I thought you might’ve figured it out,” he said. “You were acting so strange today.”
My gaze locked onto the ax as my hands scrabbled uselessly against the leaves beneath me. “Please…” I managed to whisper. “Please don’t kill me.”
“I was never going to kill you, Alissa,” he said softly. “But you know for sure that it’s me now. And that’s a problem, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer. I just kept staring up at him, eyes wide and jaw slack.
“So…” He crouched down in front of me, bringing himself level with my line of sight. “What am I supposed to do with you, baby?”