Chapter 1
Present Day…
Blood smelled different in the cold…sharper. It cut through the air before it hit your nose. I learned vital information the first time I killed in the winter, and I’ve craved it ever since.
Tonight would be perfect for it.
The frost crystallized on the grass, and the moonlight shone through just enough to make the fog glow like smoke rising from a funeral pyre.
Of course, that meant a fresh mindless herd of rich little prey was coming. These men and women were simple-minded. They all wanted one thing—to get their jollies off by being hunted by the masked men in the hunt.
I could see them lined up now at the massive gate, bouncing on their heels, thinking they’re about to have the thrill of their lives.
They aren’t wrong.
It was true that though most of them would leave tonight with shaky smiles and stories for their friends, except for the lucky ones I chose tonight…
Well…they will never leave the maze at all.
That was the thing about my family’s annual hunt. Everyone thought it was a theater, a performance of a lifetime that demanded multiple fat zeros to enter. And just like every year, people paid without a second glance.
They wanted the performance.
They wanted the masks, costumes, and cameras they knew were tucked away in the trees. They clapped for the horror like it was a dream come true, never realizing the blood they saw dripping from my gloves wouldn’t be fake.
The Harding Hunt was just a fuck ton of noise. There were squealing crowds at the gates, floodlights swinging through the foggy arena of the corn maze, and the abandoned houses adding their own style of horror.
There were always actors screaming on cue, dumbasses lined up for their turn to slaughter. Year after year, their fear was painted on for the cameras. It was always the unmistakable truth written on their dumb, smiling faces: arousal.
These people wanted to be hunted.
They wanted to be captured and fucked without mercy.
Some of my fellow hunters gave them their wet dreams. It was the anonymity that masks provided, the excuse they all needed to whore it out for the night. All of them knowing damn well they’d be truly horrified to see what lay behind the plastic smiling faces.
Usually, the masked men were nerdy kids around their early twenties, or Cosplay gods that like to gender-bend and make everyone froth over them. It wasn’t the same shit they read in their porn books.
But the imagination was a beautiful thing.
In the studio lights, I gazed at the reflection. An actor getting blushed and fluffed to perform a miracle glared back at me. The other hunters swaggered around in their masks like they were part of some elite club.
To be fair, my whore of a mother always picked particular looks for the masked morons. She liked the boys who didn’t have brain cells, and even the few who did have some left seemed to have only used them to abuse their bodies into a sculpted submission that met her liking.
It may as well have been a fraternity for all the ‘bro’ and ‘dude’ interactions you heard around here.
I was highly intelligent, and my disinterest in everything about this shit show was evident in my posture.
But I did it.
Every fucking year, I put on the white mask with the warped smiley-face crudely carved into it, thick black marker lines accentuating the expression.
I squeezed my thick thighs into the leather black pants and let my sister, Xanthy, smear me with the congealed mix of animal blood and corn syrup. All to create the very best illusion for the masses.
I had a reputation to uphold, of course. Couldn’t disappoint the fans.
Millions of followers on multiple platforms created the adored image of me. The most ironic part was that I wasn’t putting on a persona for the posts and reels.
No.
I was nothing more than the bona fide psycho I portrayed. I showed videos of my hunts, the blood spilled from every victim, and the light as it left their eyes.
But people weren’t scared…they adored me.
Hell, they showered me with DMs of videos of themselves ‘jacking and jilling’ off to my posts.
You fucking name it, I had a picture of it. I saw everything from unsolicited pictures of dicks, tits, and feet. My comments were filled with people asking for spicy subscriptions, recalling my kills, and what I did right and wrong.
Everyone wanted to be a fucking detective, sleuthing in the illusion of safety from their cheap computer chairs. The more I shared that I was truly a killer, the more feral they became.
That’s society for you. Fucking Booktok.
“Wow, Carrington, have you been working out? I can’t even get the blood into all the ripples on your abs. Are you finally going to get a girl, little bro? For someone who cleans up dead people all day, you are fucking shredded.”
I ignored my annoying sister, Xanthy, trying to stop the quivering of my skin as her fingers glided over my body with the sticky paste of SFX makeup and blood.
I hated being touched. It’s why I always wore my black nylon gloves.
I didn’t want to fucking brush against anything, much less be groped for hours and spackled in makeup.
My day-to-day as a crime scene cleaner was quiet. Nothing like this fucking noise.
“That depraved already, Xanthy? I guess you need your imaginary boyfriend.”
She bristled and smacked me. I smiled, enjoying her reaction.
“Shiloh isn’t imaginary, asshole. We may have a long-distance relationship, but he’s been my boyfriend for a year. He is very real and just as toned as you. So, shut the fuck up before I drop one of my designer bags on your dick.”
My sister had been on edge as of late. Her long-distance boy toy created a new breed of monster in her PMS-ing ways.
Supposedly, this man was coming to the hunt.
Maybe his family demanded the fame as much as Xanthy demanded his presence for her own pleasure. He was a nerdy wannabe doctor, from what my sister said, and he was always too busy studying for his residency to show up, until now.
I didn’t give a shit either way.
My focus was on how to keep the masses entertained while I found a way to persuade my prey to take a wrong turn.
I need the fucking lake house.
It was the only destination in my mind now. I was already giving up this facade of chasing mindless drones.
“Yeahhh, Carry! What the fuck, bro? You’re ripped, my dude. What’s your regime? I need to step up my game, or you’ll be stealing all the babes this year, dude.”
How many times can one dumbass say the word dude?
Ashton’s voice grated on my nerves, and I tried to focus on my heartbeat, so the plastic knife concealing my real one didn’t end in his eye socket tonight.
“C’mon, Ash. You are pretty. Carrington is just a new beast that one can only hope to live up to.”
Now Raegan was joining in. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dim were my moron cousins, and just like me, had been roped in every year since they were old enough to put on a mask.
Stupid fundraiser bullshit.
Ashton and Raegan were from my mother’s side, and just as the stark blond hair and blue eyes showed that trait, so did the idiocy of not having an original thought run through their minds unless it was connected to their limp dicks with a marionette string.
“I’m going to kill you all.” I breathed, pushing off the vanity and walking outside.
I couldn’t handle the touch of Xanthy’s hands on my body any longer.
I just fucking couldn’t. I needed to get this adrenaline and negative energy out of my system.
When someone touched me, it always felt like ice gliding across my skin.
That hot-cold bite made me hiss from the intensity and pain.
My sense of pleasure and pain were flipped in my brain.
I didn’t feel anything but the beautiful numbness that followed…
Causing someone else intense pain was the only thing that got me off. The only orgasms I ever had in my life that weren’t faked for the fucking persona had been from my kills. Their screams, that gleam of helplessness in their fading eyes when they knew it was no use.
I loved it, craved it.
I needed it.
And right now, I needed to fucking hunt, not the cat-and-mouse toying fantasy, but the real hunt.
I didn’t bother listening to the crowd behind me, bawking like chickens at my dismissal and exit.
They were worse than flies on a horse. Always there, never quite leaving, even when you snapped at them.
Sighing, I kept to the shadows, staying away from the massive iron gate that had thousands of people standing and patiently waiting. The secret entrance to the maze was through the first abandoned house.
The flashing strobe lights, thick clouds of fake fog, and cheesy screaming from the idiot mechanic characters made my head throb instantly.
I kept going toward the back, memorizing the entire arena. I knew all the secrets, all the dark places where the cameras didn’t reach. I knew where the reporters waited to get a taste, and where the real woods began.
I was here for the quiet moments. The seconds when the game peeled away, and the real fear shone through. The moment when someone finally realized there was no safeword to stop the chase.
When they began to run from me because they knew it was life or death.
When they knew I’d won.
The sound of hushed giggling broke through the chaos of the haunted house, and when I stepped into the corn maze, I saw the two women. They were here without permission, likely sneaking through some weak link in the chained fence around the perimeter.
They were clearly drunk, staggering, and slurring words as they bumped into the maze’s edges over and over again.
This was pathetic.
Was anyone a challenge at all nowadays? Where is the fun? It’s like drowning a fucking kitten when you want to skin a fucking lion.
I walked behind them, following in their staggered steps, not bothering to hide the sound of my footfalls. My smiling mask was put into place, and all the ridiculous blood and baby oil had me shining like a dumb glittery vampire.
There were cameras all around this area. Twenty-four-hour CCTV footage was streamed in the lobby for the waiting guests, enticing and building suspense for their turns.
I couldn’t do as I wanted.
I had to divert these morons away from the cameras and into my own line of shadows.
“Excuse me, ladies.” I interrupted their giggles, trying to exude some form of frat-boy charm like my moronic cousins. The accent felt weird in my mouth, and I couldn’t help but shiver as the words seemed to soak into the stalks surrounding us.
The inebriated females stopped and turned around with zero reaction time. I could have run up and sliced both their necks, then gone back to my place in the time it had taken for them to turn around to face me.
“Oh no, Rai! We’re caught.”
Bouncing eyes stared at me like they were trying to undress me with the pure willpower of thought.
And people fear me? These book humpers are the true monsters.
“By a deliciously sexy masked man. What do we do?”
The girls hiccuped and laughed, giving me creepy, growling cat calls and plastering even more unsettling expressions on their faces.
“You’re not authorized to be here. You could get hurt. Why don’t you turn around for me and come back to the entrance? Play the game the right way?”
“Oh, em gee! Yes, Mr. Scary Masked Man. We’ll be good…if you give us a reward,” the black-haired woman gasped, gripping her redheaded friend’s shirt and squealing so loud I had to stick my fingers in my ears.
Despite the smell of vomit and reasonably priced whiskey permeating the air from their cackling breaths, I smiled.
The stupid accent broke into my own deep, gravely, vibrato.
“Sorry, darlings. I’m not very good at rewards, but I can assure you if you don’t obey me, you’ll find I’m extremely well versed in punishments.”
More giggling, more squeals. And more of my absolute best efforts not to ring their necks—cameras or not. Finally, the one girl, Rai, gripped her less ballsy friend’s arm and nodded, stumbling over to me.
The smile on my face reflected the one on my mask. Eerie and deadly.
“That’s my good girls.”