Chapter 47
Rain smacked against the windshield like fists, hammering my skull with every fucking heartbeat.
Where is she?
My hands gripped the wheel so tight it hurt, my knuckles turning white while I couldn’t stop shaking. Vodka burned in my stomach and throat, buzzing like bees in my veins. It mixed with fear until I felt like I might explode from the inside out.
Xanthy’s last words haunted me on the phone.
“Shiloh…please…please just listen. I need you to go back to where it began. Please…for me.”
Her voice had sounded cracked and fragile, and it kept looping in my head like a broken record. There had been a loud crack and then nothing but silence. Nothing. Just a dead signal.
I slammed my palm against the wheel.
“Goddammit, Xanthy,” I screamed, my voice raw, carried off with the storm. “Goddammit!”
The mansion loomed ahead, dark windows and jagged shadows, while the rain streaked the drive into slick, treacherous lines of eerie gray.
My tires hissed against the wet asphalt as I skidded to a stop, my engine screaming like my mind.
My stomach twisted. Panic clawed up my throat. No cars were here.
Fuck!
She was supposed to be here.
Supposed to tell me it was okay.
Supposed to make me remember why the fuck I chose her over…
I stumbled out of the car, the thick rain soaking my jacket, and plastering my hair to my forehead. My fingers were fucking numb, and my teeth chattered.
I tried the front door.
Locked.
“Of course it’s fucking locked,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Of course.”
I rattled the handle and listened to the deadbolt resist. Nothing. I pounded with my fists, desperate, as the adrenaline sliced through the vodka fog in my mind. “Xanthy, open the door. Please, damn it.”
The sky swallowed my voice, but nothing answered.
I stumbled backward, my heart hammering while I tried to catch a breath.
Fuck it.
I dug around until I felt a sizable rock and hurled it into the glass window of the door. No alarms blared when it made impact…the security system must not have been armed.
“Xanthy?”
Inside, the hallways stretched before me, dark and distorted. Every sound, whether the creak of the floorboards or the thumping of rain in the gutters outside…it all felt like a scream in my ears.
Then I saw it.
A mask.
A smiley face, crude mask, painted with dark red.
Fresh blood.
I froze while my stomach turned over and nausea twisted my gut.
Blood. Real blood. Not a joke. Not a prank. Real. And not just an animal.
It smelled too bitter. This was human blood, too.
I sank to my knees beside the mask, my hands trembling while my fingers hovered above the plastic. My mind spun around and around, trying to make sense of this.
The storm outside rivaled the storm in my head. Rain mixed with fear. Fear mixed with vodka. All of it swirled around until I couldn’t sense anything else.
I heard my own voice echo back at me. “Xanthy…where are you?”
No answer.
The mask seemed to grow in my hand, my mind warping the smile into a cynical grin. Drenched in blood, dripping and vibrating under my palm.
I nearly collapsed. The adrenaline hit harder, keeping me awake as it mixed with the alcohol and panic until breathing felt impossible. And then, everything clicked at once like a gun.
Xanthy alone.
The phone call.
The messages.
Her voice was trembling.
“Go back to where it began.”
Carrington.
I felt my knees give out completely. The room swayed. The mask stared at me like warped horrors. My hands shook violently.
“No…he wouldn’t.”
I scrambled to my feet, stumbling down the hallway, knocking over a chair. The floorboards moaned under my weight as I called a new name out into the dark hallway.
“Carrington…where the fuck are you?” My voice cracked, raw and desperate. “Where’s Xanthy?”
No one answered.
There were just shadows, and the rain as it drummed on the roof above me, mocking my existence.
My mind flared. Memories of Xanthy, scared and trusting. Memories of Carrington, cold and precise. Every detail of their faces, their movements, flashed through my mind. My hands clenched in anger. My knees buckled again, and I dropped to the floor, pressing my forehead to the mask.
I whispered, fear and rage swirling inside me. “What the fuck have you done, Care Bear?”
I moved from room to room, stumbling over furniture, knocking into walls, trying to make sense of this shit.
The electricity was off, and as I stumbled around, the hallways seemed endless, darkened mirrors reflecting shadows that weren’t there.
The storm outside roared in my ears, and I pressed my hands over them, trying to block out the booming thunder.
I called her phone again…nothing, not even a dial tone.
I pressed my palms to my face, breathing shallow as I tried to focus, tried to hold the pieces together. Carrington had been three steps ahead.
All the messages.
The instructions.
The call.
It had been a setup.
A trap.
For me.
I thought of Xanthy, curled up, terrified, maybe drugged, maybe dead already. My stomach felt empty. I almost felt the cold grip of her fear, and it didn’t feel good. I felt guilty.
And the masks…those grins.
They weren’t just toys. They were messages.
Warnings.
Proof.
A gift.
I stumbled into the study. My eyes scanned the room. Empty except for the shadows that pooled in the corners. And then I saw a smudge of red—a trail of blood, faint but unmistakable, leading to the basement stairs.
My heart leapt into my throat. My legs wanted to run, but my mind screamed at me to leave. But something inside me reminded me that this was my fault. The raw, desperate need to make sure she was okay pushed me forward.
I descended slowly. Every creak of the stairs was like a fucking hammer against my skull. The mask glimmered in the dim light, every speck of red a warning and a promise. There was going to be a horror show to witness.
At the bottom, the air smelled of damp rust, and something sharper…iron? I stumbled into a room I hadn’t noticed before. And there, in the corner, there was a chair, tied to the floor. It was empty, except for a single ragged blanket tossed aside.
I froze. The rain outside sounded like a drumbeat now, and I panicked.
Carrington didn’t leave her.
He is here.
Somewhere.
Watching.
Waiting.
For me.
Every step I’d taken, every heartbeat, had been exactly where he wanted me. I had to divert this path and catch him off guard.
The storm outside, the masks, the darkness…they weren’t just decoration. They were the edge of the world Carrington had built.
And I was falling in deeper.
I dropped to my knees, shaking. Tears burned my eyes, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t think. All I could do was sit there, surrounded by the proof of my failure, whispering her name.
“Xanthy…Care Bear, please…please let her be okay.”
Whatever Carrington had planned…there was no going back.
The storm outside raged on like a living, fucking beast, beyond the walls of the mansion. I knew I couldn’t outrun my hunter. He always had me in his sight. The floorboards creaked in the silence of the room like they were waiting.
I sat there, looking out on my knees, because so was I.