50. Black as Night
SOUNDTRACK: Rise by Tommee Profitt
~ CAIN / SAM ~
I watched Bridget get out of the car and stop, staring up at the sky and my chest squeezed.
Her dark hair, black as night, gleamed and shot sparks of gold in the dying light. Her face was pale, but her cheeks were flushed and her lips pink.
I was staring—gaping, if I was honest with myself—my heart pumping and palms sweaty because we were here. In hours, possibly minutes, I’d finally show her my face and then it would be over.
Had she brought a weapon?
She was hardly a rule-follower, so I wouldn’t put it past her. But I guessed that she wouldn’t. She wanted to win by herself.
That was, if she wanted to win at all. I hadn’t liked the desperate tone of her messages. Like she wasn’t running towards me, but away from something else.
Some one else.
There was still so much I didn’t know about her.
I ground my teeth and sank lower behind the bushes as she gave a little shudder, a ripple of unease that traveled through her body, then shook her head and started walking briskly towards the trees.
Every hair on my body stood up, and some other parts of me too. This was it. It was happening. My instincts kicked in and I started moving, following her, still scanning to make certain she hadn’t been followed. But there were no signs as I followed slowly towards the trail that was closer to where she’d started. I’d known which path she’d take and wanted her ahead of me.
I smiled as I watched her look around for me, her face tight with tension. I scanned her beautiful body, wrapped in black tonight, which seemed fitting. I was glad she’d remembered.
Then she disappeared under the shadows of the trees, and the night seemed darker already.
The park would close in a few minutes. There were only a couple other cars here, and no sign of people. But I slunk through the bushes towards that trailhead, keeping myself out of sight just in case.
I liked that she had dressed in black and would be hard to see.
I hadn’t brought my phone. I wouldn’t use the trackers. I would make this an honest to God hunt .
When I made it to the trail I kept low, darting between the trees alongside the path as quickly as I could while still keeping my steps quiet. I kept my breathing low, through an open mouth, but my body was alight, my pulse thrumming in my head.
It was happening.
It was finally happening.
She was here. And this was going to end once and for all.
Twenty minutes later my heart was thrumming, and I smiled into the dark, but she still eluded me.
I was having to watch my breathing so I wouldn’t give myself away. I knew I could move faster than her through this, and I knew the rough direction we were traveling. But I also knew she was clever and wouldn’t just walk to that clearing and wait for me.
She was making me stalk her, and my body thrilled with it.
The mask was an annoyance in the dark—the moonlight was bright tonight, but didn’t reach beneath the treetops.
Her request for me to remove it had made my heart thud in my chest.
She had no idea.
She was getting everything tonight. More than just my face.
Holy shit.
I paused in walking, listening hard, hitching up the small backpack I’d brought with a few items just in case. Including night vision goggles that would let me see, and could be set to heat sensor if I really couldn’t find her.
But I wanted to find her without all that. I wanted this to last.
A little voice in the back of my head said I was dragging it out to keep from reaching that final confrontation, but I pushed it aside.
I’d thought when she said she didn’t want to die that it was all over. That there was no more work for me to do. And under any other circumstances, it would have—
A twig snapped somewhere off to my right and I froze, smiling.
“There you are,” I breathed, grinning into the dark before creeping off in that direction as quickly as I could without giving away my own location. “I’m coming, Bridget. I’m coming for you.”
It was time to stop playing at the edges of this.
It was time to empty my mind, sink into my senses, and hunt.
SOUNDTRACK: Beast Within by In This Moment
~ brIDGET ~
I could feel him, watching.
My heart beat so hard I felt it in my fingertips. I’d started the night feeling sad and agitated, but as the darkness surrounded me and the night went quiet, I embraced this.
It was going to end either way. So why not give myself up to the hunt and enjoy it while I could?
I was smiling by the time I heard a boot scuff on a tree root.
I’d taken a wide arc through the trees in the rough direction of my clearing, but with the dark and my distraction, I wasn’t entirely sure if it was still ahead, or I’d overshot it. Still, it didn’t matter, because I could feel him getting closer. It made my breath shake and my skin prickle. It was terrifying and delicious, and I could hardly wait until he got his hands on me.
But since this was the last time, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him to catch me.
I’d always said I would go out fighting, and I had every intention of doing exactly that. So, I kept my hands clenched to fists in preparation. I crept through the dark, sweating a little bit, but keeping my pace slow so that I could stay quiet and force him to find me.
There was a rustle in the bushes off to my right and I froze, heart pounding, breath coming faster and faster.
The explosion, when it came, was low to the ground—a snap and flutter of wings, quickly followed by a small shriek as an animal lost it’s life.
My heartrate spiked, then dropped quickly when I realized it wasn’t Cain, but a totally natural kind of predator.
I slumped, clutching my chest and shaking my head.
“Fucking anticlimax,” I muttered under my breath, turning in the direction I thought the clearing was in—just as a shadow moved on the edge of my vision.
I went still again, not breathing at all, waiting, peering into the dark, every one of my senses heightened and alert.
And then the shadow of a tree separated from its brothers about twenty feet away, and I caught the shape of a large, hooded male body.
I bolted.
I wasn’t even trying to be quiet—he was stronger and faster than me, but not as light on his feet. My only hope of staying out of his hands was to keep my path unpredictable.
I sprinted between trees, tripping over tree roots, my shins scraped by brambles.
Then I turned sharply on the back side of a large tree, praying he was close enough behind me to overshoot and have to double back when he realized I wasn’t ahead of him anymore—and instead, ran into a steel bar halfway around the tree.
At least, that’s how it felt.
Every ounce of air in my lungs whooshed out with an oof as that bar caught me right in the middle. My feet swung up, my arms shot forward as my momentum bent me almost in half over his arm.
He swept me up into his chest, clapping the other hand over my mouth and leaning into my ear.
“Hey, beautiful,” he rasped in that gravelly, deep voice that made my blood shiver. “Lovely night for a hunt.”