Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
DAPHNE
Daphne planned to hightail it to the shower, but Candace was waiting to ambush her outside.
Biting the inside of her cheek, her path veered sharply into the patch of woods between the dining hall and dorms. Students sometimes hiked or made out in here.
Thankfully, it was empty. Daphne plunked down on a fallen log, clutching her shaking hands together until her knuckles turned white.
If she confronted Candace, it’d get bloody.
Her anger burned at a low simmer, cold and calculating as she quietly planned her revenge on Alex’s little groupie.
The fact they were still coming after her, months after the break-up, proved ignoring the problem wasn’t working.
She’d let Alex get away with his petty antics for too long.
An idea was already forming when twigs snapped.
Somebody had entered the woods. Daphne slid down, using the log as cover as Candace crunched through the fallen leaves, clearly looking for someone.
Idiot must have decided she wanted to escalate their disagreement.
Daphne braced herself just as Candace jerked her head in the opposite direction.
She followed the other woman’s gaze and froze.
Celeste leaned against a tree, her arms stretched over her head.
The pose lifted her breasts and exposed the creamy pale flesh of her midriff.
Aside from the placement of her limbs, her expression was completely slack as Candace rushed her.
Daphne tensed, wondering if the other woman was about to attack her—and she did, though not how she expected.
Candace crashed in a heap at Celeste’s feet, wrapping her arms around her legs. She pressed her face against the other woman’s exposed midriff with a soft sigh of relief, as if she were desperate to be near Celeste.
Daphne’s mind scrambled to observe and decipher what was happening because something was happening.
Candace was an Alex groupie, one of the many women he kept up a casual tryst with and had a boyfriend on the side.
Yet she clasped onto Celeste with trembling limbs.
From this angle, Daphne could just make out the worshipful expression on Candace’s face.
The expression on Celeste’s face was serene, except for the predatory glint in her gaze. There was a heaviness to the scene, pregnant with tension. A viper ready to strike an entranced rat.
Daphne relaxed, settling back against the log to watch.
In the deepening dark, she almost missed their appearance: tentacles slithering through the air as they wrapped around Candace, surrounding her.
More appeared, emerging from the space around Celeste, from within Celeste, wrapping, twisting, winding…
but there was a moment where her prey’s primitive hindbrain broke through. Candace bucked with a cry of terror.
Celeste slapped a human hand over her mouth. “Now, now sugar. Be sweet and enjoy the ride.” The woman fell silent, and Celeste’s human facade continued to crack and peel away.
Sweat beaded on Daphne’s forehead. She knew when her deepest, most primitive instincts screamed at her that she was witnessing something the human mind couldn’t handle.
At the last second, before reality fractured, she snapped her eyes shut, listening to the slick wet sounds, the pull of flesh against flesh.
Candace sighed, contentment in her tone at odds with her situation.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice breathy and soft.
“Thank you.” As if Celeste answered her prayers. The platitudes soon went quiet.
Daphne didn’t dare open her eyes because there were other sounds now: the crunch of breaking bones, a rhythmic squelch she realized was chewing.
She waited, quiet and still, while the predator finished her meal.
Likely because she was satiated, Celeste appeared to miss her presence.
Of course she didn’t bank on that observation.
Daphne counted seconds in her head until the sensation of mental unease finally subsided.
Celeste was already making her way out of the woods, hips swaying and steps silent. Daphne settled back against the log and turned over her thoughts.
She, not Candace, had been Celeste’s intended meal.
Part of Daphne knew she should be horrified by that realization, but it was the part of her who tried to conform to what others expected of her.
She was more curious how Celeste had lured Candace into the woods.
Some sort of scent baiting? That would explain the surge of fluttery feelings she got when she found her in the library, except she was currently absent from Celeste’s presence and she’d just witnessed her consuming another student.
That combination should allow her survival instincts to override whatever Celeste emitted.
Maybe it was a natural allure, or maybe it was her choice to switch targets and gobble down one of Daphne’s tormentors directly after their confrontation. The fluttery feelings remained.
Daphne nibbled on her lip. There were definite complications to romantically pursuing a carnivorous, tentacled eldritch horror.
For one, she wanted to explore these budding feelings and see where they led—if she could do so without being eaten.
There was also that small issue with her inner monkey brain going apeshit when Celeste dropped her human guise.
Daphne wasn’t sure what the innate urge to close her eyes meant, but it was another obstacle.
Shifting, she blushed at the dampness in her underwear that had nothing to do with the soda.
No, Celeste’s monstrous form wasn’t a dealbreaker either.
Because Celeste could have hunted down any student after she left.
If, at any point, Celeste noticed her presence and kept going, well, that was practically flirting.
Daphne simply had to figure out how to court her.
What could she offer an eldritch entity capable of taking what they wanted? Daphne wondered if Celeste was allergic to formaldehyde.