Chapter 15
fifteen
It’s a chilly autumn evening filled with fog and dread.
Part of me feels like Christine meeting the Phantom beneath the Opera as I enter the unlocked sanctuary doors.
My footsteps slap across the stones, echoing up to the vast, buttressed ceiling.
I’ve never been in the catacombs, but there’s a first time for everything.
And if my stalker shows up tonight, well…he’ll already be in the right place.
The hilt trembles in my hand as I flick my blade open, holding it in front of me.
I rarely wear jeans. Rarer still that I carry a weapon. But here I am, treading carefully down the steps, headed either toward my demise…or his.
Why did I decide to do this? I’m now regretting my decision-making capacity. I felt so self-assured in the daylight. Like maybe my father was right about me all along. That the girl who wields strength like second nature was just under the surface.
Now, I think about turning around and hiding in my bed.
But there’s this person inside of me. One I feel like I could know if only the bad stuff hadn’t happened to me.
And she’s screaming to get out.
As I take a step down the path, it feels as if she’s drawn closer to the surface.
Flickering candles create spectral flames that dance along the corridor. When I reach the main landing, I’m shocked by how clean it is. Tidy. Almost reverent. But the air is too still. This antechamber is a mask—something curated to deceive.
A chalk arrow points toward a heavy wooden door, its iron hinges dusted with rust. It stands slightly ajar. A tall, dark figure disappears through it, just far enough ahead to quicken my pulse.
I follow.
Through the door stretches a narrow stone hallway. The sconces are fewer here, the shadows longer. As the wall curves left, something scrawled in white chalk catches my eye.
With a creeping step, I approach to read the words.
Pig. Thick Livy. Ogre. Unfuckable.
My breath catches. Every word hits like a blade to the chest. The exact insults I’ve heard since I was twelve years old. Childhood playground cruelty etched into stone. Each one makes my eyes well up with hatred and pain. How dare he?
I stagger past them, blinking hard. My jaw locks. Rage wars with humiliation inside me—old wounds ripped open raw in a single glance.
Just around the next bend, the door I came through slams shut. A scream rips from my lungs as every muscle jumps inside me. Rushing back the way I came, I try to press my weight against it, but it won’t budge.
I’m trapped.
The only way out…is forward.
With a tight throat, I swallow hard and turn back, facing those chalked words again. I hate that they still sting. Detest more that he knew exactly what would cut the deepest. Around the next bend in the stone walls, my stomach churns as more shine like diamonds against the weeping stones.
A fraud. No personality. Annoying. Cold as ice.
“I have a word!” I scream, my voice ricocheting down the stone corridor, tears spilling over onto my cheeks. “Asshole!”
Somewhere ahead, another door slams with finality. The sound of dread.
Reality settles in as the air shifts. He’s not just stalking me. He’s trapping me with the worst of myself written on the walls. Weakening me before he slaughters me?
Is this like the word HUSH he carved on Naomi’s belly?
Will he mark me with these labels, too?
Swiping at my nose with the back of my hand, I point the sharp end of my knife toward the far end of the hall. The hooded figure shifts behind the iron window in the door. With careful steps, I approach, but halt near the end.
On a wall, plastered onto the surface, are copies of ripped pages from my diary. My words. Scraps of pages of me calling myself those very names. Paragraphs discussing how they were all right. My eyes blur as they well with burning emotion. Every passage I read cuts me deeper.
“Do you believe them?” The voice shatters me back to reality.
“Wha-what?” I whisper.
“Do you believe what you wrote? Do you believe what people say about you?”
It takes a long moment to swallow back any ego I have left. But finally, I’m able to speak. “Yes.”
“You’re weak.”
His words hit harder than the insults.
I gasp and spin to face him. “Fuck you.”
“You’re weak for believing them. You already know the truth.”
“What is this? Fuck you—you don’t know anything about me!”
A haunting laugh floats off the walls. Even though I’m infuriated, heated by his words, I shiver at the sound. “Don’t I?”
He’s read my diary and is using it against me. “Just because you read some words—”
“I see you, Chrysalis. But more than that, I see who you can become.”
His masked face disappears from the window, vanishing into the darkness beyond, and I rage. Everything within me heats, my blood boiling. He gets me to admit the worst about myself, then says I’m weak?
He doesn’t know who he’s testing. I’ve survived much worse than this…
Every injustice I’ve faced surfaces until I’m seething. No one should’ve ever treated me this way.
With a shoulder shoved hard against the door, it rattles. Another few pushes and the lock slides ajar. My breaths are heavy with fury and exertion.
I burst through into a darkened passage. A tiny cavern lined with skeletons. Up ahead in the distance, a few flickering flames dance across an altar…made entirely of skulls and bones. Atop the pile of rubble is a laptop, standing open.
“Where are you?” I ask through gritted teeth, but there’s no answer. He could easily be hiding behind one of the old stone coffins.
Curiosity urges me forward to press play on a video sitting ready on his computer.
It’s a second until I realize exactly where the footage is from: a security camera inside an escape room from Terror Tuesday.
The footage my brother had to give up? No…
this appears to be from a different angle than the cameras I saw.
Was this from Vanq’s hidden camera?
A sick animal sound chokes the back of my throat when I spot Naomi’s group entering.
It’s the motel room. As the girls explore, none of them notices a round man, covered in black, emerge from the shadows.
Not until he revs the chainsaw and slices through the first of his victims. Then, they scatter in terror, but are unable to flee, despite their struggles to pull the doors open.
The scene cuts to the rain outside. A hooded man attempts to enter one of the cottages without success.
Squinting my eyes, I peer at him until I recognize Vanq…
He’s doing something to the lock on the last door.
Seemingly frantic, he tugs on the handle, but it’s not budging, and he goes back to work on the keypad again using some tools I don’t recognize.
Another quick flip on the screen shows a different room… Naomi screaming, terrified. She rushes through the door of the altar room and shoves against the wall, making herself small. There isn’t any sound on the footage, but her chest heaves as her mouth opens wide in a silent scream.
I lurch away from the screen, hand over my throat. Horror settles in every nerve ending until I want to dig them all out.
But I can’t look away. I owe her that much.
The camera flashes to me in the first room, working the clues, blissfully unaware I’m only a few cottages away from horrific slaughter. It’s difficult to swallow past my tightened throat. I was so close to the danger… If only I were quicker. Could I have saved them?
By the time the camera cuts to Naomi again, the large man stands over her dead body with a butcher’s knife, carefully carving his message into her before binding her floppy arms and legs in a showcase. And then he circles back to get me…
Only he couldn’t.
Because Vanq saved me.
I’m shaking by the time the masked man materializes from the eclipse of the crypts.
Heavy boots thud a little too softly for his frame.
He’s built, but not big. The scent of candle wax and smoke lingers around him like an oath.
Tall and foreboding, he stands a few feet away from me as I jab my blade toward his chest.
But even while doing the motion, I’m not sure I even need to anymore…
Is he like my dark guardian angel?
My tight fist trembles, but not from fear any longer. Something stranger. Something hotter. Thighs tense like I’m preparing to run, but the heat there says otherwise. Just his presence has already primed me for more…
“Do you know what you just watched?” he asks, voice low and intimate as he creeps one step forward.
I nod. “The truth.”
“No,” he corrects gently. “Just the beginning of it.”
As my lips part to ask what he means, he moves closer. I can smell cold iron on his dark hoodie. I know there’s dried blood on his gloves—the same from that night I met him. But something about it makes my pulse beat between my legs.
“You watched me,” I whisper, gaze flicking to the shadow where his face should be. “On the surveillance cameras. You could’ve let that monster take me too.”
Rapidly, he shakes his head. “No. I wouldn’t let anyone touch you,” he says. “Not when I’ve read every page of your pain. When I’ve stitched every need you have into my soul. Just so I can be the one to give them to you.”
I exhale shakily, my knees going weak. “You shouldn’t have… You shouldn’t know what I need.”
He shrugs. “But I do.” With his full height at least a foot taller than me, he leans over to whisper in my ear. “You don’t want to be rescued. You want release—from the cage they called a future.”
Tears fill my eyes. Some part of me should hate that he understands me so much better than I know myself. The other…is comforted that he’s sharing the truth in a world of confusion and lies.
When he straightens, his foreboding figure looms over me. “Only the strongest submit by choice. And you, my Monarch, are stronger than you know.”
Despite my heart pounding against my ribs, I close the knife and slip it in my pocket. Straightening my shoulders, I say, “You helped me.”
His voice is deep, calm, and smooth. “I did.”
“Why?”
“The answer to that question can only be given once you kneel before me.” He waves his gloved palms at the stones in front of him.
With a glance around at the demented wedding ceremony he’s set up, I scan his frame once more. Considering him. The warped sense of safety that he provides. Does he have the answers I’m looking for?
Why did he bring me here?
Why was Naomi killed?
And why… Why has this man taken such an interest in me?
If I lower myself to my stalker, I might never be free again. But maybe freedom was never the point.
What if I long for things that are bad for me because Reggie messed my brain up so bad, I think I deserve it?
Vanq leans forward with anticipation, and I make a decision that I know will change my life… I feel that creature I’ve become ripping her way out of my skin and letting the darkness creep in.
Keeping my eyes on my stalker’s mask, I slowly kneel in front of him and bow my head.
And I let her escape.