19. SIREN
19
SIREN
P lacing the hot bowl of spaghetti bolognese down on my new kitchen counter, I stand back and smile, knowing Shadow would appreciate this. After meeting with her a few nights ago in the luxury hotel restaurant that was too fancy for a standard chicken parmigiana, I’ve been sticking to my word and doing everything I can to make sure the kid eats a healthy meal every day.
Even after my small villa was shot up and turned into a house-sized strainer, I still took the risk and welcomed her into my new place. It only took her a few hours to figure out where I’m staying now, and honestly, it couldn’t have been that hard.
I’m still at the holiday resort but in a whole new villa. Though, this one is more like a fancy suite, and while it’s a little more risky staying here, I couldn’t resist. There’s something about this little holiday resort that’s really started to grow on me. Perhaps it’s the pool and the short walk to the lake that gets me. Either way, I’m content here for a little while.
I place a spoon and a fork down beside the bowl of spaghetti before adding a soda and a to-go bag filled with a fresh sandwich, a piece of fruit, and a bottle of water, knowing damn well the kid can’t survive on her own. I haven’t yet figured out where she’s sleeping every night, but I hope she’s safe. Either way, I’ve left blankets on the sofa every night, hoping she’ll take me up on my offer, but so far, she hasn’t allowed herself to trust me enough to let her guard that far down. I swear, she’s probably the type to sleep with one eye open. I wonder if she even knows what it’s actually like to be a regular child. Has she ever experienced jumping over the waves at the beach or building sandcastles? Did she ever learn how to ride a bike, or did she even have a baby doll to play with as a little girl?
My heart breaks for her, but knowing there’s nothing more I can do until she’s comfortable trusting me, I go for a walk, leaving her to be at peace in my new little suite.
I make my way down to the lake, strolling along the shore and holding my shoes as I drag my feet through the cool water. It truly is beautiful down here, and if this town wasn’t tainted by the aftermath of War Games, this would probably be somewhere I’d like to settle down one day. You know, way in the future after I’ve retired. Assuming I somehow make it out of here alive. Not that I have high hopes with Shadow as a contender, but if I have to lose, I’m glad it’s for her.
On the other hand, Reaper would carve his own heart out and offer it to her on a silver platter if it meant that she would live.
It’s only been a few days since he showed up in my villa and tried to take my life, and since then, we’ve spent more time together than I could have anticipated. To be fair, most of that time is spent naked with our bodies grinding together, but when we’re not, he happily sits beside me on the couch, both of us with our laptops open, working on tracking the remaining five contenders.
So much for not wanting to work together. He’s doing it without even realizing, but having someone to bounce ideas off has come so naturally to him. To be honest, I don’t even know if he realizes that we’ve been working as a team, but when that moment comes, I’m sure it’ll be the equivalent of being punched right in the vag.
Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I bring up Mila’s number and chat with her for over an hour as I make the full walk around the lake while ignoring the security notifications rolling in, letting me know Shadow arrived at my suite and is happily annihilating her dinner.
As I make my way under the bridge, I tell Mila every little detail of the time I’ve spent with Reaper over the last few days, but I stop and cringe when I see the familiar dark stain on the concrete leading to the bushes. I assume Raven’s body is still hidden deep within the garden because she hasn’t made the headlines yet. And knowing I shouldn’t be anywhere near this crime scene, I decide it’s probably time to head back.
Shadow isn’t exactly comfortable with company, especially company she doesn’t fully trust, but I was hoping to catch her before she left, maybe try to get to know her a little better. After all, she’s been dropping by for dinner for the past few nights without fail, and maybe that’s enough for her to realize that I’m the kind of woman who sticks to her word.
After making my way back into the resort, I stride to my door, making my presence obvious as I walk up onto the front deck and enter the access code. I dangle my bag a little and fake a cough just to give her the extra warning in case she’s not ready and wants to slip out the back, then I turn the handle and step into my little suite.
The suite is quiet as I walk in, no familiar sound of a fork scraping the bottom of a bowl or a chair shuffling across the floor. My brows furrow, and I walk deeper into the suite, desperate to figure out where she is or if she’s even still here at all.
I creep toward the kitchen with my hands out, trying to show her that I mean her no harm, and just as I turn the corner to peer into the kitchen, a hand shoots out of nowhere pressing a drenched cloth over my nose and mouth.
Panic blasts through me. I only have mere seconds to save myself before the chloroform knocks me unconscious, and I become a puppet for the master to manipulate. I try to fight this person off, having no idea who stands at my back, but as the chloroform begins to take effect, I quickly grow weaker.
My heart races as I claw at the hands blocking my airway, and when my lungs begin to scream for sweet oxygen, I’m left with no choice but to take a deep, gasping breath, sucking in nothing but pure chloroform.
Darkness dances behind my eyes, and just as my body begins to give in to the rich, lethal chemical, a flash of bright red hair cuts across my vision. My mind tries to make sense of it, tries to figure out exactly what I’m seeing, but the dizziness rushes over me, and not a second later, everything goes dark.
A laugh breaks through my unconsciousness, and I force my eyes open despite the fogginess clouding my mind. My head pounds, and there’s no telling just how long I’ve been out cold. A flash of red cuts through my grogginess, and I try to focus on the room around me, but the splashing sounds make it hard to concentrate.
What the fuck is going on?
I come in and out of consciousness, my body determined to give in to the dizziness, but I’m not having it. Whatever the fuck is going on here, I’m not about to succumb to it. I’m not dying today, nor am I about to die barely halfway through the games. I’m no runner-up, and I’m sure as fuck not the type to get participation awards. I win. I’ve always won, and today isn’t going to be any different.
Focusing on the red blob until it finally begins to take form, I see a woman with blazing red hair, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out this is Gasoline—the woman Eagle warned me about. This is exactly what she did to her, and while Eagle was lucky enough to escape with her life, she was left with deep scars. Despite everything I did to Eagle, it was Gasoline who terrified her, and that speaks volumes.
I watch the older woman for a moment, trying to make sense of everything around me. I’m still in my little suite at the holiday resort, sitting in one of the chairs by the dining table, and as she goes around the small suite, the smell of gasoline assaults my senses.
My brows furrow, and I blink through the fogginess, realizing that she’s dousing the suite and preparing for one hell of a blaze.
Panic soars through my chest, and the reality of my situation sobers me. She’s going to burn me alive, just as she tried to do to Eagle. Only this time, she’s already had a failed attempt, so I can guarantee she learned from her mistakes. She doesn’t intend to fail twice.
I’m fucked.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I have to get out of here.
As the woman circles the suite, murmuring to herself, I pull against my heavy limbs, quickly realizing just how dire my situation is. I’m not only chained to a chair, but the chair has also been chained to the heavy table, leaving me no hope of escape.
I pull at my bound wrists and ankles, my heart booming loudly in my ears. The headache is intense, and the fogginess threatens to knock me out again, but I do everything in my power to keep myself from failing. My wrists quickly turn bloody from the way I pull at my binds, and after trying for much longer than I should, I realize just how hopeless this is.
I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to die right here in this chair, burned alive. If I’m lucky, the smoke inhalation will kill me first, and if I’m not . . . I guess I’m about to discover how it feels to have your flesh burn right off your body.
“Ahhh, well look who decided to join the party,” Gasoline chimes as she glances up from dousing the couch in gas. “I was worried you were never going to come to, and that just doesn’t seem like any fun. What’s the point of burning someone alive if they’re not even conscious enough to hear their screams?”
Holy fucking shit. This woman is batshit crazy.
She moves on from the living room, leaving a thick trail of gas as she struts through the small kitchen, making sure she doesn’t miss even an inch of the suite. “You know, it was appallingly easy to track you down,” she tells me. “At first, I thought you were going to be a threat. Your name has this whole stigma about it, and I foolishly believed it to be true. Yet here you are, taken down without even the hint of a fight. Kinda disappointing actually.”
I clench my jaw, not willing to give her the satisfaction of seeing my fear, but my lack of response doesn’t seem to bother her. Hell, she doesn’t even look at me as she continues with her little taunts.
“I’ve been tracking you for days, and if it weren’t for that dumbass Boneyard Slayer shooting up that other place, I probably wouldn’t have found you at all, so you have him to thank for your untimely death,” she explains. “Though I have to admit, you let me down.”
I can’t help the scoff that tears out of my mouth. “Oh please. Tell me how exactly I managed to do that.”
“Ahhhh, Princess Barbie finally joins the conversation.” The redhead claps her hands before turning her wicked stare on me, only after dealing with the lethal one of Reaper’s, hers is nothing but child’s play. “I wanted to see how the elite live, steal your tricks of the trade, and gather what information you’d been able to find on the other contenders, but it’s become more than clear that you have nothing, and instead of spending your time doing recon, you’ve been too busy getting your rocks off with Reaper. You’re pathetic, not even a hint of a trace on the other contenders, just some whore bitch, waiting around like a sitting duck, just begging to be picked off. You’re so fucking pathetic, you didn’t even see me coming.”
I roll my eyes and instantly regret it as the subtle movement does nothing but make my headache that much worse. “That’s where you’re wrong,” I tell her. “But it’s not my fault you just have no idea where to look. I know every detail about every last contender. I know where they’re staying, where they go for lunch, and when they took their last shit. I know everything about you, bitch. I know how you killed your whole family, burned them alive, and then went fucking crazy. You’ve spent more time in mental hospitals than out of them.”
Gasoline roars in anger, and it’s clear she doesn’t appreciate being insulted, but honestly, I couldn’t give a shit. It’s not as though sweet-talking her and being her best friend is somehow going to get me out of here.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” she snaps, throwing the gas at me, drenching me from head to toe. She steps right into me, holds the gas can above my head, and begins to pour it over my hair, letting it cover my face in some bullshit attempt at trying to waterboard me. “Say what you want, but it won’t fucking matter when I’m through with you.”
I sputter over the gas pouring down my face, and I’m grateful when the can runs empty. She huffs and throws it aside, but one thing is for sure, I’m not just screwed, I’m completely fucked.
“Don’t mind me,” she says, patting down my pockets and grinning to herself as she finds exactly what she’s looking for. She digs into my pocket and pulls out the stack of eight IDs I’ve been collecting over the past two weeks. “Oh my, you really have been busy. Perhaps I underestimated you after all. Guess that really doesn’t matter now.”
She slides the stack into her back pocket before continuing to pat me down until she finds mine. I’ve kept it separate this whole time. “Ahh, here we go,” she chimes as she holds up the little identification card. “Kienna James. Hmm, I took you as a Jessa or a Katie, something a little streamline for a streamlined bitch like you.”
The sound of my legal name on her tongue is worse than the thought of being burned alive. I have to clench my jaw to not take the bait, despite how it has my stomach clenching in agony.
“You know, this is the one mistake I made with Eagle,” she tells me. “I was going to go back for her ID after she was dead, but the bitch got loose and escaped. Even if she had escaped, she would have been as good as dead without her ID. Just like you are now.”
“You’re a fucking joke,” I tell her. “Your mistake wasn’t just not taking her ID, it was assuming it would still be there after her body burned. What kind of dumbass are you?”
She clenches her jaw. “Call me a dumbass all you want, but you’re the one doused in gasoline and chained to a fucking chair,” she tells me before turning her back and making her way to the door. “See you in hell, bitch.”
And with that, she pulls out a packet of matches from her pocket, lights one, and as she stares at the small flame at the end of the match, she grins, truly getting off on this shit.
The moment seems to drag out forever and as she tosses the lit match back into the small suite, I watch with horror as it falls to the ground and quickly takes effect. I hear the door slam, but my attention is focused solely on the flames quickly licking through the suite.
“Fuck. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK!”
I tear at my binds, my bloody wrists screaming in protest as the flames create a thick smoke that immediately fills my lungs.
The panic is like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life, and all I can do is sit back and watch as thick, raging flames spread through the suite. At least this way, Reaper doesn’t have to worry about killing me himself because at the rate these flames are turning into a full blaze, there’s no saving me now.
The couch catches light, sending the flames soaring so much closer toward me as the locked suite quickly becomes overwhelmed with thick, billowing smoke, leaving nowhere for it to escape.
The heat is like nothing I’ve ever known, and as my skin starts to sting from the heat of the flaming couch, I cry out in agony, knowing it’s only going to get a million times worse. Fear grips me in a chokehold as tears stream down my face. I’m not ready to die, but tonight I’ll meet my maker.
I start to cough, my lungs desperate for sweet oxygen, but all I inhale is the thick smoke clouding the air. It’s too much, and as the flames lick closer and closer, the heat becomes unbearable. I cry out, screaming for help. There must be someone in this resort who can help, but who the fuck is going to run into a fire like this? They’ll be better off running as far as their legs can take them.
My lungs scream in agony, and as I take shallow, desperate breaths, I realize this is it, and I pray to whoever exists above that the smoke claims me before the flames do.
My vision blurs, and I will myself to succumb quickly as I cough and sputter over the thick smoke, choking on it as it bears down on me, suffocating me with its intense force. The coughing claims me, and just as my head lolls and the unconsciousness creeps back in, a shadow cuts through the smoke, pulling at my bound wrists, but it’s too late.
There’s no saving me now.