Chapter 14 #2
I dart left, bare knees scraping cornstalks, and stifle my giggle with both hands. The maze devours me, fog curling like it wants to hide me from them. My heart slams, high on terror, high on glee.
“October!” Bonehead bellows, and it echoes like thunder. But he’s laughing. Laughing like a dog who’s scented blood. “I smell you!”
“Creepy,” I mutter, delighted.
Skully’s voice slices closer, sarcastic even as it frays at the edges. “Oh, I love this. Great idea, Final Girl. Hide in a corn coffin, make us feral. You want us to find you? We’ll find you.”
And Marrow—oh, Marrow—his voice is quiet, intimate, floating through the stalks like silk over a blade. “Beloved, you turn the hunt into a sacrament. Do you know how dangerous that is?”
I bite my knuckle, trying not to moan at the way he says dangerous.
The corn rattles behind me. Heavy footfalls. Bonehead, smashing through like a wrecking ball. I duck and sprint the other way, laughter bubbling out of me. I crash into a false wall, turn, stumble, and run again. My lungs burn but my grin doesn’t crack.
They’re close. So close.
Skully’s lighter clicks once, twice, fire flaring through the fog, and I see his grin for just a heartbeat before I whip away. Bonehead barrels past a scare-actor who shrieks in genuine panic. Marrow’s shadow glides along the row like death in a tailored suit.
Shit. Dead-end. I turn and whip around a corner and slam straight into a wall of muscle. Bonehead. His hands are on me before I can squeal, pinning me to the corn, stalks snapping under my spine.
“Caught you,” he growls, voice low enough to vibrate through my ribs. His grin is a slash of teeth in the lantern glow, wild, triumphant.
My gasp turns into a laugh as he cages me in.
His mouth finds mine, hot and clumsy and hungry, like kissing is just another kind of collision.
His tongue tastes like dirt and sugar, like he’s been eating the night alive.
One big hand fists in my hair, the other shoves my thigh up around his hip, grinding me against him like he could rut straight through denim.
I arch into it, breath sharp, nails biting into his shoulders. “Mine,” I pant against his mouth.
“Yours,” he growls back, and kisses me harder.
For a moment I let it consume me—the press of him, the snap of corn breaking around us, the fog curling jealous fingers into the heat we’re making.
My laugh breaks on a moan. I can hear Skully and Marrow crashing closer, voices sharp with hunger, and it only makes me bite Bonehead’s lip until he hisses.
Then, quick as a spark, I shove at his chest. He staggers back a step, more surprised than angry, and I duck under his arm with a wicked grin.
“Too slow,” I call, sprinting into the maze again.
Bonehead’s laugh bellows after me, wild and delighted. Skully’s voice follows, sharp and filthy: “Oh, you’re fucked now.”
I tear down the path, corn whipping my cheeks, mascara stinging my eyes. Two actors leap out at me—one in a rubber pig mask, one wielding a foam axe—and freeze like deer caught in headlights when I barrel straight at them.
“Nice try!” I sing, ducking under the axe and blowing the pig a kiss. “But I’m already being hunted by hotter monsters!”
They gape, helpless, as I vanish into the fog.
Behind me comes the crash of Bonehead’s boots, the flicker of Skully’s lighter, the hiss of Marrow’s words turning into scripture.
The actors don’t even jump out again; they press themselves flat into the stalks, whispering what the fuck like they’ve seen a real haunting.
I keep running, lungs burning sweet, until the next bend—and then Skully is there, sliding out of the shadows like he owns them. He catches me by the wrist, yanks me against him so sudden I yelp, and the smirk he levels at me could cut glass.
“Thought you could slip us?” His breath smells like smoke and sugar. His body pins mine to the fence of corn, thigh wedged between mine, forcing a grind that makes me gasp. “Final Girl’s about to find out she’s not the director here.”
He kisses me like a dare, sharp teeth and mocking tongue, hand fisting in my hair to tilt my head back. I meet it with equal violence, biting him hard enough to taste copper, laughing into his mouth when he groans.
For a second I think I’ll let him win. For a second I want to.
Then I twist, wrench free, and shove him backward into the stalks. He stumbles with a curse, straw tangling in his jacket, and I bolt again, grinning so hard it hurts my cheeks.
“Final Girl rewrites the script!” I call back, voice breaking on a laugh. “Catch me if you can!”
I rip down another passage, my boots slipping on loose straw. Fog curls higher, thick enough to taste.
Two clowns lurch out of the stalks, honking horns like psychotic geese. I shriek in delight, grab one by his rubber bow tie, and plant a big, sloppy kiss on his greasepaint cheek before he can even blink.
“Sweet makeup,” I whisper, licking a streak of white and red paint off my thumb like frosting. “Ten out of ten ambiance.”
I spin in the fog, arms flung wide, cackling like I’m the haunted attraction now.
“Did you—” Skully’s voice cracks like a firecracker, disbelief cutting through the corn—“did you just kiss a fucking clown?”
“Mine,” Bonehead snarls, voice hot iron in the cold air. “No clowns.”
The actor freezes, greasepaint grin wilting, like a puppet caught mid-string. Too late. Bonehead barrels up, grabs him by the scruff of his ridiculous polka-dot costume, and hauls him off his feet like a ragdoll.
Skully’s on him too, yanking the honking nose off his face and slapping it back on upside-down with vicious precision. “Rearranging time,” he says, grin jagged as a hacksaw. He rips the clown’s wig askew, knots the bow tie until the guy wheezes. “There. Fixed. You’re welcome.”
Bonehead growls, shoving the poor bastard deeper into the corn. “No more kissing clowns.”
The clown vanishes, stumbling into the fog with a squeak like a dying balloon.
And me? I laugh so hard I nearly choke, then bolt.
Because if they’re busy punishing clowns, it’s the perfect time to make myself the prize again.
I tear away, laughter ripping out of me like static.
My lungs burn, my thighs ache, and still I run—because nothing feels better than being wanted enough to be hunted.
The maze stretches ahead, lanterns swinging, fog thick enough to choke. I dart left, then right, kicking up straw, and nearly barrel into a scarecrow actor dangling from a cross. His burlap mask splits into a nervous laugh when he realizes I’m not part of the script.
“Nice posture,” I say, brushing my fingers over the straw jutting from his shirt. “Ever think about modeling?”
He blinks at me, too stunned to answer, and I slip past, giggling.
That’s when it happens.
A hand, cool and steady, snakes out of the stalks and closes around my wrist. Not the brute clamp of Bonehead. Not Skully’s hot, twitchy grip. No—this is silk over steel, patient, inevitable. I’m yanked off the path and spun into the shadows before I can yelp.
Marrow.
He presses me against the corn with a grace that feels like ritual. His chest is flush against mine, lean and unyielding, his face so close I can feel his breath on my cheek. His eyes gleam in the lantern glow, bottomless and fevered.
“Beloved,” he murmurs, voice velvet dragged over blades. “You let them chase. You let them maul. But you knew—” his thumb brushes the inside of my wrist, tracing my racing pulse like scripture—“you knew the last catch would be mine.”
I pant, my giggle snagging on a moan. “What if I keep running?”
His mouth ghosts the line of my throat, reverent as prayer. “Then I follow. Forever. To the edge of graves. Into the fire. There is no running from devotion.”
He kisses me then, nothing frantic—no smashing, no mocking—just drowning. His lips coax mine open like confession, his tongue slow, claiming, pulling the sound right out of my lungs. My knees wobble, but he holds me up by the throat, not squeezing, just reminding me who steadies my pulse.
The fog curls tight around us, jealous, the stalks whispering like witnesses. His other hand slides down my spine, settling at the small of my back, pressing me into the heat of him. The kiss deepens, thick with hunger disguised as worship.
Bonehead’s boots thunder before I hear him—an earthquake with a face—and then he’s there, all grin and raw hunger, shoving past stalks like they’re paper.
He doesn’t bother with ceremony. His hand clamps around my hip, pushes me harder into Marrow’s reverent embrace and hauls me up until I’m held between them.
Pressing into me, Bonehead’s chest is a brutal wall.
He breathes at my mouth, rough and hot, and there’s a laugh in it that’s half worship, half animal.
“Finally,” he rasps, like I owe him an apology and a prize.
His mouth slams into mine with the force of a slammed door; it’s all teeth and need.
He eats my laugh, his kiss a claim. One big hand splits my hair, the other claws the hem of my jacket and drags it up, heat radiating through fabric like a furnace.
Skully’s presence is a razor—slick, quick, electric.
He slides in from the side, shadow-smooth, and squeezes my jaw with a hand that might have been a joke if it wasn’t also slightly violent.
He presses his mouth to my neck, breath smoky, his voice in my ear a serrated whisper: “You love this. You love making us feral.”
I turn and nibble his earlobe for proof.
He hisses, delighted and provoked, and answers by scraping his teeth along the shell of my ear.
He smells like smoke and mischief and cheap cologne, and the taste of him is always like a dare.
His fingers find the edge of my corset and tug—testing, rearranging—making the world tilt.