Chapter 9 Psychological Games
Psychological Games
Each step smacked her aching feet, jolted her knees, slammed into her hips, and shook the rest of her for good measure.
Liv had successfully escaped, and each gulp of cold night air tasted bubble-alcoholic as sweet champagne.
She didn’t care that her feet would be ribbons by the time she reached anywhere likely to have a phone, that hypothermia was a factor, or that the other two men might find out the blond guy had let her go.
You want to get out of here? I’m only gonna ask once.
No, the only thing Liv Stellack cared about was that she’d gotten free, she was outside, and she flung herself away from the wrought-iron gate at full speed. It wasn’t so much being kidnapped, though God knew that was enough to make anyone run.
No, it was the persistent nagging dread spurred by that horrible bright crimson mark on the dark-haired man’s wrist. That was the final straw. And his describing one of her goddamn recurring dreams—it had to be a common one, right? Had to be.
Anxiety, bad food choices—you name it, everyone had nightmares about nasty doors and the bad things that happened when you opened them. Everyone got déjà vu from nighttime brain-walks; Liv’s vivid, quasi-lucid ones were just a sign she had an active imagination and a good memory.
Most days, she had herself convinced there was nothing wrong with her sanity or her sleep. But kidnapping had a way of making you doubt things, or so she’d discovered.
If she just ran fast enough, she’d escape this nightmare too. It was uncannily like one which had tormented her ever since college—a black night, her feet sodden-slapping, her breath tearing in her throat…
…and a sudden looming bulk of something utterly wrong exploding from the ground like a mushroom after hard rain.
Liv skidded, saved from falling onto her ass only by a wrenching sideways leap nearly throwing her into tangled, thorny vines alongside the single-lane road. The thing hulked its shoulders and thrust its ungainly head forward, crimson eyes dripping with nasty rheum.
A pointless gurgling scream burst from her throat as the wind of the thing’s claws passing over her head ruffled tangled, dirty hair.
That faint breeze convinced her the thing was real, not just a fevered hallucination.
She scrabbled back crabwise, erasing skin on her palms, her heels thumping uselessly as the thing loomed over her.
Its next strike wouldn’t miss; she knew it as surely as she knew her own name and her own teeth as her tongue was caught between them.
Liv dropped flat on her back. A metallic tang of blood coated her abused tongue, filled her throat; the attacking thing was darkness itself, its stench burrowing into her nose.
“Stay down!” An indistinct shape hurtled past, twin bright metal gleams disappearing as they were driven into the monster’s hide. It roared, the blast stripping her hair back and slathering her bare skin with a reek so foul she knew, miserably, she wouldn’t feel clean again for a long, long while.
Maybe forever.
A pale, leprous light bloomed, running wetly along the beast’s every muscled curve.
Its chest was too big for its tiny back legs, but the thing still drew itself up, and up, and up in a horribly liquid movement.
One ungainly arm flashed out, but the dark-haired guy dropped under the strike with quick blurring grace.
He uncoiled, driving forward, and the metal glitters were curved, wicked-looking knives.
They slashed, and the thing howled, striking out again.
Get up. Run, while it’s occupied. Come on, Liv. You know how this goes.
And that was the whole problem, wasn’t it?
She did indeed know how it went, because she’d dreamed this same thing over and over.
The thing would come for her, batting a dancing, spinning gleam out of the way, and its maw would yawn wide, inward-pointing rows of sharp serrated teeth dripping with that sticky red fluid, then the jaws would snap shut with her in them, and—
“Stay down!” he yelled again, as if he could hear her thinking about moving, and one of his knives sank to the crossguard in the thing’s side.
It threw its head back and howled, its hide running with that pale diseased light; Erik yanked the blade free and coiled himself.
He leapt, and there must have been a trampoline or some Superman-powered muscles in his legs because he went higher than he had any right to, twisting to avoid another swipe of those terrible glassy claws.
The thing howled once more, but one boot hit its shoulder, his other knee jammed under its chin, and he drove both daggers into its glowing, murderous eyes with a short, grunting sound of effort.
Liv gulped back another scream, scrambling again with stinging hands and scooting back on her bottom. Cold dampness worked through her jeans; she was going to have a huge soaked patch on her ass but that was unimportant.
The monster dropped like a pile of insensate meat, with a cartoonish thud that might have been funny if it hadn’t smelled so ungodly awful. Liv’s mouth worked aimlessly as she kept scrambling, trying desperately to retreat and not managing it very well.
Erik turned, and that pale light was all over him. His eyes were dark but still burned with starlike blue glitters, live coals set in a thin-lipped face, as he launched himself straight at her.