Chapter 1 #2
The horses pawed at the gravel, snorting and blowing, their bridles jingling.
Boots crunched brutally through the rocks as they strode toward her.
Esmie tried to crawl away from the inexorable death knell sound, but she hadn’t quite gathered her wits yet.
Her face hurt. Her chest hurt. Hell, everything hurt.
She needed to run. She needed to at least get up and face her attackers.
A gloved hand touched her shoulder.
“Sorry, miss,” said another voice, a male voice, as low and hollow as the desert wind blowing over a dead man’s dried out eye socket. “Can I help you up?”
She sobbed in a gasp, choked, tried to catch her breath, choked again, reached up with a shaking hand to run her glove under her snotty nose. Another gloved hand clutched under her other arm. The fingers inside the glove felt like barren tree branches, but the grip wasn’t tight. Just firm.
“Here, let us both help.”
Before she knew it, she was on her feet, her wobbly knees barely holding her up between the two careful but firm grips under her upper arms. Twiggy, those grips. What was happening? She couldn’t begin to tell.
“There you go.” If a preternaturally deep, undead voice could sound reassuring, this one tried. Failed, but tried. “Oof, you’re bleeding a little. Here.”
The rough, tattered fabric of an old cape dabbed at her face here and there, mostly on her forehead, and she recovered enough of her startled, scattered wits to wince at the stinging pain.
On the plus side, the sting brought her back a little.
She blinked tears from her eyes, caught her breath—though her heart still raced unevenly in her chest—and tried like hell to pay attention to what was happening.
Who were these people? Were they people?
Unfortunately, when her vision cleared enough and the tattered bit of cape pulled away enough for her to see straight ahead toward the rider standing before her, she squawked in new alarm and jerked back.
Because the somewhat helpful riders’ grips weren’t tight, she jerked right out of their hands, stumbled, and fell to her ass in the gravel.
She scooted backward until she fetched up against a tombstone.
“What the fuck? What the fuck? Where the fuck is your head? What the fuck?”
Her feet continued to pedal against the cold, dead grass on top of what could only be someone’s grave, but she wasn’t going anywhere.
The tombstone at her back kept her right where she was.
Which was a real problem, because three headless riders, dressed in black with black capes with literal, honest to god swords at their sides strode toward her, closing in on her even as she tried to back-pedal away.
And all she could say was, “What the fuck? Where the fuck is your head? What the fuck?”
Thank god, but the middle one finally put out its hands—his hands?—to hold the others back.
“We’re not going to hurt you.”
She didn’t believe that for a minute. She didn’t believe things that moved around without a head in the middle of the night. She did, however, stop talking, which was at least as much a relief for her as it must be for them. Her feet, however, kept trying to push her back through the tombstone.
“We promise, okay? You’re safe from us. If we’d known you were a girl—er, woman, lady, we would never have chased you.”
The one to the left waved a little awkwardly, if she was any judge of headless motivations. “We only go after men. Hunt, I mean. Not go after, like, go after.”
To her further surprise, the one to the right made a few quick gestures with his hands. Gestures she… recognized?
“Alpha Sigma Psi, baby. We respect women.”
Her breath fell out of her, and her feet finally stopped moving. Alpha. Sigma. Psi. That… couldn’t be possible. That was a fraternity at Missouri Southern University, where she was a student.
Was this… was this some sort of prank? Had she just damn near shat herself and given herself a heart attack—not to mention brained herself on a gravel path—over a frat joke?
But… they were headless. That couldn’t be a joke. She literally saw trees through where their heads should be. Stars. Moon-lined clouds hurrying across the dark sky.
Oh, and flaming jack o’lanterns held casually under their arms like forgotten baggage. Flaming jack o’lanterns that used to sit where their heads should be. That weren’t catching their capes on fire.
Horses. Jack o’lanterns. Headless riders.
Headless horsemen.
Her mouth said it before her brain could stop her.
“Headless horsemen.”
“Exactly!” The one to the right bowed, sweeping his free hand graciously. “But also ASP men. Pleased to meet you. I’m Jerome.”
The one to the left waved awkwardly again. “Aaron. Nice to meet you. Sorry we… you know. Our bad.”
She blinked. Her mouth no longer functioned.
The middle one’s shoulders rose and fell, a low, hollow sound that could only be a sigh echoing in the night. “I suppose it’s only polite. Chad. And yes, we are sorry. We never should have chased you.”
“And you are?” the left one asked.
She couldn’t even begin to answer. She couldn’t think of her own name. She had no more words. She was stuck at “headless horsemen.”
The left one jerked as if startled. “Guys, I think she’s scared. Maybe if we put our heads back on? Chad, you have mine.”
While she watched, mute and lost, they traded pumpkins around until they were satisfied, then placed their chosen gourd upon their shoulders. Having a flaming jack o’lantern to look at where a head should be did absolutely nothing for her peace of mind.
“I don’t think it helped,” the left one said. “Miss? Are you going to be alright?”
One of the horses snorted. Otherwise, the night was quiet. She certainly had nothing to say.
The middle one shoved them apart and strode forward. Though she started to backpedal again, he didn’t slow down until he stood directly in front of her. There, he knelt, one forearm propped on one knee, flaming eyes boring into hers.
“We know we’ve caused you one hell of a scare.” The flames in his triangle eyes were hypnotic. “We’re sorry about that. There is a slight problem, though. We said we only hunt men. That’s true.”
The slightest thread of something that might be the beginning of hope blossomed in her chest as his meaning finally got through to her.
Only men. They didn’t want her. They’d even helped her up.
They were ASP guys, and the ASP guys were trusted to drive drunk girls home safe after parties. They were the good guys.
Wait. Problem. What?
“Unfortunately, what we do with men is run them down, behead them, and drag them off to the Between, where we hurl them into the Beyond for whatever lurks there to torment.”
Aaaaannnnd she was struck speechless again, her feet scrambling below her. This time, she managed to squirt a little to the left, where she edged around the tombstone, scuttled a little, then made it to her feet and ran.
“Wait, come back!” one of them called, voice echoing hollowly throughout the cemetery.
“Men, mount up.”
She didn’t look back this time. She ran for dear life, hurdling tombstones, reasoning that if she ran in a straight line, she’d reach a wall sooner. Hopefully, one she could reasonably climb over before the horses ran her down.
But the horses were already on the fly. Their hooves were quieter on the grass of the graveyard than on the gravel paths, but she still heard the thudding of their hoofbeats, pounding like her heart in her throat. She heard the Horsemen’s capes snapping and flapping. She heard her doom approaching.
No laughter this time. This time, they were deadly serious.
There was no real chance for her. She couldn’t outrun horses.
They surrounded her, and she finally stopped, gasping and panting, one hand to the hot stitch in her side.
She looked from one to the next to the next, unable to read anything but malice in their flaming eyes, their jeering mouths.
The horses snorted and pranced, but the riders only stared down at her, hands steady on the reins.
“You didn’t let me finish,” the middle one finally said, low and cold and empty.
“Save it,” she gasped. “Just make it quick.”
The two on the outside looked at each other. The one on the right spoke.
“Make what quick?”
She rolled her eyes, rubbing at the painful stitch in her side. She was no one’s Usain Bolt, and the extra pounds she carried around did not like her sprinting twice in the same night.
“The beheading. I don’t want to feel it.”
The left one pulled back so hard his horse shied. “What? No way. We don’t hurt women. We already said.”
Her breathing steadied a little, though she felt wrung out, both sweaty and chilled at the same time. Exhausted and confused, as well. And a little pissed off.
“What?” She grunted. “Then why did you chase me again?”
The middle one sighed hollowly again. “Because we can’t let you leave.”
She frowned, even more confused, her body readying itself to run again despite its exhaustion. “You what now?”
“We do only hunt men, and we do dispatch them, but now that you’ve seen us, we can’t just let you leave.”
Staring, she stood in a moonlit cemetery—a poor T.A. who just wanted an interesting angle for a grad school paper she needed a good grade on—with a stitch in her side and fear in her heart and wondered what the fuck to do now. For the first time, it occurred to her that all this might be a dream.
No. She wasn’t that lucky, and the details were all too real. For one thing, her face still stung in a dozen places from where she’d skinned herself on the gravel after faceplanting in it. Her knees sizzled with heat, too. This was real, all right. Weird and terrifying, but real.
“If it helps, we’re sorry?” That was the one on the left. “We didn’t mean for this to happen.”