Chapter Seven
Chapter Six
Leona
The night settles wrong. I know it before I can explain how, before I can point to any single thing and say there, that is what changed.
Briar Hollow has its own language after dark, and I know the rhythm of it as intimately as breath.
I know the dry rustle of hay shifting in the barn loft.
I know the distant clink of enclosure latches moving with the wind.
I know the uneven chorus that rises from the tree line once the day animals settle and the nocturnal ones begin to move.
Even silence has texture here, familiar pockets, predictable pauses, a shape to it I have learned the way some people learn prayers. Tonight, the silence feels arranged.
I stand at the kitchen sink with one hand braced against the counter, looking out into the yard beyond the window.
The porch light spills a weak amber glow across wet boards and slick gravel, but it reaches only so far.
Beyond it, darkness gathers thickly between the barns and trees, swallowing edges, flattening depth, turning the familiar bones of the property into something watchful and obscure.
Nothing moves. Still, every muscle in my body tightens.
The animals notice it too. Diego has been irritable since dusk, giving sharp, uneasy clicks from his perch instead of settling into his usual offended muttering.
The horses in the side pasture keep shifting in place, not fully spooked but restless in a way I do not like.
Freya paced her enclosure longer than normal before finally lying down, head lifted, ears forward, as if sleep itself would be careless.
I glance at the clock on the stove. 10:43 p.m.
I have spent the last hour doing all the stupid normal things people do when they are trying not to admit they are afraid.
I checked the locks. I checked the mudroom.
I let the dogs out and back in. I tried reading.
I tried not reading. I tried standing in the sitting room with the television on low just to hear human voices in the house.
I tried to tell myself that one dangerous man and one vague threat had not turned me into someone who saw danger in every tree shadow and every shift of wind. None of it worked.
My phone sits on the counter beside me, screen dark.
Twice I think about calling Nora and reject the idea both times.
What would I even say? That I feel watched again?
That the dark outside my own windows feels inhabited?
That I cannot stop replaying the memory of a man with cold blue eyes and a voice like a blade, and hate myself for the way my mind keeps circling back to him even though fear should have burned out every other response?
No. Better to sit in the discomfort alone than drag it into the light and hear how ugly it sounds out loud.
I turn from the window and reach for my tea just as the power flickers.
Once. Twice. Then steadies. I freeze. The old house shifts around me with a low groan in the walls, the kind of noise it always makes, only now it sounds different.
Closer. More deliberate. Outside, somewhere near the secondary barn, metal strikes metal with a thin ringing sound.
My heart slams once, hard enough to hurt.
I set the mug down without feeling my fingers release it.
This is not nothing. This is not nerves.
The thought moves through me with sudden, icy clarity.
Fear does not disappear. It changes shape.
Narrows. Becomes function. I move quickly, almost calmly, crossing to the pantry and reaching behind the door for the shotgun.
The wood is cool beneath my palm. Familiar.
Heavy. My hands do not feel steady, exactly, but they feel purposeful, and for the moment that is enough.
I kill the kitchen light. The room drops into shadow.
Only the porch glow and the faint light above the stove remain, leaving the corners dim and indistinct.
I stand very still and listen. At first there is nothing.
Then, faintly, the crunch of gravel. Not on the main drive.
Closer. My pulse climbs into my throat. Someone is in the yard.
The dogs, who in every imagined emergency were supposed to be my first and noblest line of defense, remain asleep in the mudroom.
Traitors. I back toward the hallway with the shotgun angled down but ready, eyes locked on the dark shape of the window over the sink.
Every instinct screams at me to go upstairs, barricade myself in the bedroom, call someone, stay hidden.
But another instinct pushes harder, the one that has kept animals alive in my care, the one that trusts patterns and deviations more than comfort.
See. Know. Do not let yourself be blind inside your own house.
I move silently to the side window near the dining room and ease the curtain back one inch.
At first I see only the pale side yard, washed weakly by the porch light.
The grass is slick. The equipment shed crouches black against the farther dark.
Empty. Then a shape peels itself away from shadow near the shed.
A man. He moves low and fast, cutting across the yard with practiced economy.
No flashlight. No hesitation. Another form follows several yards behind him, broader through the shoulders, one hand lifting briefly in a signal I cannot read but immediately hate.
Not Marius’s men. These move differently.
That does not make them safer. It makes them worse.
I step back from the window, my breath suddenly shallow.
Call 911. My mind says it clearly. My body turns for the phone.
But before I reach the counter, glass explodes somewhere at the back of the house.
The sound rips through the silence like a gunshot.
I flinch so hard my teeth click together.
The dogs erupt at last into frantic barking.
One of them yelps. Furniture scrapes. Heavy footsteps hit the back floorboards. No time. No time.
I snatch the phone and run. Not upstairs.
Out. There is a narrow side door off the laundry room that opens toward the north fence and the service path leading behind the outer enclosures.
If I can make the tree line, if I can get behind the holding pens, if I can reach the truck, I might still have a chance.
The mudroom door bursts inward behind me with a crack of splintering wood.
A man shouts something I do not catch.
I hit the side door hard with my shoulder and stumble into the cold night, shotgun clutched tight, phone sliding in my damp grip.
Wet grass slaps at my boots. My breath comes in ragged bursts, too fast, too sharp.
I run blind across the side yard, aiming for the dark stretch between the barn and the quarantine pens.
Someone shouts behind me. Another voice answers from farther ahead. My stomach drops. They spread out.
The realization hits too late. A figure surges from the dark near the fence line, and instinct takes over before thought can catch up.
I yank the shotgun upward, finger tightening on the trigger.
The blast splits the night open. The recoil slams into my shoulder hard enough to make my arm go numb.
The shot goes wide. Maybe it clips wood.
Maybe metal. Maybe nothing at all. The man in front of me ducks and curses, and that is all the opening I need.
I run again. My phone flies from my hand somewhere in the grass.
I hear it hit and vanish and I do not stop.
The barn looms to my left, black and massive against the clouded sky.
All across the property the animals are awake now, their fear breaking outward in waves of motion and sound.
Diego screams from the aviary. The horses crash against fencing.
Somewhere farther back, one of the wolves lets out a long, terrible howl that seems to split me straight through the middle.
I cut toward the service path behind the quarantine enclosures.
If I can reach the back gate, I can get into the woods.
I almost make it. A body slams into me from the side with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.
I hit the ground on one knee, pain jolting up my leg, the shotgun wrenching free of my hands and skidding into mud.
A fist knots in the back of my jacket, hauling me halfway upright, and I twist on instinct and drive my elbow backward as hard as I can.
It connects with ribs. The man grunts. For one staggering second I tear free, enough to turn and see dark clothes, a ski mask, eyes only. Not random. Prepared.
I open my mouth to scream and a gloved hand clamps over it so hard my jaw aches.
“Easy,” a rough voice hisses against my ear. “Don’t make it worse.”
I bite him. Hard. He swears viciously and slams me backward against a fence post. Pain bursts white at the back of my skull. My vision blurs, then snaps back in ugly fragments. The yard tilts sideways. Another man appears out of the dark, taller, carrying a flashlight with the beam angled low.
“Move,” he snaps. “Now.”
I kick wildly and catch someone in the shin.
The reward is a brutal yank on my arm that nearly tears my shoulder out of place.
Panic burns hotter than fear now. Animal.
Furious. I thrash and twist and claw at whatever I can reach, every instinct in me bent toward one single impossible goal.
Get free. For one wild second I slip loose enough to see the open yard, the house, the faint lights along the main drive.
Then something sharp punches into the side of my neck. A needle.