Chapter Seventeen
Seraphine
“OK, so we’re basically turning your peaceful home into Home Alone: Serial Killer Edition?
” I muttered as I followed Valen around the property with two buckets of empty cans.
“I always wondered what my life would be like if I took that job at Camp Nightwing instead of sinking thousands into an art degree.”
Valen shot me a look over his shoulder. The kind of look that usually meant he was going to spank my ass as soon as we finished our little project. “This isn’t a joke, Seraphine.”
“I know it’s not a joke, that’s why I’m making jokes.” I set the buckets down, the cans clanking together. “It’s either laugh or have a mental breakdown.” I grinned.
He stopped near a cluster of trees, studying the area like he was planning some type of military operation, which I guessed we kind of were.
“We need early warning systems in place. Let’s put the tripwires here, here and here.
” He pointed to several different spots that all looked the same to me.
“Anyone approaching from the road will hit at least one of them.”
He pulled out some fishing line from his backpack, which was filled with supplies. I had no idea what we were going to do with most of it, but apparently, I didn’t need to know.
“You were probably an amazing Boy Scout.” I watched him as he looped the wire.
He chuckled darkly. “Never was a Boy Scout. Learned this in prison.”
“Noted.” I laughed, trying to pay attention to what he was doing. He insisted we needed to prepare for when Cyrus showed up. My original idea of sitting on the couch with my gun in my lap seemed ridiculous at this point. I would have been dead in seconds.
So instead, we were outside setting up tripwires, motion-activated alarms in trees, and string lines. He’d vetoed my idea of digging a pit with stakes; the chances of one of us falling in by mistake were too great. And by one of us, he meant me.
I tried to help him string the first tripwire, but I had the hand-eye coordination of a drunken toddler. The wire kept slipping through my fingers and I got tangled in it more than once.
“Like this.” Valen came up behind me and guided my hands. “We want them to trip. This is the best height for it.”
I tried to focus on what he was showing me, but having him pressed up against me was making it extremely hard.
We moved to the next location, and this time I managed to hold the fishing line steady as Valen tied it off.
“Can you try attaching the cans like I showed you without getting tangled?” He chuckled, handing me some line.
“Are you trying to insinuate that I’m some sort of walking disaster?” I tied one of the cans to the line, saying a prayer to Satan it would stay put. “I’ll have you know that—”
The can slipped from my hand, and when I tried to grab it before it could hit the ground, I ended up kicking over the entire bucket of cans.
Valen stared at me, that infuriating smirk plastered on his face.
“OK, maybe I am a walking disaster.” I squatted down and picked up all the cans. “But I’m your walking disaster.”
“That you are.” He reached down to help me, giving me a kiss on the cheek on his way up.
We spent the next hour creating a trail of traps around the cabin’s perimeter. Valen moved with the skilled efficiency of someone who had thought this through, while I mostly tried to not accidentally set off any more of our traps.
“We need sight lines.” He pulled out a large hatchet and started chopping off branches. “We need to be able to see if anyone’s approaching.”
Even in his winter coat, I could see his muscles flexing with effort as he chopped away at the trees.
“You know, there’s something slightly arousing about how good you are at this.
” I picked up some of the smaller branches, trying to make myself useful.
It wasn’t like I was going to be chopping any branches.
I’d chop off one of my fingers by accident.
“Would you prefer I was bad at it?”
“Point taken. Though this whole booby trap situation is really putting a damper on the romantic cabin vibe we had going on.”
Can you stop making stupid jokes already?
Valen threw his head back, laughing, the sound doing all sorts of strange things to my heart. “Plenty of time for romance after we kill Cyrus.”
“You know, you’re really quite the sweet talker.” I winked as I grabbed more debris.
The sun was starting to set by the time we’d finished up outside. Every noise made me jump. Even the shadows cast from the trees looked threatening. Luckily, I’d only managed to set off one tripwire and walked into a line of hanging cans that nearly made me deaf at how loud they were.
I rubbed my forehead, wanting to kick myself for being so clumsy. “At this rate, I’ll probably trip over my own two feet and knock myself unconscious before Cyrus even gets a chance to kill me.”
Valen’s jaw clenched as he reached for me. “You’re doing great. And when the time comes, you’ll do what you need to do.”
I gazed up at him, this man who had become my partner in literal crime. My heart beat wildly at the certainty in his eyes. He was right. I might have been terrible at setting traps, but I was a survivor.
Once we got back to the cabin, Valen went over some escape routes in case we needed to get away quickly.
He also hid extra guns and ammunition in every room in the cabin, along with bear sprays and various knives.
I helped him block off some of the windows and we moved the furniture around to give us every advantage possible.
We were about to invite danger into our home.
I just hoped we were as ready as we thought we were.
*** ***
The next night at eight p.m., Emmeline’s special edition podcast went live, just one week shy of the anniversary of the sorority house massacre.
I was curled up against Valen on the couch, his arm wrapped around me as we pretended everything was normal. My phone sat on the coffee table, lighting up every few seconds with notifications that I’d been trying my hardest to ignore.
“You don’t have to look,” Valen murmured against my hair. “Emmeline said she’d monitor all the comments.”
“I know.” But I was already reaching for my phone because I was a sucker for punishment.
The comments on her Instagram post were rolling in faster than I could read them.
A lot of people were angry that my testimony had helped put Valen behind bars.
But there were others who came to my defense, commenting that I’d never said it was him and the DA had twisted my words to the jury, which was true.
Some people praised me for my bravery, but scattered between those were comments that made my stomach churn.
She’s a lying whore. Valen’s guilty and we all know it.
She loved playing a victim all these years. Pathetic loser.
Why would anyone believe anything this bitch says?
I scrolled past them, anger pulsing through me, even though I knew these people didn’t matter. What they thought or said should mean nothing to me at the end of the day. But there was a small part of me that was still hurt by it, no matter how much I hated to admit it.
My DMs were flooded with messages, some supportive, some crazy. There were even more messages from the woman who claimed to be a survivor of the attacks in Chicago, Amy Champ. I clicked on her message, scanning through it.
She was adamant about meeting. Claimed she could help me. Little did she know I’d just invited my would-be killer straight to my door. I showed Valen the message, and he shook his head, meaning “don’t even think about responding.”
I was just about to close out the app when a video message came through. The thumbnail was mostly black, but there was a distorted image, so I pressed play and immediately regretted it.
I dropped my phone like it was on fire as the sounds I’d spent six years trying to forget came blasting through the speaker. My friend’s voices, desperate and terrified as they screamed.
“No, no, no.” I scrambled backwards on the couch, my breath coming in gasps as I struggled for air.
Valen picked up the phone, his face darkening as he made the video stop. “Seraphine, don’t listen…”
But it didn’t matter what he said because I could still hear it. Even without the volume turned up, I could hear Courtney screaming and the terrible sounds that came after.
“He recorded it,” I whispered, my hands shaking uncontrollably. “He fucking recorded them dying.”
The familiar panic that I’d spent years trying to control clawed at my chest, trying to drag me back into the hell where I was just a helpless victim, a girl who’d hidden under a bed while her friend was butchered just feet away.
But something was different this time. The panic was still there, but underneath it was something else. Something stronger. Something that had been building these past few weeks with Valen.
Anger.
Pure, red-hot rage burned through me.
It had to be Cyrus who’d sent the message. He thought he could break me again. That I was that same terrified girl who’d barely put up a fight when he’d tried to slit my throat.
But I wasn’t that girl anymore. I was a survivor. A fighter. And nobody—not him, or any of those trolls on social media—was going to break me again.
Valen’s voice was deadly calm as he reached for me. “I’m sorry, Seraphine. I wish you didn’t have to hear that again. But I vow to you, I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“No, Valen.” I gripped his hands in mine, which were shaking, no longer out of fear, but out of anger. “We’re going to kill him. Make sure he can never hurt anyone ever again.”
I was never going to be a victim again. This time, I was going to fight back. This time, I had everything to live for, and he was sitting right across from me.
Valen watched me as I grabbed the phone, opening the message back up. “What are you doing, little lamb?”
“What I came here five weeks ago to do.” I typed out a message and hit send before Valen could stop me.
Come and get me, you coward.