Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Iglance down at the knife I’m holding, like I for some reason need to make sure it’s still there. Given his reaction—or lack of one—it feels like I don’t have a weapon at all. From what I can tell, the man is unarmed, though he doesn’t seem to see that as a problem.
“Where’s my dog?” I snap quietly, trying to ignore the way Ariana’s body is right there behind me, mutilated and butchered. It’s so hard not to turn and look at her. Almost fucking impossible not to check to see if she’s breathing, as stupid as that is.
Because she shouldn’t be dead. Things like this don’t happen outside of movies and scary stories. They don’t happen in real life.
Or well, they aren’t supposed to, anyway.
“Your dog,” he repeats, his voice is flat, making it come out as more of a statement than a question. “Your dog? You’ve been in Wolf Lake for four days and you’ve claimed the local menace to society as yours?” He lifts a brow, looking expectant, instead of letting the question be rhetorical.
“Uh, yeah.” I barely hesitate. “Yeah, I absolutely am. She helped me kill a man. We’re sort of trauma-bonded at this point.” Shifting my grip on the knife, I add, “And my chainsaw. Trauma-bonded to that too, so if you could give it back—”
Without warning, the man laughs. A full, mirthful sound that makes him lean back against the doorframe with a look of absolute delight on his handsome face.
All I can do is stare at him, from the stubble on his jaw to the way his blond hair catches the light from the open door behind him.
He’s gorgeous, which I hate admitting to myself.
It feels not fair that a monster can be so beautiful.
When he looks at me again, lips still curled in a fox-like grin, it hits me just how blue his eyes are. Like the expanse of open sky we drove under for most of our trek through Texas, before the storm on the day we came to Wolf Lake.
“You are something, you know that?” He glances outside, like he’s searching for something, and as I watch, he closes the door quietly behind him. “Fox is looking for you. He doesn’t really know your name, so he’s just yelling and hoping for the best…this is where you tell me your name, by the way.”
“You first.”
I don’t expect him to answer, but his smile never even falters.
“Deacon,” the man introduces. “Deacon Shaw. Adopted brother to the esteemed sheriff of our lovely town.” He rolls his eyes as he says it, as if suggesting he’s not so impressed by Fox’s position.
The way he stressed the word adopted makes me silently question the importance of that.
Does he not see his brother as true family?
If he doesn’t, then why live here with him?
“I’m Sadie,” I admit finally, as he continues to stare at me pointedly. My grip adjusts on the knife again. “Sadie-Rae. Where’s my dog?”
“Not in here.”
“I got that, actually.”
“And you shouldn’t be in here either.” Ignoring the fact I’m holding a weapon, Deacon strides by me, brushing past within a few inches of the blade that I follow him with, holding it between us like it could possibly save me from him.
But stabbing him in the throat feels like it would be a damn fine deterrent to keep him from doing to me what was done to Ariana, so long as I don’t let him get a weapon first.
“A shame,” he repeats, reaching out to tuck Ariana’s hair back behind her ear.
I make a choking, gasping noise as he does, pulling his unimpressed gaze up to me.
“Oh, come on,” he tsks, rolling his eyes.
“You saw her when she was still bleeding. And when we met, you were covered in the gore of a man who you ran through with a chainsaw; you still are. This is nothing.”
God, I wish he wouldn’t say that. It makes me unable to ignore how disgusting I am, and how badly I need a shower, though I push it down on my list of priorities once more.
“Where’s my dog?”
“You’re like a broken record.” He cups her jaw, turning the corpse’s face up to him like he’s studying her eye sockets.
He even pries her mouth open in a movement that makes my stomach turn, and the whole time, Deacon ignores the knife still shaking in the air between us as my arm starts to ache from holding it up.
At last, I drop it, frustrated and curious. “What are you doing?”
“I want to see what they took and figure out why.” When he turns her head again, I see a wound I hadn’t before, and my heart almost stops bleeding when the gash on her neck gapes open like a second mouth, revealing bone and sinew underneath.
“Oh, fuck.” The knife comes back up, my movements jerky. “D-did you…” I trail off, swallow, and force myself to continue. “Did you kill her?”
Deacon’s blue gaze flicks up to meet mine, searching and shrewd.
“She was never walking out of that basement alive, Sadie-Rae,” he says slowly, his hand leaving her face.
With slow steps he circles the table, trying to remove the obstacle between us, but I don’t let him.
I sidestep it, feeling more than a little uncomfortable about using Ariana’s body as a barrier for my safety.
“She begged me to kill her.” He hesitates, his head tilting slightly, and I see a hint of cold cruelty in his gaze. “She asked you to as well, didn’t she?”
The words hit me like a physical blow and I stumble, having to grab onto the edge of the tilted table near Ariana’s hair to catch myself. “Stop it.”
“No, no.” He tsks, shaking his head. “She did. She begged you, didn’t she? Somehow she worked through the pain of having her tongue cut out just to form those words, hoping you’d end it—”
“Stop it!” I hiss again, cutting him off. “Stop…stop talking about her!” I brandish the knife between us, the shaking so obvious it’s embarrassing. “You didn’t know her!”
“No, I didn’t.” He glances down, then back up at me.
“But I know what suffering is. You couldn’t end hers, so I had to do it for you.
” There’s a note of dismissal in his voice, along with the unfriendly taunting.
“What happened, hmm?” I hate the way he’s goading me, and every word makes me want to stab him in the fucking throat.
“Too squeamish? Too weak to end it for her, to give her one final act of kindness so—”
“Because I’m afraid of being alone!” The words are out before I can stop them, and when I blink back against the hot pressure suddenly pressing against my eyes, I feel tears stream down my cheeks, blurring my vision.
“So please, for fuck’s sake. Please don’t make me stab you. Where the fuck is my dog, Deacon Shaw?”
Deacon doesn’t answer. He tilts his head to eye me, as if he’s seeing me for the first time. “Are you going to stab me, pretty little rabbit?” he murmurs at last, reaching across Ariana’s body to tap the edge of the knife in my hand. “Are you going to cut me to pieces just like your friend here?”
“Stop it.” My stomach churns every time he mentions her, though I try to ignore how my hand shakes with both horror and exhaustion. “Where’s my fucking dog?”
“Not in here”—he spreads his arms with a sly grin on his face—“but you’re welcome to look around a little more. Don’t you want to know if your other friends are here too?”
A shiver trails down my spine, and a fear I didn’t know existed blooms in my stomach. I can’t look at Tyler again, though my mind betrays me by forcing me to remember his dead body in the cell where Pearl found him.
“No.” I move finally, realizing this isn’t getting me anywhere, and I stride around the table, trying to look bold.
God, I hope I look something other than scared. Even annoyed will do, instead of showing the terror that’s turned my insides cold. I don’t let myself hesitate as I stalk toward Deacon, and my knuckles are white against the blade from gripping it so tightly.
“Where the actual fuck—”
It’s his small, curved grin I notice first. His eyes narrow ever so slightly, blond lashes fanning over the rich blue, and a stupid grin that’s more of a smirk.
He doesn’t hesitate either. Deacon meets my advance by stepping toward me, one arm shoving mine outward with a quick push to my wrist. I gasp, trying to turn the knife and bend my arm to at least cut him, but he’s too fucking fast.
While it feels like a weird thing to admit in my mind, this does not seem like his first rodeo with someone trying to stab him.
My back hits the wall of the shed and a gasp leaves my lips, the soft sound from my throat more of a surrender than anything I want to give this monster. His hand on my wrist moves until his thumb is pressing hard into a spot that makes me cry out; my fingers spasm and the knife falls to the floor.
“There we go.” When Deacon closes the space between us, the scent of his aftershave, mixed with something that feels rough around the edges, like smoke or rain, hits my nostrils.
“Now let’s try something different, shall we, Sadie-Rae?
” The way he purrs my name has me shifting uncomfortably with a nervous scowl on my lips.
“Not until you tell me where Pearl is,” I hiss with my heart racing in my chest as I writhe against the pressure of his body blocking mine.
Deacon rolls his eyes and suddenly both of my arms are over my head against the wall, pinned there with one of his long-fingered hands.
The tan of his skin is a stark contrast to the paleness of mine, and some part of me wonders how many summers he’s spent in the sun to look so effortlessly sun-kissed.
“I’m not telling you where your dog is,” he whispers, leaning in so his face is close enough to mine that I can feel his breath on my cheek.
“Because you don’t really get to ask the questions.
Not when you’re here, in my territory, in my slaughterhouse.
” His grin turns wolfish and this time I can’t even try to hide my shudder.
Slaughterhouse?
The word makes my blood go cold and I glance down at Ariana’s corpse, my eyes flitting from her to the table, to the chest freezers and the meat hooks along the far wall.
Finally the truth, the real truth, hits me hard in the gut. My stomach twists and coils, tying itself in knots of absolute revulsion at what I’m seeing.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, my eyes going wide as my head whips back so I’m facing him again. “You’re…”
His grin widens, wolfish and cruel. “What am I?” he purrs. “Come on. Tell me what I am, pretty rabbit.”
I bite down on my lower lip, swallowing the word monster when it’s apparent he’ll take it as a compliment.
“You are in need of a fucking therapist,” I whisper finally, somewhat satisfied by his flash of irritation in that cold part of me that’s already decided I’m going to die and I should fuck up whatever I can until then.
“A real therapist. Like, a highly paid one who has access to meds and a psych ward.”
“Better than a dead girl who—” The door bangs open, admitting the light from outside along with Fox, who pauses in the doorway to survey the scene in front of him.
Whatever I expect to see, it isn’t frustrated bemusement. “Really?” he asks, walking inside with his eyes on us. “You’re going to do this already?”
Deacon tilts his head, not looking flustered or ashamed at being caught. If anything, he looks rather happy about it. “Your little rabbit was hopping around so valiantly,” he sneers. “Why stop her when she’s not getting out of our snare anytime soon?”
Our snare? The way he says it makes it seem like there’s no way off this farm, though that can’t be right. Sure, I saw a fence around the property, but there was also a gate. And in the worst-case scenario, I could climb the fence and break my ass falling down the other side.
Fox’s eyes flick to Ariana and his frown deepens. “You shouldn’t have let her in here.”
“She found it on her own.”
With Deacon distracted, I lunge forward, kicking out to get free.
To my absolute surprise, he simply lets me with a low, amused snort.
Deacon steps back, dodging my clumsy kick at the same time he releases my arms. My momentum makes me stagger forward, and my arm goes out to catch myself on the only thing in sight.
Ariana’s table, of-fucking-course.
The moment before my hand connects with her hair, another snatches the back of my shirt, stopping my stumble and giving me the chance to regain my balance. “How did you even get out?” Fox asks quizzically, holding me like a cat he’s got scruffed by the neck.
It’s humiliating, though I suppose it’s infinitely better than falling face-first onto Ariana’s corpse. He holds me up like that, his dark eyes surveying my face, before his hand loosens, though he doesn’t let go.
“She climbed out the window, Crawled across our roof, shimmied across the overhang, then fell on her ass on the back patio,” Deacon recounts quickly, drawing my stunned attention and Fox’s disbelief.
“You saw all that?” I ask, as Fox releases a noise of disbelief.
“You did what?!” Fox asks, looking at me.
I open my mouth to argue, to defend myself. But instead, I scowl and ask, “Where’s my fucking dog?”
“She means Pearl,” Deacon supplies, arms now folded. “Apparently she’s trauma-bonded to her. Wants that shitty chainsaw back too.”
Fox grimaces. “That cheap, nasty thing? Darling, that went in the dumpster. It hadn’t been cleaned in ages and, no offense, but you fucked up the chain real bad when you killed that asshole in the auto shop.”
Rest in peace, Sally.
“And Pearl’s fine.” The relief from his words unclench an invisible fist from around my heart, letting me finally breathe normally.
“How do I know you aren’t lying?” The words leave me before I can stop them, but I remind myself it’s a valid question.
“You don’t.” His smile turns just as sly as Deacon’s, though cheeky instead of taunting. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“Oh, yeah?” I try to rip free of his grip, but Fox’s fingers tighten again, sending a wave of fear through my veins. “Why the hell would I just believe you?”
“Well…” Arms close around my shoulders from behind, and Deacon is suddenly there, his chest against my back and his face pressed close to my own.
“It seems to me, Sadie-Rae, that we aren’t giving you much of a choice, are we?
” Without another word he suddenly picks me up, throwing me over his shoulder while I yelp and shriek my protests.
“Put me down!” I wail, flailing and grabbing for something, anything I can reach.
“Nah,” Deacon chuckles. His steps toward the door are unhurried, and Fox picks up the knife before following.
“Like I said, darling. You won’t enjoy where I put you this time, but don’t blame me…
” His hand moves to grip my thighs, while the other arm is like a steel band around my calves to prevent me from kicking him.
“You did this to yourself.”