Chapter 14
SALIVA THICKENS IN MY MOUTH, COATING MY TONGUE WITH its slickness as a second passes by.
I hear a clock ticking inside me. Blood runs cold in my veins, but I’ve yet to become paralyzed.
Surely there must be an explanation for this.
I’ve become too distrustful for my own good, but it doesn’t stop my heart from speeding like crazy.
“You didn’t find the flashlights?” I interrogate as he turns off the light from his phone, leaving us in the dark.
I see the shadow of his head move to the side.
“No, I tried to find them, but these guys aren’t like Delta. Theta is fucking messy, especially now that I hear Gideon is president. He doesn’t care enough about having supplies like I did. And by the time I was raiding the closets, I heard the screams and . . . You know the rest.”
Mentally, I press the snooze button on the alarm blasting in my head.
His reasoning is transparent and logical.
His voice never wavers or falls into the nervous pitch he does whenever he’s been caught in a lie.
There’s a sense of calmness in the way he speaks.
Either he’s become a great liar in the past year or what he’s saying is nothing but the truth.
I choose to believe the latter because in no universe is Danny a killer. He wouldn’t do this to us—to me.
“Oh,” I mutter without masking my disappointment. I would’ve preferred to have the option to have some source of illumination that didn’t require us to waste what’s left of our phone batteries. “It would’ve been good to have some lighting, just in case.”
It’s not like using a flashlight would be a bright idea, wandering around and giving up our location to the killer, but it would’ve been helpful. Like when you’re stuck in a closet with no way out. It just . . . It would’ve made everything easier.
But I guess Cupid doesn’t like it when we have it easy.
“Yeah. Maybe we’ll find some in the kitchen,” he supplies with a hopeful tone that lifts my spirits.
Unlike me, always prone to seeing the worst, Danny is an optimist. Somehow, he finds the way to see the glass half full instead of half empty in every situation. Even this one.
“Come on.” He cracks the door open a little and the tiniest bit of pink glow sneaks in, allowing me to see him tilt his head. “You okay to go?”
I tap under my chin twice and then my chest. The signal makes him smile.
His fingers find mine and I squeeze his hand as he twists the doorknob, pushing it open just a sliver to check it’s all clear. When he confirms it is empty, he pulls me with him back into the hall. But things have changed in the handful of minutes we’ve been in the closet.
The hollow darkness that was reigning over the halls has been replaced by a soft neon pink glow lining the ceiling.
Somehow, the fact that there’s more illumination makes my nerves rub together.
The more effort Cupid has put into this, the harder it’ll be for us to overpower him.
He’s been preparing for this for who knows how long.
I cling to Danny’s hand as we move through the house. Apparently, when I was blindly running from Cupid, I had been going in the opposite direction from where we’re headed. Going as far as being near the main living room where Elodie was killed.
Bracing myself to see her gutted body on the floor, I hold my breath as we step into the room. Things have changed in here too. The projector is on now and although there’s no sound coming from the speakers, a film plays on a white screen at the end of the room.
I almost roll my eyes when I recognize the scene from the movie.
It’s a romantic comedy.
Cupid has a wicked sense of humor because he’s playing a romcom while we’re being hunted for his pleasure. Nothing screams romance more than seeing entrails and blood splatter.
This isn’t the only thing that’s changed, though.
While we were in the closet, Cupid decided to redecorate the room.
Dozens of photographs lie on the floor and are plastered to the walls, and they’re all of Cerys.
And they have one thing in common: the eyes are crossed out like they were in the letters.
Inspecting them a little closer, I see that there are articles too.
The pink light isn’t the best for me to read through them, but a name stands out from the headlines: Brian Manders.
I clutch Danny’s hand, and he squeezes it back.
“They’re all of Cerys,” I murmur. Whoever is doing this, they want her. Maybe it explains why Cupid didn’t immediately kill her when he found us in the lounge room. A memory flashes in my mind. “The letter.”
“What letter?” His voice sounds hollow as his eyes take in the photos.
“Her letter. It said all the deaths would be her fault.”
“Do you think they’re doing all this for her?”
Danny dares to ask what I haven’t wanted to. That somehow, some fucked-up creep decided to orchestrate this entire night to mess with her, or worse.
“Maybe,” I mumble.
His expression twists into a confused frown.
“Where’s Elodie?” Danny asks, openly looking around the room.
There’s a pool of blood near where I remember her being attacked, and a path of red streaking out of the room like she was dragged out of here. Is this what he’s doing? Removing the bodies and placing them somewhere else?
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth as I place a hand over my stomach.
I don’t even want to ponder the possibilities of what the killer could be doing to the bodies, because they’re all too sick and disturbing for me to handle.
Even as a horror fanatic, there are limits to what I can witness without feeling ill.
Knowing how bad humanity can be, I don’t want to imagine.
Even in death, I want Elodie and the others to be safe from any harm, especially when there’s no one to defend their bodies, not even themselves.
“He takes them,” I say. “Cupid.”
“Cupid?”
“That’s what I’ve been calling him in my mind. His mask reminds me of a cherub, so it must be Cupid, I think,” I explain vaguely. “He must be collecting the bodies like trophies or something.”
Putting them in a room somewhere.
I eye him carefully as he takes in the shocking news. His expression wrinkles in a mix of horror and distress, his mouth falling slightly open. The news is shocking to him and the suspicion I had back in the closet fades away.
“That’s fucking disturbing,” Danny says, shuddering. “He’s fucking insane. Should we find them too?”
The bodies.
No, it’s too risky. They’re already dead and we have to keep surviving.
It would be a waste of time and effort. We need to conserve energy because I don’t doubt that we’ll crash from the constant adrenaline rush.
When the effect stops, we’ll be too exhausted, and perhaps maimed, so we need to make wise choices.
Being wise has evaded me so far tonight, but maybe I can still redeem myself.
I shake my head. “No. Let’s keep going.”
We leave the living room behind as we continue on our path.
Now that there’s some decent, albeit a bit dim, illumination, it’s easier to travel through the house.
Granted, Danny’s also more knowledgeable about the frat’s layout than I am.
Living in Kappa never made much impact on me.
It was more a place to sleep than anything else, so I never bothered memorizing every inch of the place.
But for Danny, the experience was completely different.
Being the president of his fraternity required him to know the ins and outs of the place like the back of his hand.
Holding on to Danny’s hand, I allow him to guide me through the building. I focus my senses on staying alert, just in case Cupid approaches us out of nowhere. Danny takes care of the front, and I watch his back.
It’s a team effort.
We’re nearing our goal when I hear some soft muffled cries coming from the opposite direction.
“Wait, do you hear that?” I question in a low voice. I don’t want to be overheard. “Someone’s crying.”
By the tone, I think it’s a girl.
It feels as if an elephant has stepped on my chest, and I can’t breathe properly. It rises and falls rhythmically, but my lungs burn and ache like the oxygen isn’t coming through.
What if it’s Carmen?
“Danny,” his name escapes my lips like a plea.
I can’t even muster the courage to say the words.
“It’s okay. We can check,” he reassures me.
To add more comfort, he squeezes my hand three times.
Following the noises, we approach the source.
It’s coming from an open area that seems to be a lounge room.
At first glance, it appears to be empty, but then I spot the small frame hidden behind one of the couches.
The corner barely has any space, but it’s a hiding spot.
It would be a good one, if it weren’t for the crying.
If she was silent, she would go unnoticed by anyone who wasn’t cautiously inspecting every inch of the place, like we are.
As I step closer, I see that the frame doesn’t belong to my sister or my best friend. This girl doesn’t have Carmen’s curls or Cerys’ short bob. Instead, straight dark hair clings to a familiar heart-shaped face.
Zelda.
When she catches a glimpse of us, her eyes snap open with terror. It’s only there for a second, though, and then she begins to cry with relief.
“Oh God, it’s only you two,” she says, pressing her hands to her mouth to drown the noises.
The pink from the lights messes with my color perception, but I can see dark stains on her hands, caked around the edges of her nails where it’s begun to dry.
I’m guessing it’s blood, but I can’t tell where it came from. “I thought he found me again.”
Danny kneels down next to her, inspecting her body for wounds. If the cries and blood are a hint, she must be hurt. It takes him ten seconds to find it, as his eyes dart to me and I see fear plastered across them. I lean in, crouching next to him, and I spot what has him so scared.