Chapter 40
Escape
The sun was bright and dazzling. It did nothing to alter my mood.
I turned left, the garden was even prettier in the daylight, a sea of white and yellow roses with a few soft pink ones scattered throughout.
It was well manicured, someone had given it lots of time, attention, and love.
It would hardly be Karson, I couldn’t see him pruning roses.
I marched forward, the yard was sprawling and beautiful, with manicured lawns, and trimmed hedges hugging sanded paths which meandered around the garden.
It was a few hectares in size. The whole yard was encased by the high, creamy brick wall.
As far as I could see, unless I wanted to climb a tree, scale the wall, and try not to break a few bones on the jump down, I was trapped.
There was no distant rumble of cars. No rumble of lawn mowers.
No sounds of humans nearby. No one to cry out to.
I’d spent my life trapped in places I didn’t want to be, with some cruel people, and survived, hadn’t I?
Yes, I had. Every time. Still, being trapped here as an adult, not with men but with beasts, hurled me back to the emotional whirlwind of childhood.
The feeling of entrapment.
‘Do not try and leave or I will be forced to stop you.’
Bastard. How dare he threaten me. How dare he presume he got to control what I did, or where I went.
I wasn’t a child anymore, and what did he think he was going to do, lock me up?
There were laws for that kind of thing. I wouldn’t allow myself to live like that ever again.
I would not be a victim. Trapped. Powerless. Afraid.
I had to escape.
I headed toward the back of the property, skirting around trees as majestic as they were ancient.
The money I’d tucked under the bottom of my sock earlier had shifted and felt slippery on the ball of my foot.
The credit card I had placed in my bra dug into my breast. My phone was still sitting on the dining table, in my haste I’d left it there.
Still, he wouldn’t expect me to try and escape without a phone, would he?
Leaving it behind could work in my favour.
A cold prickled the back of my neck. I had the inexplicable feeling I was being watched.
I stopped and glanced back toward the house.
On the third-floor small, black windows gazed out from an entanglement of ivy growing up a lattice on the side of the house.
From where I stood, most of the house was buried behind the canopy of leaves.
I couldn’t make out movement of the curtains, or density in the shadows.
From behind me birds cried out and fluttered into the sky.
I swung back and kept walking until I came to the fence. It was as thick and impenetrable as a prison wall, but it might have a gate somewhere leading into the forest behind.
I couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes on me, the cold sunk down to my bones. I glanced back toward the house, only the corners were visible now. I was being silly. No one was watching me.
I reached into my bra, took my credit card out and tucked it down the side of my sock. Baby birds tweeted from high up in a tree.
Run.
A breeze rustled the tree branches. I jerked to the westerly direction and stopped dead. From somewhere in the distance a crow screeched and took off. A black void opened up in my head and took with it my blood. My heart thumped in my chest.
It can’t have been.
I held my breath and listened. The breeze shifted the limbs and they rattled. The baby birds had gone silent. The whole forest seemed eerily silent, bar the breeze. I shuddered.
You imagined it, fool.
It was ludicrous, but I thought I’d heard, coming from the trees in a hushed cold whisper, as if the wind itself had whispered an ominous warning. One single word . . .
‘Run.’
I scanned the tree line, craning into the dark reaches. The trees, usually a place of sanctuary no longer seemed innocent, now they seemed to be a cellar of menacing darkness. A cold sweat clung to the nape of my neck. Nothing moved, there was nothing out of place.
Get it together, Amy, there’s nothing out there.
There wasn’t some evil lurking in their midst. The wind didn’t speak. I was merely rattled, and with good reason, I supposed. I walked easterly, faster than ordinary. My lungs tight against my chest. My eyes and ears on heightened alert.
Karson said he wouldn’t hurt me, hadn’t he?
But the way Monique had looked at me, it was as if I were a cockroach she might want to place her high heel on and squash.
What if she convinced him otherwise? I knew too much.
And now he had to deal with vampires who wanted revenge.
What if killing me was an easier option?
I needed to get as far away from here as I could. Another strong breeze shifted the tree branches and it sounded like claws sharpening on a trunk.
An ice-cold chill shot up my back.
The tree line had thickened, the sunlight pocketed randomly through moving branches, flickering and fluttering across the leafy floor. The air seemed cooler here. Shadows loomed from under the trees like shapes. Eyes burnt into my back.
‘Run, run, run.’
The words floated out of the branches, sung like a taunting, demonic lullaby. I went stone cold. The snap of a branch came from behind. Another crunch of leaves from the same place.
Footsteps.
Too noisy to be a vampire. Nervously, I swung back. Could be an animal. It was too loud to be a squirrel, but it had to be an animal of some sort, didn’t it?
Eyes as large as saucers, blood rushing through my scalp, I stared into the space. I can’t have heard singing, it was stupid. There’s no one there I told myself.
My throat dried and my palms felt damp. I clenched them into fists and now, oh fuck!
I could hear footsteps, coming my way.
Panic roared through my veins, and I turned to run. My foot slipped on the notes in my sock, I stumbled sideways, and hands shoved my back from behind.
I hurtled toward the ground, reaching forward to break my fall, but my head came down on a sideways angle and slammed against the earth so hard my teeth clanked together. Pain shot through the edge of my tongue, blood leaked into my mouth. My vision watered. I rolled back, gasping and whining.
A face loomed above me.
I cried out.