by Aly Noble
After carefully sponging off my neck and forehead with an old towel, I leaned away from the sink and let the fabric hang around my shoulders. I looked at myself in the mirror and wiped a dribble of red dye-tinted water off my cheek before I went to sit on the edge of the tub and wait for the dye to do its job.
My nerves were shot, and my head was numb. This was all a waiting game. It was all just a fucking game.
I drew a shaking breath and glanced toward the counter. I’d set the gun and bundled scythe there when I’d undressed to put on an old zip-up sweatshirt I put on whenever I dyed my hair pre-shower. At this point, I was trying to decide what to do with them while I was in said shower. I had two weapons now, and it was two more than I’d had before. I wasn’t letting them out of my sight.
One of which I know next to nothing about, I pointed out to myself, and the other an otherworldly blade of godknowswhat. Real safe.
I checked the time and then reached for the scythe, keeping it covered as I set it on my lap. I was wary of touching it, wondering what direct contact with it might do to a human, if anything. I wet my lips and slid the fabric off, thinking Bethaline had to have touched it directly when she’d pulled it from the river. Then again, she wasn’t exactly “normal” either.
Against what had an equal chance of being anxiety or my better judgment, I shed the case from all but the bottom of the handle and peered down at the weapon, poring over the etchings up the handle and across the base of the blade. It was perhaps as long as my arm, and the blade was curved sharply toward the handle—maybe it operated on pure power without an actual need to cut like a normal scythe?
Steeling my nerves, I brushed the handle with the lightest of touches and, thankfully, I didn’t expire on the spot. In fact, it was surprisingly warm to the touch.
After my experiment didn’t result in immediate death, I liberally investigated the scythe, taking note of all its etchings and the little dips in its making. It looked like something was missing from where the metal met the blade, but it didn’t seem like it had anything to do with the two being attached to one another at least. I ran my finger along the divot, lightly chewing the inside of my cheek while I contemplated the empty space. When no ideas sparked, I shook my head and set the scythe back down, my hand feeling light and a little cold once I let it go.
I spent the rest of the time until I had to rinse out the dye looking up how to use Jeff’s pistol on my phone. By the time I needed to hop in the shower, I was—in theory—prepared to use the firearm if I had to. I wasn’t sure how my reading would translate to reality, but at least now I knew how to safely check to see if it was loaded or not.
I turned on the shower and let the water heat up while I did exactly that, finding that it was indeed loaded. I picked one of the bullets free and examined it, noting the make so I could grab some at the next sporting goods store I hit, which would likely be the one in Cadillac that Jeff had recommended. I picked up the scythe again and set both weapons on the shelf inside the shower, sweeping a glance over my shoulder before I shed my clothes and got in. I kept a wary eye toward the backlit vinyl curtain as I flipped my hair over and took the shower-head to it, rinsing it clean.
The dread deep in the pit of my gut wasn’t going anywhere. It would fluctuate, but it would stay. I knew that. What I didn’t know was what I could do about it.
The thought rang false in my head, and I sighed. Of course that was a lie—I knew one thing I could do. Well, one thing I could try. I closed my eyes, and the breath that fell from my lips was heavy like the silence beyond the sound of falling water. Like the weapons beside me on the toiletry shelf. Like the burden that didn’t exist yet, but fell just as palpably across my body.
It was obvious. It had been for a while now.
I opened my eyes and stared down at the dye running out of my hair, cascading a watery red down to the off-white floor—it diluted as it spiraled in a predestined path into the drain, into a void I couldn’t see.
He won’t stop until he kills me.
I began to work out the final remnants of the dye as the answer unfurled clearly in my mind. It had always been there to some degree. I was just fully acknowledging it this time. Accepting it.
I’m going to have to kill him first.
Chapter 27
It was on the second trap I set up that I strained a muscle in my shoulder.
The thought of one of these fuckers clamping shut on my hands was enough to make me take my time despite knowing that I could be in the fight of my life at any moment. The morning darkness that preceded dawn felt too light and empty—my body knew that this wasn’t a normal hour to be up, despite the insomnia that had kept me all too aware of my own fears these past two, nearly three, weeks. It felt wrong to be awake even if—had I been back at Estelle’s—I wouldn’t be sleeping anyway.
Finally, I finished setting it up right as my shoulder felt like it might give out. I looked at the bear trap’s jaws gaping up at me before I took my weight off the side and removed the clamp. A moment or two later, I had both traps mostly obscured with leaves and created a semicircle of stones around each trap’s general location—just enough to notice when I had to look for them, but not enough to be noticed by someone who had no reason to think they were there. At least that was the idea. I just hoped some poor animal didn’t wander into them before I returned.
I straightened up and looked around in the dark, waiting to see if I heard anything before I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder.
Had it not happened to me, it might have been funny to see how people reacted to someone walking into a trading post in Cadillac, Michigan and bringing three bear traps, a can of bear mace, a can of regular mace, and fifteen feet of chain to the register. It was certainly more intense than the single look I got at the sporting goods store when all I purchased was a bat and some safety rope. And yet, still, no one gives you side-eye for buying hydrofluoric acid—they would if they’d paid any kind of attention in chemistry class.
I’d brought my haul back to Estelle’s and had then made the load as feasible as possible to take with me—meaning I’d had to make two painstakingly careful trips. The first had been made just before 4 a.m. after obsessing over whether the shadow I’d seen cross the moonlight had been a woodland rodent or Price. As it turned out—unless he was well and truly screwing with me—it had been an animal because I was still alive despite being alone and vulnerable in the woods in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe this would work.
Don’t think like that yet, my more rational side reminded the optimist. You still have to actually kill him.
That still felt so alien to consider. And yet what felt more alien was how okay with it I was. I was sure that part of that was feeling like I didn’t have a choice and like it was deserved on his part. However, the norm I knew was that killing another person—even one formerly demonic and perpetually homicidal—should feel vile. It should make me sick. Maybe it just wasn’t real for me yet. Or maybe Hollywood paints humans in a kinder light than we’re born into. I should have probably instead been referring to world history for my conjectures about human nature.
I threw the last of my effort into setting the third trap, and it paid off—now there was just the matter of resting up before I made my very blatant return to this spot. I covered up the trap and lined it like the others before I stowed the rest of my supplies in hollow, hidden places and grabbed my now-empty bag to cautiously make my way back through the trees. I relaxed some once I was away from the traps and turned to look back, memorizing oddities for landmarks as well as I could. Now, it was time to wait. And wait.
And worry. I had time to do that, too.
The potential problems with this plan that wasn’t quite a plan were huge. There was massive room for error. In fact, there were rooms for error. An actual lux hotel for it. And yet, here it was—an end in sight. Even if that end was me fucking up royally and dying a macabre, slow death that preceded my detached jaw rotting in a ziplock in
Price's subterranean murder workshop, it was an ending. And I was desperate for an ending.
There was no way this was realistically going to work though. I was relying mostly on being smarter and more desperate than Price, and I was only sure of one of those being entirely true. Either way though, it’d end. No matter what happened, all of this would end. Unless of course, the psycho didn’t happen to be creeping around when I made my move to lure him out to the woods. I groaned audibly at the thought and checked around afterward to ensure no one was around to hear me, thinking that had been a dumb thing to do on my part.
I hadn’t told Estelle—and if everything went the way it was supposed to, I wasn’t sure I’d have to. So long as she didn’t try to fight me going somewhere by myself and Price followed me instead of going inside after Estelle, things would unfold in a semi-acceptable way. I wondered if he was smart enough to see through this or if he was still wrapped up in his supernatural superiority complex and the blatant narcissism he came by naturally.
I hesitated at the edge of the trees before working my way through Estelle's backyard. The fine hairs on my neck stood on end as I neared the house, watching and listening for any sign of Price. When I got to the back door, I looked at the crack in the jamb—the mulch chip I’d wedged in there was still sticking out and a sigh of relief passed my lips. I set my empty bag against the house siding and opened the door. The chip fell out immediately, as it would have if anyone had disturbed the door while I was gone.
Stealthily, I slipped back into the dark dining room and glanced toward the couch as I latched the door behind me, seeing that Estelle was still asleep. I was halfway past her when a horrible thought stopped me—shit, what if she wasn’t asleep?
Swallowing against a dry throat, I backed up and glanced at her again, trying to make out a rise and fall of her chest in the darkness. When I couldn’t, I moved forward. She unconsciously chose that exact moment to draw a rumbling snore and, despite hoping for the signs of life my anxiety had talked me into looking for, the abrupt sound scared the life out of me.
Shaking my head in her general direction and feeling a little miffed about being startled, I made my way into the kitchen and took a glass from the cupboard as silently as I could. I filled it with water from the sink, the gentle whine of the pipes doing something to steady my nerves as it broke the renewed silence that hung around the house like a shroud. Once it was nearly full, I shut off the water and raised the glass to my lips.
“You’re up late.”
I half-choked and had to grapple with the glass before it could slip from my hand and shatter in the metal sink basin. I raised a shaking hand to my face to wipe my chin with my jacket sleeve. Finally, I recognized the consequences of keeping my back turned and slowly adjusted my stance to take in Price, who was standing in the shadows behind me near the fridge. How hadn’t I seen him?
Amused by my unstated shock, Price scratched the back of his head with his right hand, inclining his head just slightly to meet his nails. My mouth felt dry and my brain was going a hundred miles a second in six different directions, but I saw the weakness in that simple, miscalculated display—his wound was still angry and festering. He was catering to it.
Use it.
“Your little mulch trick with the door was cute,” he commented softly. “Something from a movie?”
I drew half a breath in through my nose and made myself speak. It felt like leveling the playing field somehow. “Something I came up with on the fly, actually,” I said honestly. “Or maybe I did pick it up from a movie I saw once. Who knows.”
“True enough. You’re crafty enough to think of it. But maybe not enough to invent it,” he said considerately.
Sure. Keep thinking that, I spat back in my head. “Um… Thanks?” I said aloud.
He snickered to himself. “My point exactly.” Call me stupid one more time, asshole. Price’s snickering ended on a sigh that held an air of being inconvenienced, like he was late to another appointment. His gaze traveled—lit sideways by muted moonlight filtering through the blinds—toward the living room doorway as Estelle emitted another quiet snore from the couch. I felt myself bristle. However, he contemplated the archway for only a moment before making a faint, dismissive noise from the base of his throat. “I don’t think we need to drag your friend into this any more than you already have. Do we?”
Part of me resisted agreeing. Two against one with not only Estelle’s rifle but Jeff’s firearm (which was currently in my jacket) at our disposal, too? Sounded like nice odds. The problem was that shooting Price where he stood would be loud and leave more of a mess to clean up, literally and figuratively. There were no signs of a break-in this time, and I had a more significant time gap for which to construct an alibi because I’d snuck off to hide my traps. Not only that, but Lancer had quite an opinion of both me and Estelle by now—he’d be more than happy to rail us with a lousy testimony if something went to court.
For a moment, I entertained how a case like this would go if it ended up within the parameters of a courtroom. The notion, in theory, was intriguing, but not something I wanted to experience. I wanted this to be over. That being said, eliminating the option of keeping this inside the house meant involving Estelle outside the house if I chose to alert her. This would also demand that she didn’t panic and that I could keep the trap damage limited to Price despite her going in blind.
For once, it felt better to go in alone, despite the turns off-course this venture could take.
Hope this makes you the Final Girl and not a Prologue Death, my brain snapped unhelpfully. At last, I sighed. It sounded adequately resigned, just not for the reasons Price probably thought. “We don’t.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Then shall we?”
He leaned up off the counter and walked to the back door, assuming I’d follow. Almost mechanically, I did. We walked out to the yard, and he sighed again, up at the sky this time. The moon had become obscured by clouds. “This feels more like an execution than I’d like, Miri. This isn’t what I wanted for us.”
I felt sick—every time I thought he could no longer surprise me with whatever twisted thing he said next or the sheer depth of his insanity, he did.
So use it! my brain insisted.
Before I could contemplate the repercussions—although, at this point, what did I have to lose?—I said, “Then give me a fair shot.”
I’d surprised him this time. I could feel the way his posture stiffened just a little nearby, the way his attention shifted. With that surprise, however, there was interest. “Go on.”
I was already a third of the way to my spot in the woods by being outside of the house. It was a straight shot. No doors. No corners. No hallways. No fences. Nothing in the environment that he could use against me. All I had to do was not trip and be faster than Price. Before he was all human again, it wouldn’t have been a contest. Now, I had a chance.
“I want a head-start.” I looked him in the eyes as I spoke and that surprised him, too. “Thirty seconds doesn’t seem like much to ask.”
His eyes narrowed, and he sized me up. “Ten.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Fifteen.”
I gritted my teeth. “Twenty then.”
He snorted with an air of condescension. “You realize you’re in no position to be ‘making rules’ for this, don’t you?” he sneered. However, he hesitated in answering me for so long that I half-expected him to refuse or just hurl his knife at me and be done with it. Finally, he nodded. “Fine. Twenty seconds.” He acted put out, but that tricky, hungry light was back in his eyes, no illusion cast by fear or an absent moon. “Get a breath, and I’ll count down your start. Like a race.”
I definitely expected him to cheat. He was either excited about the chase to come or aroused by the prospect of ripping the proverbial rug out from under me more than he already had. However, if I’d learned Price the way I thought I had, he’d give me at least half of what we’d bargained. He was
a predator after all and an adrenaline junkie to the core—the thrill was more than half the prize. The way he acted, I was a challenge he hadn’t had in a long time, if ever. I hoped I could fulfill that expectation. I wanted to throw it in his face.
First though, I’d have to win.
“Ready?” he asked, a smile in his voice.
I didn’t look at him. I put my eyes on the trees. “Sure.”
“Any last words before we begin?”
“A few,” I muttered, a chill wind sweeping the yard. “But you’ll have to catch me first.”
Price chuckled. “I hope I can hold off long enough to hear them. From three then. And no early starts—all bets are off if you start early.”
“Simon Says. Got it,” I said in a clipped tone.
“Three…”
I took a breath.
“Two…”
I let it go.
“One.”
I ran.
I don't know if it was the thought of him cheating or basic instinct that sent me hurtling so immediately toward the woods. The point is that I took off so quickly that my knees nearly buckled, and I belatedly realized that it all could be in motion at that very moment. I couldn’t hear anything outside of my own feet crashing against the ground and my own breathing I was keeping steady out of willpower alone. I wouldn’t know if he was after me until it was nearly too late.
How long had it been? Ten seconds? Five? I wasn’t keeping count. Did it even matter?
I’d crested the steep incline that connected the yard to the edge of the forest when the end of Price’s knife sank into the trunk of a tree I was passing, level with my head.
