by LeAnn Mason
GOLDEN BEAUTY
A TALE OF GRIMM HOLLOW
LEANN MASON
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
OTHER BOOKS BY LEANN MASON
FOLLOW LINKS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For all those who need a little help to overcome…
CHAPTER 1
Three weeks she’d been away, and I was still scrambling to get eyes on my best friend. Griffin had yet to return either or I’d have just followed him. He was arrogant enough to not worry about the rusted little beater car that puttered around behind his shiny new SUV. Maybe then I could get a glimpse of her, assure myself that she was just home sick.
But I knew she wasn’t.
I parked said beater in the cracked driveway of the old house my parents and I called home, forcing my thoughts away from my worry. Turning the key, I listened to the ignition die with a cough and pushed open the heavy, creaking door. Neither the house nor the car was anywhere near the top of the line, but they were what my family could afford. My stepping stone to a life with more was college, and I needed to study to get there. Studying got me scholarships. Scholarships got me to college. College got me a good job. A good job got me enough money to live comfortably. My sisters were already employing such methods, both having gotten hefty scholarships to great schools. Thus taking them one step closer to being full-fledged adults than me.
But losing one’s friend—one’s only friend—made the days a bit less bright and studying less important. I’d never had many friends, always too absorbed in studying, learning all I could about everything I could. It had served me well in my education, but my parents still thought I needed to get out more. To have more invested in the “here and now.”
Allya had been my one exception. She’d been my best friend for years, and then, a few weeks ago, she’d up and vanished. I’d asked around at school, but she’d been known to be absent for several days, and Griffin, her foster brother, wasn’t there either. After the second week of her being away, I got truly worried. Impotence set in when I realized just how little I knew about my friend.
I had no idea where she lived because she’d been scared to show me. She went out of her way to keep me from being seen with her. We spent our lunches in the library more often than not, and when Griffin was around, she clammed up, sometimes going so far as to leave entirely. I never understood it completely. I did understand that Griffin was bad news, a serious creeper hidden by a beautiful face.
I went to the sheriff’s office to see about filing a report, but the best they could do on my word was a welfare check, which they did. Or said they did. When I’d come back in, they informed me that she was home sick with a bad case of the flu. Nevermind that the flu wasn’t a late summer affliction. They were sorry, but there wasn’t more they would do.
I didn’t know where to go from there.
My backpack, heavily laden with all the books of my accelerated learning classes, several of which were counting toward college credits, threw me off balance as I flipped it around my shoulders. I wouldn’t be surprised if the weight caused me back problems later in life, but for now, I just reminded myself that it meant I was succeeding in my goal to leave this town.
I watched my feet as I trudged to the step of our little front porch. A habit I probably needed to break before going somewhere more populated—like college. I didn’t want to be that girl. My glasses slipped down my nose, as usual, when I stared at the ground for too long. A finger reflexively pushed the black frames back in place as I lifted my eyes… and froze.
“Mom… Dad?” Slowly, I reached out a hand to further push the already open door. Crossing warily into the house, I gasped. The entire living room was in disarray like a struggle had taken place. The end table between the couch and ratty, threadbare recliner my father always spent his evenings adhered to was flipped, its glass surface shattered across the floor when it hit the wall—kicked or thrown, I didn’t know. The couch was skewed from its normal position facing the television along the far wall, and said television was face down on the tan carpet at the base of the stand it had formerly inhabited.
“Mom? Dad?” I yelled again, my nerves reaching panic level. My hands and legs trembled with my fear, clenching painfully in warning when I forced them to continue further into my home. Thankfully, my shoes had thick soles, otherwise, I’d have impaled myself more than once as I navigated to the hallway leading back toward the three small bedrooms.
Each step acted like a vise on my heart, making breathing more difficult and my limbs sluggish in their response to my brain’s commands to continue. A thump had me jerking my attention to my parents’ semi-closed door. I felt lightheaded as my heart attempted to gallop out of my chest, a last-ditch effort to avoid discovering what it feared lay behind the flimsy barrier.
The black rims of my large, square glasses slid into my sightline once again. My panic was not allowing me to focus on such a small thing to correct, not when… my fingers connected with the hollow barrier, pushing softly to allow myself entry. The dingy door’s hinges squealed in protest, almost as if it, too, was screaming at me to turn and go. To not enter further. Warning me that I would not like what I found.
The little room looked almost normal, the bed still sitting against the left wall with small tables bookending each side. Only, the contents of the tables: an e-reader, water bottle, and, from the far table, a lamp were all scattered on the floor—broken in the case of the lamp. The sheets were pulled and haphazard… like someone had grabbed them in an effort not to go somewhere.
My eyes darted to the door cut into the wall on the far side of the bed. My breathing was now coming in panted bursts and exploding noisily from my mouth as I inched around the foot of the bed toward the bathroom door. “Mom?”
“There you are.”
I spun on my heel, my eyes wide with fear and shock at the masculine voice radiating from the doorway behind me. Gaping, and near hyperventilating, I stared at a man I’d never set eyes upon before. He wasn’t anything I’d remember even if I had. He was simply a man. Brown hair, brown eyes, average height.
But there was more lurking behind those irises. That look I recognized; it was one that Allya’s foster brother Griffin had as well. That look led me to believe that maybe this had something to do with her. “What do you want? Where are my parents?” I squared my shoulders as I addressed him. Weakness would only ignite the fire in those eyes. I’d seen it with Griffin, too.
A smirk kicked up one side of his mouth, and those eyes lit with excitement. Dang it, there would be no avoiding it then. Anything I did now would be intriguing to him. “Did you want to take a look?” He thrust his chin in the direction of the door I’d been aiming for when he’d made himself known. “Maybe you’ll be able to say goodbye.”
I bolted to the doorway, catching mys
elf with the frame as I skidded to a stop. My eyes fell to the figure lying in a twisted heap upon the cream linoleum flooring. My mother’s dark hair was spread almost artfully in a fan around her head, her luminous hazel eyes, so like mine, were flat and lifeless as they returned my stare.
“Mom!” I wailed, falling to my knees at her side. Reaching out to her, I moved my body to cradle her to me. Her head moved unnaturally—too much—only stopping when it hit my legs. She was heavy, limp… a dead weight as I hunched over her and gathered her to me as best I could. Sobs wrenched from deep within as I realized I was too late. There would be no saving her.
“Oh, come now, Mae Randall. Don’t cry. There is no need to mourn the spilling of milk. It has already been spilled. There is nothing you can do about it,” the callous voice mollified without feeling. I could picture the shrug that accompanied the words.
I couldn’t help but smooth my fingers across my mother’s rapidly cooling cheek. My tears wet a path behind my touch, and I moved the digits back to remove the wetness from her skin. Skin that was rapidly losing not only warmth but color as well. It only made me cry harder.
“Your father, on the other hand…”
“Who are you? What do you want? Why would you do this?” I choked between sobs, laying my mother’s dead body gently to the floor. She’d been getting ready for her shift at the hospital, already dressed in her pale pink scrubs. There were even cheery little kittens all over it.
How horrible of a lie those kittens were.
“So many questions that I do not feel like answering at the moment. All will become clear soon enough if all goes to plan. Which it will, of course.” He smiled. A fake, placating smile that matched his tone. This man didn’t care. About anything, it seemed. “Your father?” he reminded me, lifting his eyebrows in a secondary question.
“Where is he?”
“That is what you must find out, Mae Randall,” he answered almost coyly. He enjoyed this, soaking up my pain, my fear, and frustration. Taking in my responses to his jabs like that was the point of… everything. “Maybe you will be able to save him.”
Those words spurred me from my grieving. I needed to do what I could for the parent who might still need me. “Dad,” I yelled, my voice cracking as I barreled past the psychotic man leaning casually against the door jamb, watching me weep over my mother.
The acrid scent of smoke greeted me as soon as I hurtled out of the bedroom. How had I not noticed that on the way in? “Dad,” I coughed before bringing my arm across my face to rest my nose and mouth in the crook of my elbow. Just as I made my way out of the hallway and veered left toward the little enclosed kitchen, the smoke alarms began their shrieking, their screams adding to the ringing in my head fear had initiated.
Thick clouds of black smoke roiled through the arched doorway and fanned across the ceiling, the scent cloying and threatening to send me into a coughing fit so severe I’d collapse.
I couldn’t. I needed to find my father, though if he was still in the house—and quiet—there wouldn’t be a good reason.
“Mae!”
“Dad!” He was still in there… and alive. I renewed my efforts, bolting into the kitchen with wide eyes stinging from the smoke. I coughed on the inhale, taking in too much smoke. But then, so was Dad.
“Mae, run! Get out of—” My father’s panicked voice cut off abruptly mid-warning. His words turned into a murmured gurgling as blood seeped from between his lips and stained his teeth. Almost as if in slow motion, I watched my father collapse to his knees in front of the stove. His kind eyes were wide with shock and fear as he stared at where I raced to catch his falling body. In a world-class slide across the open floor, I reached my father’s side in time to catch his body as it fell forward.
“It’s okay, Dad. I’m here. I’ve got you.” Finally remembering that I had a phone hiding in one of the pockets of my jeans, I fumbled to retrieve it while still holding my father. Where was the wound? “Dad, where are you hurt?”
He gasped, eyes widening in anguish. Blood splashed across my face, staining my glasses from the exhale. Finally, I pulled the old phone from my pocket, trying not to hyperventilate at the idea that my sight was now marred with little specks of my father’s blood.
“Oh dear, you missed this one, too?” the vile murderer tsked blithely, conversationally. Again. “I can barely hear myself think,” he huffed in a near shout. “Let’s stop this infernal shrieking, shall we?” With a wave of his hand, the smoke detectors abruptly ceased their screams of alarm.
I fumbled with the phone, keeping my father’s head cradled on my lap as his breathing slowed, his blinks becoming longer in a fight to keep his eyes open.
“Why are you doing this?” I scream-cried at the sadistic man looming in the background of my burning kitchen.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
“My parents are… dead. Dying. Please—”
“That’s enough of that,” the man said as he flicked a finger. The phone shot from my hand as if it were a bullet fired from a gun, shattering against the wall with its impact. “Time to go. There is still much fun to be had.”
I was frozen with shock and fear, my limbs refusing to move, to acknowledge the danger I was in.
A weak touch to my chest brought my attention back to my—dying—father. I still couldn’t see a wound, no reason that he should be spewing blood. Just one breathy word escaped his blood-stained lips: “Run.” I pinched my brows. How could he expect me to just leave him, to leave Mom?
When I didn’t move, his grey eyes narrowed, blazing with a new intensity. The hand that had been gripping me began to push at my body. Though he had no real strength, he used what little he had available to move away. “Go!” he choked out in another spray of crimson.
Tears streaming down my cheeks, I forced my body to obey. Pushing to my heels so I could stand, I jumped into action. Unfortunately, my only exit was blocked by the assailant, who smirked with more than a hint of crazy lurking in his bright eyes.
Here goes nothing.
I lunged, feinting to the left in a pathetic hope to move him enough that I could squeeze by. I wasn’t very big; it was feasible… except he wasn’t fooled. I, however, was caught completely off-guard by the right fist that hooked toward my face. The strike hit my cheek with more force than I would have thought a man of his build could deliver. As I careened to the gleaming linoleum, I watched—in a detached manner—as my large, black-framed glasses leapt from my face to skid across the kitchen floor away from me.
The secondary impact with the ground was enough to tunnel my vision to black. At least I wouldn’t have to watch my parents’ bodies be engulfed by the hungry flames that I now felt at my back. Maybe it would take me, too. The smoke was heavy. I could smell its toxic stench, but it wasn’t choking me as it had when I’d first discovered my father in the kitchen. How was that possible?
“Sometimes, nothing beats a good ol’ punch,” the man mused as he knelt in front of me, tilting his head as if curious. “Nunc somnum.”
With a press of his index finger to my forehead, my sight once again tunneled. My limbs became heavy—too heavy to lift—and my mind muddled, spiraling me steadily into an abyss that I wasn’t sure I could rouse myself from.
“That daughter of mine will come for you. I will have my legacy.” I had a detached sense he had picked me up like a sack of potatoes and thrown me over his shoulder like I imagined the cavemen of old to have done. Then, I succumbed fully to whatever he intended, all of my senses fleeing the real world.
CHAPTER 2
I woke with a start. My senses came back all at once, unlike the gradual waking of a natural sleep. Memories assailed me, filing through my mind like flipping the pages of a picture book: My mother lying dead on the bathroom floor, her neck broken. My father dying in my arms, his blood staining the lenses of my glasses.
My hand flew to the bridge of my nose. My spectacles were missing, blurring my surroundings as I looked around in an
attempt to gain my bearings. I was outside amid fuzzy vertical pillars I assumed were trees based on the smell of earth and rustle of leaves. The cloying scent of smoke carried on the breeze.
Smoke. My house had been billowing with it when I’d been rendered unconscious by my parents’ murderer. Fear hammered at my heart once again, and I scooted around on the ground where I’d been placed. I needed to get out of there. I needed to see my parents. I needed to make burial arrangements. I'd need to call my sisters.
“Oh good. You’re awake. I was afraid my spell may have been too… potent for the likes of you. My plan can continue forward unhindered now.”
“What plan? Who are you? What do you want?” My heart rate accelerated with every moment I remained in the psychopath’s clutches, increasing with the realization that I couldn’t see anything with certainty. I would have a heck of a time trying to escape without knowing where I was going or even coming from. There were countless plants and other natural—maybe even some unnatural—obstacles barring my flight.
I assumed I was in the forest bordering town, but that was purely a guess. I hadn’t ventured into the forest much at all, especially not alone. It was just too easy to get turned around. Many an errant child had been lost within the thick confines of the towering flora over the years. Some were recovered successfully. Some were not.
“You really are a curious thing, aren’t you? I could see you making a wonderful Witch… if you were able. But alas, your purpose will only be as bait.”
“Bait? For who? You killed the only people who cared about me!” I shrieked as my panic crested. I pushed to my feet and spun a hasty circle. We were in a small area that looked, to my blurry vision at least, like someone had come in years ago and cleared it of trees, vines, and even rocks. “What the…”
“I know for a fact there is at least one other who cares for you. Even if she did think she was keeping that fact from me,” he mused as he moved around the area, shifting unseen items from one point to various others.
