Horrorscape

by Nenia Campbell

  “Mm-hmm. Just like that.” He wrapped his arm around Val's waist. “You have Val to thank.” His fingers stroked her side possessively. “She was most persuasive in begging for your lives.” She stiffened, face aflame, and could not meet the eyes of her friends.

  “Stop it,” she whispered.

  Blake and Lisa looked at each other. “The front door is still locked,” Blake said cautiously.

  “Observant as always,” Gavin said. “I'll get the key. Excuse me.”

  The moment he was gone, her friends pelted her with questions. She didn't register any of them over the sound of her own heartbeat. Only the tone they were asked in: suspicious, hurt, betrayed, frightened.

  “Listen to me—he's not going to let you go. He's going to kill you both. You have to get out of here.”

  “He said we can leave,” Lisa said.

  “Yes,” Val replied, “but he didn't say you may.”

  “How do you know that?” Blake asked. “That's splitting hairs. It's semantics. It's—”

  “It's the way he works,” Val snapped. “You don't believe me? He carries a small knife. I…I saw him kill Charlie with it. Back in the greenhouse. I'm pretty sure he killed Jason, too. I saw his body upstairs. He'd been stabbed.”

  Lisa covered her mouth. “Oh God—”

  “Lisa—remember the greenhouse? There was a back entrance, I think. I was trying to find a way out and then Charlie showed up—” she cut herself off. “You found it. Try that way. If he's locked it, smash the glass. It's far enough away that he might not hear it.”

  “But not the front door?”

  “I smelled gas. I think he's going to torch the place.”

  “Oh God,” Lisa said again. “This isn't happening—”

  “And what are you going to do?” Blake demanded.

  “I—” She fingered the glass through her jeans. “I'm going to try and distract him.”

  “Distract him? This isn't a movie, Val,” Lisa warned, shaken from her hysteria. “He might really kill you.”

  Not if I kill him first. She turned away, before they could see the sangfroid in her eyes, the blood lust in her veins.

  “I'm willing to take that chance. Now run.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Checkmate

  GM pretended to look surprised when he came back and found Blake and Lisa gone. “Where are your friends, Val? I was under the impression they were dying to leave.”

  “I don't know.”

  “You're a poor liar, Val. They're trying to escape, I suppose? Leaving you here—to distract me, like a lamb to the slaughter.” He grinned. “Welcome distraction though you are, I'm afraid I can't have that.”

  “Can't—or won't?”

  “Touche.”

  He took her by the wrist, yanking her out of the house. Her feet were slipping and sliding on something wet, and the sharp smell of gasoline burned her sinuses.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “You'll see.”

  At the door's threshold, he struck a match and tossed it on the boards. A river of fire erupted through the halls. It was terrifying, akin to glimpsing the hell that awaited her into the afterlife. “Wait.” Her throat was coated in grit from the smoke. “The others—” Had they made it out in time?

  “I agreed to spare their lives. I said nothing about preserving them.”

  That's splitting hairs. It's semantics.

  This must have been how Cassandra felt. She dug her heels into the dirt. “We have to go back.”

  “No,” he said, with cold finality, “Have you learned nothing? Survival of the fittest, my dear. Only the strongest are capable of living on to reproduce and flourish.”

  “Is that right?” Her voice sounded raw.

  “Two million years of evolution seem to indicate so.”

  GM led her off the porch—not that she had much choice; his hand tightly gripped her wrist, tighter when she tried to pull away one last time. She could scarcely breathe, and only barely resisted the impulse to check that the glass shard in her pants was still secure. It was like ice against her sweaty skin; a grim reminder of what she was going to have to do.

  “Then why do people exist who aren't like you?” she spat, to take her mind off the blade.

  “That's a simple case of mathematics. It takes many sheep to satisfy one wolf.”

  “Is that what this was? Some sick, Darwinian experiment?”

  “I suppose you would see it that way. No, my intentions were slightly less grandiose. I merely wanted something that would ensure your good behavior. And it worked.”

  She let her silence speak for itself.

  “Don't be that way. You know I'm right. You would never have come to me alone.”

  They were by the swimming pool now. Spirals of steam rose up from the water to mingle with the morning air. Val could smell the chlorine. The water lapped at her feet.

  “I'm here now,” she said quietly, bowing her head so he would not see the hatred there. Or the fear.

  He moved her down with him until she was lying flush against the second step of the pool. The chemicals of the pool water stung her many cuts and scrapes. At her hip, where the glass had gouged her, was a steady, painful throb.

  “You look like Ophelia,” he said huskily.

  “She killed herself.”

  “Only because Hamlet was foolish enough to let her. You are mine. As long as one of us still breathes, that won't change.”

  Exactly.

  She yelped when he lowered his hands to his jeans, and got into position over her. “Wait—”

  “What is it?” He didn't sound human. Where his white clothing was damp, she could see right through. Leaning over her like this, face blackened with smoke, wet, and unkempt, she realized she had never seen him look so wild.

  “I…I want to touch you.” She thought frantically back to the movies she had seen with James. Action movies, where the heroine tricked the villain. “I want to, um, g-get used to you a-and your body.”

  The blush that colored her face wasn't feigned.

  His face didn't change, but she thought she heard his breathing quicken. For a moment, he seemed about to refuse, and the glass burned like fire against her hip. He's going to kill me, if he sees it, she thought, her heart pounding.

  “All right.”

  He backed up off her, and she was free. Well. Not quite. Even as she rose to a sitting position, she knew he was tensed and ready to spring if she tried to run. She kept that in mind as she straddled his waist, letting her fingers slide through his dark hair that had the texture of coarse fur.

  He remained still at first, letting her touch his face, his eyelids, his lips—though he bit her fingertips when she ventured too close. His willingness shocked her; was he that trusting? Or did he simply believe her to be so weak that she was incapable of betrayal?

  Which would be quickest? She wondered, as their lips met again. His throat? Her fingers played over the supple skin, the rigid tautness of his Adam's apple, as she let her hands fall down his body. His heart? But she wasn't sure she'd be able to find it—the ribs were in the way, and a wound to the stomach wouldn't kill him fast enough.

  “What on earth are you looking for?” he whispered, as her hand slipped down his soaked shirt. And—perhaps she was imagining it—but he sounded perhaps the tiniest bit suspicious. The way he had sounded when she'd kissed him and he'd seen Lisa's reflection in her own.

  “This.” She bared her teeth in a mangled attempt at a smile, and grabbed him through his pants. He inhaled sharply, as though his breath were a knife slicing through his throat and lungs, and his hips bucked beneath hers involuntarily.

  The crotch of his trousers was under the water, seated as he was against the steps, and the tight fabric was plastered to the skin because beneath it, he wore nothing else. She looked up from the hard, corded flesh she clutched in her hand and gasped at the expression on his face. With a splash, he tackled her, and they fell down a step, forcing her to
sit upright to keep her head from being submerged.

  She waited until he was over her, until his hands were on her hips and out of the way, and then she let the glass shard fly. But she hesitated, and he'd sensed the flash of silver in the corner of his eye. He whipped his head back to look at her. Instead of slicing the arteries in his neck, she merely grazed the skin with the teeth of the blade. A crimson collar blossomed on his skin, studded with garnet drops of blood.

  He stared at her, eyes wide with disbelief.

  And then he was wrestling her for control of the blade. She slashed at his hand, and he let his weight settle on her belly, keeping her hips pressed against the ground—so she couldn't crawl away. She let out an angry yowl, holding her hand as high above her head as it could, trying to keep the blade away from him. Just when it occurred to her that she should toss it he tore the knife from her hand and poised the blade at the hollow of her throat.

  “You are quite a bit more ruthless than I gave you credit for, my hellcat.” His voice like clotted cream, disgustingly thick. She moved her head back, trying to put space between herself and the blade, and water flooded her ears, lending a strange, robotic quality to his voice. “I had no idea your claws were so sharp. Or perhaps you merely wanted a bit of blood-play?”

  She spat in his face.

  He pitched the shard into the water. Then he yanked her to her feet, so her back was to the pool, and kissed her so hard that her head tilted back. His long fingers wrapped around her throat, and his other arm kept her bent at an acute angle over the water. She had never seen him look so angry, even before. His kiss was bruising, and she clutched at his hand desperately to keep him from choking her. He gave her a cruel smile and slid his hand down her pants.

  “I knew you were up to something—though I never imagined it was premeditated murder. You always have been able to surprise me, though.” She felt the caress of his fingers against her underwear, as gentle as his smile was hard. “I admit, I was curious…to see how far you'd go,” he said softly, sliding his fingers deeper. Her knees buckled, and she felt her grip on his neck slacken. He studied her for a long moment before slowly withdrawing his hand. “All the way, apparently.”

  Val stared at him, and her heart seemed to tear in two.

  “What should I do with you?” he whispered, and if it were not for the rage that held his words in their choking grip, he might sound seductive even now. “Oh, I am furious. I could easily strangle you. And yet…I find your daring quite arousing. Which would you prefer? To be my consort—or my kill?”

  “You're insane,” she whispered. “Really and truly insane. Delusional.”

  “That's not an answer,” he responded.

  “Go to hell, you sick, twisted fuck.”

  His lip curled. “You first, Valerian.”

  And then he threw her into the deep end.

  Epilogue

  A black sheet of rolling fog seemed to encase the red-haired girl as she stared up into nothingness, wondering what had happened. Her chest hurt in that tight, constricting way that sometimes followed a severe flu, except, unlike the flue, she couldn't ease the tension there by coughing. She couldn't even breathe. Val turned her head to the side, wondering why her cheeks felt so cold. Why there was so much pain?

  (Because you drowned, a small voice said.)

  Had he been planning to kill her all along, or had it been spontaneous? An act of passion? In the black fog, Val wondered, bleakly, whether she was still at the bottom of the pool.

  A feeling of warmth broke through the cold barrier that had woven its way around her like a cocoon, wrapping itself around her like a blanket, and she felt the firm but reassuring pressure of someone's mouth on hers. The feeling wasn't exactly pleasant, and Val wanted to turn away, but she couldn't move. Just leave me alone, she thought wearily.

  The pressure disappeared and, following in its wake, a horrible pain exploded in her chest like a cannon. She gagged, wincing at the disgusting sensation of chemical-laced pool water rising in her throat. The tightness eased and she found that passageways previously blocked were open, allowing her to breathe again, roughly, as she rolled on her side to spit the water out.

  Her eyes opened slowly, and she found herself staring at the grass. There was an unfamiliar woman leaning over her, with an expression of concern etched on her youthful face. Confused, Val's eyes drifted down from the woman's face to the symbol of the red cross on her stark white uniform. Oh. “Are you all right?” the woman asked. “Can you talk? Do you know your name?”

  “I.... Yes,” Val said, wincing at the light. It was sunny now and possibly warm, but the heat of the sun didn't reach her cold, unresponsive body. Someone had stripped off her wet clothes and wrapped her in a fuzzy blanket, which she now wrapped more tightly around herself. “Val. W-what happened?”

  “You almost drowned,” the woman said, answering the question which Val had asked in what felt like an eternity ago, point-blank. “You have mild hypothermia. Just a few minutes longer, and you would have been a goner.”

  Oh, Val thought again, more faintly this time.

  Her words had an undesirable effect, and the girl's eyes widened, remembering: Suicide Chess.

  Val shot up, ignoring the woman's anxious suggestion that she shouldn't, and winced at the fiery pain that coursed through her (she later found out that the painful Heimlich procedure had resulted in a few broken ribs), but she'd seen what she'd needed to see.

  The massive white house was now swarming with men in uniform, the driveway packed with police cars, two ambulances, and a fire truck. There were a few other cars as well, but a bar of yellow crime scene tape kept the curious onlookers from coming any closer. Her eyes shifted up to the second story, and the single shaded window that faced her.

  So Lisa and Blake had managed to escape after all, and they'd called the police, too.

  We won, she thought weakly. Funny, I don't feel much like a winner, right now.

  An old quote drifted to her, from a place long-forgotten, but it's meaning was still fresh: “You may have won the battle, but you've lost the war.” Yes, that was it. She'd lost the war.

  “I lost,” Val murmured quietly, which the paramedic heard as 'I'm frost', and she gave Val an odd look.

  “Are you cold, honey?”

  Acknowledgments

  There are so many people to thank that if I went through them all I'd have a miniature book in and of itself.

  But let's start with:

   Louisa, for her beautiful covers, and even more beautiful personality.

   The PH whoars (I love you, skanks! <3).

   The Goodreads community for being so supportive and wonderful about helping out a little indie author like me.

   My original readers who read my first (admittedly not-so-great) draft of this story, and who enthusiastically supported me on the subsequent revisions.

   My family, for their tongue-in-cheek support.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  DEDICATION

  Prologue

  Chapter One Opening

  Chapter Two Decoy

  Chapter Three Waiting Move

  Chapter Four Antipositional

  Chapter Five Undermining

  Chapter Six Capture

  Chapter Seven Hanging Pawn Penalty, Val.

  Chapter Eight Compensation

  Chapter Nine Exchange Variation

  Chapter Ten Wild

  Chapter Eleven En Passant

  Chapter Twelve Sham Sacrifice

  Chapter Thirteen Breakthrough

  Chapter Fourteen Attraction Lives.

  Chapter Fifteen Castling Into It

  Chapter Sixteen Trap

  Chapter Seventeen Domination Checkmate.

  Chapter Eighteen Vacating Sacrifice

  Chapter Nineteen Trebuchet

  Chapter Twenty Counterplay

  Chapter Twenty-One Threat

  Chapter Twenty-Two Overloaded

  Chapter Tw
enty-Three Relative Pin

  Chapter Twenty-Four Passive

  Chapter Twenty-Five Checkmate

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments