The Darkest Embrace

by Megan Hart

  Max, soaked to the knees, had tight hold of her wrist, but her boot had become lodged in the space between the rock and one beside it. Her flesh scraped, her bones grinding, when he pulled her. Jessie let out a short scream. Max’s grip slipped from her and he went into the water with a splash.

  “I’m stuck!”

  She could hear the thing now, whatever it was, and there was more than the snap and crack of branches breaking. Now she could hear the whistling grunt of its breathing, too. The thump of something heavy in the dirt prompted her to look back again, but whatever chased them still hadn’t made it around the bend.

  Max knelt in the water, strong fingers working at her boot. He worked steadily, without looking up even as she urged him to hurry. With a sharp yank, Max pulled hard enough for Jessie to get her foot out. Then he had her by the wrist again, his other hand on the small of her back to help her along. And still, Jessie froze, unable to move.

  There was something in the water. Red-and-black checked shirt, denim jeans. And there, deeper in the water, a hint of what might have been long blond hair, tangled in the underwater plants, waving gently in the current.

  “Jessie, c’mon!”

  On the other side of the boulder, Max couldn’t see the horror in the water in front of her. Jessie could only point, shaking. He stopped only long enough to scoop a hand beneath her legs and carry her to the other side of the stream, where he staggered on the slippery bank.

  Jessie’s ankle exploded into fresh agony when she put her feet down to keep him from dropping her, but she bit back a scream. Grimly, she forced herself up the bank, Max at her side. Whatever was behind them must have killed Carrie, that was the only thought Jessie could form, and she wasn’t about to end up like that.

  She ran.

  In another few minutes they reached the cabin’s yard. She was flagging by then, but rallied at the sight of the porch and a door that locked. Max slammed it behind them, then leaned against it, panting, while Jessie stumbled to a kitchen chair and collapsed.

  For a minute or so, she had no breath for words. They were both covered in mud from the knees down, with more splashed on their arms and faces. The ankle she’d caught in the rocks ached, her sock torn in several places. Her ankle was already swelling. The stitch in her side made her sit back and press a hand to it. When she thought about what she’d seen in the water, she wanted to throw up.

  Max twitched aside the curtain on the door to look out. “Nothing’s out there.”

  “What was it?”

  “Not a deer,” he said. “A bear maybe.”

  What she’d seen was nothing like a bear. Or a deer. Jessie hobbled to the sink to get a drink of water, dipping her head to pull it straight from the tap. Mouth dripping but nowhere near calmed, she looked at him.

  “It wasn’t a bear, Max.”

  He looked out the window again before crossing to her. He took her in his arms. She felt safe there, Jessie realized, which was nice but a little naive. He kissed the top of her head.

  “It was Carrie,” she told him. “In the water. Wasn’t it? Something killed Carrie and dumped her there.”

  Max squeezed her and let her go. “It looked like her.”

  Jessie shuddered. “We need to call someone.”

  “No phone.”

  She’d forgotten. “Then we need to get out of here.”

  But when they got to the SUV, it was clear they wouldn’t be going anywhere. All four tires had been slashed, the big vehicle itself settled into the mud left behind by the night’s storm. It was such a cliché, such a scene from every horror movie she’d ever seen, that Jessie could only sag against the vehicle and hang her head.

  “We can’t be more than four miles from the store,” Max said. “You stay here. I’ll go—”

  “No! Are you kidding me? You’re not leaving me here, Max!”

  “You’ll be safe in the house, Jessie.”

  She barked laughter. “You think so? Have you ever watched a scary movie? Don’t you know the first thing that happens when people split up?”

  Incredibly and beautifully, he smiled at her. Then he kissed her, his hand cupping the back of her neck to hold her to him. “I know.”

  “We go together,” she said, already wincing at the pain she anticipated in her ankle. “All the way.”

  Chapter 4

  The storm that had passed long enough for them to enjoy their picnic—at least until they’d been attacked by whatever the hell had come after them from the woods—was back and with a vengeance. The midafternoon sky had gone to twilight, the thickness of the trees further masking any hint of sunlight. Back at the cabin, Max had bound Jessie’s swollen ankle in a tight grip of bandages, but she was still limping. It would have been faster for him to do this alone, but she’d made a good point. He didn’t want to risk anything happening to her if they split up.

  “How much farther?” She wasn’t even out of breath and hadn’t complained, but her face was white with pain he hated himself for being unable to shield her from.

  “Half a mile maybe?” Max paused to look upward at the canopy of leaves and branches overhead. He hefted the hand ax he’d grabbed from the woodpile out back. The weight of it pressed the still-sore wound in his hand, but it was bearable. Jessie carried a rusty rake doubling as a cane. Neither weapon was that great, but both were better than their bare hands in case that thing came after them again.

  “Shit.” Jessie wiped a grimy hand over her forehead, leaving a smear. She leaned on the rake, taking the weight off her foot, and grimaced.

  “Is it bad?” Max indicated her ankle.

  She smiled. “I’ll be okay. Let’s get to the convenience store before the storm hits, though. It looks like it’s going to be worse than last night.”

  It was already worse, something they learned when they rounded the bend in the road and found what was left of the bridge ass-end-up in the ravine. The rickety timbers had cracked in half, dumping most of the bridge and leaving only scraps to show it had been there at all. Max muttered a curse as they eased up to the edge and looked down at the wreckage. The stream that had been little more than a trickle the day before was now a gushing, frothing river. As he watched, it tore away a hunk of the ravine and sent a mudslide skidding down to disappear into the angry water.

  “Stay back,” he warned Jessie, but a sudden clap of thunder stole his words.

  She knew, though. Nodding, she hopped back. The rake dug into the soft earth, gouging holes. “Now what?”

  Lightning lit the sky like an LED lantern, followed moments later by another bang of thunder louder than the first. The light was so bright that Max threw up a hand to cover his eyes, wincing at the afterimages imprinted on the insides of his lids. But only as an automatic response and only for a moment, because what he’d seen illuminated in that few seconds, formerly hidden in the shadows, sent his heart rocketing into his throat.

  “It’s here.”

  Jessie yelped, turning, almost losing her balance on her bad ankle before she caught herself with the rake. “Where?”

  “I saw it in the tree line over there.” Max pointed. Lightning blinded them both again; thunder drowned them out.

  There it was, the thing that had come after them before. Easily seven-feet tall with broad shoulders and long, gangly arms and legs, the thing had a sloping head covered with long, matted hair. The rest of its body looked pale and mottled, with dirt or hair, he couldn’t tell. But its eyes...

  “Oh, God,” Jessie cried. “What the hell’s wrong with its face?”

  The eyes, red and burning, were twice as large as seemed normal for the rest of the face. It was humanoid, but definitely not human. Definitely not a bear. Another crack of lightning turned the thing to blazing white before darkness obscured it once more. So far, it only watched, making no move towar
d them.

  “What do we do?”

  Max, keeping his gaze on the thing, took her hand. “Back to the cabin.”

  “I’m not sure I can run,” Jessie told him. The wind whipped up her hair the way it was starting to slash the pine trees back and forth.

  The first fat drops of icy rain spattered. In the next flash, the thing was gone. Max scanned the tree line but could see nothing.

  “I can carry you if I have to,” he said.

  She laughed at that, and he loved that about her. That even in the midst of one of the most fucked-up situations Max had ever experienced, Jessie could laugh. She pulled him close for a kiss that should have been totally inappropriate but tasted so sweet it was worth every second.

  “You don’t have to carry me.” She looked up at the sky, now completely black. Rain pattered on the trees and ground, and she swiped her face clear of it. “But I’ll go as fast as I can.”

  * * *

  Back at the cabin, a fire roaring in the fireplace, all the windows and doors locked, Jessie sipped a mug of hot cocoa and propped her ankle on a pillow. It wasn’t broken, at least there was that. It just hurt like a son of a bitch and needed some ice, but there were no ice packs and the freezer had offered up only a few lame cubes.

  Max looked out the front windows, though there was nothing to see but black and the storm. “You were right. It wasn’t a bear.”

  “Bigfoot,” Jessie said.

  He looked over his shoulder at her. “The hell?”

  Jessie couldn’t help it; she busted into laughter at the sight of his affronted face. “You’re not a believer?”

  “No, hell no.” Max vehemently shook his head and twitched the curtain closed. “Besides, aren’t Bigfoots supposed to be hairy? That thing was...naked.”

  She laughed again at the way he shuddered saying the word. But he was right. The thing in the woods had been naked. Sexless, too. “And there was something wrong with its face.”

  “Red eyes.”

  “Yes, that. But its mouth, too.” She used her hand to demonstrate, placing her fingers in a circle around her mouth and pulling her hand away, fingers closing, to indicate the way the tapering mouth had looked to her. Like a tube or a funnel. “A proboscis,” she said.

  Max’s brows went up.

  “Like...a butterfly,” she explained.

  “That thing was no butterfly.”

  Jessie patted the couch beside her until Max came over to sit. “No, but it looked like that, didn’t it? Like a fleshy...tube. Thing.”

  Max made a disgusted noise. “I thought that was its tongue.”

  “Whatever it was,” Jessie said, “it was big. And fast.”

  “It didn’t attack us that second time.” He turned toward her, his knee pressing hers. “It looked right at us, but it didn’t come after us.”

  Jessie shifted, stretching her arm out along the back of the couch to toy with his sleeve. “Maybe it’s territorial? And we were in its territory before. Maybe it has young or something that it was trying to protect.”

  “Like it’s an animal.”

  She paused, thinking again of the way it had moved. How it had looked. “It’s not human, Max. Unless it’s some crazy sort of inbred monstrosity.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Well,” Max said.

  “It was an animal,” Jessie told him. “It had to be.”

  “Maybe it was an inbred monstrosity of an animal.”

  It should have been impossible for her to laugh right now—with her aching ankle and their disabled SUV, a washed-out bridge and some freakish thing stalking them from the woods—but she laughed anyway, because Max could always make her laugh. It was one of the things she loved so much about him....

  Oh, shit, Jessie thought with something like wonder. She loved...

  Something huge and loud clattered on the front porch, interrupting her thoughts and sending Max rocketing from the couch to grab up a poker from next to the fireplace. Jessie tensed, heart pounding, but relaxed a little when he turned from the window. In the firelight his hair looked very dark, his eyes very blue.

  “The wind blew the swing over.” He looked out the window again, up and down, before turning back to her. “There’s a bunch of trees down in the yard, too, but nothing else.”

  She let out the breath she’d been holding, and it turned into an unexpected yawn. Max came back to the couch and set the poker close at hand when he settled in beside her. Jessie scooted closer.

  His hand passed over her hair when she snuggled against him. “You should go to sleep. I’ll stay up. Keep watch.”

  “No way. You think I could sleep up there by myself anyway?” She stifled another yawn and wriggled as close as she could, even if it meant suffering the ache in her ankle when she shifted.

  Max kissed the top of her head. “In the morning, someone will come.”

  “You think so?”

  “I only rented the cabin for the weekend,” he reminded her. “I’m sure Freddy will be by to make sure we’re all checked out.”

  “Unless he can’t get across the river.” Jessie breathed Max’s delicious, familiar scent. She’d have recognized him anywhere by the combination of fabric softener and soap, the musky hint of his cologne.

  Max was quiet for a few seconds. “Then we’ll hike our way out.”

  Jessie tipped her face to his, not laughing this time. “You know what?”

  He looked down at her. “What?”

  “If I had to be stranded in a cabin in horrible storm with some creepy monster thing outside terrorizing us, I’m glad it was with you.”

  He looked surprised, but only briefly. His mouth creased into a smile she could feel against her mouth when he kissed her. “Same here.”

  With a sigh, Jessie snuggled back against him. In silence, she watched the fire leap and crackle, and listened to the roar of the rain on the roof. The lightning and thunder had subsided, though every so often there was another far-off rumble. Sleep had seemed impossible just a short time before, but now her eyes started to get heavy and her tongue loose.

  “Max...”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  The endearment warmed her. She snuggled closer, eyes closing, words slurring a little as she drifted. “Why don’t you ever talk about your last girlfriend?”

  “She tried to kill me.”

  Jessie blinked awake. “What? For real?”

  “Yes. She tried to run me over with her car. She tried to hit me with a frying pan to the face. And she set my apartment on fire trying to burn all my clothes.” Max cleared his throat, and she thought he was done, but he continued. “She also befriended my younger sister online under a man’s name and posted nude pictures of her with links so that our friends and family would find out.”

  “Oh, God. Why would she do that?”

  “Because she’s crazy.” Max’s lips pressed her hair.

  “I’m crazy,” Jessie breathed, “about you.”

  This time, the low rumble was from Max’s laughter and not from thunder. Helpless against her exhaustion, Jessie lost herself in disjointed but somehow comforting dreams, all featuring Max. Kissing her, dancing with her, making her laugh, making love to her.

  Making her love him.

  * * *

  Jessie woke to the fire burned low, the storm still rushing outside, though now the rain sounded soothing and comforting, not so angry. Max had adjusted them on the couch so that he lay behind her, his face buried in her neck and one arm cradling her, his hand flat on her belly beneath her shirt. Waking just a little, Jessie murmured his name, but he didn’t answer. She settled back against him, snugging her ass tight to his crotch.

  Max’s fingers twitched on her skin.

  Jessie woke up a little more.r />
  Another carefully orchestrated wiggle. Max sighed into her hair. She smiled, shifting her hips to press herself against his growing erection. She’d changed earlier into soft pajama pants. Max wore sweatpants, and there was no denying that the more she wiggled, the harder he got.

  Her ankle had stopped hurting, or maybe it simply didn’t matter anymore when his hand slipped into the front of her pants and his fingers brushed her clit through her lace panties. A moment later he pushed them inside the front of her panties to find her bare flesh. Jessie’s back arched, and one hand went up to caress the back of Max’s head, pulling his mouth closer to the curve of her shoulder, bared by the neckline of her T-shirt. He feasted there, each lick and nibble sending pleasure along every nerve and straight to her clit where his fingers still played. When she rocked back against him, grinding, his muttered “yes” almost tipped her over the edge right then.

  Somehow, without falling off the couch or even twisting around, Jessie eased her pants down her hips until she could kick them off. The soft fleece of Max’s sweatpants caressed her bare behind for a minute or so while he also maneuvered, getting himself naked, too.

  It felt so good when he pushed inside her that she cried out, low and wordless. A voice full of need. His fingers tickled the underside of her knee, the couch rocked. If she’d opened her eyes, she might have been alarmed at how close to falling off she was, but all Jessie could think about or feel was the perfect, thick length of him fucking into her.

  They’d been lovers for two days, but already he knew her body better than anyone else ever had. The pace, the rhythm, the perfect amount of pressure, exactly the right pattern of circles on her clit. Jessie was going up, up, up and over, but she wanted Max to go there with her.

  “Come with me, Max,” she murmured. “I’m so close.”

  “Close,” he agreed, his voice muffled in her hair. His hot breath caressed her skin. His fingertips on her clit slowed, maddeningly, but his thrusts got deeper.