by Logan Fox
Warm, wet fingers brushed her ankle, tugged on her anklet. But then she was free, making a low, panicked whine in the back of her throat as she fought not to scream in abject terror. Her hands found the front door’s handle, tugged it open. She slithered from the car, her thumb managing to swipe over the phone’s screen as she landed on her ass with a solid thump. Pearl scrambled up and kicked the door closed in Rex’s face.
She brought the phone to her mouth, falling back from the car, scurrying away in a pained three-limbed scrawl.
“Help!” It was more a yelp than a yell. “Please, Jesus, please help me!”
Scrambling up, she let out a breathless shriek when she saw Rex ripping open the car door behind her. She got her feet under her and darted around a tree. Again, she brought the phone to her ear.
“—me, man? Pearl? Are you—” Greg’s voice flooded into her ear.
Her legs wobbled. She almost pitched forward, muscles turning to water in relief at the sound of his voice, as tight and terrified as it was.
“Oh fuck,” Pearl managed, her throat constricting. “Greg. Thank fuck it’s you. I didn’t—”
“Jesus, man, what’s wrong? Where are you?”
Pearl darted around a tree, wincing at the stab of pain from her bound up leg. She could hear Rex behind her, trailing her through the thick underbrush and around the firs like a bloodhound.
She let out a hurried breath, risking a glance over her shoulder. Rex wasn’t in sight, thank God, but the sound of that man forcing his way through the trees was getting louder and louder.
“What’s happened? I got this fucking voice mail—”
“Greg, come help me. Please, you’ve got to come. It’s all—”
Pearl’s foot caught on an exposed root. She tripped, only a mad scramble saving her from falling flat on her face in the dead leaves and moss. The phone jarred from her fingers, flashing away beneath a bush. Her hand dove after it, snatching it free, lifting it back to her ear.
“…be there. Pearl? Pearl!”
“Greg!” she yelled. “Greg, he’s fucking after me! He’s right the fuck behind me!”
“Fuck, Pearl, I can’t—I’m already—” Greg said. His voice was so tight, it sounded as if he was about to start shouting. Or crying.
“Greg, please, just come!” she yelled into the phone. “They’re dead, Greg. Dead! He’s been killing them! And now he’s—”
A beep in her ear. She glanced down at the phone’s black screen.
Pearl’s footsteps slowed. Behind her, the crashing approach of Rex grew louder. She came to a stop, breath surging through her, hot and thick. Her mouth was desert-dry. Her eyes stung. Her skin felt too tight, too hot — as sunburnt as if she’d been flayed and left for dead in Death Valley. That, despite the fact that the sun was already melting into the distant mountaintops.
A tap to the phone produced no reaction.
Was it truly dead? Or would it come back to life to taunt her with acid hope?
Behind her, Rex’s crashing footsteps came to a halt.
Pearl turned, phone dangling at her side in a limp hand. She stared at those familiar black eyes, filled with that alien, animalistic presence. That familiar body, slumped in predatory anticipation, as if preparing to pounce.
“He’ll never fucking make it,” she whispered. “It’s like, what, five hours? Five fucking hours.”
Rex took a small step forward, nostrils flaring. His arms lifted from his side, fingers bunching into fists.
“He’ll never get here in time!” Pearl yelled, hurling the phone as hard as she could at Rex.
It struck the man’s forehead. He stumbled back a step, giving her a startled, wide-eyed frown of confusion.
And then Pearl spun around. With a grimace of pain, she forced her legs to take her forward.
Forward and away.
Away from the Fox Pit.
Away from Owen and Rex and all the other people trapped behind those midnight-black eyes.
And hopefully, toward freedom. Life. And the cessation of pain.
11
The Girl
Branches and leaves snapped around Pearl’s twilight-cloaked figure as she raced along the overgrown footpath. The trail she’d found led a haphazard route through the thinning forest surrounding the Fox Pit.
Her path to freedom. An escape route.
Light glanced off the torn yellow dress that clung to her shoulders. Her hair, rose-scented, greasy, and bedraggled, flew out behind her as she dodged a tree trunk.
She’d been on her feet for more than an hour. They weren’t used to running — not for this long, anyway — so they ached and stung. Her soles were bloodied and torn, making every step a deep agony. The chill of approaching night bled through her flesh and settled its tiny, barbed claws into the marrow of her bones.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
But she hadn’t had a choice, had she? Oh, she’d had plans. Gorgeous, meticulously calculated plans. They hadn’t involved things like mouth-pasting thirst and bloodied feet.
She should have stayed there in that special hell. Let them do those abominable things to her. Things she could never erase from her mind. Things now branded into her dreams.
A root snagged her foot.
Pearl tumbled to the carpet of dead leaves and crawling things, scrambling up an instant later. Her head swiveled. She caught sight of the shape racing after her.
Just a silhouette sufficed as identification. A scream throttled her breath. She pushed forward, her legs shrieking at her to stop, that they were about to collapse.
How long had that thing been tracking her? Since she’d fled the Fox Pit, of course. But it felt like years. As if he’d been on her trail, following her scent since the day she’d first had blood on her hands. Sam’s blood. Perhaps earlier than that.
He’d killed the others, the ones they’d sent away. She knew this because he’d told her. He’d told her while he was washing her hair in the bath.
And he hadn’t been remorseful. That man, The Chair — he didn’t care who knew. Plus, Owen could cover it up, so it didn’t matter who The Chair told. He could claim they were crazy from the drugs and were suffering delusions.
And then he would kill her. Then they would kill her.
So she kept running.
But now Rex was behind her, snapping twigs underfoot.
He always managed to twist things on their fucking head.
The only thing he was concerned about was how far he’d have to carry her back in his arms. Carrying her back to his master. The one who switched him on and turned him off like some part-human, part killing machine.
She hated those strong arms. She hated his eyes. She hated the smell of him and the feel of his hands on her. Dear God, she could feel him inside her still, filling her.
So she ran.
So she would keep running until she couldn’t anymore.
There had to be people out here, somewhere. A road. A house. Some-fucking-thing.
There were bodies out here, surely. Had she run over them? Perhaps disturbed a shallow grave without realizing it. Leaving behind a partially unearthed hand, a single finger curling from the soil like the unfurled cotyledons of a newly germinated seed?
Was Rex getting closer? Was that sound his crashing feet or hers?
Or was it The Chair stalking her now?
Why that name? Why that accent? So flamboyant, so… so utterly different from Seth. Almost polar opposites. Bi-polar opposites? But that didn’t explain Abby. Didn’t explain Rex.
Didn’t explain the flicker of that other person, the one whose concerned eyes had widened as he’d told her to run.
Pearl’s breath was a fire igniting her lungs, scorching her throat. Her body rattled with every lurching step, her teeth chattering together. Sweat popped out on her skin, cooling instantly. But it couldn’t keep that inferno inside her tempered. She felt ready to explode from the heat and pain and fear building inside her, stretching her mi
nd like a balloon.
Ethan — poor, dead Ethan — had tried to put her back together again. But even his painkillers had long since faded. Or, perhaps, her pain was too obtuse for those meds to counteract them.
The trees disappeared. Her feet pounded onto something hard and even.
Tar.
A road.
Pearl lurched to a halt, head flashing left and right down the empty road. She was on a bend, a mountainous wall of trees ahead and to either side.
A sob tore through her. She stumbled further into the road, head swinging from side to side.
Please, God. Please, please, please. Just one fucking car. Please—
A crash of underbrush behind her. She spun around, facing her predator. Light slowly leaked from the world as the man straightened his shoulders and let out a huff. His hands curled into fists.
He turned his head, eyes narrowing.
She turned too, her eyes flashing wide.
A car.
It hurtled toward her — a black SUV, tinted windows, anonymous silhouette of a driver.
Pearl flung her arms up, despite her body’s intense protest, and hobbled toward the car. They had to have seen her, but they weren’t stopping. They weren’t even slowing.
“Stop! Stop!” Her voice cracked, and she coughed.
The car sped past her, its velocity yanking at what was left of her dress and making it flutter violently against her legs. She twisted back to face it and swallowed a scream.
Rex was right behind her.
In the distance, she heard the car slam on its brakes. Raised voices.
Owen. Shouting.
Pearl’s legs tangled around each other, sullenly disobeying her command to run. A flicker crossed Rex’s face. He drew at the air, nostrils flaring, and then blinked, giving his head a hard shake.
When those black eyes opened again, a malicious gleam glittered from their depths.
Pearl managed a last scream as The Chair drew back his fist, skin stretching tight over his knuckles and his tattoos standing proud over the back of his hand.
Her head snapped to the side as that tattooed fist connected with her cheek. The world swept past her, bouncing when she hit the tarmac.
Night swallowed her, numbing her to the feel of those hands sliding under her, lifting her, carrying her back to that special hell.
Back to her death.
Pearl awoke in a dimly-lit chamber with candles flickering on the walls. At first, she screamed, thinking it was the dungeon, that room where every perverse act she could muster enough courage to remember was performed on her, where she was forced to perform just as debase acts in return. Acts she’d learned to love… and had then been taught to hate.
But then her eyes adjusted. The room swam into focus.
It had no windows, like the dungeon.
And, like the dungeon, those wavering candles provided the room’s sole illumination.
But this place reeked of ceremony and ritual. There was no shrine yet, but she knew this place for the altar room it was. Pearl’s skin rose in a flurry of goosebumps as she drew in on herself, eyes flashing over the bare walls, the stone dais, the row upon row of pews. That dais hadn’t always been empty; she’d once seen a majestic elk, carved from pale marble, frozen in its center — its shoulders and horns supporting the weight of another thick slab of marble.
That had been eons ago.
Why had they brought her back here?
Could such a person exist? Someone so caught up in their own hedonistic pleasures that, to them, the thought of sacrilege became just another kink?
Pearl shuddered and brought a shaking hand to her face, touching the tender edges of her bruise. She was becoming accustomed to pain. Before, it had been singular, a sensation that had always been the same. Fierce, agonizing, eventually abating.
But now there wasn’t just pain. There was physical hurt, willfully inflicted torture, and unmerciful agony. Some, she’d learn to accept. To transform into pleasure. Some, she’d become numb to.
That fist had held not a shred of remorse. It had been intended to knock her out, and it had done its job to perfection — she could remember nothing of her trip here.
A door shuddered open. Footsteps approached. Her back stiffened and she peered reluctantly over her shoulder. A cloaked figure drew near, face in deep shadow. He was tall, taller than anyone she knew, with wide shoulders and a long-legged stride that quickly closed the distance between them.
They’d left her on the floor, a few paces from the first step leading up to the empty dais. The figure drew to a halt less than a foot away from her, but the pathetic illumination in the room could not pierce the shadows cloaking his face. The hood tilted. She could feel a pair of eyes, hidden in that oval of darkness, latch onto her, scan her.
“They tell me you ran.”
The girl jerked, her heart squeezing painfully. She recognized that voice.
“I… I don’t want—” Her rasping voice trembled.
“It doesn’t matter what you want. It never did.” He lifted his hands, his thumbs briefly flaring away from his palms. “Don’t you understand? It’s about what I want. About what I need. Your wants are inconsequential.”
A tear straggled down her cheek. The figure crouched down in front of her, reaching toward her with a long-fingered hand gloved in grey.
“You will not run from me, princess.”
That finger touched her cheek, the soft fabric of the glove absorbing her tear; even those didn’t belong to her anymore.
A sob racked her shoulders. More tears blurred her vision. She ducked her head forward, bowing as resistance failed her.
“If you ever again feel an urge to escape, then just remember this.” Another slow stroke down her cheek. “Whenever a toy in my family breaks,” he whispered, “I throw it away.”
Pearl brought her hands up and cupped her face. Her fingertips dug into her hairline, bringing a stab of pain from the angry bruise on her cheekbone.
“So don’t force me to break you, princess.”
His hand slid around her throat. There was a faint click as something closed around her neck. Her hands slid down, gripping the strip of satin. A smell of roses tickled her nose before it clogged up with more tears.
“I shouldn’t have to throw you away,” said the wolf.
Pearl tried to swallow, but the hand was too tight. She gasped instead, reaching up to try and tug that collar free. What had happened to Tanner’s collar? It wasn’t around her neck anymore.
More footsteps. She recognized these.
“I’m afraid this toy’s already broken.” Owen’s voice oozed into Pearl’s ears like the gelatinous slime of a demonic sea serpent. She squirmed, trying to look past the wolf’s wide green eyes, trying to see how far away the man was from her.
But the wolf held her gaze, as frantic as it was. He gave her a cold smile, releasing the grip around her throat.
“I suppose she is, at that. See that fucker collared her.”
“Hmmm,” Owen murmured, coming to a halt beside the wolf. “I’ll make sure he regrets it.” Owen tipped his wrist up, glancing at a large, gleaming watch. “Soon, in fact. Very soon.”
Owen crouched beside them. Pearl shied away, but the wolf caught hold of her shoulders, holding her in place. Owen dipped a hand into the pocket of his suit, drawing out a syringe. He drew the cap off.
“Hold her.”
Pearl managed a brief struggle, the wolf showing her his teeth as he kept her in place. She reared back, shaking her head as Owen came closer with the syringe. It bit into her neck, liquid fire spurting into her skin before Owen drew it back, recapping it, and returning into his pocket.
He blinked at her, those green eyes wide and curious as he watched her mouth sag open.
Pearl’s gaze flickered from his face to the wolf’s.
Of course… why hadn’t she noticed it before? Those eyes… that strong nose. Those wide mouths. Two years, three at the most, age difference. That
carefully enunciated way of speaking, as if they’d both been schooled at the same elite university. Both tall. Both slim.
They could have been brothers, Owen and her wolf.
They were brothers.
That’s why Tanner had let them use the Earth. Perhaps he’d thought they came down here to fuck prostitutes. Perhaps he hadn’t given it a second thought after Owen had waved some money in his face.
“Shall we begin?”
Pearl kept her eyes down, a hand around her throat, the other fisted in her lap.
The wolf touched the tip of her chin, lifting her head. Pearl kept her eyes down, staring at the grey gloved finger clutching her face.
“This will be our best one yet.”
“An award-winning masterpiece,” Owen murmured, laying a hand on the wolf’s shoulder.
The wolf laughed. After a second, so did Owen.
Pearl’s body felt heavy and limp. Even her eyelids were leaden. Consciousness greeted her with a flare of light and the murmur of low-pitched voices. She blinked, eyes watering at the insistent brightness. Refusing to focus. Refusing to open more than a slit.
Cool air swirled around her. Candle wax and an oily stink wafted into her nose. She twitched it, lifting a concrete hand to try and cover her nostrils. It moved reluctantly, clumsily, dragging over her mouth. Something slick coated her lips — there was more of it on her nose. Her fingers lifted, exploring the thick swathe of sticky-slick paint under her fingertips.
“—fucking up your face.” A voice billowed from nowhere, loud and close.
Pearl jumped at the sound of it, turning bleary eyes to the side. A shadow loomed beside her, wide and unstoppable.
A cloth — stinking of something acrid — dragged over her face. That coarse fabric scoured her skin, guided by a rough, methodical hand.
“Now I gotta do it again,” the shadow-man said in a hoarse voice. “Know what that means, lover?”
Pearl didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t know what any of this meant — the bright lights, the crude paint on her face.
