AND GREW STRONG IN MY MIND. I HAVE MANY THINGS TO TELL YOU, BUT FIRST YOU MUST LEARN A LESSON OF YOUR OWN.
Eddie tensed. “Whoa, wait-“
She was still writing: YOU MUST KNOW YOUR PLACE. I ALLOWED YOU THE ADVANTAGE LAST TIME, BUT YOU CANNOT OVERPOWER ME.
Eddie started to push the chair away from her.
“Giselle-“
She seized him about the wrist, gripping him hard with one slender hand. Eddie attempted to yank free, but she held him fast-and with little apparent effort. She steadily increased the pressure until he could feel bones grinding. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes. Maintaining her grip on him, she stood up and pulled him away from the table. He stumbled along beside her as she led him to the bed. She spun him about at the foot of the bed, spread both her palms open over his chest, and pushed with all her considerable strength.
Eddie flew backward, then momentarily experienced a kind of drowning sensation as he sank into the plush comforter. The girl climbed onto the bed and stood over him. She prodded him with the tip of a high-heeled shoe, urging him toward the headboard. Eddie scooted backward, too intimidated now to do anything but her bidding. The display of strength had frightened him, all that power in that small body.
His gaze was riveted to her face-her beautiful, cruel face.
Then he felt the folds of her long dress brushing his bare torso as she planted a foot on either side of him. She neared the headboard and velvet darkness engulfed him.
A moment later he couldn’t breathe.
Dream went to Karen’s side, knelt beside her, and draped an arm over her heaving shoulders. Karen turned into her friend’s embrace, clutched at the thin fabric of her top, and began to sob even harder. Dream cradled Karen’s head against her chest, felt the wetness of tears against her breasts, and felt moisture appear in her own eyes. She stroked Karen’s hair and made painfully useless cooing noises.
Alicia’s face was a mask of intent concentration as she held Shane’s limp right wrist. She dropped the wrist and leaned over Shane’s face. Dream wasn’t sure what Alicia was looking for, but something in her friend’s expression told her she wasn’t finding it. Alicia pressed two fingers against the man’s throat, waited a few moments, frowned, and sighed. She made eye contact with Dream, who asked the pertinent question with a lifted eyebrow.
Is he…
Alicia answered with a tired nod.
Yes.
And now a tear did slide down Dream’s face.
All my fault, she thought.
She’d taken the stupid detour because she was a fucking flake. Memories of the escalating tensions in the car in the moments preceding the detour were temporarily banished from her conscious mind. All she knew was that a human being was dead due to her foolishness. She was such a worthless shit. If only… if only …
If only I’d gotten it right that time, came the inevitable conclusion.
The thought made the scarred area around her left wrist tingle. She experienced again the sense-memory of the blade penetrating her flesh. There had been pain, yes, intense pain, but there had also been relief. Tremendous relief. There’d been a sense of falling, of plummeting from a great height, and then the sweet release of unconsciousness.
If only …
Dream’s tears flowed unimpeded now.
She made a shushing noise, slipped an arm around Karen’s neck, and again eased her into a sitting position. She cupped a hand under Karen’s chin, held her head steady, and said, “Honey, I’m gonna need you to get up now, okay?”
Karen’s shoulders sagged. “Shane …”
“I know, sweetie, I know…” She glanced at the man’s ravaged body, winced at the tickle of nausea at the back of her throat, and brought her gaze back to Karen. “He’s just resting.”
“That’s right,” Alicia said, taking the verbal baton from Dream. “He’s resting. We’ll get him some help real soon, but first we have to get you out of here.” A forced smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “Okay, sweetie?”
Karen swallowed a lump in her throat, sighed, and looked at each of them in turn. Dream and Alicia each felt a flash of shame at the look of desperate pleading in her eyes. “Don’t coddle me.” She sniffled. “I know he’s dead.”
She tried to get to her feet. “Whoa …”
Dream and Alicia caught her as she wobbled, held her until she was steady, and began to walk her back to the car. As they stepped through the line of trees, Dream heard something behind her. Something stealthy. She risked a backward glance, saw a flicker of shadow at the periphery of her vision, gasped, and stumbled over a rock. The other women gave out a shout as she pitched forward and tumbled down the incline.
Her uncontrolled descent came to a painful and abrupt stop in the ditch. Her body was gouged and scratched, and she ached all over. She tried to move, but a line of pain arced through her like a jolt of lightning. She cried out again and looked up to see a panicked Alicia kneeling over her.
“Goddamn, Dream, try to give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
Dream winced as she turned her head toward the dark line of trees. “I saw something back there, Alicia. I looked back and … saw something.”
She shuddered at the memory.
Alicia frowned. “What?” She glanced in the direction of the woods, then looked again at Dream. “What did you see?”
“She saw what I saw.”
They both looked at Karen, who was sitting up on the guardrail now, staring at the line of trees, that green wall that now seemed like the demarcation between the sane, natural world and a land of nightmares.
Her voice had a faraway, dreamily detached quality to it. “The thing that got Shane. A real, honest-to-gosh monster.”
Alicia sighed. “Jesus…”
Dream seized Alicia’s wrist. “She might be right.” The other woman’s skepticism was immediate and obvious, but Dream plunged on. “Or maybe not. But there’s something out there. Something that didn’t leave when it was done with Shane.”
Alicia’s gaze again went to the line of trees. “Fuck me.” She swallowed a lump in her throat and fixed Dream with a serious expression. “I don’t believe in monsters, girls, but I do believe in mad dog killers. So maybe some Hannibal the Cannibal wannabe is out there. And I don’t know about either of you, but I don’t aim to be another notch on his knife handle.”
Dream recognized the logic in Alicia’s words. Her theory made so much more sense than the idea of some supernatural abomination, but there was something about her memory of the barely perceived thing at the edge of her vision that snickered at concepts like logic and reason. Something in that flicker of shadow that made the idea of monsters resonate in her heart with cold certainty.
She held tight to Alicia’s wrist and began to haul herself up. Bits of dirt and bramble tumbled off her, and various parts of her body complained. Alicia cried out, surprised by the abrupt movement, but Dream managed to get to her feet. She tightened her grip on Alicia’s wrist and began to move toward the guardrail. Alicia stumbled along with her, protesting every step of the way.
“Hey! Shit… hold up. …” She stumbled again, but Dream’s arm went rigid and held her upright. “Jesus … what’s gotten into you?”
A moment later they were at the guardrail, flanking Karen, who regarded them with the kind of distant expression a combat veteran would have recognized, the hollow gaze of a person who has walked straight through hell’s front entrance, fought with demons, and somehow emerged physically intact. The same couldn’t be said of her mental health, however, which was in obvious tatters.
Her eyes didn’t reflect the smile she showed them. “Monsters,” she breathed. She hugged herself and shuddered. “I can feel them watching. Can’t you?”
