No! She squeezed her eyes closed against the building headache and ran faster.
“Brave girl, running for your life. Running for your coven’s life. When you get tired, you know it’ll feel so good to have all this be over with. You and your coven can rest in peace. It’ll feel so good, Nicole Leanne.”
“Screw you for using my name, Vlaric Prickface Gofuckyourself,” she growled.
A crack of pain blasted through her head. She skidded to a stop and doubled over.
“I don’t like when you talk to me like that. I’m the one who is going to free you from your hollow life. Is that how you talk to your savior?”
Inhaling deep, she forced her legs forward, but it was like running in a dream in slow motion. Her legs felt so heavy; like her bones were made of concrete.
Evan!
“Go into the woods, Nicole Leanne. Just go and rest for a few minutes. You have plenty of time before nightfall. Plenty of time.”
Plenty of time.
Her arms grew too heavy to lift, and the stake fell from her hand as she stood there. Her body weighed too much, and she was too tired.
“Evan,” she cried, tears streaming down her face.
“Evan will be fine. He’s been waiting for this. For his final end for so long. We’re going to give him what he wants. Go into the woods, Nicole Leanne.”
Shoulders shaking with her sobbing, she focused all her energy into moving, but her body betrayed her. She was no longer in control of anything.
“Please,” she pleaded. “I just found Evan. I haven’t had enough time with him.”
“Please, please, please,” Vlaric’s wrenched-up voice echoed all around her. “Don’t go to pieces now. You actually had fire in you. Don’t disappoint me with your weakness.”
A blinding headache blasted through her mind, and she bit back a whimper at the pain. She didn’t want to go weak. Not for Vlaric’s game.
Her feet were moving on their own, and she watched in horror as her bare feet strode from the road and toward the tree line.
On and on she walked, trying and failing to fight every step, until she reached a lumbering, dying, spooky tree. The sun was disappearing on the horizon.
The glisten of metal caught her eye, and she bit her lip hard against a scream.
Sitting under the tree was a huge trap with sharp teeth, just waiting.
It was a trap like the one Evan had described from the night he was Turned.
“Yessssssss,” the monster hissed inside of her mind. “You’ve got it now. Evan has such vivid memories. I can pick through them all when he’s asleep. He loves you. Loves you deeply. I don’t know what love is, but I felt it through him. Uncomfortable for a man like me, I assure you.”
“You’re not a man,” she whispered breathlessly. “You’re a monster.”
“Good girl.”
Nicole looked down in horror as her feet began to move again on their own. There was no use in begging. She could feel Vlaric’s glee in her mind. There was no turning back, no getting out of the betrayal her mind and body were about to do to her.
The best she could hope for was to be strong in the end.
“Evan, I’m sorry,” she whispered as she stepped over the teeth of the trap and pressed the heel of her foot onto the trigger.
Chapter Eleven
Damn the cloudy night as she looked up and searched for Evan’s stars.
Warmth ran out of her broken leg as she panted in agony at what the bear trap was doing to her.
“Why is she holding her leg up like that?” a man’s voice asked softly.
“Because that vamp is fucking with her mind,” another voice answered.
Above her, a white snowy owl flew to the branches of the death tree and settled there. He flapped his massive wings a few times, languidly, as he caught his balance on the branch.
A snowy owl. Those shouldn’t exist here. Maybe this was what happened at the end. She was cold from her bones out, and the sky was dark now. Vlaric was coming for her.
She wished she could see the stars.
“Nicole?” the voice asked.
Where was it coming from? She couldn’t see anything but dark woods and the snowy owl staring down at her.
“This is going to hurt,” the voice told her.
Okay. It was time. She wanted to go well and not scream. Not give the satisfaction to Vlaric.
“Okay, but Weston, what if she wants to be a vamp?” the other voice asked. “Evan won’t be able to Turn her if we do this.”
“Look, Wyatt, I told them to stay near the house, and she didn’t. That’s where my dad’s vision has her surviving, but she ended up way the hell out here. In my vision, she dies human out in the woods. In his, she lives as a bear. Bite her and stop giving me shit. Vlaric will be here soon.”
“Evan?” she asked, confused. Her head was swimming, and she didn’t understand anything but the pain in her broken leg.
Nicole gasped at the roar of a monstrous animal that rattled the woods, but the motion yanked on her leg caught in the trap. She yelped in pain and turned her head to the side. There was a man with dark hair and bright green eyes, crouching down near her, and behind him, lumbering from the woods, was a massive grizzly bear.
“B-b-b….” she stammered, fear shooting more adrenaline into her shaken system. “Bear.”
The enormous predator picked up speed. He was going to get the dark-headed man, Weston. But no, Weston stepped easily out of the way, and the bear came for her.
Riddled with terror, Nicole screamed as the bear opened its enormous jaws and aimed for her. He ripped into her shoulder
