Rise at Twilight

by Kayla Krantz

  “I need to sit down.”

  Chance gestured to the empty chair beside him which Luna gratefully accepted. The room and everything in it spun. Her world had been far from perfect that morning, but at least in its own strange way it had made sense. Just like that, Chance had managed to yank the rug out from under her feet once again.

  “I don’t think you ever told me what it was that you hoped to accomplish with the whole fusion thing,” Luna said, eyes falling to the ground even though she had wanted to look him in the eye as she asked the question.

  Chance smiled, small at first, but it grew wider as he thought about his response. “I thought if I had enough power, I could kill Morpheus myself, and it would all be over.”

  Luna was silent. What could she say to a confession like that? “So that’s what you meant when you said you would take over the world?”

  “If he was dead, there would be no more war. Everyone, even people like us, would be able to do what we want to do.”

  “And I stopped you,” Luna said, finding it hard to wrap her mind around the fact that she had saved a God.

  Chance frowned again. “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Say you had succeeded. Say I never broke you out of your fusion, you killed Amy, and I stayed in the cabin. You would’ve killed Morpheus, and then what?”

  “I would’ve done whatever I wanted to do. There would be no one to stop me. I could’ve lived in peace.” He paused and added much softer, “For the first time in my life.”

  “What you consider peace is chaos to everyone else,” Luna said with a frown. “If things had worked out that way, you would’ve kept me here with you, wouldn’t you?”

  Chance laughed and looked away sharply though the downturned curve of his lips told her he was close to snarling. “Why are we talking about this?”

  “I’m just trying to understand,” Luna said quietly. “For everything you’ve told me, you never told me why any of that happened.”

  “It make sense now?” he inquired, raising a sarcastic eyebrow.

  Luna bobbed her head. “For the most part. Did…” she trailed off, uncertain of how to word her question without pushing Chance into complete anger.

  “Out with it,” Chance sighed.

  “Did Cody encourage you to do it?”

  Chance’s lips pressed together. “No, he didn’t. He was another one of the reasons I tried what I did. I wanted to break away from him, from them, but things never work for me the way I plan.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Luna said stiffly.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m here now, aren’t I?” she asked, and this time, she found it surprisingly easy to stare him in the eyes.

  He stared back, no emotion on his face as he said, “Why yes, I suppose you are.”

  “You have to know this was never in my plan. Being here with you is wrong. This whole place is. There are really people out for my blood because of what you’ve done? Saying it out loud is ridiculous. I never chose any of this.”

  “But?” Chance prompted, sounding almost bored, and Luna could understand it this time. They had been through this song and dance hundreds of times.

  “But I don’t know what else to do. I could go out there and survive on my own somewhere in the woods. It’d be lonely, but I’d get by. Maybe if I begged Max or Amanda for forgiveness, they’d take me back and things would be right again.”

  Chance narrowed his eyes. “That’s your plan? After everything I’ve done for you, you’re gonna up and leave, as if I won’t follow you?”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” Luna said, lip twitching in irritation. “I was going to say I should leave.” She paused to drop her gaze. “But I can’t.” Oh, God, do I have Stockholm Syndrome? she thought, wincing at her own pitiful words as soon as she caught sight of his eyes. He really did do something to me, and I was too busy falling for it to realize what it was. Good job on a beautiful web, spider.

  Chance pressed his lips together and reached across the table to clutch her arm in the spot he had earlier, only this time much gentler. “It’s because we’re connected, remember? And I don’t just mean by the Rosebone either. We’re the same, you and I. You denied it in the beginning, but I think you see it now.”

  As much as it pained her to admit, he was right. She understood everything about him…the good and the bad.

  What did that say about her?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  DESPITE EVERYTHING CHANCE had told her about the world they were in, Luna had no trouble falling asleep that night. She drifted off as soon as her head hit the pillow. The real problem was staying asleep. She rolled over in bed, trapped in the grips of a nightmare. Flashes of her last day on Earth bounded through her mind and bloodcurdling screams filled her ears. In her mind, she was trying to hide, to block it all out, and it wasn’t working.

  Luna tucked her head under her pillows, desperate to muffle the sounds of screams, but Amy, Michelle, Kylie, and her mother only grew louder. The scent of iron breezed into her senses so overwhelmingly strong that she could taste it. No matter where she turned, she couldn’t escape. The four women worked together to corral her into a corner, and Luna knew that once her legs gave out, she was done for.

  At last, Luna’s bloodshot eyes finally flew open. Covered in a layer of her own sweat, she stared up at the dark ceiling of Chance’s bedroom. Screams echoed through the darkness suddenly, and paranoid, Luna assumed she was still in a nightmare. She swallowed but didn’t lift her head from the pillow, unsure of what she would do if any of the four women from her nightmare were in the room with her.

  I’d leave, and never come back, she thought, just as a new panicked cry echoed through the cabin.

  It wasn’t from her bedroom—it had come from deeper in the cabin. Instantly, she sat upright in bed, arms clenched over her chest to rub the tops of her arms. She glanced sideways, ready to wake Chance up, when she realized he wasn’t beside her.

  Running her hand over the empty side of the bed, she swallowed roughly before standing to her feet. Whatever it was, she would have to figure it out on her own. Usually, Chance didn’t disappear until the morning. Luna twitched her nose. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the screams were happening at the same time.

  With another quick glance around the room, she rushed to the hallway, and as she headed toward the front room, the screams grew louder. Luna’s mind was a wreck as she pictured who the screams could be coming from. Was it somehow all a trick of DreamWorld or was she seventeen years old again, reliving the worst time of her life? Was it possible she had somehow ended up in an alternate dimension, one where she had never beaten Chance and escaped the cabin? Her heart flip-flopped at the realization that she couldn’t tell either way. She lifted her arm, seeking out the scar across her bronze skin.

  When she saw it, it brought her only seconds of relief before the cries of pain drifted from the hall again. The sound was loud, and she realized they were coming from the room Chance had steered her away from. Heart pounding, she stared at it, contemplating her options before she advanced, knowing it was the only way to get answers.

  Luna pushed open the door eyes scanning over the room before her fear glued her in place. Chance stood before a woman, her hands bound above her head as she hung from the ceiling with her shirt cut open to reveal her bra and abdomen covered in a myriad of cuts oozing blood. They ranged from tiny incisions to deep gashes that left Luna wondering how the woman was still alive. Luna’s lip quivered as she forced herself to look for the woman’s eyes, to see if there was still life in them. Her head lolled on her shoulders, and her eyes were closed leaving Luna to wonder if she was already too late.

  Before Luna could stop him, Chance carved a cut into the tender skin just below the woman’s collarbone. A gargled wail rose up from her throat, and the sound made Luna want to hurl though she was relieved the woman still could make sound.

  “Go ahead and scream,” Chance purred to her, running his fingers through the fres
h torrent of her blood before he flicked it in her face. “Tonight, you’re mine.”

  “Chance! Stop!” Luna croaked, tears in her eyes.

  At the sound of her voice, he stopped instantly and turned. Blood was splattered across his face and arms, but he didn’t seem to notice as his shoulders sagged and one word fell from his lips, “Fuck.”

  “W-what are you doing?” Luna demanded, taking a small step forward though every urge in her body commanded she go the opposite direction.

  “I warned you away from this room,” he said calmly, holding up his bloody dagger for her to see the crimson splattered not only on the blade but halfway up his arm as well.

  The expression on his face—or lack thereof—was dangerous. How tightly set his jaw was allowed Luna insight to his true feelings on being interrupted. To anyone else, he would’ve looked terrifying, the demon breaking through the angel exterior, but Luna had been through this situation so many times before—as both victim and executioner—that she felt no fear. She was calm and collected in a situation that didn’t call for it—one that would’ve left her breathless at one point in time.

  “I’m not going to go,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “Not until you do.”

  He laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. Now is not the time for this. I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.”

  “Let her go,” Luna said, and the girl’s eyes opened then, filling with hope as she caught her first real glimpse of Luna. Luna tried her best to ignore the look. She could try to talk him off the high ledge, but if she couldn’t get him to listen, Chance would do what Chance always does—he would kill her, and she would, once again, be a witness to it all.

  “Please help me,” Chance’s victim mumbled with slurred words. Luna could see from the glazed look in her eyes that she was on the brink of shock leaving Luna to wonder if she was just wasting her time trying to save her.

  “Shut up, bitch,” Chance snapped, expression demonic, before turning back to Luna with an exasperated sigh that turned to a whine very unlike him. “She’s already almost dead. Why can’t I finish this exactly?”

  Luna’s lips parted as she stared at him, but she didn’t speak. She couldn’t believe this was a real argument they were having. It would certainly be so much easier to walk away, to pretend this wasn’t happening, but that was what she had done plenty of times in the past hadn’t it? When Sarah was killed, she had walked away, and regretted it every moment onward.

  Not this time.

  Chance held his palms out. “Look, this is ridiculous. It’s not as if I have the police to worry about anymore. No one will know.”

  “And what about the Keepers and the Cultists? They’ll know. Every time you do this, it gives them more fuel to try to catch me so they can do the same.”

  “Don’t worry about those assholes. I can keep you safe,” Chance seethed, waving the bloody dagger with each word though for emphasis or as a threat, Luna was unsure.

  He’s stalling, she thought and crept forward.

  Chance’s body went rigid as he watched her every step. He was still in predator mode, his adrenaline high spiked, and Luna knew that made him especially dangerous, but she refused to back down, refused to stop until she completed her mission. She made it to the girl’s side without Chance saying another word and reached up the length of the rope but couldn’t reach the knot. The girl whimpered in response and tried to curl her body closer to Luna and farther from Chance. Gagging on the scent of blood, Luna took a step away and looked at Chance feeling more helpless than she would’ve liked to admit. If he didn’t cut the rope, Luna couldn’t do it.

  “Just let her go,” she repeated in a voice oddly dulled of emotion.

  Chance huffed and stared her down, looking torn between humiliation and defeat. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” Luna echoed.

  Chance breathed in slow through his nose, the second lasting eternity, before finally, he slashed out with his dagger, severing the binds tying the girl’s hands above her head. She collapsed onto her knees, and Luna helped her to her feet, noting the damage to be much worse than she assumed at first glance. Whimpering at her freedom, the girl held a bloodied arm across her torso to close her flayed shirt and scampered past Chance to escape. Luna wiped the girl’s blood off her hands onto her shorts and looked up at Chance, waiting for whatever would come next.

  Chance ran his tongue along his teeth as he stared at the bloody dagger in his hand. “Just know I wouldn’t do that for anyone else.”

  “Who was she?” Luna asked, studying the remains left by the girl’s torture.

  “Just some bitch,” Chance replied, wiping the blood from his face. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt the people you care about again so why does it matter?”

  Luna could’ve screamed with frustration. “Because she’s a human being, Chance, and just because we don’t know who she is didn’t mean she deserves that!”

  “How do you know she’s not a terrible person?”

  “How do you?” Luna challenged, anger brimming up inside her.

  He shrugged. “I don’t, but I also don’t care. I mean, people die in their sleep all the time.”

  Tears welled in Luna’s eyes, and she couldn’t fight them away. That feeling of being tricked settled over her again, and it was impossible to ignore looking into his blue eyes. Chance was an excellent actor—so much so that he had gotten her to believe he was remorseful for what he was, for what he had done, but the truth was he didn’t know the difference between right and wrong. How could he ever apologize to her for what he had done if he wasn’t sorry?

  Looking at him now reminded her of what a fool she really was.

  Luna’s lips parted as realization washed over her. “You…it was you who killed Violet’s mother, wasn’t it?”

  Chance shrugged. “If I did, it wasn’t on purpose. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Luna laughed, deep and loud, her mind awash with memories and irony. “All the weird deaths in town were yours.” Violet had been a much different person before her mother’s death, open and happy. When her mother died, she had shut down, turned inward, and closed her circle of friends so much so that she had latched onto her unhealthy crush for Chance. If her mother had never died, it would be possible that Violet would’ve found a boyfriend, that she never would’ve replaced reality with fantasy.

  “Basically.”

  Luna scoffed and took one step backward, away from him. He suddenly felt too close, the room too small, and the smell of blood too strong.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “You lied to me,” she said, clenching her hands into fists.

  Chance’s golden eyebrow raised instantly. “Huh?”

  “You’re not sorry for anything that you’ve done. You told me you regretted what you did to me, hated how you were, but…but you’re here, and this is here, and you lied to me.” Before she even finished speaking, Luna’s lip quivered, and she had to bite it keep from letting a sob out. The fight was stupid really because she should know, and she did know.

  “I can see why you would think that,” Chance said.

  Luna huffed. “Really now?”

  “Look, I understand that this isn’t ideal, but I warned you away from this room, warned you about me. Some things aren’t meant to change.”

  “Maybe, but why would you want to condemn innocent people to this place?” Luna demanded. “Why bring more people to this side that’ll want to see you die? More people who can fight in this war against you? You want to talk about how bad everyone else is for wanting my blood, but you’re not much better. That girl didn’t deserve what you were going to do to her, and you don’t even have a reason for inflicting that level of pain. You chose her because…why? She was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  Chance laughed, the sound more psychotic than it should’ve seemed when she studied the blood on his scarred arms. “Oh, come on, Luna. You’re so serious, but
you can relax. I’m sorry to wake you up.”

  “On the list of things I’m upset about, that ranks very low right now.”

  Chance rolled his eyes so hard that Luna was sure it hurt to some degree. “She was the kind of girl you would’ve hated in high school.”

  “Keyword, would’ve.”

  “How do you know she didn’t need to be taught a lesson or two?”

  “It’s wrong, Chance,” Luna said, hearing the echo of the girl’s screams in the back of her mind again.

  “Even if she happens to be one of them?”

  “We have no proof she was.”

  “How’re things up on your pedestal there, your majesty?” He snorted and pulled a rag from his pocket, wiping all the blood from the blade with his eyes on Luna the entire time. “I don’t know where you get off looking down your nose at me when we’re the same.”

  “We are not the same, Chance,” Luna said. “I’ve never tortured someone just to hear them scream. I’ve never wanted to.”

  The corner of Chance’s lip quirked upward. “Oh, but you have, right? Look at me and tell me there was never a time you wanted to hurt me. That you never wanted to make me pay for what I did to you.”

  Luna looked up at him, chin held high, but the longer she held his gaze, the more she began to waver. He raised his eyebrows, prompting her to speak, but she didn’t.

  “Exactly my point,” Chance said and tossed his bloody rag to the ground where it landed in a puddle of blood.

  Luna flinched at the rising sharpness of his words. “I only wanted to hurt you because you deserved it.”

  Chance sighed and tilted his head to the side. “What’s your point, Luna?”

  She frowned. Now that he asked, she wasn’t sure what her answer could be. The girl was already gone. This conversation didn’t need to drag out, but there was something about the moment that kept her from resisting. “My point is that I don’t understand why you feel the need to hurt people you’ve never met when there are people much more deserving.”