I hit the tree with my other hand. “No.” I pounded the trunk. “No, Christa, you are not fine.” I smacked my other hand into the trunk. “You are not fine at all.” I began to pummel the tree, my fists punctuating each sentence that I spit out. “Just because you got gang raped when you were fourteen doesn’t make it cool for you to get fucking raped again. It only means that you’re like doubly fucked up.”
“Shut up,” she said.
I looked at her. Blood dripped off my knuckles. I could see that I’d stained the tree red as well.
She was standing up. Water streamed over her naked breasts and hips. She was clean now. She was beautiful. And that made it worse, because for some reason, all I could think about was the way it had felt to have my lips on her skin.
“Fuck you, Silas.” Her voice shook.
I turned back to the tree. I didn’t want to see her like that. I didn’t want to see her naked and vulnerable. Ever again.
“It was my idea,” she said. “It wasn’t what you said.”
“It couldn’t have been your idea,” I said. “You didn’t know what you were offering them. They should never—”
“It was my idea,” she said. “And I’m fine. And I can handle this fucking Rolf thing. So, you just shut up.”
* * *
There was more trail mix in the backpack I’d brought back with us. There were also two more cans of Coke. I gave them all to Christa.
At first, she tried to tell me that we should share them, but I wouldn’t take one. So, eventually, she just gave up and drank them both.
We ate some more beef jerky and some of the trail mix.
We watched as the light outside the cave faded away, until it was night outside.
I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know how to act around her.
I knew I needed to be doing something for her, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.
I thought about trying to be comforting, but that didn’t work for lots of reasons. For one thing, she was still insisting that she was fine and that none of it was a big deal. For another thing, I didn’t think I should touch her. I didn’t think she’d like it. And I was afraid to touch her.
I was afraid that I’d hold her, and that my body would betray me, like the time when we’d huddled in the underbrush while the hunters shot at her.
I was afraid I’d hold her, and that I would want her.
And that seemed to me like the single most disgusting thing I could possibly do.
Currently, thinking about sex made me ill.
But for some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I kept thinking about Rolf and Christa and the way he’d ripped open her shirt. And then I kept picturing things. How had he done it?
Her legs had been tied to the tree. When I’d gone dark, her pants had been on. When I’d come to later, they’d been off.
Had he untied her legs to get her pants off?
How had he done that?
If he did untied her, did she struggle? Did she try to kick him?
Was that when he’d hit her face, split her lip open like that?
He must have forced her legs open somehow. Had he tied them back up?
How had he tied them?
It seemed so complicated.
I didn’t want to know.
I needed to know.
I couldn’t stop picturing her against that tree, stripped and spread open. Rolf against her. Rolf in her.
I stayed to the other side of the cave, as far from her as I could get, clutching my head, trying to rip the images out of my mind. I was afraid to get close to her.
Touching her? Being comforting? That was definitely not an option.
But I couldn’t pretend like nothing had happened either. Because something had happened. And I wasn’t okay with it.
But I knew that I didn’t have any right to be freaked out about it, not when she was pretending to be peachy keen.
I couldn’t talk about it.
So, I did nothing. I stayed away from her, and I did nothing.
And she sat on the other side of the cave, toying restlessly with an empty Coke can.
And, outside, it got darker.
* * *
“You don’t want me anymore, do you?” She was only a voice in the darkness, a tiny voice, quiet and frightened.
I didn’t answer. I was sitting up at the door of the cave. Outside, the trees and brush were all stock still.
“You know, back in Morgantown, I was afraid because of how much you wanted me. It reminded me of other guys, like that guy who ran the brewery. You asked me if he was my boyfriend, and I said he wasn’t, because I don’t do boyfriends. But he sort of was. I thought maybe he’d be different. Like maybe it would be okay to, you know, let him in.
“So, I tried,” she continued. “I let him in little bit by little bit. I thought I was controlling it, like I was only letting him in as far as I could handle. But I wasn’t. I was losing myself to him. I liked him, and I wanted him to like me back.
“And then one day he didn’t like me anymore. He said I drank too much, and I flirted too much, and that he couldn’t trust me, because he thought I’d sleep with other people besides him. And then it was over.
“And the way you were acting, Silas, I was pretty sure you were going to do the same thing. I knew your type.”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Christa, I don’t think that was what I was going to do. I wasn’t thinking very far into the future when I met you, you know.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But I didn’t know how to get rid of you. You wouldn’t stop, no matter what I said. You let my brother beat you up because of me, and you still wanted to kiss me afterward.”
“I heal fast.”
“I know,” she said. “But you made me feel out of control, and I didn’t like that.”
I stared out of the lip of the cave, feeling dead inside. “I made you feel out of control? Christa, I haven’t been in control of anything since you appeared in my life. I’ve been falling apart.”
“No, you haven’t,” she said. “You’ve been the only thing protecting me.”
I laughed bitterly. “Well, I’ve done a damned good job at that, haven’t I?”
She was quiet.
I felt cold. I hunched my shoulders under the jacket I wore.
“You said it was like a switch got flipped, and suddenly I wanted to fuck you. You wanted to know why. You remember?”
“Yeah.” But it seemed like another life, when shit like that mattered.
“It was because I wanted back in control of the situation. As long as it was my idea, then…”
“Like it was your idea to lose your virginity to three guys in a hot tub?”
“It was.”
“Right. And I liked being forced to have sex with Sylvia. I didn’t really have a problem being a fucking whore. It was no big deal.” I pulled the jacket closer around my body. “We’re both rewriting history to make it seem like we weren’t victims, aren’t we?”
Her tone was fierce. “I’m not a victim.”
“Christa.” My voice cracked. “You have bruises all over your body.”
* * *
She was crying.
It was sometime in the middle of the night, and I might have been asleep, even though I’d promised myself that I would stay awake and keep watch to make sure that Rolf didn’t come for us in the night.
He’d never come at night before, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t now.
I needed to be ready.
But I’d fallen asleep anyway.
And now she was crying.
I crept across the cave to her.
Tentatively, I touched her shoulder. “Christa?” Maybe she was asleep.
But she sat up and threw her arms around me. “Oh god, Silas,” she sobbed.
I couldn’t move.
For several moments, she clung to me, crying into my shoulder, and I didn’t touch her. Was afraid to touch her.
>
And then I forced my arms to go around her small, soft form, to pull her against me.
I thought about her in my arms the night before, both of us nude and satiated on each other’s bodies.
Fear jolted through me. I was terrified that my body would respond to the sensation of her pressed into me—her curves and soft heft.
But it didn’t.
It felt nice to hold her. Good, even. But there wasn’t anything sexual about it. It was comfort. It was closeness. It was safety.
I wasn’t hurting her. I wasn’t doing anything inappropriate.
I was just holding her.
So, I did.
I held her until her sobs quieted.
And then I let her curl up against me, and I stroked her hair over and over again. Gently. Reassuringly.
Until she fell asleep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When I woke up, she wasn’t in the cave.
I walked in a quick frantic circle, trying to make sure that she wasn’t hidden somewhere in the shadows, still lying down. But all I found were our four empty Coke cans and the leftover trail mix and beef jerky.
Had Rolf been here?
He’d said that he was going to hunt us down and do it all over again.
No.
I couldn’t handle that. She couldn’t handle that.
I tore out of the cave, images that I’d conjured up swimming through my brain. Christa against that tree—bleeding, naked, legs spread…
She was sitting by the stream. She had one of the backpacks, and she had gathered several branches. She was using a pocket knife to whittle the edges into sharp points.
I collapsed next to her. “What the hell?”
She held up the pocket knife. “Look what I found in the backpack.”
I snatched it from her and set it down. I took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Don’t run off like that. I thought…”
She wrenched the knife away from me. “Have a coronary, why don’t you?”
“I thought he found you again,” I said. “I thought he had you, and he was—”
“Well, he didn’t.” Her nostrils flared. She picked up the knife and went back to whittling.
I ran a hand over my face. My heart was pounding. I took deep breaths, trying to calm down.
“I found something else.” She dug in the backpack and came out with a folded up piece of paper. She handed it to me. “It’s a map.”
I unfolded it. It was hand-drawn, with various scrawled labels like, “waterfall” and “holding cell.” I squinted at it.
She leaned over, pointing. “We’re around here, I think.”
“So, there’s a map,” I said. “What good does that do us? And why are you making… stakes? You planning on killing vampires or something? These aren’t long enough for fishing.”
“They aren’t for fishing,” she said. “And they aren’t for vampires either. They’re for Rolf. I’m going to kill him.”
This was too much to take in. The last thing I remembered, she was a sobbing mess in my arms. Now, she was making weapons?
She pointed on the map. “See that?”
I read out loud the label she was pointing at. “Hunting cabin?”
“It’s close,” she said. “It’s just down from the cellar we were in the first night. That’s the ‘holding cell,’ see?”
“It took us days to get here,” I said. “Besides, we don’t even know what ‘hunting cabin’ means.”
“It’s where he is,” she said. “And it did take us days, but that’s because we all went out this way, remember?” She gestured on the map. “Emmett told us to go east, so we went way into the woods. Then we started towards the power lines, and we came all the way back this way, along the stream.”
I cocked my head, considering. She was right.
“I figure we could get to his cabin by nightfall tonight,” she said. “Just follow the stream up to the waterfall and then go this way.” She pointed.
“Maybe,” I said. It wasn’t a bad plan.
“I’m doing it,” she said. “I’m killing him.”
“No.” I shook my head.
“You want him alive?”
“Of course not,” I said. “But Rolf’s mine. This whole mess got started because I wanted to kill him. And so I’m doing it.”
“No, you’re going to let me do it.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
She held up the sharpened sticks. She had about four of them already. She was working on a fifth. “It’s just like what you said when you were talking to Emmett. Rolf has to sleep, right? So I’ll sneak into the cabin, find him in his bed, and stab him.”
“Christa, you don’t even know how to kill people.”
“I’ve killed two people in the past few days,” she said.
“But that was luck,” I said. “You need to let me handle this.”
“Maybe it was skill,” she said. “Maybe I’m a natural.”
This was ridiculous. “You aren’t a killer.”
“Sure I am. I’ve killed two people. That makes me a killer.”
I sighed. “You have to let me do it.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I have to do it for Sylvia,” I said. “And for you. And for me. You can’t take this from me.”
She shrugged. “Sorry, but you have to let me do it.”
“It wouldn’t be good for you. You’ve been through too much. I’m used to killing people. It won’t bother me.”
“I’m already pretty damned bothered. The only way I’m going to be sure that I’m safe is if I do it. If I’m sure he’s dead, then I’ll know he can’t ever come after me again.”
“No.”
“Silas, you’re going to let me kill him. Me. Because when he was…” She looked up at me, her jaw twitching. “When he was jamming himself in and out of me, I kept scraping up against the tree behind me. The bark dug into me, and I was bleeding. It hurt. And it just kept going on and on.”
I turned away.
“You’re going to let me do it.”
I couldn’t look at her. “Yeah. All right.”
* * *
I didn’t have any intention of letting her kill Rolf, but I had nothing to say to that. So I let it go. If she thought she was going to kill him, fine. But when it came down to it, she wasn’t going to be able to pull it off.
And I’d be there to make sure that it all worked out. I’d get to take him down.
I helped her make a few more sharpened sticks.
We ate some of our remaining food.
We loaded everything up into the backpacks, and we started through the woods as silently and inconspicuously as we could. Because for all we knew, Rolf was out looking for us. He was hunting us, and we weren’t any match for him and his guns.
Christa was definitely right about one thing. We needed to wait until he was vulnerable to get to him. Find him asleep in his bed. That was the way to make sure that he couldn’t get the drop on us.
We walked throughout the day, pausing only once to eat again.
We didn’t see any sign of Rolf.
Either he wasn’t stalking us, or he was staying out of sight.
The sun sank down behind the tree line. The woods was engulfed in night. We could hear the sounds of insects singing to each other.
Our pace slowed, because it was harder to see in the dark.
But it didn’t take long until we emerged into the clearing where everything had started. The holding cell was there. Empty and concrete and cold. Not long ago, it had been filled with men, and there had been shooting as we scrambled into the woods.
They were all dead.
All that remained was Christa, me, and Rolf.
Soon, Rolf would be dead too.
Following the map, we crept past the holding cell, up the hill on the opposite side.
And we found the cabin.
It was actually a little bit large to be considered a cabin. It was made from interlocking log
s, but it was two stories high with skylights on the sloping roof and a huge wraparound deck. There were numerous windows, but they were all dark. A garage sat behind the cabin. The doors were open, and I could see two cars inside.
I stopped to point them out to Christa. “Maybe we should just go. We could take a car and drive away.” I figured that once she was safe, I’d come back for Rolf.
But she shook her head. “No. I won’t feel safe unless I know he’s dead.”
I decided it was pointless to argue with her. Besides, she probably would feel better if she could see Rolf’s body.
“Let’s get inside,” she said.
“What if he isn’t here?” I said. The house looked empty and quiet. Rolf could be inside asleep or he could be out in the woods looking for us. We couldn’t be sure.
“Then we’ll hide someplace and wait for him,” she said.
We crept up to the door of the cabin.
It was painted green. It had a cheery looking half moon window at the top.
I put my hand on the door knob and turned it.
It was locked.
Of course it was locked.
I turned to Christa. “We’ll have to try a window or something.”
A high-pitched beeping alarm rent the air.
We both jumped.
She looked at me with startled eyes.
“He must have a security system.” I grabbed her, pulling her away from the door.
Too late.
It opened.
Rolf tore outside, brandishing a shot gun. He was wearing a pair of plaid pajama pants and nothing else.
He had been sleeping.
He pointed the gun at us. “Impressive, Drake. You found me. The hunted becomes the hunter.” He laughed wild and loud.
I started to pull Christa behind me.
But Rolf pumped the gun. “Don’t move.”
I froze, still holding onto her, my pulse racing. It couldn’t end like this. Not after everything we’d been through. Not after everything Rolf had done.
He advanced on us, stopping when the gun was inches from Christa’s head. He laughed. “Should I shoot her now, Drake? Splatter you with her blood? Shoot you and dump you someplace, so that you can wander around without her, agonized, wishing you could die, but coming back to life over and over again?”
No. Please, no. But I didn’t say anything.
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