She only walked a couple of paces before she heard the cry.
Distinct. Crystal clear.
“Reese!” Prudence screamed.
Christine turned back to Raymond. His jaw was hanging open.
He’d heard it too.
She marched back down the grass, just as Elliot was coming up the drive.
“What are you doing?” he hissed. “Get away from there!”
“He’s got her,” Christine hissed back. “She’s inside.”
“We’ve been over this –”
“No, Elliot,” Raymond said standing up. “I heard Prudence just now. She’s in there.”
Elliot frowned.
“What should we do?” Christine whispered.
Elliot looked at them a moment, and then pushed on by walking up to Reese’s front door.
The motion sensor switched on.
“Reese!” Elliot shouted, pounding on the door. “Reese, open up!”
Christine and Raymond joined him from behind.
They waited.
The front door then opened slowly and Reese’s face peered out. “Honestly, what is your –”
All three of them charged through, knocking Reese to the ground.
“Prudence!” Christine cried out through the house. “Prudence, we’re back!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In one moment where Prudence had been huddled and cowering in the corner, that room was her entire world. She opened her eyes, almost unable to breathe at the sheer surprise of hearing Christine’s voice again, and immediately dashed for the curtain, pulling it down, and pounding on the mirror’s glass. “In here! In here!”
She looked round, trying to see if anyone was coming. The light was on in the hallway outside the bathroom, but Pru didn’t know if it had been just turned on or if it was on before.
“Christine?” Pru tried again.
She realized of course that it was unlikely that Christine could hear her. If she had heard her, it was probably only when Reese had the room’s door open. She looked around hoping to find something she hadn’t seen before, something she could use to get Christine’s attention. God how horrible it would be to lose her again…
Snap.
Grind…
Pru stepped out to face the wall opening, almost afraid Reese would be on the other side of it, in one of his moods and moving to attack her.
Then her eyes filled with joy.
“Prudence!”
“Christine!”
The friends ran to each other and embraced, tears streaming everywhere.
But of course as happy as Prudence was to be reunited, she knew that there wasn’t much time – there wasn’t long at all before Reese would be up and about and after them.
“We need to get out of here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Elliot and Raymond were standing out by the front door of the house. Reese was still on the ground beside them.
“We gotta go guys,” Christine said as she and Prudence hurried over. “Before he wakes up.”
Prudence looked down at where Reese was. His eyes were closed.
“He must have really taken one,” Pru muttered.
“Got the edge of the wall here,” Raymond confirmed. “Guess we got lucky.”
“I’m so sorry,” Elliot said. “I can’t even imagine what he’s done to you. I had no idea –”
“Save it for later,” Christine interrupted. “We need to move now.”
The four of them raced out down Reese’s driveway, and back into the street where they turned down the adjacent road.
“The taxi!” Christine exclaimed. “It’s still there!”
“I paid him to wait,” Elliot said.
They reached it and piled inside, telling the driver to get a move on. Each of them kept looking back nervously, anticipating Reese’s sudden emergence, but thankfully it didn’t come to pass.
They drove to Elliot’s place first and dropped him home, before the went back to Christine and Raymond’s house.
The cab stopped at the edge of the drive, and Raymond got out as Christine began to.
She looked back and saw Prudence hadn’t moved.
“Come on,” Christine said. “You’ll be safe here. He doesn’t know where we live.”
“You can’t know that,” Pru said.
“Well, I mean, where do you want to go?We’ll come with you.”
“I don’t think so. I have to face this alone.”
“Surely you don’t mean…”
“I’m sorry,” Pru said, feeling horrible. “I can’t help it. I have to. I … I …”
Christine looked at the floor of the car. “I understand.”
“What? You do? Really?”
“You have to trust what’s inside,” Christine said. She gave Pru a hug. Then stepped back out to the road.
Pru leaned over to look at them one last time.
Raymond put his arm round Christine.
They smiled and waved to her.
Then they went home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The rain had stopped. The clouds had cleared.
The cabbie looked back at Prudence nervously as she stepped out into the cold, starlit car park closing the door behind her. Goosebumps ran up her arms and legs. Chills ran down her spine.
In so many ways, this could mean nothing. The whole place could be empty. When the cabbie was gone, she’d be the only one here.
She heard the window roll down behind her.
“Miss?” he called to her. “Miss?”
She turned.
“I don’t think anyone’s here,” he said. “I can you someplace else. Back to your friends if you like.”
“No,” Pru said. “That’s okay. I’m gonna wait here.”
“Suit yourself.”
He wound the window up and turned the cab away, going off round the bend and out of sight.
Prudence stepped onto the grass.
It was time to think. Time to reflect on everything that had happened to her.
In no way, shape or form, did she think she would ever see this place again. Even during all those months where she was Reese’s prisoner, and she prayed night after night for her freedom. She never believed she loved him.
Until now.
All the thoughts, the feelings, the reasons – everything suggesting she shouldn’t do this had fallen away. She walked towards the maze’s entrance, knowing this was the only thing she wanted to do – and that it had been that way forever and always.
The gate was open and unlocked tonight, giving her easy access to the interior. She stepped around the pathway, her feet crunching on the stones below her. Everything breath. Every beat of her heart. Every blink of her eyes … pulling her forward.
And after corner after corner turned to reveal nothing on the other side, behind one of them he waited for her, his eyes weary, his heart filled to the brim.
They stared at each other, the moment frozen in time, each not believing that after everything that had happened, and all the time had that passed – each not believing that the other loved them enough to be there in that moment with them.
Except, there they were…
Bastian grabbed hold of Prudence and pulled her into him, kissing her all over, between gasps of joy and laughter, the ironic sentiment not lost on either of them.
And when they’d done all the hugging and kissing they could, they stepped back again and looked at one another, still unsure the moment was real.
“I have so much to tell you,” they both blurted out at the same time, cutting each other short.
“You first,” Bastian said.
“No, you,” Prudence replied.
He put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know what to say now. I mean, there’s so much I want to say, so much you need to know, but … I think I just want to focus on what’s here. What’s between us. This is like nothing I’ve experienced before. I want to believe in you. But are you real?”
And they held each other a while longer, until the night and the stars were gone, and the day had risen in the sky above them.
Outside the maze, whether they traveled into Bastian’s world, or into Prudence’s – outside the maze there were people and things and situations that were dangerous, and terrifying and threatened to drive them apart again.
It wasn’t something they could hide from, rather that they had to face.
But through all of that the one thing that wouldn’t change was that they could remember this moment, a time where they were infinitely happy. They could remember this beautiful kiss now, and what had led up to it before, and the rest of the adventures they were about to have.
The mazes they carried inside had now become one between them, and whenever one was lost, the other would know and remember the way.
Their love would not die.
And the journey was eternal.
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Vampire's Eternity (Vampire's Valentine Book Four) Page 5