by D. N. Hoxa
“Okay,” I breathed, going against everything I stood for. “Okay, I’ll stay away from him.”
At first, I had no idea who he was talking about, but then…Adrian Ward.
Could it be?
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Trip said, smiling again like the world was his. He stepped away from Mrs. Herman’s door and came closer to me. If I could choose to simply make my heart stop beating and fall to the ground, I’d have chosen that moment. I leaned away from him until my back hit the door, my palms so sweaty, I kept expecting the knives to slip from my fingers.
“Don’t you want to know why you are to stay away from him, though?” he asked, narrowing his brows.
“Yeah, no, I do. Absolutely,” I made myself say. If I could distract him from whatever he was doing to me for just a second, I could swing both my arms and aim for his throat. That was all I needed—a short second and this nightmare would be over.
“Because he’s going to kill you, if you let him, Willow. That’s no joke.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to break his hold over me.
“What the hell are you doing to me?” I sounded panicked because I was. Having no control over my body was not a joke, either.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said, leaning his head to the side as he watched me, obviously wanting me to ask him again. He loved this sick game. That’s what this was to him—a fucking game.
“Try me,” I said because I needed to understand so I could maybe break free.
He raised his hand and waved his fingers. “Magic,” he whispered, like he was letting me in on the secret of his life.
I swallowed hard. Magic. This sick bastard thought he could do magic.
But if not, how was he holding me back without even touching me?
“Now, for the other thing.” He took something out of his pocket. “I have a token to deliver.” He held out what looked like a black Ping-Pong ball. “Take it.”
It was an order, and just like that, my left hand let go of my knife, and I reached out for the ball without even thinking about it. Shit, shit, shit. This was worse than I thought.
“When the time comes, you’ll know what to do with it, and when you want to call me, use your blood.”
“Call you?” Was he insane? Why would I ever want to call someone like him?
“Yes, exactly. Just draw your own blood, lots of it—their words, not mine. I highly doubt you’ll know what to do with it, though, but they say you will, so…” He shrugged like all he said was perfectly understandable.
“Who’s they?” I asked, despite myself. I didn’t need to know anything, I just wanted this guy to go away, far away from my mother. Far away from me.
“The Velluum Sisters.” Again, he said it like I’d know exactly what the hell that meant. “Hey, don’t look at me like that!” He laughed, and the sound made my stomach turn. “If it were up to me, I’d have killed you in your crib. Everything would have been so much less complicated that way, but here you are.”
I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry because I believed every word he said.
“Don’t forget—lots of blood.” He pointed both his fingers at me while he stepped backward toward the stairs. “And stay away from that guy, okay? If you die, they’re not going to be happy.”
Cold air settled on my skin, making me shiver. My arms were mine again, my body able to obey my thoughts once more. I didn’t care who this psycho was, but I was not about to let him get away now that I could move again. A knife was still in my hand, and with it, I charged him. I never looked away from his face, still smiling that awful smile, so I saw exactly how it happened:
He became transparent, at first, like he was a fucking ghost. Flames danced in the darkness of his eyes, and black smoke rose from the ground around him. It took three steps for me to reach him, and by the time I should have been right in front of him, I was only looking at Mrs. Herman’s door.
He’d disappeared right in front of my eyes. I was all alone in the hallway again.
Chapter Six
Trying to convince myself that it was all in my head didn’t work. No, Trip had felt way too real. The control he had on me had scarred me forever. The little I could do to defend myself against him scared the living hell out of me, even as I rode in the back of a bus, on my way out of Manhattan. The plan was to go all the way to Philadelphia and stop at a motel for the day until I figured out the next step. It was a good plan, I thought, and I was going to see it through.
The token Trip had given me, or rather made me take, was another testament that it had all been real. The black Ping-Pong ball felt more like plastic than glass to the touch, and the strings that decorated it with small circles all around were the same. I had no idea what the hell it was, but it couldn’t be anything good coming from a guy like that. I debated throwing it off the bus more than once, but I held onto it instead. Something told me it was important, and a plastic ball wasn’t going to hurt me, anyway.
The words Trip said to me spun in my head every second of the way.
The guy you’ve been seeing is going to kill you.
I know much more about you than just your name and address.
The Velluum Sisters.
And my personal favorite: I would have killed you in your crib.
How the hell would he have known about me then, when he must have been in his own crib? He didn’t look a day older than me—maybe even younger.
Nothing at all made sense. If he was really talking about Adrian, how had he known? Had this Trip guy been stalking me, too? What had I become, a stalker magnet?
The sound of my own teeth clenching shook me out of my trance. I couldn’t let myself go there—I couldn’t lose it. I was on a bus with six other people—innocent people. If I began to do whatever it was that I did, the bus was going to crash, maybe even kill me, too. And I couldn’t die yet, not without figuring out what was happening first.
Half an hour later, I got off the bus and headed east to find the motel I’d researched. It was a ten-minute walk according to my phone. I needed to get a new one because the broken screen was giving me a headache.
My duffle bag was with me, but I no longer trusted that I’d hold onto it no matter what. If Trip came for me again, it would be the first thing I let go of. Just the thought of him and those empty eyes and I was covered in cold sweat. My knives were no good against him. The time had come for me to get a gun, a big one so I could shoot his brains out the second I saw him again, if I ever did.
The motel I was staying in was quiet. Only two cars were parked in the front. My room was on the second floor, and by the sound of it, the rooms around me were empty. The sheets looked clean, and the bathroom was decent. I checked, just in case I’d have to stay there for more than a day.
I fell on the bed with my bag still in hand and looked at the ceiling, wondering how much longer I could go without sleep. I hadn’t slept at all the night before, but this morning’s meeting had chased the sleep away during the bus ride. Now, though, I felt its weight settling on my chest, like an invisible hand that was going to make sure I couldn’t get up if I tried. I didn’t want to sleep, but I knew I had no choice. The panic, the fear—they were unbearable in the state I was in, and I couldn’t hope to figure anything out like that.
I was safe there, I told myself. Nobody had seen me leave, except Trip, and he hadn’t followed me. Nobody had, at least to the bus station—I’d made sure of that. So I closed my eyes and emptied my mind as best as I could. Maybe when I woke up, the world would make a little more sense.
No sign of the Velluum Sisters anywhere online, though I hadn’t really expected to find anything. It was three in the afternoon and I was starving, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go out to the gas station convenience store just a couple of buildings away. I’d slept, had woken up, but nothing had gotten any easier. Things had yet to make sense to me, and being stuck in a cheap motel room wasn’t very inspiring. Go figure.
I read his pad and his journal again, as if I could force them to share secrets they didn’t have by sheer will. Nothing new came out of them, just like I knew it wouldn’t.
Except…his phone.
I’d turned it on after he died to read his messages and check his search history, in hopes of finding something that would tell me why he’d taken his own life. I’d found nothing, and I’d never tried again.
But back then, I’d been hurt and confused and angry—and not really focused. What if I’d missed something? I hadn’t gone through his contacts, his notes, his emails. What if there was something hidden in there that could help me figure out what to do next?
Jumping to my feet, I grabbed my jacket and ran to the door. Hunger couldn’t get me to the gas station, but the need for a charger sure did. I was a fool for not thinking of it before. Of course there would be something in his phone. There had to be.
I ran to the convenience store and back to the motel like my ass was on fire. I couldn’t make my hands move fast enough while I plugged in the new charger. The phone hadn’t been turned on in four years, so I already knew it was going to take a while before it came back to life. I ate the snacks I bought without ever taking my eyes off the black screen.
When the light turned on, my heart skipped a long beat. All I’d eaten in such a hurry threatened to come back out the same way it had gone in, but I swallowed hard and forced myself to focus. My fingers still shook as I waited for what felt like a lifetime until the phone was fully functional. All the applications were there, and as soon as I got rid of all the notifications about the expired card and the update requests, I sat on the bed and opened the messages first. I’d read those, but like I said, I could have easily missed something, so I was going to go through them again.
He had forty messages in total, most of them from Mom, asking when he’d be home. Nothing at all suspicious, but I wasn’t done yet. I opened his personal email, the one he didn’t have installed in his laptop, and had to wait for the app to update after I connected with the motel’s wi-fi. Agony, I tell you. Those minutes felt like hours, and I was so consumed with the screen of that phone that I forgot about everything else.
But going through his personal emails was just a waste of time. Appointments, appointments, and more appointments. I searched for the word Trapper, and even just Trap, but there was nothing in there. Hope that I’d find anything useful left me every time I opened a new email and got nothing.
Next were his contacts. Just a whole bunch of names. No Trappers there, either. But there was one name that was registered differently from the rest. Not a name and last name—just two letters: TI.
TI. Could that possibly be Trappers, Inc.?
I copied the number to my phone and hit Call without giving it too much thought. It was a landline. After the second ring, an automated message played: “Please type your code.”
Code? What code?
I held my breath and waited.
“Please type your code,” the recording repeated. I had no idea about any code, so I just pressed number one. The line went dead immediately. Damn it.
Finding a decent reverse search web page for a phone number was time consuming, and to be honest, I didn’t expect anything to turn up. So when the page finished its search and gave me the results, I could hardly believe my own eyes.
The number was registered to an Elton Maine, with an address and two other phone numbers. My love for the Internet grew to the size of a freaking mountain. The address was in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. If I had to go back to New York to find out who this guy was, so be it, but first, I dialed one of the phone numbers.
Nobody picked up.
I tried the second.
“You’ve reached Trappers, Inc. Please leave your message after the signal.” I forgot how to even breathe.
The door to my motel room flew open with a loud noise. I jumped to my feet, fear and panic making the view in front of me swim. I reached for my knives only to find that I’d left them on the bed when I came back from the gas station.
Two men were in my room, one of them so big he barely fit in the doorframe. They were coming at me fast, like they knew exactly where I’d be. My instincts kicked in. I slammed my fist into the face of the first guy, the smaller one, who tried to grab me by the arm like I was just standing there for the taking. He fell back a few steps, holding his cheek, looking at me like I was the one who’d broken into his hotel room.
Then, he looked at the big guy. “Get her!” he shouted, but by then, I’d grabbed two of my knives from the bed, and I was ready.
Right until their darkness spread over me. It grabbed me like a physical thing, sliding beneath my skin, filling me with a kind of emptiness that could make me lose my mind if I was exposed to it for too long. But my body knew how to fight, even if my mind was frozen, so when the big guy tried to grab me by the neck, I ducked and kicked him in the gut with all my strength. It didn’t do much damage other than to send him back a step, but I had an opening, and I took it. With my knives in hand, I ran to him, aiming to stab him in the chest. I didn’t know what happened to people who’d sold their soul to the devil when stabbed with a demon bone knife, but I was about to find out.
Unfortunately, the guy was faster than I’d given him credit for, and his forearm stopped mine before the tip of my knife could even touch his shirt. His fist to my face was not a pleasant feeling, but I had yet to feel the pain when I spun around and nearly hit the floor on my back. Holding onto the bed frame, I took in a deep breath before I charged again. If these guys thought I was going to go down without a fight, they were in for the surprise of their lives.
I fought the big guy while his friend watched us. If he wasn’t so damn big, I’d have had his head by then, but he could move better than the demons I fought. It felt like we’d been fighting for hours before I managed to bury my knife in his gut. The guy didn’t seem to even notice it, so I twisted the handle as fast as I could until a sound like a growl left his lips. He tried to push me away, but I ducked and took his feet from under him with a hell of a kick that probably hurt my leg more than his. He collapsed to the floor, holding onto his gut, his once white shirt now red.
I wasn’t one to waste time, so I fell to my knees by his side, and holding the handle of my knife with both hands, I raised my arms and aimed for his heart. Even if he didn’t have a soul, a stab in the heart was going to kill him—of that I was pretty sure.
It was a decent plan, and it would have worked had the other guy not been in the room. But he was, and I hadn’t noticed him sneaking up behind me. He wrapped his arm around my neck and pulled me back before I could get rid of the big guy for good, and then something wet covered my face. The smell of chemicals filled my nostrils, and it seemed to get all the way to my brain in record time. Something sweet slipped onto my tongue as I tried to push the man’s hand away from my face.
“Grab her! Just grab her hands!” he shouted, completely panicked, but not as panicked as I was. Big Guy must have stood up because the next thing I knew, I couldn’t move my arms or my legs.
“Come on, come on, come on,” the other said, holding me by the neck. I knew what they were doing. I hadn’t smelled chloroform before, but what else could that rag he was holding against my mouth and nose be soaked in? As it turns out, you can’t just stop breathing altogether, not even when you knew you had to.
“On the bed,” said the guy holding me, and I couldn’t even feel them lifting me over the panic. I tried to move like I was on fire because that’s what it felt like. And it wasn’t like in the movies at all, where the second someone puts a chloroform-soaked rag on your face, yo
u pass out. The torture lasted for a long time, and the big guy was literally sitting on my hips, holding my arms with all his strength to keep me from moving.
I still tried. I tried until the very last second to kick him in the head, and I did, but it was no use. Neither of them let go of me until my limbs grew extremely heavy, and so did my eyelids. The ceiling of the motel room was the last thing I saw before unconsciousness took me. It looked like they finally did it. The demons had caught me, and now they were going to make me pay for all I had done to them.
Chapter Seven
The rope bit into my skin like it wanted to tear it all the way through. It was everywhere: around my wrists, arms, legs, ankles. My eyes refused to open and my head refused to rise for a long minute after I came to.
Then, I heard them.
Their footsteps felt like a clock on a ticking bomb. My entire body froze even more when I remembered exactly who they were. The two men who’d nearly knocked the door off its hinges, and who’d tried to capture me.
No, not tried. Did. They’d tied me to a fucking chair.
I’d been such a fool to think I could escape the demons, but if there was one thing I was thankful for, it was that I’d gotten away in time. They hadn’t caught me at home where my mother was. Out here was fine. She, at least, would be okay, if not freaked out that I hadn’t called yet.
I wondered who’d sent these two men after me. Was it Cirko? Demons using the soulless to do their bidding was unusual but not unheard of. My father told me a couple stories that kept me up at night when I was a kid, which was exactly what they were meant to do, so that I wouldn’t be caught unprepared, like I was. So wrapped up in that phone call that I hadn’t even heard their footsteps outside the door.
Now, I was paying the price for my stupidity.
“She up yet?” one of them said. It sounded like the smaller guy. His voice sent shivers down my back, but I didn’t allow myself to move even a single inch. Maybe if they thought I was out cold still, I could do something about the situation. I could free myself, escape, kill them, whatever.