I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. His crushing grip left me wheezing for air. My vision started to swim, and the next thing I knew, I was on the cold ground. My assailant kicked my legs open with his knee, his rancid breath hot on my skin.
This wasn’t happening.
Titus screamed my name, followed by the sounds of a struggle, bones breaking and flesh tearing. Then the man was being thrown off me. Titus stood over me with the raging fire at his back. His mismatched eyes were wild with bloodlust.
“Lore, run!”
Disoriented, I flipped onto my hands and knees to see two more dead men on the ground. I scrambled to my feet, shaking my head. “I’m not leaving without you!”
The two remaining cultists were already charging at Titus. He gave a frustrated snarl and turned just in time to block the first blow, but not the second or the third. He cast me a sidelong glare, serrated teeth clenched and his chest rising and falling harshly. “I said go!”
Tears flooded my eyes, making his face go blurry. I turned, then I ran into the woods as fast as my feet would carry me.
Chapter Nine
Lore
AsIran,thebranches whipped against my face. This time, though, the sting brought no comfort.
I’d left him. For all I knew, he was dead, sprawled amongst the trash he’d killed to protect me. I could have helped. I’d killed one, maybe I could have taken down a second with a little more time.
I was lying to myself.
One of them had been seconds away from raping me. Titus had sacrificed himself to give me time to escape. But escape where? I was lost. There were more cultists roaming the woods. Soon, they’d find me. Then, come the full moon, they’d feed me to the Jersey Devil.
Even if by some miracle I managed to find my way out of here, then what? I was just supposed to go back to regular life? Fat chance.
I’d helped him murder his father. I’d bashed in the skull of one of my almost rapists.
How were things ever supposed to go back to normal? They wouldn’t.
I didn’t want to go on living at all without Titus.
This wasn’t the time to cry, but the tears came anyway.
I loved him. In two days, I’d fallen stupidly in love with my cruel stepbrother. He was the only thing that mattered now.
And he was probably already dead.
With a pathetic sob, I forced my feet forward. I wasn’t sure how long I ambled aimlessly through the woods. My eyes ached from all the crying, so probably a while.
A snap of a branch from not far off had me freezing in place.
Something was following me. The cult members? No, they would have been louder.
I swallowed thickly, feeling the roar of my pulse in my ears. Titus had said that monsters roamed the Pine Barrens at night. I’d been so upset, I’d forgotten to stay quiet.
Who knew what horrors of the night lurked in the shadows, waiting to pounce? Titus had made a mean joke once about how I wanted all the nightmarish monsters to come out and fuck me. Maybe in books that was fun, but in reality, all I wanted was Titus.
Another crack of a branch sounded. More rustling. My jaw tightened, and my palms started to sweat. Then, dead ahead of me, huge, glowing yellow eyes appeared.
A silent scream caught in my throat. Terror immobilized me as the creature emerged from the trees. It was so huge, I had to crane my head to look at it. Its skin was almost like bark and its antlers like branches. But its body was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was like a deep-forest cryptid in a found-footage horror movie.
It took a step for me, its head canting so far to the side its neck should have snapped. It just kept going until its head was almost upside down. Creatures with animal heads weren’t supposed to smile, especially this thing. It didn’t have lips. Its head was all bone, but somehow it was smiling, the stretch of its gaping maw looking more like a frown with the angle of its head.
“Delk na vi, humanae.”
An ice-cold chill lanced through me. It was speaking to me in the same language the cultists spoke. There was no possibility that this thing was friendly. There was a hunger to its cadence, and as it stared me down, it began to salivate.
