No head loomed below that fire-carved face. There was simply nothing above the shoulders.
Esmie tried to scream, but no sound emerged from the pinhole her hot, dry throat had become. She stumbled, caught her footing, ran for her life. Literally ran for her life.
But again, she couldn’t help but look behind.
Another rider pulled off its jack o’lantern head, laughed awfully, and tossed its head toward the last rider. The last rider caught the head easily enough, wrapped its reins around the saddle horn, and pulled off its head to toss to the first rider. They laughed in appalling, mocking, hollow glee as they easily caught up to her and ran on either side of her, tossing their heads,their jack o’lantern heads, from one to the other. Their horses screamed and ran around her, their shod hooves striking sparks on the gravel in the cemetery path.
Sobbing in the extremity of her terror, Esmie tried to shriek for them to stop, please, just give her a fucking second to catch her breath,please,but she lost her footing again, this time for good. There was no catching herself. She went down, and hard, face first into the gravel.
She felt small rocks dig in, felt her skin give away here and there. Her forehead knocked hard against the ground. Her stocking cap flew off, her hair flying around her face in an instant tangle. Knees skinned through her leggings, which tore like tissue paper. Her palms were somewhat saved by her gloves, but only just.
Worse, the riders slowed, their dead, mirthless laughter growing louder for a moment before abruptly cutting off.
“Wait,” an equally hollow, awful—undeniably male—voice said into the suddenly quiet night, “you’re a girl?”
But she could no longer hold back the hysterics she’d been denied by her breathless running, and the sobs soon had her gasping so hard she was as speechless as the running had left her. Oh, god, but then she heard the most terrifying sound yet—three sets of boots hitting the ground as the riders dismounted.
The horses pawed at the gravel, snorting and blowing, their bridles jingling. Boots crunched brutally through the rocks as they strode toward her. Esmie tried to crawl away from the inexorable death knell sound, but she hadn’t quite gathered her wits yet. Her face hurt. Her chest hurt. Hell, everything hurt. She needed to run. She needed to at least get up and face her attackers.
A gloved hand touched her shoulder.
“Sorry, miss,” said another voice, a male voice, as low and hollow as the desert wind blowing over a dead man’s dried out eye socket. “Can I help you up?”
She sobbed in a gasp, choked, tried to catch her breath, choked again, reached up with a shaking hand to run her glove under her snotty nose. Another gloved hand clutched under her other arm. The fingers inside the glove felt like barren tree branches, but the grip wasn’t tight. Just firm.
“Here, let us both help.”
Before she knew it, she was on her feet, her wobbly knees barely holding her up between the two careful but firm grips under her upper arms. Twiggy, those grips. What was happening? She couldn’t begin to tell.
“There you go.” If a preternaturally deep, undead voice could sound reassuring, this one tried. Failed, but tried. “Oof, you’re bleeding a little. Here.”
The rough, tattered fabric of an old cape dabbed at her face here and there, mostly on her forehead, and she recovered enough of her startled, scattered wits to wince at the stinging pain. On the plus side, the sting brought her back a little. She blinked tears from her eyes, caught her breath—though her heart still raced unevenly in her chest—and tried like hell to pay attention to what was happening. Who were these people?Werethey people?
Unfortunately, when her vision cleared enough and the tattered bit of cape pulled away enough for her to see straight ahead toward the rider standing before her, she squawked in new alarm and jerked back. Because the somewhat helpful riders’ grips weren’t tight, she jerked right out of their hands, stumbled, and fell to her ass in the gravel. She scooted backward until she fetched up against a tombstone.
“What the fuck? What the fuck? Where the fuck is your head? What the fuck?”
Her feet continued to pedal against the cold, dead grass on top of what could only be someone’s grave, but she wasn’t going anywhere. The tombstone at her back kept her right where she was. Which was a real problem, because three headless riders, dressed in black with black capes with literal, honest to godswordsat their sides strode toward her, closing in on her even as she tried to back-pedal away.
And all she could say was, “What the fuck? Where the fuck is your head? What the fuck?”
Thank god, but the middle one finally put out its hands—his hands?—to hold the others back.
“We’re not going to hurt you.”
She didn’t believe that for a minute. She didn’t believe things that moved around without a head in the middle of the night. She did, however, stop talking, which was at least as much a relief for her as it must be for them. Her feet, however, kept trying to push her back through the tombstone.
“We promise, okay? You’re safe from us. If we’d known you were a girl—er, woman, lady, we would never have chased you.”
The one to the left waved a little awkwardly, if she was any judge of headless motivations. “We only go after men. Hunt, I mean. Not go after, like,goafter.”
To her further surprise, the one to the right made a few quick gestures with his hands. Gestures she… recognized?
“Alpha Sigma Psi, baby. We respect women.”
Her breath fell out of her, and her feet finally stopped moving. Alpha. Sigma. Psi. That… couldn’t be possible. That was a fraternity at Missouri Southern University, where she was a student.
Was this…wasthis some sort of prank? Had she just damn near shat herself and given herself a heart attack—not to mention brained herself on a gravel path—over a frat joke?
