“Save it,” she gasped. “Just make it quick.”
The two on the outside looked at each other. The one on the right spoke.
“Make what quick?”
She rolled her eyes, rubbing at the painful stitch in her side. She was no one’s Usain Bolt, and the extra pounds she carried around did not like her sprinting twice in the same night.
“The beheading. I don’t want to feel it.”
The left one pulled back so hard his horse shied. “What? No way. We don’t hurt women. We already said.”
Her breathing steadied a little, though she felt wrung out, both sweaty and chilled at the same time. Exhausted and confused, as well. And a little pissed off.
“What?” She grunted. “Then why did you chase me again?”
The middle one sighed hollowly again. “Because we can’t let you leave.”
She frowned, even more confused, her body readying itself to run again despite its exhaustion. “You what now?”
“We do only hunt men, and we do dispatch them, but now that you’ve seen us, we can’t just let you leave.”
Staring, she stood in a moonlit cemetery—a poor T.A. who just wanted an interesting angle for a grad school paper she needed a good grade on—with a stitch in her side and fear in her heart and wondered what the fuck to do now. For the first time, it occurred to her that all this might be a dream.
No. She wasn’t that lucky, and the details were all too real. For one thing, her face still stung in a dozen places from where she’d skinned herself on the gravel after faceplanting in it. Her knees sizzled with heat, too. This was real, all right. Weird and terrifying, but real.
“If it helps, we’re sorry?” That was the one on the left. “We didn’t mean for this to happen.”
She wanted to snap back a sharp, “Like I did?” She kept her mouth shut, though. She did not want to antagonize these… Headless Horsemen. Jesus, she couldn’t believe she had to think such a thing to herself.
“So you’re just going to kidnap me and call it good?” she asked instead, trying like hell to make the question even-tempered instead of snappish. She wasn’t sure if she succeeded.
“I wouldn’t use the word kidnap,” the one on the right said.
To her annoyance, he didn’t sound nearly uncomfortable enough. Despite her intention to keep herself in check around these psychos, she felt her temper slipping. She was tired. Scared. Hurt. She just didn’t have her usual control over herself and her reactions.
So she smiled with exaggerated sweetness. “Oh, I’m sorry. Forgive me. What word would you use?”
Before Righty could respond, the middle one—had he really called himself Chad? She refused to think of him as a Chad with his cut-out eyes and mouth flaming like that—flung out a hand, his forearm neatly stopping Righty from stepping forward.
“Call it what you want. We are sorry, but we can’t just let you go. You haven’t heard of us for a reason, and we’d like to keep it that way.” He stepped forward and offered her the hand he’d used to bar Righty from stepping into the fray. “We ride.”
She made no move to take the offered hand. “To where?”
“The Between.”
Her jaw clenched. “Where you’ll hurl me into the Beyond?”
The jack o’lantern head twisted side to side. “No. You’ll stay with us in the shadows of the Between. You’ve done nothing wrong to end up cast into the unknown.”
She shook her own head, her staticky hair sticking to her cheeks. “This can’t be happening. I have class in the morning. I’ll be missed.”
“And yet, it must happen.”
Lefty lifted a hand. “We’re really?—”
“Don’t. Even. Say it.”
He subsided.
