Page 60 of Two Sides of Sin

I bolted.

Instinct took over. I ran, fleeing the terrible, malicious echo of his voice.

I dived beneath a low-hanging pine, but my jacket snagged on a broken limb. It yanked me backwards with a vicious tug, the collar digging into my throat, directly over the stinging nick of the blade. I let out a choked, pathetic sob, my numb fingers fumbling uselessly with the buttons.

Through the black lattice of branches, I saw a flash of white, the porcelain mask. He was closing in, gliding through the shadows with a smooth, terrifying grace. The silver dagger hung loosely at his side, catching the moonlight.

With a final, desperate wrench, I tore myself out of the denim, leaving it hanging on the branch like a shed snake skin. I scrambled up a mossy embankment, my fingernails gouging into the damp earth, my toes weeping blood as they caught on the jagged rocks. At the top, I rolled behind a rotting log, pressing my face into the cold dirt and rotting leaves.

I stayed there, paralysed. I heard him reach the embankment. I heard the soft, dismissive hiss of the jacket being tossed into the mud.

Then, the sound of metal on wood.

Skreeeeeeeeee.

He was dragging the dagger across the log, he was right there. His face was mere inches from my own.

“Peek-a-boo,” he breathed, the words heavy with a sickening playfulness.

I instinctively rolled away, kicking off the ridge and sliding down the opposite side. I hit a slick patch of pine needles and plummeted towards the shore, my body thudding against the earth until I crashed into the freezing reeds.

I stood there, shivering and bared, the cold mud squelching between my toes. Above me, Cain stood like a god of the abyss. He didn’t move to catch me. He didn’t have to.

I was trapped, frozen like prey against the edge of the dark water.

“End of the line,” Cain called out, his voice echoing with a terrifying edge. “The show is over. And the guest of honour is already in the trunk.”

A frantic, frenzied thudding erupted from the car. Julian. The sound was panicked and desperate, the screams of a man dying to save me and failing. I couldn’t breathe.

The mud of the lake shore was like ice between my toes, but I couldn’t feel the cold. I couldn’t feel anything but the overwhelming terror tearing through my chest. I tried to scramble past him, my hands clawing at the air, but Cain moved with the effortless, sickening grace of a shadow. He stepped into my path, the white porcelain mask gleaming under the full moon like a skull.

I collapsed to my knees, I was sobbing, my voice a broken, high pitched plea as I looked towards the Camaro.

“Julian!” I shrieked. “Julian, help me!”

From the direction of the car, I heard it—a muffled, frantic yelling that sounded less like a man and more like a wounded animal. The trunk thudded, the metal groaning as Julian kicked with the desperate strength of a man listening to his world end. Thump. Thump. Thump. He was only metres away, trapped in a steel coffin, forced to listen to my terror through the cracks.

“Please, Cain… just stop,” I begged, my hands shaking as I held them out in a useless, pleading gesture. “Why are you doing this? I’ve never done anything wrong to you. I’ve lived in your house… I’ve followed your rules… why hurt me?”

Cain tilted the mask, tracking the way my tears streaked through the dirt on my face. He looked entirely, terrifyingly bored.

“This was always the ending, June,” he rasped, his mismatched eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying, detached glare.

“It’s a simple equation of supply and demand. You were born with a light that doesn’t belong to you, and I am the dark that was made to house it. All things return to their natural state eventually.

He lunged.

I didn’t have the breath to scream. I threw my arm up in a blind, animalistic reflex to save my face. The bite of the steel was instantaneous—a sharp sear that tore through the space between us and buried itself deep into the meat of my forearm.

“JUNE!” Julian’s scream ripped through the night air.

The metal of the trunk groaned in the distance, a frantic bang-bang-bang of someone fighting a losing battle against time.

I let out a defeated sob, clutching my arm as blood began to drip down, pooling between my toes.

Cain hovered over me, the silver dagger held high, his posture loose and terrifyingly fluid. He was a cat savouring the final, pathetic twitches of a mouse that had already been devoured in his mind.

“Quiet, little bird,” he whispered. “It’s almost over. I’m going to eat your heart whilst it’s still beating for him.”