Hallowed Night: A Halloween Romance Anthology, page 28
Part of me hopes that none of this is real.
That the hosts of Olympus have concocted a night made up of our worst fears.
Maybe Saint is experiencing the worst trauma of his life, too, in another part of the forest. Not what I should be wishing for—but the alternative is that the man who kidnapped me when I was fourteen is now standing above me.
“What was the smoke?” I ask.
“A water-soluble drug in a fog machine.” The bastard is smug. His foot lifts off my ankle, and he crouches beside me. “What do you see?”
Not as much as you’d like.
“Butterflies,” I lie.
He pauses, then nods. “Always were a romantic, Elora.”
I reach out quickly and knock his mask off. It hits the ground and reveals the face from my nightmares. The paralyzing fear comes roaring back.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he scolds.
He’s right—I shouldn’t have. Because now I can’t move. My muscles have frozen.
“Why did you come to Olympus?”
He tilts his head. “Luck. And it only took a little while to get my hands on what I needed. I missed some of the party, but what could I do? I haven’t seen you in years, and it brought back memories.” He traces the scar on my leg. “Did this hurt?”
A broken leg in eighth grade.
“Yes,” I whisper.
He nods to himself. “It has to be done again, I’m afraid. To keep you from running.”
“I won’t—”
“You ran before,” he snaps. “I won’t let you get away.”
I shudder. His obsession is mad.
His hands on my leg, though, makes me want to scream. One above the scar, the other below. He’s going to break my leg.
But I’m not the broken girl he knew. I’ve become someone else.
Tonight is not the night to mess with me.
Rebirth.
Hadn’t I thought that already? Before Saint buried himself between my legs? More than that, though: the whole damn night has altered me.
It took me from one version of myself right up to the edge of a new beginning.
This is my trial by fire. Maybe not the intended path, but the necessary one. Nothing deadly was ever created without pain.
12:00AM
SAINT
Time is running out.
I run through the woods, my phone’s flashlight glancing off trees. There are smears of red paint on the bark that guide me along. Fucking Halloween. Everything seemed like a macabre illusion until Hades shattered it.
It took us too long to realize Elora was missing.
Hades announced the rules to his game shortly after she left to get our masks. The night was meant to be a scavenger hunt. There were tokens to collect around the sprawling property. Locked doors were to remain locked.
But then the couple was found near the training room. The girl had Elora’s mask in her hand and babbled nonsense about smoke-filled rooms and giant snakes. Her pupils were blown out, the girl high out of her mind. And the guy beside her was unconscious.
I think about what I know of Elora. She was a pretty, quiet girl with few friends at school. Kept to herself. Rarely spoke. I saw a likeness in her that immediately drew me to her. But my family…
Stupid.
My younger brother joined the Hell Hounds just before I graduated, and I would’ve joined him if my elder brother hadn’t put me to work in his tattoo shop. Idle hands and all that. He was able to get through to me in a way neither of us could reach my younger sibling.
Elora lived in Titan territory. Even crossing through the neutral college district to get to school gave my mother more gray hair than any gang dispute in our neighborhood. Going further into what the Hell Hounds would call enemy territory would have risked everything for them.
When I saw her fight, though… damn.
Somehow, even with the mask and the name, I knew it was her.
She still had that magnetic force about her.
But now she’s gone, leaving a trail of red paint in her wake, and my desperation to find her is unfamiliar. Tonight is the first night we’ve spoken outside of school—and both of us graduated last year. I shouldn’t be so attached.
I am, though.
It’s undeniable.
This is our moment. Like fate just plucked us both from the sea and put us together.
A scream shatters the forest’s quiet, and I swear under my breath.
I run faster, pushing my body to my limits. It took too long to make it to this point.
Now, a light through a window glows between the trees. Someone chases after me, but I’m too fast. Adrenaline and fear urge me on, and I crash through the brush. There’s no path, and then I’m suddenly back on one. Only a few long strides farther, I burst out into a small clearing surrounding a cabin.
I skid to a halt.
Elora’s on top of a man, pummeling him. She’s screaming incoherently.
Listen, I’m all for a fight—but the guy’s face is pulp. And somehow, I don’t think she wants murder on her conscience.
I rush forward and grab her under her armpits, locking my arms around her chest and yanking up and back. Similar to the move Apollo used to get her off Hercules.
Then, it was easy to tell that she had blown past her limit. She wasn’t fighting an opponent, she was fighting a nightmare.
And something tells me that nightmare is on the ground in front of us.
“Shh,” I say in her ear. “It’s okay, I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
“S-Saint?” She goes limp in my grip, and I drag her farther away from whoever the fuck that is. “How’d you find me?”
I shake my head and bite my tongue. She probably doesn’t want to hear that it was pure luck.
The lump of flesh on the ground groans.
“Can you stand?” I ask her.
She puts her feet under her, and I slowly release her. She stays where she is, a vacant look in her eyes. I step forward and peer down. The man makes another low noise. Elora did a number on him. His nose is crooked. Cheekbone could be broken, at an angle and already swelling under the layer of blood. His eyes are swollen into slits.
I nudge him with my foot.
“He was the one who abducted me,” she says. “When I was fourteen.”
Anger surges through me. If she hadn’t beat me to it, I would’ve put him in a similar state. I ball my fists and take a deep breath. We can’t… we can’t leave him here.
“He drugged me.” Her voice is fainter. “I don’t know what’s real.”
I go back to her.
“Stupid bitch,” the man moans. He comes back to life, pushing himself up into a sitting position. “You’re not getting away with this.”
Another person steps into the clearing.
Hades.
His mask is off, and I jolt with recognition. He meets my gaze, and I press my lips together. This is probably a rare occurrence, to catch him like this.
“You violated Olympus.” His voice is ice. “Drugged my guests.” His gaze flicks to Elora, now under my arm again, and back to the man. “Hurt my fighter.”
“You can’t do anything.” He chuckles and stands. It takes him forever to regain his feet. The man should be unconscious after what she did, but he… he doesn’t seem fazed. I spot the white mask a few feet away.
He was at the fight.
Watching her, no doubt.
How deep does his obsession run?
“I’ll be taking the girl.” He leers. Even his teeth are stained with blood. “This is Hell Hound territory, boys. So you can kiss my—”
Crack.
Elora doesn’t flinch, but I do. Hades pauses with his gun extended and smirks at me. Then he tucks it away, and the man falls backward. The hole in his head matches the rest of him.
“Hades—” Elora starts.
“Save it.” He stops in front of us and touches under her chin, lifting her face. She meets his eyes. “The big bad wolf of your nightmares is dead.”
She winces.
“When you’ve recovered from whatever he dosed you with, come back to Olympus. I have a proposition.”
“Okay,” she breathes.
“Until then… I expect Saint will take it from here?”
I straighten and nod. My protective instincts rear up again, and I sweep Elora into my arms. Her red-stained, bruised hands curl in her lap. Hands that save her from whatever he had planned.
“I’m taking you home,” I say in her ear. “Okay?”
9
3:00AM
The witching hour. My eyes stay on the digital clock next to my head.
Apollo had shined a small penlight into my eyes and declared me lucky. The two who were in the room with me ended up at the hospital—I just inhaled a small amount, and my trip should be a short one.
For the last three hours, I’ve willed myself to return to normal while Saint tended to my split knuckles and lip. The bruises all over my body aren’t just from the fight, but…
A tear slips out, rushing down my temple and into my hair.
“He’s gone,” Saint repeats. “Permanently.”
It’s been a mantra.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “No one believed me.”
“I believe you.”
I know. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but the words won’t come out. A lump forms in my throat. Saint had carried me out of the woods and put me in the passenger seat of his car. It’s hard to explain the hallucinations I was having. Just little changes to my peripherals. Men in white masks glaring at me. Spiders scurrying across the grass. Shadows where there shouldn’t be any.
But at least Saint is real.
“A fog machine. He dissolved LSD in the water mixture and…”
I shudder, and Saint gathers me in his arms. He lifts me on his lap, guiding my head to his shoulder. I lean forward, resting my forehead in the crook of his neck.
“Some days I feel too broken to exist,” I admit.
He scoffs. “Not to discount that feeling, but you’re doing a damn fine job of existing. Even if Hades and I hadn’t shown up, you were going to survive.”
“He wanted to break my legs.”
He doesn’t say anything to that. What can he say? The asshole is dead. Shot straight through the head—that isn’t an illusion. Hades did that for us. For me, I think.
“But I stopped him.” I reach the same conclusion I came to three hours ago. It was my trial to go through, and I defeated my demons.
I trace one of the tattoos on his chest. The dragon blinks at me, and I smile.
10
9:00AM
Saint is curled around me when I wake up. He’s breathing deeply, his lips parted, and I take a moment to watch his face. He’s still here, even in the light of day. Halloween night at Olympus wasn’t entirely a deception.
“You’re staring, Elora,” he whispers.
I start. “Sorry.”
His arm around my waist tightens. “How do you feel?”
I wet my lips. “Parched.”
He releases me, and I stand. Surprisingly, I don’t feel terrible. My body aches, but it isn’t that much worse than training days. My muscles are strong. And the drugs seem to have worked their way out of my system.
We’re in his bedroom. The blinds do a crappy job blocking out the sun, the curtains left open. It’s surprisingly neat, though. Unlike my own room. I’m the tornado that sweeps through and upends drawers full of clothing to find the perfect shirt.
Framed drawings on the wall next to the door catch my eye, and I ignore my thirst to study them.
In turn, I feel his gaze on me.
The pencil sketches are amazing. Flowers and animals, geometric shapes. Something that looks similar to Apollo’s mask, that rough bark texture. And next to them, a human skull with horns protruding from the top. Another type of animal skull with a long nose bone. They’ve been lightly colored in, golds and pale creams. The animal skull one has leather and feathers hanging down off of it.
“You’re talented.” I clear my throat and gesture to the bark one. “This one is familiar.”
“They’ll all be familiar soon enough.”
I glance back at him.
“They’re using my designs. I haven’t finished Ares’ yet.”
“Hmm. And these?” I slide down a little to the flowers.
“Some of my first tattoos.” He smiles. “Do you like them?”
I don’t want to admit that his dragon tattoo, the grayscale beast that’s curled on his pec, featured heavily in my acid trip after they found me.
“They’re beautiful,” I acknowledge.
And then I can’t take it anymore, and I duck out of the room.
His apartment is small and modest. The short hallway opens into a kitchen on the left, with a cutout above the sink to give a view out into the living and dining area. The far wall is mostly glass, sliding doors that open onto a little balcony.
We’re not too high up, just a few floors, but I can appreciate being able to step outside without going to street level.
I find two bottles of water in his fridge, then duck into the bathroom. I resist the urge to peek in his medicine cabinet and squirt a line of toothpaste onto my finger. It’ll have to do until I can get home, and I need the sour taste in my mouth to go away.
Once I’ve cleaned myself up a bit, including taking the elastics out of my hair and finger-combing out the last remnants of braids, I return to the bedroom.
He’s in the same spot, gaze on the ceiling. I circle to his side and hand him one of the bottles. He takes it and sits up, twisting the cap off and bringing it to his mouth. He doesn’t look away from me as he tips it back and swallows. My attention flicks to his throat, then back up.
When he lowers it, he smirks.
I turn away.
“Is your hair naturally curly?”
I drink most of the bottle of water before I answer. “It’s just the braids making it that way.”
“Elora.”
I flinch.
“Do you… want to talk about it?”
Not really. But I heave a sigh and face him again. “What do you want to know?”
He pats the space beside him.
And I hesitate.
“Get your ass over here,” he demands. “We’re not talking about this with you across the room.”
My eyes widen, and heat unfurls in my abdomen. I don’t like taking orders, but his voice just got deeper. And now my body is reacting some sort of way.
I sit beside him, pulling my legs up and resting back against his headboard.
“When we were freshmen at the academy, I was abducted by my friend’s dad. He kept me for two days in the woods.” I focus on my knees. “He got off on my fear, you know? He forced me to take hallucinogenic drugs and then…”
His arm slides around my shoulders, and he holds me tightly into his side.
“One chase led me to a group of hunters, and they took me back to civilization. Because of the drugs, no one believed I was being hunted—just that my trip made me think it. They thought I got high and wandered off on my own.”
My throat closes.
“You didn’t deserve that,” he says.
I glance up at him. “He was at the fight, and… he said he recognized me. And he wanted to make me afraid again.” Quieter, “I was only with him for a short time but I felt myself shrinking again. After being Nyx had opened me up.”
“You said he was going to break your legs.” Saint’s voice is steady, but I hear the barely suppressed anger behind it. “He didn’t want to chase you anymore.”
“No.” He didn’t.
Maybe it wasn’t about the chase, after all. Just the capture.
“If it were up to me, I’d have kept him alive.” Saint’s fingers pinch my chin, turning my head so I have to meet his eyes. “I’d keep him alive because death is too easy. I’d flay him apart for touching you.”
“We don’t know each other.”
His harsh laugh comes out hollow. “Bullshit.”
“Saint.”
“You and I are meant to be.” He presses his hand to his chest. “I feel it. I don’t know why. I’ve been thinking about you since we graduated. It’s crazy. Fucked up. I’ve been twisted up about it since we first started going to school together.”
Wow.
“That’s why you kissed me in the water.”
He nods slowly.
“I… I’ve had a crush on you forever. It’s just…”
“We were divided.” He nods once. “I know.”
I lean forward and press my lips to his. He doesn’t move for a moment, and I count to three in my head before I withdraw. But then he catches my face and drags me back.
This kiss is stronger, and he tastes like mint. I’m not sure when he snuck away to brush his teeth, but I’m not mad about it. I lean into him and let my mind go blessedly blank as he explores my mouth. Our tongues tangle, and I fight my urge to climb onto his lap.
My phone vibrates once, then again.
And again.
I pull away, wincing, and reach for it. It only has a ten percent battery left, but it’s enough for now. I swipe to answer the call from my mother.
“Good morning,” I say cheerfully.
She pauses. Then, “Good morning? Elora Jane Whitlock, where are you?”
“I, um, didn’t I text you?” I glance at Saint.
His eyebrows are hiked up.
This is my mother, I want to say. Instead, I put the call on speaker.
“Oh, so you did.”
“And I told you I was staying with a friend?” Because if she knew I fought, she might combust. “Then going to work.”
Silence.
“Sorry, honey, I just saw your empty room and was worried. It was Halloween, after all. Crazies are out that time of year.”
She was one of the only ones to believe me when I was fourteen. Mom’s boyfriend was definitely in the she’s a drug addict and liar camp—which was the beginning of the end of their relationship.
Several maxed-out credit cards later, he bounced.
