Fractured (24 page)

She ran her fingers along the wall, guiding herself. She had no idea what was ahead, but that wasn’t the point. She was moving along the halls, doing something other than waiting for those creatures to get her.

Scuttling in the ventilation system drove her to a stop. She held her breath, clutching her stake her to chest and wondered if she was going to have to face another corpse. Her heart was beating too loudly. She closed her eyes, stilling her heart and her breathing.

Please move on. Please move on.

Miraculously, the scuttling passed overhead.

She waited a few moments before letting out the breath she’d been holding. She started walking, a bit faster than she had been, turning at the first corner to get out of the line of the monster.

And she bumped into a body. She screamed in terror, totally caught off guard. Her stake clattered uselessly to the floor.

Strong arms encircled her, not to choke her, but to hug her.

“Bash! Bash, it’s me, it’s me!”

She cried out in relief. “Oh Seth!” she cried. She wrapped her arms around him, finally letting the sobs escape her throat as her screams echoed in the hallway. “Oh Seth, you’re here.” She closed her eyes and melted into him, not wanting to ever let him go again.

“I’m here,” he murmured into her hair. “I’m here.”

She breathed in deeply, taking in his scent. Only...

She froze. His scent. It was wrong.

“Seth—”

“Bash,” a voice behind her interrupted, hushed and scared at the same time, “what are you doing?”

The texture of the skin embracing her changed to rough, raw flesh that oozed blood and bodily fluids. She recoiled, but the arms held her tight.

“Hello, Bathsheba,”
a familiar voice grated, a mixture of both a demonic voice and the voice of an acquaintance.

She screamed, this time not of the unknown, because she knew full well who was holding her, whose arms were holding her fast, whose hot, putrid breath was blowing in her face.
Rick
. Who was completely under the demon’s spell.

The real Seth—
her
Seth—stood behind her.

She tried twisting out of the monster’s grasp, but he held her to his chest.

“Seth!” she cried, helplessly struggling to break free.

Rick laughed. His tongue was raking across her chest, leaving a slimy streak of saliva.
“What’s the matter, lover?”
the strange dual voice taunted to Seth.
“You’re okay to kill your brother, yet you won’t risk your whore?”

“What?” Bash cried. She sagged in the monster’s arms, despair overcoming her. “Scott’s dead?”

“
You
killed Scott, you bitch,” Seth evenly replied to the demon that was Rick.

“And what about those children, Seth?”
the beast taunted.
“You killed them yourself, did you not?”

For second, no one spoke.

“What children?” Bash asked, confused.

“Don’t listen to her,” Seth said quickly. “Bash, don’t listen.”

“Shouldn’t she? She should know who she is marrying. Wouldn’t you want to know if you were marrying a killer?”
The thing growled, shifting and bringing her closer to Seth.
“Give up, Seth. You should’ve stuck with me.”

“It never would have worked between us, Lily—Abyzou,” Seth answered. “You and I are too much alike.”

“What do you mean?”
For once, Abyzou sounded confused.

“We’re both not good enough for Bash.”

The monster’s entire body tensed as it screeched at him, but it was momentarily distracted. Bash didn’t quite understand what was happening, but she took that opportunity to push and shove, hard, knocking the creature off balance. Its grip loosened on her, and Bash scrambled away. Her stake clattered at her feet, and she grabbed it in one fluid motion. Without pausing to think about it, she drove it into the thing that had once been Rick. It reared back, screaming now out of pain. The Rick-thing was flailing, its scream rising in pitch and volume, like it was growing. She had long enough to realize that she hadn’t landed a killing blow, instead hitting Rick somewhere in the shoulder, when a sweaty hand grabbed hers.

“Run!” Seth yelled at her.

She spurred her feet to run, blindly following Seth’s lead down the hallway, leaving the thing crying out in pain. Getting away from Rick was as good as anything else she could do at that point.

“Run, Bash, run!” Seth was yelling.

He took the lead, pulling her along the endless hallways. She ran after him, surprised that she had the strength to do so. Her arm was aching and she felt faint, but she kept running.

Away from Rick.

The screaming had stopped and the only noise was the sound of her feet hitting the tile of the hallway.

“Oh, thank God,” Seth whispered.

She had just enough time to wonder what he had meant when she fell forward. They were on the stairs—the stairs at the entrance of the hotel, she realized—and she nearly stumbled on each step, but Seth was pulling her along so fiercely and quickly, she managed to stay on her feet. She hit what felt like a wall. No, it wasn’t a wall—it moved. It was a door, a heavy door to the outside world. She pushed against it with Seth. There was a split second of resistance, and the rush of cold winter air hit her full on.

She burst out of the front entrance to the hotel with Seth, nearly stumbling. Seth caught her, practically dragging her down the steps to the ground. They weren’t on fire. They weren’t dying. They were finally out of that accursed hotel.

“We’re out, Bash!” he shouted jubilantly. “We’re fucking
out
of that hell hole.” He was kissing her. She didn’t realize she was crying until warm water was dripping on her hands.

“I love you so much, Bash!”

“I love you, too,” she whispered to him, although she felt unease, remembering the odd conversation between her fiancé and the thing that had been Rick.

Don’t think about it right now. Be glad that you’re out of there.

“How’d you know we weren’t going to get burned like the other times we tried getting out?” she asked.

“I didn’t. But we had to try it. Maybe the fire stopped. I don’t know. I don’t really care. We’re out, Bash!”

Snowflakes fell, landing into her hair. The cold settled into her skin, making her shiver. Seth noticed.

“We need to keep going,” Seth said, urgently.

“I don’t...think I have it in me.”

“Come on, the car’s just to the side.” He chuckled bitterly. “I have the car keys. About the only fucking thing that’s gone right this whole trip.”

He dragged her to her feet and across the front entrance of the hotel, pausing on the steps. Bash could hear her heart pounding in her eyes.

“Where...?” Seth’s voice trailed off, although she could hear the despair etched in it. “
Where’re all the fucking cars?!
”

Bash closed her eyes, feeling her hopes deflate. Somehow, the cars were removed from this nightmare. They were trapped.

She heard a groan from the hotel. It sounded like all of the wooden boards were creaking at once, sighing with a release. She could feel the ominous waves from the hotel, reaching out to her. Beckoning her to come back inside.

“Bathsheba...”

Then she heard it, far away at first, too low at first to distinguish what it was. After all of the weird stuff that had happened, she wasn’t about to ignore her gut instincts. She held onto Seth for dear life.

“Something’s coming,” she said. The thought of running again was too much for her.

“Fuck!” Seth was yelling. “FUCK!”

“We have to keep going, Seth,” Bash said. “We need to get away from this place.”

Even though she knew deep in her heart that they were trapped.

*****

To Seth, the woods outside the Grand Trails were even creepier than the inside. Whereas the forests and the slopes looked serene and peaceful in the daylight, in the darkness, those same forests looked sinister and terrifying. An eerie fog hung low on the ground, and other than the sliver of the moon, there was nothing to illuminate the grounds. How could it still be nighttime outside?

How long had they been in there? It felt like days.

He led Bash away from the Grand Trails Lodge. After everything that had happened, Seth knew better than to question Bash’s hearing; when she said she heard something, something was there. And when he finally heard something beyond the hotel coming directly towards them, he took off running even harder and took Bash with him.

“Bash!” he yelled. She must have been exhausted—she was running a bit slower behind him, dragging him down. He yanked her along, in fear of leaving her behind. “Bash! Bash, you have to keep going! We can’t stop!”

He glanced behind them at the hotel and saw what was after them. A cloud blacker than the night sky homed in towards them. Seth and Bash weren’t able to run fast enough—whatever the black cloud was, it was going to catch up.

Then he started hearing a distinct noise, like the cawing of millions of birds.

He chanced another look behind them. Yes, it was a bunch of crows, so many that they collectively looked like a black cloud. Thousands and thousands, charging right towards them, so much closer than he would have liked. Close enough that he could see the color of their eyes: red, like they were possessed themselves.

“BASH!” he yelled. They were almost to the relative safety of the tress.

The entire hotel shuddered behind them, a loud, sinster sound emanating from it, like a laugh erupting from its very depths.

Bash stumbled to the ground, half-falling, half-running. He stopped to pull her up again, but he saw that the birds were too close. He pressed her as flat to the ground as he could and shielded her with his body. The birds flew overhead, dangerously close to their bodies. One or two of the crows raked his back with fearsome claws, but he still held her as close as possible; he wasn’t about to let them get to Bash.

The cawing was deafening.

After what seemed like an eternity, the air above them cleared. The birds were doing a wide turn, headed right back to them. Seth noticed that they were staying within the Grand Trails Lodge’s grounds. Not a single bird flew outside of the gates, like there was some sort of force field keeping them in the vicinity.

That was it. Once they were free of the gates—actually off the hotel grounds—they’d be safe.

Then again, they probably had about thirty seconds before the birds would attack again.

“Follow me,” he whispered to Bash. “Once we’re to the gates, we’ll be done with all of this. I promise.”

They ran to the hotel’s main driveway, padding on top of the fresh layer of snow that had fallen on top of the pavement. They ran and ran for what seemed like ages.

This isn’t right
, he thought with a sinking feeling. His hopes were rapidly deflating as the gates seemed further and further in the distance.
This isn’t right at all.

“We should be there by now,” he muttered. He put on another burst of speed. “We should be there!”

Suddenly, he stopped short. Bash nearly ran into him.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered. “How—what? How the fuck did we—? We were just running
away from the goddamn place!
”

“What?” Bash screeched, sensing what was happening. “What’s going on?”

Time was up. Seth grabbed her and pulled both of them down to the ground, just as the swarm of birds flew overhead again. This time, having judged the height a bit better, the birds bit into his back harder. He sucked in a deep breath and chewed on his bottom lip, fighting the urge to scream in pain.

The swarm passed, and began turning around for another go.

Seth looked up at the place, in disbelief that he was standing by it once again. His blood ran cold as he stared at the hulking edifice, glaring down at them with a leering sneer. Mocking them.

“We’re back at the hotel,” he whispered incredulously.

“
What?
” Bash said. “I...I thought you were leading us away!”

“I was!”

They had been running in a straight line away from the hotel. There was no way they could have gotten turned around. The road was straight as a pin. There was no way this could have happened.

Unless the demon was fucking with them again.

They could try again, see what happened, but he knew that it would be a futile effort. They weren’t escaping, especially since he felt like he would collapse at any moment.

Seth ran his fingers through his hair, trying to sort out what was happening. “Fuck!” he yelled. “FUCK!” He kicked at a rock. They weren’t going to get out. They were never going to get out. Darius was dead. Rick was dead. Scott was dead. All the other people they’d been with were dead. And now he and Bash would die. Because that bitch Abyzou wanted them to.