Run & Hide by Beatrix Hollow
17
The scream sounded terrible, like someone staring down a horror so extreme that their mind cracked open and broke.
“What was that?” Ava whispered, her fingers digging into me. My mind fired off fast, my instincts were always simple: love, mate, and protect. I set Ava down before quickly picking up her clothes and shoes. I pulled her to the bathroom door, shoving her clothes in her arms before thrusting her into the bathroom.
“Lock the door,” I told her. She turned to look at me with confusion, her mouth opening to talk. My eyes slid down to her bare lower half. Her thick thighs were completely coated in my cum. I could see more sliding out from inside her. It was the best thing I’d ever seen.
Before she could talk, I stepped into her body and slammed my lips to hers. Something was wrong and I had to protect her.
What if this is the last time I kissed her?I jerked back from her mouth, terrified by that intrusive thought.
“I don’t want to stay here,” she said.
“Something is coming for you.”
“Something has always been coming for me,” she said with wide eyes, her lip beginning to tremble. She was scared but so brave. Haunted her whole life but not letting the weight of it crush her. Brave to let me have her when I could see the fear in her eyes of what I was and of what I did to her body.
“I was always coming for you, Ava. I’ll save you from the rest of them.”
“The rest of them?”
“Mothman,” I said. “You saw him, right?” She looked at me in confusion.
“Caspian, I'm not sure he caused that scream. I… heard him in the woods, taking off after the scream. He was watching us,” she said with wide, concerned eyes. I knew he was there and I was happy to once again show him how Ava was mine. However, she was right. If Mothman hadn’t caused that yell, what had?
“Stay here,” I said, backing away and pulling the door closed. “Lock it,” I said through the door. I heard the bolt slide in and gave the door a tug to confirm.
“I love you,” I told her and then turned and ran towards camp, weaving my way into the woods so I wouldn’t be seen. The music was still blasting, making it hard to hear what else was going on.
There were people at our campsite, a collection of strangers decked out in torn-up jeans, stretched-out tee shirts, and camo. They had my bandmates on their knees. Brandon was looking at Matthias, saying something to him calmly that I couldn’t hear. Matthias couldn’t be calmed down though, his nerves shattered by the thing he kept looking over at.
The bass player, Simon, is what he was looking at. His blood was soaking into the earth around his body. Simon’s mouth kept gaping open but he couldn’t get a breath. He was on his side on the ground. Blood slid from his mouth and the entire front of his shirt was completely drenched in blood that looked black in the night. There was a modern arrow jutting from his chest. His face was gaping with raw shock.
Simon’s mouth opened almost too wide, his lips stretching, panic culminating in his eyes. Then it washed away. His eyes lost focus and his body stuck in the same position, not even sagging, just done moving. Forever.
Matthias was shaking, his eyes wide and shooting everywhere. He began gasping and clawing at his shirt when the bass player stopped moving. Simon’s eyes didn’t close, they just kept looking at one spot on the ground, never leaving it again.
The loud music cut off as one of the attackers finally destroyed the laptop, slamming it shut then chucking it in the fire.
“Look at me, Matthias. Look at me. Please,” I heard Brandon now, his words calmly begging. Matthias shook his head, trying to keep his attention on Brandon but unable to. Grady was quiet but crying, his eyes darting around in his own half-panic. Brandon was only calm because he was more concerned for his panic-stricken boyfriend than anything else.
“Where is she?” A man asked and I looked through the trees to see a big guy. He was probably about as tall as me, six and a half feet. He was thick too—well-fed but strong. His arms didn’t have any cut to them but you could tell muscle was under there. Lots of it.
“She wasn’t here when we showed up, Loren,” a smaller guy decked out in all camo said. Loren was their leader it seemed. He reached up and adjusted the brim of his ball cap, hard eyes sweeping around the camp. I processed their words. She… Ava. He wanted Ava.
But why? He was a man, not a monster. Just a fucking man. Anger swept over me and I started to move from the trees. I’d kill him before he ever laid eyes on her.
A hand gripped my shoulder and tugged me back. I jerked around, shifting my face to its true form so that when I hissed, my needle-sharp teeth were barred. A hand shot out, a fist bombarding my jaw. My head snapped to the side. He took a big handful of my hair at the base of my skull, pulling it tight and jerking my face in the direction of camp.
“Shut the fuck up,” a demonic voice sliced into my head, making my vision go black and sweat pop up on my forehead. I had to slam my mouth shut and grit my teeth to keep from crying out in pain. Mothman pointed past my body, jerking his finger at all the guns on people’s backs.
“You’ve made your point,” I hissed under my breath and he dropped my head. Why had he stopped me though? Why not let me go out there and die? I looked at him, crouched down with me in the woods. He was cloaked in dark leather—a long duster with a high collar, boots, and a wide-brimmed hat that turned his face into pure shadow.
Yesterday, I saw a mouth. He’d smiled and it was chilling. Out of the blackness, lots of little teeth blinked out of a mouth that was too wide. It reminded me of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. A strange, evil-looking smile that was too manic to be pleasing.
He wasn’t made of shadows. I knew that the moment my claws had hit his face, the brief sensation of fur on my hands as I connected with flesh.
“Tell me where she is?” The leader asked again, eyes sweeping my bandmates who were on their knees. His voice was deep and powerful but not raised--a dark, storm rolling in over the water. A steady, calm threat pressing forward.
“Who?” Grady asked with wide eyes.
“The girl with your group. Black hair...”
“What? Ava?” Grady asked, eyes turning into saucers. He shook his head rapidly, his mouth sealing up. The leader made no response, just flipped open something on his belt I hadn’t noticed. It was a leather knife holder. He slid the knife from the pouch and stepped up behind the person closest to him. Which just happened to be Matthias.
Brandon’s eyes bugged, panic taking over his face. For once I was gripped with empathy for my drummer and it made me feel horrified because I knew what was about to happen. I could feel it like an ailment in my gut and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
The leader reached out and grabbed Matthias, pressing the guitarist’s head to his own body in a tight hold. Matthias cried out and Brandon began screaming. The sound grated on my ears like it wished to harm me.
I didn’t see the violence of it, the leader’s back was turned to me. It looked so normal from that angle, a man just doing a job. The weapon came away, held aloft at his side, coated thickly in blood. I saw the look on Brandon’s face as he watched though and it made me feel sick, my stomach bloated with awful empathy.
Brandon flung himself forward as the leader dropped Matthias’ body. He stretched his arms out to catch his lover but didn’t make it in time. The body fell to the ground in a heap, dirt shifted into a tiny puff up around him. The ground became stained with dark blood at an alarmingly fast rate.
Brandon wailed and the agony of it made me jerk my face away, unable to look any longer. The reality of Ava’s possible death felt closer now, inching forward in my mind.
She could die. Die just like Matthias. A split second of quiet movement followed by the putrid sounds of loss erupting from within me. I promised myself I’d kill the man who just murdered Matthias. I’d gut him like a pathetic, squirming fish.
Mothman shoved a leather-bound journal into my trembling hands and I looked down at it. He sighed and flipped it open to the first page. Scrawled on the paper was psychotic handwriting that was hard to make out.
“The hunters want to use you all as bait to catch their prey.”
“What prey?” I asked through gritted teeth. He pointed at his chest.
“Why do they want Ava then?” I asked. He gave a shrug. “Bullshit.” He snatched the journal from my hand and pulled a pen from a pocket in his duster. He scribbled something out while I looked back at the camp. The leader, Loren, had moved on to Grady now, tugging him up to his feet and gripping him in a chokehold. The knife, still coated in Matthias’ blood, was poised above his chest, the tip denting the fabric of his shirt.
The journal was shoved back in my hands.
“They must have seen something.”
“Oh, they must have seen something. Thanks, really fucking helpful,” I said throwing the journal away. He flung his hands out in a “what the fuck” look then crawled over to his journal, grabbing it off the ground. When he lifted it up and began dusting off the page I saw a drawing.
My eyes rounded and I snatched the journal from his hands. He’d drawn a naked picture of a woman. The face was crude, mostly glossed over. The breasts had remarkable shading, revealing where he’d rather spend his attention. The girl had long hair with bangs, shaded dark. She had curvy hips that flared wide and thick thighs spread wide open to reveal an intricately drawn pussy with delicate, flower petal like labia.
“Is this Ava?” I hissed, slamming my finger into the drawing and smudging the pencil lines. He sighed while snatching a metal cigarette case from his jacket. He slid a hand-rolled cigarette into the black depths of his face. Then he struck a match on his boot and lit the end, puffing a few times to bring the end to a red glow of life. The edges of black fur and a long thin mouth lit up on his face.
Who the fuck was this guy?