Page 20 of Twisted Empire

I’d never really socialized all that much with Mellie, but she was always on my radar, given that she was Henry Davenport’s sister, not to mention how frequently she hung around the Lodge. I never realized how deeply she was involved in the society, though, not until Tatum happened to tell me what a monstrous little witch she was during one of our many chats a couple of days ago. That was when I got the bright idea to rope her into our scheme.

On the day before the hunt, I went to one of the medical wings in the mansion and asked one of the nurses for some of the knockout drugs they gave the captives when they were unruly. Tatum told me all about it. Apparently she’d had it administered to her a couple of times at the Finishing School in glasses of juice.

I told the nurse it was for a misbehaving slave, and she gave it to me easily enough. She knew who I was, after all.

After that, I went to find Mark, the amenable guard from the day before. I offered him my watch (worth over twenty grand) if he agreed to help me with my ‘prank’. All he had to do was ensure he was on the guard shift outside Tatum’s room on the day of the hunt. If any members, staff, or other guards tried to enter at any point to prepare the prey for the evening, he was to tell them in an officious tone that it had already been taken care of by other staff members, as ordered by Mr. King.

Of course, he wouldn’t specify which Mr. King, exactly…

Eager to please, Mark agreed to go along with the plan immediately. He had no idea what I was really up to, so as far as he knew, he was getting thousands of dollars just to help with a dumb prank against the rest of the society. Poor guy would get blasted when everyone realized what he’d inadvertently done, but that was simple collateral damage.

For the greater good, as they say.

This morning, I went to Mellie’s room and laid on the charm. I told her I always thought she was sexy as fuck, and because of that, I wanted her help with something. I said I felt an urge to torture Tatum one last time before the hunt, and therefore I wanted to fuck Mellie right in front of her, forcing her to watch the man she loved with the woman she hated the most.

Mellie loved the idea, just like I knew she would. Evil little bitch. She happily accompanied me to Tatum’s room, and Tatum screamed and cried with faux jealousy and rage as soon as she stepped inside. She was an excellent actress.

I offered Mellie a secretly-drugged glass of wine, ostensibly to loosen her up before we did the deed (a little trick I learned from Tatum, seeing as she once did it to me). Within minutes, she was unconscious on the bed. Tatum told me the drugs usually kept a person asleep for somewhere between six to eight hours, and once they were awake again, their memory wouldn’t function properly for a while.

That was just what we needed.

The hunt officially started at seven, but all third-level members were expected in the maple grove at six-thirty, right after dinner. We knocked Mellie out at ten a.m., which meant she would be well and truly awake by the time she was scheduled to arrive at the hunt in Tatum’s place.

We dressed her in the clothes and shoes Tatum was supposed to wear (delivered to the door by a maid and then passed on to us by Mark, our unsuspecting aide). Then we gagged her, tied her up, put the requisite golden mask on her, and left her on the bed to sleep off the drugs.

At half past five, I left the suite for dinner. I had to make an appearance there, or someone might begin to suspect I was up to something. While I was doing that, Tatum watched over Mellie to make sure nothing too serious happened when she finally woke up.

When two of the Lodge guards were ordered to go to her room and collect her for the hunt, Mark let them in and helped them take Mellie out, believing it was Tatum all the while. The poor guy was too dim to notice that Mellie had never left the room after entering earlier.

As they carried the struggling, moaning young woman out of the room, Tatum hid in one of the large cupboards in her walk-in closet. After that, she had to act fast. She dressed in dark clothing with a hood and slipped out of the room—now unguarded, as everyone thought she was being taken down to the grove—and headed out a back entrance toward the forest. She told me she’d found some sort of tree hollow to hide in last time she tried to escape through the woods, and we’d decided she would hide there again until I was able to join her.

Because she’d only been there once in the middle of the night, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to find it again, so I’d spent part of the previous day searching through the woods with her vague directions in mind so that I could find the hollow myself and create a path for her. Once I’d located it, I left bright yellow reflective ribbons tied to certain branches on my way out. Seeing as Tatum would be running through the forest at dusk, it would still be light enough for her to see the ribbons and find her way there before it got too dark.

Or so I hoped.

It was much harder for me to find my way to the hollow when it was my turn to run. I’d entered the forest from the grove, which was nowhere near the part Tatum entered from, and with all the other shit I had going on over the last two days, I hadn’t had time to figure out exactly how to get there from my entry point, let alone leave markers to guide me. It was pitch dark now, anyway, so I just had to rely on my mental map and my natural sense of direction to get me there.

I didn’t have long. It was only a matter of time before all the relevant security footage was located and viewed, revealing my involvement in the escape attempt, and soon, Mellie was sure to regain all her memories and recall what I’d done to her as well. When that happened, everyone would eventually realize I hadn’t exited the grove with the rest of them, and they’d figure out I was still in the forest.

That meant we had an hour or two at the most before they started hunting us properly.

It was eerily quiet as I dashed through the woods, just the light patter of drizzling rain on the trees and bushes around me and the crunch of my shoes on sticks and leaves. I thought I’d still be able to hear all the shouting from back in the grove as everyone tried to figure out what to do, but the forest seemed to swallow up all of that sound and spit it back out in the direction of the Lodge.

The deeper I went, the darker and eerier it got. It began to feel as if I were lost in a sea of blackness, doomed to wander the woods for all eternity. Low branches like gnarled hands clawed at me and spiky bushes scratched at my legs, somehow sticking all the way through my thick pants. The pungent scent of loam and moss choked my throat with each frantic breath, but I didn’t stop.

I couldn’t. I had to get to Tatum before someone else did.

I was far enough away from the grove now that I could safely turn on a flashlight. Whipping it out of my pocket, I aimed it ahead, and I let out a victorious whoop. One of the yellow markers I’d put up for Tatum was reflecting back at me, somewhere to the northeast. I was getting close.

Spurred on by the sight of the marker, I ran even faster, my feet easily carrying over the roots and rocks now that I had a light to guide me. Ten minutes later, I arrived at the gaping tree hollow.

I flashed the light on and off a few times to draw Tatum’s attention. Then I stuck my head into the entrance.

“Hey. It’s me,” I said in a stage whisper.

Silence.

My heart began to pound faster as adrenaline and fear flooded through me. What if she got lost? Or what if someone caught her trying to slip out of the mansion earlier, and she never even made it to the forest in the first place?

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