Page 47 of Run

The rolling tear on her cheek drops and lands on the wooden deck, staining it darker, and it’s the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back for me.

“H.” She cries, the sickness in her at what she’s looking at evident, but so is something else. She should be wanting to get away, to run, but she’s fighting me for another reason. Her hand stretches out for my face, gingerly touching the filth that coats it, her nails scratching lightly over my five o’clock shadow. “I don’t care.” She says on a thick swallow.

“Lily, you need to run before I ruin you like I’ve ruined everything else in my life.”

“You already have, but I…I like it.”

“Run from me baby.”

“I will, but not to get away.” She says, wiping the streams of liquid off her face.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask her, confused, tilting my head and staring at her reddened face.

“I want you to catch me. Just like in my books. If you catch, me you fuck me.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake Lily. No.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

She turns and takes off as I drop her arm in disbelief. Yet another bad decision, something that is going to get her hurt. With all the emotions flooding through me, and all the rage, I’m terrified of what I will do to her if I chase her and allow my predatory nature to come up to the surface after what I’ve just done.

I watch as she disappears off the gazebo, in utter disbelief of this fucking woman. She’s asking again for an evil man to play her games, but her games always get her in trouble. I don’t want to play her game, but I also don’t want her to go. She has been the light in my darkness for the past few weeks, and I don’t think I can go on without her.

Her form gets smeller as she nears the exit to the maze, her legs taking her in and out of the turns, until I lose sight of her. Shaking my head, I close the hatch to the pit and hop down, preparing to head to the house and clean myself up. If she sees I’m not following, she’ll give it up. I trust she’ll come back to the house, especially since when she had the chance to escape before, she stayed.

The barking of the dogs makes me whip my head to the front of the gardens, and my heart tries to leap out of my chest.

“The dogs. Fuck, the fucking dogs. I didn’t close the cabin after I fed them.”

Like a madman, I run through the courtyard, and into the maze, thanking all the stars above that I know it like the back of my hand. Growing up here, hiding in these corridors of hedges from my father taught me every which way to get through them in the shortest amount of time possible.

The barking grows louder and more intense as I bolt out from the exit, almost running into the serpents that guard the mouth of the maze. Their evil faces and hissing tongues sneer at me, telling me that even though I thought I was the evilest thing here, I’m nothing compared to the pack I have trained to kill in my absence.

“Lily!” I scream, stopping to spin around in circles, frantically searching for her, not seeing her anywhere.

There’s enough trees and shrubs to lose sight of her, and I don’t have the senses that the dogs have. I can’t follow my nose or my ears like they can. Surely they’ll find her before I do.

When I hear nothing from her in response the only thing I can think of as I race towards the garage is to call on my head bitch.

“Magnolia!” I holler, looking for her, or any trace of her.

I can’t hear her barks with the rest of the pack, so I hope and pray she is already taking her place protecting her new best friend from the rest, just like she guarded her from me in the house when I made her bleed for the first time. If she was brazen enough to stand up to me, she sure as shit won’t have an issue knocking back the pack she already leads.

Shit, she was in the house with Lily when I left them.

As I skid to stop in front of the garage and tap my passcode into the security box, I can finally hear her. She’s in thehouse and not where I’d hoped she’d be. She gets louder as the door rolls open, and before I can step inside, she darts out under the door and takes off like a bat out of hell into the yard.

“Go, Magnolia, go save her.” I tell her as she recedes into the gardens, disappearing through the hedges, her yapping and high-pitched barks ebbing into the spring breeze.

I’m still covered in filth, maggots still crawl on my skin and my clothes, but that’s nothing I can worry about now. I would never get on my bike like this, but it’s the fastest way to her. I can cover more ground on two wheels that I can on two legs.

The bike fires up with a thunderous roar inside the garage, blue and yellow flames spitting from the exhaust as I crank the throttle and warm her up for the second it takes me to put on my helmet. I can’t force her out this fast when she’s cold for concern of blowing her motor or popping her chain.

“I’m coming Lily.” I say to myself as I tap the bike into gear with my left foot and peel out into the driveway, taking the bike off the path and into the grass, following where I saw Magnolia head.

She’s running, thinking it’s all a game, but the game is going to be deadly if the pack catches her before Magnolia or I find her. I can hear the barking growing louder as I get near the east section of the gardens, then a high-pitched scream breaks through the hazy spring morning.

“Oh no.” I whisper to myself, my words blowing away on the wind that whips past my face.

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