Page 23 of Eden's Deliverance

7

Scarlett

Twigs snap under my feet as I sprint through the woods.

I can just barely make out the shape of the moon past the trees, but I keep my focus on it to distract myself. My calves start to cramp, so I duck behind the closest tree and take a second to catch my breath, panting loudly with my hands on my knees.

There’s a rustling of leaves to my right, in the direction I came from. He’s not far behind now. I don’t know how I got here or when he started following me, but I do know I’m in danger.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, Ruby.” His voice echoes through the trees, but I can’t judge how far away he is.

Another pile of leaves crunch, so I dash from behind the tree and haul ass again, keeping my eyes on the moon. Something smacks into the tree next to me, causing me to scream and give my position away. Except, I guess he already knew where I was…judging by the knife jutting out of the tree near my head.

The motherfucker is throwing knives at me.

He can see me, but I have no idea where he is. I’m not willing to look back, either. I run for what feels like hours—and I could be hallucinating—but I swear I keep passing a tree to my left that has a knife stuck in the bark.

Then, I trip.

I fall flat on my stupid face, and he’s on me before I can find purchase in the leaves and twigs that litter the ground. I try to scream, but he’s pushing down on the back of my head, suffocating me in the dirt. All hope seems lost until I feel a tugging at the waist of my leggings.

That gives me the strength to thrash and buck around, finally getting enough grip on the dirt to turn myself over and look directly at my attacker.

He’s masked, but not a jeweled eye-mask like at Eden. This one covers the entirety of his face, completely disguising his identity. It sort of looks like the Anonymous mask fromV for Vendetta, except it’s a dark crimson-red color with devil horns on each temple.

I wiggle one of my hands from between us and try to rip the mask away, but he’s faster. All of my strength has been replaced by fear, and I’m still as a statue. It’s cold here on the forest floor, with snow covering the ground in little patches that haven’t been melted by the sun yet.

He takes advantage of my petrified serenity, somehow gathering both of my wrists in one of his hands to pin my arms above me. His free arm disappears behind his back, emerging with an object I don’t even need to see with my own eyes.

It’s a knife; it has to be. It’s all I’ve been dreaming about since my last run-in with the mystery guy from Eden’s Deliverance, two weeks ago.

I’ve been avoiding the club ever since.

“Say you’ll come to the Red Room, Ruby.” The masked man’s voice is ominous and slow. “Say you will, or else I won’t letyoucome.”

It doesn’t matter, he’s going to kill me either way. I shake my head, crying and begging for mercy—but even in my dreams, he doesn’t care.

I’m not in control. I’m never in control.

He cocks his head, glaring down at me with eyes I can’t see. In a flash, he hovers over my face with the blade pressed to my throat. The sound of his frustrated breathing inside the mask only makes things worse. He’s furious at my rejection, and it’s so much more painful when he’s angry.

“Why do you do this to me, Ruby? You know I just want to play with you. I want to taste you. I want to feel you. I want to make you scream.” A sharp pain comes when he presses the tip of the knife into my skin, but I don’t scream. Iwon’t give him the satisfaction. “Why do you fight this? You know, deep down, you want it just as badly as I do.”

I wish I could say that he didn’t know. He isn’t real, and he doesn’t know a thing about me. Except, he does. He is a figment of my imagination, after all.

“Fuck you,” I spit back.

The man barks with laughter, tilting his head to the other side as he brings the tip of the knife up to my cheek and slices a clean cut down the side. I wince but hold back my screams. “You will, Ruby. That’s the whole point. You will. You know it, and I know it. You’re only delaying the inevitable.”

He sits up again, straddling my hips between his thighs as he reaches up to remove his mask. I’m surprised; he’s never done that before. I watch him, sick with anticipation and so eager to finally see the man under the hood.

He tosses the mask away, but what emerges from the hoodie isn’t a face at all. Out comes a creature with hundreds of insanely long teeth, snapping its vertical jaws together while acidic saliva drips onto my stomach and burns holes into my exposed flesh.

What the fuck?

Now, I scream. I scream until I can’t anymore—until my throat is hoarse and until a long alien tongue slides out of its mouth.

He leans over me again, and that tongue is everywhere. It’s curling around my cheek to suck up the blood from my cut, diving into my ears and nose, and then it’s in my mouth.

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