Page 86 of Haunted Prey

I shook my head, wiping my face.

“You learned. But you chose to stay quiet.” Slow like a tiger, he crouched down before me. “You can’t hide it forever. You can’t be with me and hold on to what you did.”

No. No, I couldn’t tell him. It was bad enough what happened after he learned who I was. Thinking I was poisoning him with medicine. But this…this would bring the demon back. This would change us forever.

He would break, and I would break with him.

“You can’t be with me,” he repeated. “Until you confess. Until everything is laid out and there are no more secrets between us. Until you say what you did, there will always be a barrier. There will always be a rift. You’ll never be one of us.”

I blinked and the kids were gone, replaced with their adult selves, their faces now covered by masks.

Confess.

They screamed, and Nina decayed before my very eyes, turning to dust and blowing away in the wind.

I screamed with them.

The darkness closed in until there was nothing, and then, suddenly, I jolted awake.

But I didn’t wake up in bed next to Emery like I expected. It was still dark, but a red light streamed down from somewhere high above me—higher than I remembered. It took me a moment to realize I wasn’t lying down. I was standing.

I blinked, straining to see through the shadows, hoping to catch a glimpse of the bed or anything that resembled the room we had been in.

Instead, I saw…feet.

I noticed they had cracks in them. Below them were a set of candles. Seven in total.

I stared at them as realization hit me. I tilted my head up and stared into the eyes of the saint standing above me.

I was in the church.

How did I get here?

A chill went through me. I was relieved to find I still wore the T-shirt and shorts Emery had given me along with the socks somy feet didn’t freeze. I didn’t feel any pain which meant I had been lucky to not have stepped on anything that cut me.

Carefully, I took a step back, trying to steer around the debris. I needed to get back to the room before—

“Seems like a bad idea walking around without shoes,” came a voice to my left.

I gasped and looked around to see someone sitting close by in one of the rows. I saw their silhouette reclined back, their arms stretched out on either side of them along the pew.

“Leslie?”

I was certain he was watching me even if I couldn’t see. He tilted his head one way as he studied me.

“You often go wandering around in your sleep?” he asked.

I swallowed and shook my head. “No.”

He hummed as if that were no surprise. “Figured I’d see your man coming out to lead you back to bed.” He slid his arms from the pew and leaned forward. “But he hasn’t. He wasn’t around downstairs. I looked in your room and saw only your friend sleeping…I thought it odd and went looking. Assumed you and him were hiding somewhere all cozied up. Until I found you just standing there.”

“I…I think I was sleepwalking.”

“Bad place for that.”

I turned back to the statue. “I was…having a bad dream.”

He was silent for a moment. I heard a faint scratching noise, and the cracking of wood. “Everyone around here does,” he said. “Welcome to the club no one wanted to join. Even your friend…”

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