Page 75 of Muzzled

Bo and Alex remained by the door, their eyes averted while their brother did a final scan and he held out his hand to her. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” she replied by rote and followed him out the door.

The car ride to her old suite was silent, the twins sitting with an eerie stillness in the back seat until they pulled up along the treed sidewalk and Ryan put the car in park.

“If you feel anything, we need to know,” he said softly, draping his arm along the back of her seat. “Our goal is to lead it out, not allow it to get ahold of you.”

She unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door. “It needs to see me. I’ll walk around the yard a bit and see if it helps.”

He nodded tersely as she tucked her purse on the floor and exited the car. She checked the rooftops for signs of movement and looked down the driveway to ensure her former landlord’s car wasn’t parked in his reserved space. Seeing it empty, she breathed a sigh of relief.

The last thing she needed in that moment was a confrontation with the guy whose basement she’d destroyed, despite Ryan’s assurances he’d been well-compensated.

Satisfied she was indeed unnoticed, she crept onto the front lawn and sat with her back to the house, listening to the morning buzz of the neighborhood until a small pressure probed her mind and then retreated, returning with heightened strength when she didn’t fight the intrusion.

She got to her feet, her eyes on the car as she walked toward it slowly and got in. “It’s here. Wait a few minutes until it catches up.”

Ryan gripped the shift, his fingers drumming the steering wheel as all attention was on her. When the first image flashed through her head, she nodded. “Go.”

The game of cat-and-mouse inched them through the side streets of the city for hours, the river dividing the university town coming in and out of view as they made their way to the park. The shade followed at a distance, scurrying over roofs and through trees as it kept its steady pulse beating through her mind, a distraction keeping her from thinking past the next bend in the road, to the moment Ryan was whisked from her world and she would be left alone to fight against the curse of her birth.

Distance had kept the shade’s influence from taking a strong hold, save for the few minutes they’d pulled into a drive-thru to grab something to fill their empty stomachs. As mildly entertaining as it had been listening to the guys place the lengthy, contemplated order, the stop had allowed the shade time to catch up, its blackened eyes watching her from behind the neon sign of the fast-food joint. When Ryan realized she was struggling to fight off the onslaught of images being pushed into her, he had torn out of the lot and blasted onto the street, slowing only when she insisted outrunning the shade was counterproductive to luring it out.

He hadn’t been happy about it.

Now, creeping along the narrow paths of the park in the faint light of sunset, his unhappiness was visibly morphing, his muscles tense as the tendons on his neck strained.

“We’ll pull over here,” he said, signaling despite the emptiness of the road. “Once we’re out of sight under the train bridge, you’ll need to entice it as close to us as you can.”

She shuddered and swallowed, the idea of purposefully exposing herself to the creature’s twisted visions chipping away at her nerves. The twins jumped out of the car first. Ryan followed with heavy steps and opened the door for her, holding his hand out.

“Shall we?”

Exhaling, she smoothed her hair down and took his hand. “What’s the opposite of ‘we shall’?” she muttered, scanning the top of the hill in expectation.

He squeezed her fingers. “We shan’t. But I’ve always thought it sounded strange.”

Bo and Alex jogged toward the train bridge, disappearing in the brush below.

“Here are the car keys,” Ryan said, passing the jingling ring over to her. “The room key. My wallet. You can destroy the ID, but keep the cards until the accounts are drained. There isn’t much, but it’ll be a start.” Emptying his pockets into her purse, he patted them down for a final time. “You remember the PIN codes?”

Nodding, she set her purse onto the passenger seat and locked the doors, wrapping her arms around herself. “You wrote them down for me.”

“Right,” he muttered, hesitating before he drew her tight against his chest. “If this all goes as planned, you don’t hang around, got it? Bo or Alex will call my cell once they’re topside again and they’ll give you the all-clear.”

She nodded against his shirt, fighting back the tears that were building fast. “I don’t know why I’m upset. I’m going to see you again when…yeah.”

His grip on her increased a fraction as he nuzzled the top of her head, the noose of their next meeting hanging unspoken around their necks. “Promise me you’ll call Alex if you’re in trouble, okay? And don’t forget to register the car in your name. I already signed the sales slip.”

“Yes, sir.” She sniffed, steeling herself and taking a step back. “Okay. It’s closing in now. Are you ready?”

“To walk away from the closest to heaven I’ll ever be? Nope. Not at all.” He lifted her hand to his lips and held it there before he turned toward the train bridge and strode away, his fingers flexing at his side.

The minutes ticked by while the prickling in her mind morphed into a steady throbbing, the shade’s influence beginning to break into her thoughts as she steadied herself on the car. Visions of grisly deaths and dismemberments seeped into her head, punctuated with flashes of a dark abyss. Her feet became weighted with the effort to keep control over her own mind and she stumbled gracelessly along the path Ryan had walked moments earlier.

*

Cerberus remained crouchedamid the bushes and fallen trees, the stillness of a hunting hellhound rivaling that of the small hare watching him from the banks of the river, her ears twitching as she assessed the danger of the motionless black beast.

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