Page 54 of Stream & Scream
It should be enough to hide me until dawn.
I crawl into the space between the roots and immediately feel better,safer, more protected than I've felt since this nightmare began. The earth smells rich, of loam and minerals.
This is where I'll wait out the night. Hidden in the embrace of this ancient oak tree.
But as I settle into my burrow, as I pull my blanket around me and try to find a comfortable position against the curved wallof wood and earth, I can't shake the feeling that I'm not actually hiding from anything.
I'm waiting.
Waiting for morning, maybe. Or waiting for him to find me again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jaxen
Sunday
She looks like a corpse when I find her.
Pale and limp beneath the ribbed roots of the oldest oak tree in this forest, skin scraped raw at the knees, lips parted on a ragged, uneven breath. The tree is a monster of its own.
I don’t go to her right away. I let my shadow fall over the roots but keep my hands to myself and my weight off the leaves. I kneel in the dark and watch her twitch in a restless sleep, lashes fluttering, mouth twitching at dreams she won’t admit to when the sun’s up.
Her breath hitches. She murmurs something I don’t catch. I lift a gloved hand and hold it there, an inch from her cheek, close enough to feel heat radiating off her skin. The animal in me hums at being so close to her.
“Easy,” I whisper to the air, to myself, to whatever’s listening.
The back of my gloved knuckle ghosts down her cheekbone. Slow. Careful. She leans into it in her sleep, then settles again. She doesn’t wake.
I linger longer than I should, watching her chest rise and fall. Counting each breath like it’s mine to protect.
When I finally rise, I circle the oak. Once clockwise. Once counter. Every footfall measured—balls of my feet, edges of the boot, no crack, no crunch. It’s easy to read the ground—the clotted paw print of a raccoon near the waterline, the half-moon of a sneaker scuff no more than two to three hours old, a skein of spider silk stretched unbroken across a low gap. Nothing fresh within thirty meters. No drones moving overhead. The wind’s out of the north, carryingourscent into the ravine.
Ours.
That buys us a sliver of time.
The comm in my ear comes to life, immediately irritating me.
“Hunter, status.” Milo. Smug even when he’s fraying. “We’ve got eyes on you. Why the fuck are you just standing around? Finish the fucking job. People are watching.”
I don’t answer. I let the hiss sit there until it sounds like he’s the one breathing through my mask.
Janice cuts in, her voice rough and worn. Typical considering she’s a chain smoker. She lights up a new one before the first is even finished. “Stop fucking around, Jaxen. You want your payout or not? Do your fucking job.”
Rory, the lapdog, comes next. “Think about the contract. You know the investors aren’t going to be happy if you don’t give them what they want. Think about the?—”
“Think about shutting the fuck up,” I say, finally, voice low and dangerous. “You wanted a show. I am the fucking show. You want a corpse, you’ll get one when I’m ready. Until then, you don’t breathe my fucking name, and you don’t fucking interrupt me when I hunt.”
A beat of silence.
Then Milo again, colder now. “You’re dragging this out too long. You think you’re fucking untouchable. Janice can edit it soit looks like you did the job. Viewers will cheer, the sponsors will cash in, and you’ll be nothing but dead weight on a reel.”
Heat spikes in my blood. My teeth bare against the inside of the mask.
“You so much as aim a fucking drone at her,” I growl, my voice thick with violence, “and I will crawl out of these woods, find you in that fucking truck, and I’ll make sure you’re the one screaming for the cameras while I peel you open really fucking slowly, Milo. Your death will be the longest feed they’ve ever run.”
Silence. Just the crackle of static.
