Page 136 of Sinister Legacy
So much blood.
My gaze dances across the dimly lit room, over the reception desk, to the camera up in the left corner.
Noticing, the masked man grasps the back of my neck, and his distorted voice slithers beneath my skin and crawls along each curvature of my spine. “They’re disconnected. By the time we’re done here, you’ll be dead, and Blackwoods will think Jimmy Hill’s daughter snapped and killed the officers.”
“You have it all figured out, huh?” I sneer.
The cloying scent of blood and death mingles on the air. I try to get a look at the killer, but with the robe, the hood, and the mask, I can’t see anything.
“There’s only one problem,” I point out, bringing my shackled wrists up to show him. “I can’t flip and kill everyone if I’m shackled.”
In a swift move, he slips his hand from my neck and grabs the chain, pulling it hard enough to send me flying to the bloodstained, grubby floor.
I fall on my side, and my temple bounces off the hard surface, rendering me defenseless as pain explodes behind my eyelids. Clutching my throbbing head in agony, I whimper into the dirty, cold floor. I’m nauseous with the pain. My brain feels like it’s too big for my skull, each heavy throb beating loudly in my ears and gums.
Crouching down beside me, he slides my hair away from my damp cheek with the curved blade before grabbing a handful and hauling me to my feet.
I let out a pained cry, grabbing onto his forearm with cold and clammy hands. My scalp burns, the blonde hairs torn from their roots. Fear grips my throat. I claw and scratch, nails snagging on his robe as I fight him.
In the next second, he shoves me hard toward the reception desk. “Let’s play a little game of chase. I know how much you like to be hunted like prey.” He takes a step closer, and I push myself off the reception desk, my fingers curled around the edge. “Only this game ends in carnage.”
I can hear the sickening smile in his voice—the bloodlust behind his intentions. Everything about this moment is designed to prolong and increase my fear. He feeds off it.
I don’t think as I turn and run. The front doors are locked, and my trembling hands leave smears of blood on the metal handle and the icy-cold glass. Outside, the snow is falling, serving as a picturesque background to my torment.
“Don’t let me catch you, Keira. I’ll kill you slowly if I do,” he calls out behind me when I sprint to my left into another hallway lined with office doors. I curse my choice when I realize it’s a dead end. There’s nowhere to run. If I enter one of the offices, I’m cornered. I can’t run back the way I came, so I’m trapped either way.
Darting into the first room to my right—Wells’s office—I quickly shut and lock the door. It’s with great effort that I manage to push the heavy desk in front of it, causing the photographs on top to fall to the floor. By the time it’s finally blocking the door, I’m panting, and my head is throbbing with a deep ache. I step back, colliding with one of the desk chairs pushed to the side. Thick, heavy silence slithers out from the shadows to dance with my fear. It kisses the cold sweat on my forehead and grips my throat in a vice until I struggle to breathe.
I wait, listening to each heavy heartbeat in my head. Nothing happens. The silence screams. My heart slows before skyrocketing when the handle rattles violently.
I let out a startled scream, stumbling back.
The handle rattles again before something heavy crashes into the door.
Half bent at the waist and sobbing, I cover my ears and plead with him to stop.
He doesn’t.
His foot connects with the door, and the loud bang is so deafening that I scream again.
“Please, stop! Please, just go away.”
The handle rattles and the hinges threaten to give way the longer he continues kicking and punching the door. By the time silence descends, I’m sobbing almost uncontrollably.
I wait, but nothing more happens. My breathing soon begins to stabilize. I listen for any noise, any sign that he’s still outside.
My feet move forward, but I stop myself. What if he’s out there, waiting for me to feel brave enough to leave this office? Debating what to do, I scan the room. Except for a metal bookshelf to my left with a potted Devil’s Ivy on top and a row of certificates on the wall behind me, there’s not much in here. The room lacks personality.
As I step forward again, broken glass crunches beneath my shoe. I lean down to pick up the framed photograph, angling it toward the moonlight shining in through the window, careful not to cut myself on the jagged pieces of glass in the frame. It’s a photograph of Officer Wells and his wife on their wedding day. He looks about twenty years younger, with a full head of dark hair and no sign of graying at the temples.
More importantly, he looks happy.
Not washed out, tired, and overworked like he did before he was brutally murdered by the killer.
As I drop the picture frame back to the floor, the window explodes to my right, and I release a blood-curdling scream. The devil’s mask leers back at me through the now glassless window. My gaze flits down to the brick on the floor and to the desk barricading the door, then back.
I’m trapped.
