Page 4 of His Darkest Desire

Now, it was pitch-black outside, and the relentless rain and walls of trees to either side of the roadway only further reduced visibility. Were it not for the blue blob on the car’s map screen, she would never have known there was a huge loch nearby.

“In half a mile, turn left,” the navigation guide said, cutting through the music.

Another car rounded the bend ahead, its blinding headlights made more intense by the reflections from the water pooled on the narrow road. Kinsley winced and shifted her vehicle aside to make room for the car to pass. Thankfully, there’d been little traffic on these backroads, so such encounters had been rare—though that didn’t make it suck any less.

“Almost there,” she said.

Static crackled through the stereo, warping the singer’s voice into something otherworldly. Though the static cleared quickly, Kinsley’s frown deepened.

She was listening to music through a Bluetooth connection. How was that getting interference? There’d been thunder and lightning, but the storm wasn’t that bad, was it?

“Turn left,” said the guide.

Flicking on the turn signal, Kinsley slowed the car and peered through the darkness until she spotted where the trees opened on a narrow dirt road—or rather, a narrow mud road. She switched into all-wheel drive and turned onto the path.

“Continue straight.”

Clutching the steering wheel, Kinsley followed the bumpy path. “Please, oh please don’t get stuck.”

As she continued onward, the music once more grew distorted, and now the instrument panel and dashboard screen dimmed and flickered along with it.

She reached out and thumped on the dashboard. “What is going on?”

Kinsley stopped the car and put it in park. Reaching into her purse, which lay on the seat beside her, she retrieved her phone and unlocked it. She tapped on the map; it came up with a No Connection page. Her gaze darted to the upper right corner of the screen.

No signal.

“Damn it.”

Closing her music app, she tossed the phone back into her purse and lifted her gaze. The cottage awaited somewhere ahead. She just needed to take it slow and steady while keeping an eye out for the place.

“People survived without wi-fi and GPS for most of human history. This shouldn’t be that hard.”

She shifted the car into gear and continued onward, leaning closer to the windshield to better focus on the road. The headlights made little difference in the rain and gloom. On one side, tall, densely packed trees marched up a rugged incline, their tops shrouded by the night. On the other, the ground dropped away so abruptly that she could just make out the tops of some of those trees.

Kinsley couldn’t be certain whether it was a sheer drop or a steep hillside, but it didn’t matter. Going down it would’ve been bad either way.

According to the map on the dashboard screen, that downward slope led to the loch, from which she was separated by only a few dozen yards of land.

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as a bend in the road ahead came into view. During the day, she might’ve seen the waters of the loch through the trees there, but now that space was filled only with impossible, impenetrable black.

Slow and steady.

A warning chime sounded, but nothing on the instrument panel indicated an open door, unbuckled seatbelt, or engine problem. Pixelized artifacts spread across the display screen, making the map unreadable. The headlights dimmed and flashed erratically. Sound buzzed from the speakers—not just static but strange, high-pitched warbling noises, like an old radio being tuned, run through by what she swore were…whispers.

She tapped the screen. Her touch only caused new glitches to blossom on the display.

In any other place, at any other time, all this would’ve just been a terrible annoyance. But here in this dark, stormy, secluded bit of the Highlands, miles away from the nearest town…

All at once, everything went out—the instrument panel, the screen and dashboard lights, the headlights. Thick, cloying darkness invaded the vehicle. The static ceased, but the whispers persisted. Kinsley’s skin broke out in goosebumps, and the hairs on her arms rose.

“What’s happ—” Her breath caught in her throat and her eyes widened as she looked ahead.

A bright blue orb floated in front of the car. A light adrift on a sea of utter, unforgiving black.

Kinsley did not understand what she was seeing. Part of her mind insisted that this…this apparition wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be. Some other part, smaller, quieter, insisted that she should’ve checked whether the cottage was in a haunted forest before signing the paperwork.

She barely noticed that the SUV was still moving forward.

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