My mouth is duct taped and I try to speak, but everything comes out muffled. All I want to do is scream, but I know I need to stay calm. To figure out where I am and what’s happening. I’m not dead yet, so there has to be something I can do.
I glance around and take in my surroundings. This place looks strangely familiar, and it only takes all of a minute for reality to sink in. I’m in Gabriel’s cabin.
A renewed sense of dread washes over me as I flop my body over, craning my neck to look for him. The man who kicked me is standing in front of the door, watching me intently. It’s the same man who bumped into me in front of my apartment the other day, the one I got the weird feeling about. I have no idea what he could possibly want with me, but from the look in his eye, it doesn’t take much to guess.
I try not to focus on that as I continue to survey the room around me. Lifting my head isn’t easy, and the moment I do searing pain shoots through my skull. I whimper and try to suppress the overwhelming urge to vomit as my eyes land on the other side of the room.
My worst nightmare has come to life as I glance at the battered figures strapped into metal chairs before me. Alanna looks as though she is sleeping peacefully, but Gabriel is bleeding badly from the side of his drooped head. He looks as if he’s taken the brunt of this strange man’s wrath, and my heart squeezes at the sight. I don’t know what he wants, but the more I watch him, the more I realize he’s waiting for something. Or someone.
Almost as if on cue, the front door creaks open, and a voice behind me chills me to the bone. Sweetness laced with Arsenic, the most caustic woman I’ve ever known enters the room with a flourish.
Eleanore.
“Is the bitch awake yet?” she asks casually, her gaze swinging in my direction.
“Yeah, she’s awake all right,” the man retorts. “And already causing trouble too. When are you going to let me at her?”
My stomach churns violently at his implication, my breath coming out in hollowed gasps. I would rather die than let Eleanore do this to me again. But then I think about Gabriel and Alanna, the innocent bystanders in all of this. They’re only here because of me.
“All in good time, Allan,” my stepmother’s shrewd voice cracks my raw nerves like a whip.
As she approaches, her heels click across the hard floor like shotgun blasts. And instinctively, I know this is it. The end of the line for me, because there’s no getting away from her this time. And just as I suspected, she isn’t going to let me go down alone. I squeeze my eyes shut as tears flood my vision, threatening to turn me into a sobbing mess. She’s going to hurt Alanna and Gabriel to get to me.
In a sick twist of irony, I recall the time that Gabriel and I spent at this cabin not so long ago. How I told him about Orion’s fate, and how I thought the constellation had guided me to him somehow. And now, here I am, his own personal Artemis, unknowingly leading him to his death.
The whole situation is so fucked up I want to scream until my lungs are bloody. But I know it won’t do me any good. The expression on Eleanore’s face tells me as much. She’s finally got me right where she wants me, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.
“Did you really think you could get away from me so easily you foolish girl?”
I try to mumble a fuck you from behind the tape, but nothing intelligible comes out. Eleanore stoops down, and in one swift painful movement, rips the tape from my mouth. I tamp down the strong instinct to react to the pain, refusing to give her the satisfaction.
She simply laughs at my stiff expression. “Always trying to put on a brave face, aren’t we? Tell me, Victoria, don’t you think it’s time you paid the piper?”
“What are you talking about?” I hiss. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve left you alone, so why can’t you just move on?”
“Oh you would say that,” she snaps. “After everything that you’ve done to hurt me. Making your father hate me… making the whole town think I was crazy.”
“You are crazy!” I yell, unable to stop myself. I know this isn’t the best way to approach the situation. She has the two people I love most in the world within her grasp. I know I should be logical, but right now I can’t. I hate her with the fire of a thousand suns.
“You think you are so tough don’t you?” she glances across the room. “We’ll see how tough you are after your friends wake up and you watch me slowly torture them to death.”
All of the blood drains from my face, and just like that, my temper is gone.
“Please, Eleanore…” I beg. “You don’t have to do this. Just let them go.”