1
Hunt
Blakely
Devil’s Peak looks different in the daylight.
The dark canopy of trees I’ve only glimpsed at night, that felt so nefarious with their gnarled limbs vying to steal the stars from my view, catches the sun’s rays to send glittering shards across the pine straw-covered ground.
The forest is in full bloom. Bright greens and oranges mingle with the heavily wooded backdrop of brown, like a Bob Ross painting with his happy little trees. It’s a sight right out of Vanessa’s pastel drawing room. The scent of the forest even smells pastel.
Before me, the narrow river is gray, the river stones tinting the clear water as the stream moves at a peaceful pace, the current leisure and serene. A tranquil atmosphere that is in direct contrast to the horrors of my nightmares.
Alex belonged to the night.
He was a creature of the moon and shadows.
He was Devil’s Peak, and he couldn’t have chosen a better location for his sinister research lab, where he tortured his victims in the name of science. Oh, he believed—somewhere in his delusional brain—that he was fighting a just cause, but it was ultimately a selfish cause. One that gave his deceased, psychotic twin sister a chance to redeem her tarnished reputation.
She made her choices, though. And Alex made his.
For her crimes against her patients, Alex’s sister was murdered by a psychopathic vigilante serial killer. Instead of mourning her loss, accepting who his sister was, Alex picked up her torch and conducted cruel experiments on people in order to try to cure psychopathy.
We’re all products of our choices. Somehow mine led me to this place, and I’ve been trying to escape it ever since. My mind is trapped here, no matter how far away I run.
I pull my hoodie close and cross my arms over my chest as I stroll toward the river. I’m cautious of the riverbank, where the graveyard of Alex’s “expired” subjects lie. I discovered the partially dissolved remains the day I escaped, when I fell into the bones. I still have the scar on my palm.
A bird chirps in the distance, and I glance out over the mountain peaks, relieved my attention has been diverted. Only now, as my gaze tracks the bird’s path, the distinct splash of the waterfall pricks my ears. Chill bumps ripple across my skin.
An alarming flutter attacks my chest. I cover the ache with my hand, palm pressed to my breastplate. I despise that I have absolutely no control over these traitorous feelings—that just the thought of seeing the waterfall cascading down the cliff causes the beat of my heart to quicken.
My mind summons the sensation of the cool, rough stone under my back. I can feel the icy water biting into my skin and his heated touch chasing away the chill to ignite me from the inside as his hands discover my body. And his kiss…
My chest burns as I remember the feel of his lips, how he deepened the kiss, our breath exchanged and stolen, as I became lost to him.
I fasten my eyes shut, effectively shutting down the memory.
With gathered strength, I turn my back to the river and force my booted feet onto the path. I thought I needed to face that place, to see it again and discover if it evoked the same emotions I felt that night. But I haven’t even glimpsed the waterfall and I’m already shaken.
I loathe this weakness.
Keeping my gaze cast on the worn trail, I avoid looking at the cabin until I reach the gate. I pull in a fortifying breath and flip the latch. The gate pushes open with a shrill squeak.
The sight halts my steps. The charred husk of the house stands in a dilapidated state of ruin where Alex’s little cabin once existed. The roof has fallen in. Blackened wood beams jut upward from the ground, bare and naked, the walls piled in heaps atop the scorched earth.
As I move closer, I notice where the trees nearest the fire were seared, but they must have been far enough from the flames to only sustain minimal damage. This whole forest should have burned. On instinct, I gravitate toward the basement door. It’s still open from where I escaped, the fire having grazed one of the doors.
A panicked beat flips my heart as I stare down into the dark vault where Alex kept me for almost a month. The smell of acrid fire and wet soot wafts up from the belly of the pit. I won’t go down there, not if I can help it. I look away and continue through the wreckage, knowing why I’m here, what I’m searching for, and somehow still terrified to discover it.
Three weeks ago, I felt the telltale prickle on the back of my neck, the signature predator and prey internal alarm that I was being watched.
Paranoia, maybe.
A remnant of the weeks I spent as a captive to a mad scientist, absolutely.
Then the first body was discovered, and I could no longer discount my suspicions.
One of my revenge targets dying doesn’t set off an alarm—but two killed in a suspected “mugging” and stabbed numerous times…
That’s more than suspicious.
That’s a cry from the grave.
I’ll never sleep again if I don’t see the proof with my own eyes. I’ll never believe he’s not just around a corner, watching. Waiting.
And I refuse to live in fear.
If Alex burned alive in this fire, I want to see the bones.
I want them to crumble to ash beneath my boots as I walk over them.
Hate is a new emotion for me. I was accustomed to indifference, and this dark, consuming feeling eating me from the inside needs an outlet. Even as I studied human emotion my whole life in order to mimic it, I never realized that it’s not just one emotion being felt at a time.
Every emotion has a web of underlying sub-feelings that battle for dominance.
It’s complicated and exhausting. No wonder why most people confuse me; they have absolutely no fucking idea what they’re feeling most days.
I shake off tiring thoughts and continue to search the cabin. To get here, I employed the skills I once used to deliver retribution for my clients. I tracked down the tow truck driver. He still had Alex’s little two-door truck on his lot. I rented a car, drove straight there, and dug out the registration from the glovebox. The address was listed in the nearest town—so that gave me a starting point.
Fleeing a house engulfed in flames with an unhinged madman who had just demolished his disturbing room of clocks makes one forget important details, like how the hell I got away. I remember escaping the cabin. Driving the truck through the woods. Making it to a rest stop where I called a tow truck service. But the finer details are a haze blotted out by adrenaline and heightened emotion.
But once I was heading in the right direction, the scenery started to become familiar, and I knew I was on the right path. As if some force was drawing me back to Devil’s Peak.
I trace my fingers along a charred beam. The seared, blackened wood is coarse and abrasive. I used to be like this wood, hardened, damaged but resilient. I used to face every intense situation with a calm and unaffected demeanor, and I would have handled that night differently had it not been for the emotions Alex cursed me with.
My fingers curl around a splinter of the beam. The wood breaks away, and I crumble it in my palm before letting the sooty ash fall to the earth.
I stare at the black smudges, the way the grime lines the grooves of my palm.
I’ve made a mess.
As I wipe my hand on my jean-clad thigh, I walk toward the center of the house, to where I think Alex’s dark room was located. Where I last saw him.