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And the infuriating man crossed his arms, leaned against the tree, and looked at me. Calmly. Pleasantly. Like he had all freaking night.
I glared back. “And here I thought you’d been getting better lately!”
“I’ve been indulging you.”
“Indulg—” I tightened my lips on a torrent of words, none of which I could say. And not just because we needed to be quiet. Because for a second there I was actually rendered speechless.
Indulging me didn’t involve treating me like a Parris Island recruit. It didn’t involve questioning every order I ever gave. And it damned sure didn’t involve trading his life for mine without even asking what I thought of the idea.
Or how I’d feel afterward.
Somehow, in all the crying I’d done over the man in the last week, I’d forgotten what an absolute bastard he could be.
Like when he calmly started to pick at a fingernail.
“Stop that!” I knocked his hand away.
He looked up, bemused.
“You . . . you’ll get a hangnail,” I snapped, because I couldn’t say anything else.
“And that would ruin my evening.”
I stood there for a moment, seriously considering just starting for the trees. He’d have to come along or watch me possibly get eaten by whatever was in there. Only, no. Any other man would have to.
Pritkin would knock me out with something in his arsenal, throw me over his shoulder, and cart me off God knew where. And that would be that. Except that I’d wake up tomorrow no closer to a solution than I was right now.
And I was getting damned tired of dead ends.
I crossed my own arms. “Fine.”
“Fine what?”
“Fine, we’ll do it your way.” Like I had a choice.
Whatever his faults, Pritkin didn’t gloat. “Wait for my signal,” he reminded me. And then he was off, running hard for the tree line. Where, a second later, he disappeared.
And the minute he did, I was sure I’d made a mistake. It would be totally my luck to get the man killed while trying to save him. I peered around the trunk, my hands eating into the rough bark hard enough to send splinters under my fingernails.
Come on, I thought desperately, as the minutes clicked by. Come on, come on, come on.
But nothing happened. There was no sound, no movement, no anything. Just a soft breeze bringing the scent of rain and resin, and a hushed quiet making a mockery of my fears.
Until somebody started screaming.
I was running before I remembered the signal and then fuck the signal, because I’d never heard Pritkin scream. And I was desperately hoping I wasn’t hearing it now. But it sounded human—if a human was being eaten by a bear or roasted over a fire or torn limb from limb or—
I shut my brain down before it shut me down, and put on an extra burst of speed. I should have just shifted, but I couldn’t see clearly and anyway, it was too late now. The ground was growing uneven underfoot, the trees were closing in overhead, and I was slipping and sliding on a bunch of black-rotten leaves down an incline and through a wall of scratchy limbs. Before bursting out the other side and into—
What the fuck?
What looked like jerking red afterimages filled my vision, half blinding me, even though I hadn’t been staring at any bright lights. Just like I wasn’t out of breath, but the whole area pulsed in and out, like a marathoner’s vision. It looked like a demon disco and felt like standing in the middle of a tumbling kaleidoscope, while that unearthly scream went on and on and—
Stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
It took the lights along with it, which would have been great. If it hadn’t left me reeling in utter darkness, my heart pounding, my pulse racing, and my mind gibbering somewhere in terror. But as usual, my mouth was doing okay.
“Pritkin!” I called thickly. “Goddamnit, where—”
