Page 82 of Mason

She felt his eyeball give, and then she heard a pop. It was disgusting.

This time he screamed and fell backward. Jo scrambled up and took off running, the twelve inches of snow on the ground slowing her down, but she kept going, sending up a prayer to keep her upright and not to let her kill herself.

She ran until her sides started to ache and her lungs burned. Peter would be behind her…and pissed. She’d stabbed him in the eye.

But her head was pounding, her cheek ached, and she was still groggy. And she was cold. Her hands hurt from the cold.

She kept running.

She hit the trees and stopped long enough to pick up a sturdy downed branch. One that would crack him over the head if he got near her.

“JoJo!”

Her feet picked up speed when she heard Peter bellow her name. He was definitely pissed.

She skidded to a stop, trying to catch her breath. The river was a few feet away, so she backed up as far as she could get. She was not landing in the water.

Where was he? She looked around as she caught her breath. Her fingers were going numb, and it made it hard to keep hold of her stick, but she gripped it with everything she had.

“JoJo.”

She froze, but only for a second. She turned and saw him standing there, the nail sticking out of his right eye, blood oozing.

“Stay away from me.”

“You have to be punished now, JoJo.”

Fuck that, as Mason would say.

She pushed away from the tree and took a fighting stance as her brother had taught her. She gripped the branch with her one good hand and waited. She didn’t rush him because she was starting to get blurry. Too much of the drug had worked its way into her system. The adrenaline must have stymied its effects until she stopped to catch her breath. It was hitting her hard now, though.

Peter advanced, looking manic.

She swung with all her might when he got within hitting distance, only he caught the branch and ripped it away and swung it at her when he gained control of it. Jo went flying backward when it connected with her side. Pain lanced up and down her right side right before she hit the water. It was so cold, her lungs stopped working, and she struggled to fight her way to the surface.

When her head broke the surface, she took deep, gulping breaths into her oxygen-starved lungs. She frantically searched for Peter and saw him standing at the water’s edge shaking his head at her.

“See all the trouble you’re causing?” He sighed and shook off his coat.

Only he didn’t see what Jo saw. Her eyes widened as a shadow appeared behind him.

An arm wrapped around his throat, and Peter started to struggle. Jo pushed away from them both to the opposite side. She didn’t know if the new threat was meant for her or for Peter, but she wasn’t sticking around to find out.

“Jo, stop!”

And she did. Viktor?

She looked back to see a man standing where Peter had been, preparing to jump into the river after her.

Only it wasn’t Viktor. It looked like him, though.

But it didn’t.

This version of Viktor scared the socks off her more than Peter had. And that was saying something.

“Jo, I’m here to take you home. Can you swim to me?”

She didn’t know what to do.

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