Page 105 of The Executioners Three
On that day at the station with Ibrahim, Freddie had been embarrassed that his handsomeness had made her a silly, trembly fool who kept missing the mechanism. Now she was grateful thatnearness of a dreamboathad had the same effect on her muscles asbrutally frozen cold.
With handcuffs clinking, Freddie started with the zip tie around her ankles, losing track of time as she tried to shove the pin into the tiny plastic lock. As she prodded and wriggled and tried to hit the right spot that would release the mechanism. Then she felt it connect, and with a yank of her ankles, she tore the zip tie wide.
She was full-on shivering now, and her fingers had gone from brightred to pale, bloodless blue. The scrapes on her palms were dark lines she couldn’t feel.
The swollen wrist, though—she felt that.
A killer is coming for you,her gut reminded.You need to move.
Without bothering to unbind her wrists or remove the dangling handcuffs, Freddie pushed to her feet. Everything looked different at this hour—and with a fresh dusting of snow. Although that groove on that hill over there…
She’d just been here, hadn’t she?
Are you sure this path is a shortcut?Divya had asked.
Of course it’s a shortcut,Freddie had replied. Now here was the same “path,” the same ephemeral stream filled not with mosquitos, but with snow. This was the end of the stream, where it would gather in a completely mosquito-infested pond. If Freddie followed this uphill, she’d reach the archives.
And in the archives, there was a telephone.
Freddie set off.
25
If Divya had thought the archives were wiggins central during the day,Freddie thought as she galloped toward the woodsman cottage,she really should see it at night.No Keebler elves would be toppling out of there now.
Serial killers, though? Definitely.
Freddie ran right up to the archives door. The red of the window frame beside it looked like blood. A nail was sticking out too; she should probably tell Mom about that.
Or maybe you should just get out of these woods alive!
She tried the door handle, but it didn’t budge. Breaking and entering it would have to be. She spun around, searching and searching until she spotted a hefty oak branch ten steps away.
Freddie didn’t have much in the way of upper body strength. Plus, her wrists were still bound, handcuffs dangling down, and her left wrist was swelling more and more by the second. But didn’t adrenaline turn people into Super Strong Muscle Machines? Who could lift a car off of a baby or something?
The answer, Freddie soon learned, wasno. At least not when you were Freddie Gellar. Her first swing at the window bounced back right at her face. She barely bit back a yelp before it bonked her forehead.
She swung again, aiming lower. Again, again. But of course the window was freakingweatherproof,to protect Mom’s precious historical documents. By the fourth swing, Freddie had to accept this wasn’t going to work. That she would be better served running the half mile to the Village Historique and trying to use the phone there.
Freddie dropped the stick. Her breaths sawed in, sawed out. She swiveled to aim for the Village…
And that was when she saw it: the figure in the snowy autumn trees. Fuzzy and cloaked in the rotten stench of impending death. It moved toward Freddie with a slow, methodical stamp.
Then a different body slammed into Freddie. So sudden she hadn’t heard it coming. So fast she had no time to react before she was smashed to the earth. Her skull slammed down. Stars and darkness splattered in.
Fingers closed around Freddie’s neck and thighs squeezed around her rib cage.
Freddie struggled and squirmed. Clawed her zip-tied hands at some unseen face and unseen body. The handcuffs were still attached to her zip-tied hands, doing more damage to Freddie than her attacker. And no matter how hard Freddie fought—no matter how hard she strained to see—all she got were shadows. It was like a black fog had swept in, and somewhere inside there was a figure she could not seem to grab hold of.
And flames. There were flames in there too, flickers that danced off a hidden skull.
The fingers at Freddie’s neck squeezed tighter. She choked. She wheezed. She fishtailed and writhed. And it was like two tracks were playing in her brain. On top was a track screaming,Stay alive!The track below that was saying,This has to be a hallucination, and any moment now, you’ll snap out of it.
Shehadto snap out of it because right now, no breath was entering her lungs. No oxygen was reaching her brain. But no matter how hard she fought, she couldn’t stop the hand at her throat.
She couldn’t avoid the face now leaning in.“Libérez-nous,”they whispered.
And Freddie realized she knew that voice. She knew that shadowed face, even if the eyes were now filled with flame. Laina hissed, teeth flashing, and Freddie could have sworn she saw smoke coiling off the girl’s tongue.
