Page 4 of Killer of the Bells
“Which part of the reservoir are we going to?” I asked evenly, not allowing the bloodlust rising inside me to force me to sound too eager.
“I found a new spot the other day. Trust me, you’re going to love it.”
“Sure. Whatever.” I didn’t have to try to sound uninterested there. The only things that made me feel anything were my research, sleep, and blood. That was it.
Vix was an anomaly in my life, and I was already well on my way to forgetting the way he’d made me feel.
I seriously doubted tonight would be different than any other.
Chapter
Two
ECHO
Iwasn’t sure why I was going to the reservoir. It wasn’t like I’d woken up and gone, “Golly, I think I’ll pop on over to the notoriously dangerous spot in town where people go missing! What a swell idea!”
That’s how cheerful folk sound to us realists, by the way. It’s like being forced to take a bath in liquid cotton candy mixed with orange juice.
No, thank you, and good day, sir.
There was no specific trigger during the day either. Everything was normal; I’d gotten to all my classes on time, taught what needed to be taught efficiently, communicated with my mentor about my thesis, and even had a relatively healthy lunch.
Hell, I’d even taken my meds on time.
So, no, I had no specific reason to nip off and spin the wheel once again to see if I’d make it back home alive.
I know that sounds dramatic.
Surely, it’s only an urban legend to scare newbie college kids, right? There’s no way the local law enforcement would allow something like a series of missing people to go unchecked, right? It’s not like anyone knows anyone who went missing.There were no names on any missing person reports, no people asking around for a lost loved one. No one making a stink about the situation at all.
So, why was I being such a drama llama about taking a spontaneous hike to a beautiful bit of wilderness?
Because I’d seen it with my own eyes. Seenhim.
I’d been out on a disastrous date that I should have bailed on as soon as the wordsromantic hikehad spilled from the guy’s lips. Seriously? Who does that?
Assuming that everyone thinks the great outdoors is all pixie dust and sunshine is such bullshit. Only the folks who don’t know pixie dust is actually pixie shit and that those little fuckers are just flying around letting it rain down on everyone would think springing a four-hour hike on someone you just met was a good idea.
Anyway, on said disastrous date, I eventually had enough and plopped my ass down on a large rock in the shade and refused to move another step until I’d rested. Lyle, my date, had suddenly gotten weird and shifty and demanded I get up and keep going.
I’d glared up at Lyle and mimed to him that if he was on a deadline, then he was going to have to carry me.
Dude was honestly just the worst. Seriously, he’d appeared in my email inbox from nowhere, refused to tell me anything about himself, asked me to keep him a secret from my friends until we both knew the relationship was going somewhere, and when we finally met, he was so different from his profile pic that he could have been a completely different person.
Why had I gone on said date in the first place, even though Lyle had been one massive red flag after another from the very beginning? Because I didn’t want to be here anymore.
Don’t look at me like that. You know exactly what that means.
Nothing in the here-and-now was real. Nothing inmewas real. Life was one long string of meaningless tasks until the end, and I just didn’t want to do it anymore.
So, when Lyle took me up on my offer and began to drag me deeper into the woods, and a shadow dropped down from the trees, tore out Lyle’s throat, and then vanished with him into darkness right in front of me, instead of running in terror, I surprised myself by shouting, “Are you fucking kidding me?!” even though I have a devil of a time speaking to people.
Because there’s nothing worse than going on a red flag date and hoping they’ll kill you, only to have your evil date get eaten by a monster. Especially when the monster doesn’t have the common decency to finish you off, too.
I wandered around the woods for at least an hour, trying to appear as appetizing as possible, but apparently the shadow wasn’t interested, so eventually I went home.
I’d been salty about it ever since.
