The Shuddering Part 14

"It felt like the right thing to do," he said. "Until it didn't."

Sawyer had a way with words, always knowing what she was thinking, like magic. Ryan was Jane's rightful duplicate, but Sawyer could decipher her like no other. He could reach inside her head and expose her innermost secrets with a phantom hand.

"It was my idea," he confessed. "And it may have been a mistake, but what can you do?"

"But why?"

"It felt like the right thing."

"The right thing," she echoed, her chest suddenly feeling Tin Man hollow. Sawyer Thomas wasn't the marrying kind. He was like Ryan in that sense-free and exuberant, with a bright future ahead of him. He was pa.s.sionate about his work, and he'd worked hard to get where he was. Jane swallowed against the slow-growing realization of what "the right thing" must have meant. She had teased her own brother more than a few times, insisting that the only thing that would ever tie Ryan down was accidentally knocking someone up.

"Please tell me that doesn't mean what I think it does," she whispered. Sawyer had just scored his dream job, had moved into a new apartment. From what Ryan had told her, he was happy in his new life. But now it was unclear where that happiness had come from; had it been because everything seemed to be falling into place, or had it been because of April and the promise of a family?

She stepped closer to him, gathering enough courage to grab his hand. Her heart lurched when he squeezed her hand in response.

"Don't think less of me," he told her. "This wasn't the plan. You always told me I was good at making the right choices, remember?"

She did. She had told him that very thing inside an airport terminal despite her breaking heart. Jane offered him a weak smile, on the verge of tears. She couldn't decide whether she was upset because his dream had been derailed, or because her secret desire had just been rendered impossible.

"But then I got to wondering, why not me?"

Jane pressed her lips together, trying to keep her composure. "Why not you...?"

"Yeah, why not? People get married, they have kids; that's life."

She wanted to protest, to insist that he wasn't regular people. Sawyer Thomas didn't get married, didn't have kids. He was supposed to remain eternal and perfect while everyone else moved on, got hurt, grew old with age and regret.

"I'm happy for you, Tom," she told him, but she could see he wasn't convinced.

"Yeah, I can tell." He cracked a smile. "Overjoyed."

"Sorry, it's just a lot to take in. As long as you're happy. This is what you want?"

"Wanting and getting aren't the same thing," he told her. Dipping his chin enough to catch her gaze, he offered her a brave smile. "Right?"

"What does that mean, exactly?"

"Are you really going to make me say it?"

"I don't know." She swallowed against the lump in her throat. "Maybe."

He shook his head and looked away. She could see it in his face: he wasn't buying in. Despite all of his opportunities to corner her-the night in the kitchen, up on the mountain, on the chair lift where n.o.body would see, and now-he restrained himself. Admitting that he had held himself back would undo his effort. It would render all that willpower invalid.

"You said this may be a mistake," she said. "What does that mean?"

"It means it may be a mistake," he said. "You've made those yourself."

Tears stung the backs of her eyes. She needed to tell him, confess that despite the heartache, she was glad she'd caught Alex cheating on her.

I still love you.

It screamed inside her head, knocking against the sides of her skull, fighting to break free. But she couldn't tell him, not after what he'd confessed. There would be no breaking up the wedding, no last-minute confession, no running away into the sunset. Because now there was a baby, and a baby was the most important thing.

"Do you regret it?" he asked. "Marrying Alex, sharing the time with him that you did; you loved him, didn't you?"

She swallowed against the lump in her throat, winced on the inside, getting his point. "I did," she confessed. "Once."

"So you know where I'm at," he said quietly. "You understand."

She laughed, tears finally spilling over her bottom lashes. She swiped at her cheeks, looking up to the ceiling, trying to squelch the sob that was trying to claw its way out of her chest.

Sawyer leaned forward to catch her chin in a tender grasp, the pad of his thumb sliding across her cheek. Her nerves buzzed beneath his touch. "We learn from our mistakes," he told her. "You're stronger for what happened to you, and if this blows up in my face..." Sawyer's expression twisted in apologetic uncertainty. "C'est la vie."

"But I want to protect you." The words tumbled out of her before she could stop them, her entire body going rigid with the declaration. A mixture of shame and embarra.s.sment crashed over her, threatening to suck the air out of the room. But before she could wilt with mortification, she was disarmed by Sawyer's smile. His grin was wide, so effervescent and beautiful that it nearly broke her heart. It was the smile she remembered from so long ago, the very smile that had made her fall in love with him, the expression that had haunted her for so long. His eyes glinted with a look she'd longed to see for years-adoration, an overwhelming ebb of affection just for her.

She nearly jumped when Oona barked outside. Could they already be back? Her gaze met Sawyer's, and for a moment she felt like her world would crumble if she didn't kiss him one last time. She could see it in his eyes-he knew what she wanted, knew what she was thinking. But instead of edging forward, instead of tilting his head just enough to let his mouth brush against hers, he gave her hand another squeeze and let it go.

"I wanted to protect you too," he admitted. "But you know what I wanted even more?"

Jane shook her head, looking away.

"I wanted you to live."

With those few carefully selected words, Jane was rendered speechless. And within her silence, she loved him more than ever.

Trudging down the slope toward Sawyer's crippled Jeep, Ryan still couldn't believe Sawyer had done what he'd done. He'd be surprised if the Jeep's axle wasn't bent to h.e.l.l, and the car was most certainly going to need a face-lift on the pa.s.senger side. Sawyer had never been a fan of conflict, so tipping the car the way he had had been a bold move; it had looked like an accident, but Ryan knew better. And while the answer to Sawyer's problem had been an extreme one, Ryan couldn't help but feel proud of his usually calm friend for letting go of all that pent-up aggression and allowing the moment to be what it had to be.

With the weather being as cold as it was, Ryan a.s.sumed that April had crawled back into the car for warmth, but when he and Lauren peered through the windows the car was empty, which could only mean one thing: she was out there somewhere, nearly half an hour in the freezing cold in nothing but a pair of jeans, a stylish coat, and boots nowhere near appropriate for the snow.

"s.h.i.t," Ryan said.

"How long has it been?" Lauren asked.

"Long enough," he said, sweeping the perimeter to see if April was just shy of the vehicle somewhere. She could have wandered off to go to the bathroom, or maybe she'd gotten bored and decided to take a walk before coming back. Only one thing was certain: up here, frostbite set in fast, and if April was suffering from it, he had no idea how they'd get her to a hospital.

He froze when he heard Oona bark behind them. He turned to see whether the dog was following them, but the husky was nowhere in sight.

"April?" Lauren yelled into the wind, but received no reply. They looked at each other, then picked up the pace as they continued down the road toward the base of the hill. They hadn't taken more than a few additional steps when Ryan caught movement in the trees.

"Look," he said, pointing out a shifting shadow.

"Thank G.o.d." Lauren breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hey, April, come on," Ryan called out to her. "It's f.u.c.king freezing out here."

But rather than a moody bride-to-be stepping out of the trees and into the road, what sounded like a guttural purr reverberated against frozen pines. Ryan and Lauren looked at each other.

"What the h.e.l.l was that?" Lauren asked, her eyes wide. She stepped away from the trail April had left and moved to the edge of the road.

"Don't." Ryan caught her by the sleeve. It was an animal, and it could attack if it felt threatened. "We need to go back."

"What?"

"What do you want to do?" he asked her. "Fight whatever that is with your bare hands?"

"It's probably just an elk or something."

But elk didn't move like that, and they certainly didn't purr.

Something about that shadow set Ryan's teeth on edge. His nostrils flared as he pulled Lauren back. "Do you smell that?"

Lauren inhaled, grimaced, and lifted her gloved hand to her nose and mouth as soon as the scent hit her. The air was stifling, heavy with the stench of blood and death.

"Come on," he said, pulling Lauren along. He didn't have a clue as to what he was going to grab for protection back at the house, but anything was better than nothing. Lauren dragged her feet behind him, her breath puffing out from beneath her scarf. He let go of her sleeve, giving her some leeway, but the moment he did she caught his hand in her own. Their eyes met, and though half her face was obscured by her scarf, he could tell she was spooked.

"Don't be scared," he said.

She narrowed his eyes at him defiantly. "I'm not sca-"

The crack of a branch stalled her words.

A tree shuddered in the near distance, snow falling from pine needles in fat clumps, as though something was climbing upward at a rapid pace. Ryan shook his head as they stood watching, unable to put together what kind of an animal would be big enough to shake a tree like that.

"You're right," he said, his breath steaming out ahead of him. "It's probably an elk. Rubbing its antlers or something..."

"And the smell?" she asked, taking a backward step up the slope.

Ryan didn't reply. He couldn't. He didn't have the answers, and he was getting a bad feeling, like they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Come on," he said, his grip tightening around her hand.

"But April..." She looked over her shoulder as he dragged her along. And then she stopped dead in her tracks, refusing to budge as she stared back down the road.

Ryan spotted what had caught her attention right away. It was impossible to miss-a long black scarf slowly rolling across the road, carried by the strengthening wind.

"She's there!" Lauren said, and then, just like that, Lauren let go of his hand and started to run, not back toward the cabin, but down the road.

Ryan's heart lurched inside his chest. Every nerve stood on end.

"Lauren, wait!"

He wasn't sure what had come first: his words or his stumbling steps. He was running after her, kicking up snow behind him; but that moment of hesitation, the moment it had taken him to process what was happening, had given Lauren a head start, and the girl was quick. She leaped through the snow like a gazelle, bolting toward the scarf that was encrusted in white, determined to find the girl they were looking for regardless of what may have been out there.

For a split second, Ryan wasn't sure what he was so afraid of. They were making plenty of noise; they'd scare any animal that was out there away. But that sour feeling in the pit of his stomach wouldn't let up. It was a feeling that had saved his a.s.s more than a few times, the most memorable being an avalanche in the French Alps that had buried four boarders but had spared his life. After that, he had never doubted that feeling again. Jane had called it a sixth sense. Premonition. A mental alarm that sounded when something wasn't quite right.

Lauren reached April's scarf and plucked it off the ground with a gloved hand. Ryan slowed his steps a few yards shy of where she stood, both of them searching the trees for its owner. Ryan's breath caught in his throat when he saw that same shadow they had seen earlier shift behind the pines. He froze, realizing just how close it had come to them, but Lauren didn't hesitate. She stepped to the side of the road, the scarf dragging on the ground.

"April?" She took another step forward before a rasping growl stopped her dead.

Ryan's eyes went wide as the shadow breached the perimeter of the trees-not a man, not an animal, a thing, ashen as though it had frozen to death in the cold. Ryan choked on his breath as the creature leaped forward, landing in the center of the road just shy of where Lauren stood, blocking her way back to him. Its long, angular body hunched over as it crouched like a gargoyle, the k.n.o.bs of its spine jutting out of its back, crosshatched by a menagerie of scars. Ryan instinctively stumbled backward, his heart stuttering. Whatever the thing was, it was a good foot taller than him, all sinew and bone.

Lauren let out a scream, but she squelched it fast. She shot Ryan a terrified look, her eyes begging him to tell her what to do. But he couldn't process what he was seeing. This was impossible, like one of those horror movies that made him throw his hands up and proclaim it was all crazy and improbable and it could never happen; how could something be scary if it could never be true? But there it was-a creature standing in the gray daylight as if to mock his skepticism, as if to say, See? Nightmares do exist.

And then, as if to mess with his already blown concept of what was real, that skeletal thing darted away, dodging back into the safety of the trees that lined the road.

Lauren stood frozen, her eyes impossibly wide, her chest heaving beneath her coat.

"f.u.c.king run," he told her, and they both fell into a sprint. His instinct was to save himself, to run ahead and survive, and once his legs started pumping, the impulse to keep running was nearly too strong to fight. He had to get back to the cabin, had to get to safety, had to get to Jane, had to get out of there. But Lauren...he couldn't leave her. This girl. This wonderful, mind-blowing, beautiful girl. Rejecting the urge to keep running toward safety, he slowed enough to twist around, his arm extending out behind him, reaching for Lauren's hand as she stumbled toward him, kicking up snow.

They charged up the driveway, fighting the slope, Ryan pulling Lauren along as she began to lag, her legs sinking deep into the powder. "Hurry up!" he urged. The longer the monster stayed gone, the louder the cacophony of a group moan that rose from the trees. He couldn't believe it. It sounded like there were dozens of them. A dozen of these f.u.c.king nightmares calling one another, announcing that they had found their next meal. Ryan's eyes went wide as the moans grew more insistent, more vicious as they rattled deep within those things' throats. He gave Lauren a yank, spooling his arm around her back as he tried to rush her along.

Lauren stumbled, falling forward, sinking into the thick blanket of snow. He tried to grab her by the arms as she struggled to right herself, their breath coming in quick, quaking gasps. Ryan's jaw dropped when the creature took a flying leap back into the drive, every sinewy muscle in its body p.r.o.nounced beneath a thin sheath of skin. He skittered backward, nearly losing his balance in the process, groping at the girl before him, his mind screaming get out of here, get yourself off this f.u.c.king hill.

Lauren scrambled to her feet as the thing watched from a safe distance away, and for a moment Ryan was mesmerized by the size of its teeth, each one as wide as two fingers put together, tapering off to a terrifying point. Those teeth were predatory, stained by the blood of its kill; but rather than four canines set between two rows of incisors, there were a good dozen fangs jutting out of an impossibly large mouth. The way its maw hung open reminded him of an anglerfish. It was watching them, as though relishing the horror that wafted off them like a pheromone, as though enjoying the cadence of Lauren's quiet, weepy gasps as she struggled to right herself.

Ryan's heart lurched to a stop when the thing squatted deeper into the snow, its muscles rippling beneath hairless gray flesh, a grotesquely wet rumble resonating from deep within its throat. It canted its head to the side, its huge mouth giving it a perpetual smile. Its black marble eyes flashed in the pale morning light.

Midscramble, Lauren froze in place when a second creature stepped out of the shadow of the trees, that same frothy snarl vibrating against the hollow of its throat. This one was closer, having stepped out from the trees less than ten feet away, its soulless eyes fixed on Ryan, its teeth so big they were forever exposed.

Ryan was as rooted in place as Lauren was, both of them suspended in a pocket of breathless horror. But just as the closest hunter was ready to pounce, Lauren's cry pulled the savage's attention away.

"Get away from him!" she screamed. The battle cry would have made sense if Lauren had some sort of weapon to defend herself, but she stood empty-handed, armed with nothing but her own fearlessness.

The creature appeared almost startled by her defiance. It lurched backward, then twisted around and bolted back into the trees. Ryan watched Lauren's determination melt into what could have only been stunned surprise, his own heart clamoring for freedom from his chest. She turned to look at him, bewilderment written on her face. For a split second she almost seemed to smile, proud of herself, but Ryan shook his head.

No.

This wasn't over.

Run.

He reached for her hand, unable to breathe, about to choke on his own pulse as the creature down the slope of the drive launched itself forward.

He heard the thing bolt up behind them.

His eyes locked with Lauren's, her expression frozen in time like a snapshot. But her gaze didn't reflect the horror he felt. Behind wisps of flaxen hair, she looked mystified, as though unable to believe where they were, what was happening, what would inevitably become of them both.

Her hand was torn from his grasp as she was snapped backward. He stared wide-eyed as the thing threw her onto her back, Lauren kicking her legs at the oncoming horror, trying to scare it away with her screams. She planted her foot against one of its bulbous knees-nothing but a ball-shaped joint suspended between two leg bones-jamming her heel against it as hard as she could, but rather than forcing it to stumble, she made it angry instead. Ryan continued to stare as the h.e.l.lion reeled back, its mouth open impossibly wide, and then charged her. Ryan's brain screamed for him to help her while his instincts urged him back up the road. You need a weapon, it shrieked. You can't fight that thing with your bare hands. The creature's jaws snapped just inches from Lauren's face as she shoved it backward with her feet.

Ryan's gaze snagged on the s...o...b..ard on top of Sawyer's Jeep. But the Jeep was downhill, and Lauren and the creature were between him and the car. He turned uphill, started to run again-there were three more on top of the Nissan. If he could get back to the driveway, he'd have something to swing at that f.u.c.king thing.

Lauren gave a bloodcurdling scream.

Ryan's heart ceased to beat.

No, he thought. Nonono!

He reeled around, hardly able to process the scene. There was blood. So much blood. Lauren was still kicking at the thing above her, but with only one leg. Her other leg lay motionless in the crimson snow, detached, the foot twisted at an impossible angle. The creature grabbed her flailing limb, crouched low to the ground in a pool of gore-drenched snow, and, in a move that was a gruesome imitation of a s.e.x act, lifted Lauren's hips before burying its mouth in the ma.s.sive, gushing wound below her pelvis. Its black eyes locked onto Ryan as it fed, challenging him as sucking noises punctuated the short-lived silence, broken by Lauren's final scream.