The Darkest Embrace (5 page)

“It’s so cold all of a sudden,” she said, just as Max shot off the couch and pushed her to the side so fiercely that she stumbled.

The pain in her ankle flared again, another sharp pain from the edge of the coffee table biting into her calf compounding it. Jessie pinwheeled her arms, confused. As she caught her balance, she realized Max wasn’t shoving her out of the way; he was pushing her behind him to protect her.

The front door was wide open, the cold night wind and rain blowing inside.

* * *

“Maybe the wind blew it open,” Jessie said from behind him.

“It wasn’t the wind. I saw her.” Max checked the front door lock again, but couldn’t shake the chill. “It was my ex, Jessie. I know it.”

Jessie poured them both mugs of hot cocoa she’d made on the stove. She added a plate of cheese and crackers Max had imagined them eating on a picnic blanket with a bottle of wine, not at three in the morning off chipped plates while a storm raged outside. He wasn’t hungry, but he sat when she gestured and sipped from the warm mug.

Jessie stood behind him, her arms around him and her cheek pressed to his. She said nothing, which he appreciated. He could feel the rise and fall of her breath against his back.

“All I wanted,” Max said miserably, “was to have this great weekend away with you.”

She nuzzled him. “Parts of this have been a great weekend, honey.”

The pet name warmed him more than the hot cocoa. Jessie had always been affectionate with him. Kind since the beginning. Open, that’s how he thought of her. A hugger, a kisser, the kind of woman who’d squeeze your shoulder if she thought you needed a little boost.

He turned his face to kiss her. “Stalked by some weird thing and my batshit crazy ex? Doesn’t sound so great.”

Jessie’s low laugh tickled his ear. “How could it be her, all the way out here?”

“It’s her,” he said grimly. “And I wouldn’t put it past her to have done all of it.”

Jessie kissed his cheek and sat at the table, still close enough to nudge his knee with hers. “You think she’s the one who slashed the tires?”

“She’s done it before.”

“Wow.” Jessie frowned and pulled her mug closer, warming her hands on it.

Max swallowed the sour taste of memories. “Her name’s Patrice. She was intense. I liked it at first, but after a while, she got out of hand. I know she had issues that had nothing to do with me, but I didn’t when I got together with her. I shouldn’t have slept with her because that escalated everything.”

Jessie didn’t make a joke of anything, didn’t laugh. Her dark eyes wide with sympathy, she covered his hand with hers and linked fingers with him. She brought his hand to her lips and kissed the knuckles, one by one, before pressing his palm to her mouth. She closed his fingers over the kiss and smiled at him.

“You’re so beautiful,” Max blurted. “You know that?”

Jessie pretended to preen. “Oh, yeah, I know.”

He kissed her mouth, holding her close, breathing in her scent and taking her warmth. He’d kept everything inside him locked up for so long he wasn’t sure he could let go. But he knew that if he didn’t tell Jessie everything about what had happened with Patty, he’d never be able to.

“It could’ve been worse,” he said. “The thing with my sister. The pictures were blurry, and we found them and got them taken down really fast. What made it so bad wasn’t that she’d conned Tina into taking pictures like that and sending them to a stranger, but that Patty had taken the pictures herself. She’d stalked her, peeking through the windows, following her into the changing room at the lake when Tina went swimming with her friends. That sort of thing. She tried to make my sister’s life hell because I broke up with her.”

Jessie’s lip curled, but she kept her hand linked tight with his. “What a bitch.”

“Yeah. I had no idea. I mean, I knew she was a little...off, but not like that.”

“When did she try to run you over with her car?”

“The day I told her I didn’t want to see her anymore. I didn’t break up with her the best way, I know that.” Max swallowed another rush of bitterness at the admission. “I could’ve been nicer about it.”

“Oh, Max, there’s no good way to break up with someone.” Jessie kissed his hand again, pressing it to her smile as she shook her head. “And I can’t imagine you ever being anything but nice.”

“I told her I thought she needed to get help. And I did think that,” Max added. “I mean, I really thought she needed like, serious psychiatric care. I should’ve helped her. Taken her to a doctor maybe....”

“Did she want to go?”

Startled by the question, he blinked. “What?”

“Did she want to go for help?”

“No. She said she was fine, that I was the crazy one. I hadn’t called her crazy, not to her face,” Max said. Shame heated him at the memory. “But she might’ve overheard me saying it about her.”

Jessie nodded but said nothing.

“That’s when she tried to run me over with the car. I jumped out of the way in plenty of time. There wasn’t a chance she could actually have hit me.”

“But she tried.”

He nodded. “Yeah, she tried.”

“After I found out what she’d done to my sister, I went to her house to confront her. She lived in this big old place that had been her grandparents’ house. Even when we were together, I never went over there. She always came to my place. Or—” he paused, remembering, feeling sick “—hotels. Places like that.”

He sneaked a peek at Jessie’s face, expecting her to look angry or annoyed or at the very least, carefully neutral in the way he’d learned over the years usually meant a woman was actually pissed-off. She only looked concerned. Still, he hated saying this to her. Hated having her know.

“I’d never been inside, but once I got in, I could see why she’d never invited me over. It was trashed on the inside. Papers and garbage everywhere, furniture overturned. It stunk like cat pee, though I didn’t see any cats, and she’d never mentioned having any pets. I was pissed off, and I went into the kitchen, calling out her name, trying to get her to come out. That’s when she hit me with the frying pan.”

“Oh. Ouch. Oh, God, your poor face.” She touched it gently as though that could take away the pain.

“She missed, mostly.” Somehow, Max found a grin for her. “Glanced off my head and hit my shoulder and back. I was lucky. She definitely might’ve killed me. Good thing she had such bad aim.”

“Good thing.” Jessie kissed him softly. “No wonder you never wanted to talk about it.”

But there was more, and even though he didn’t want to share it, he had to.

“I was so mad at her when she hit me that I hit her back. Hard. I punched her in the face.” Max forced himself to look into Jessie’s eyes. “Broke her nose. She went down right there on the kitchen floor, blood gushing all over, and I just stood there. I couldn’t believe I’d hit her. And then she got up and went for a kitchen knife.”

In Jessie’s face, Max saw no judgment. Only silent encouragement. He went on.

“She was so much smaller than me, there’s no way she could’ve really hurt me. But she had a knife, and I just...reacted. I hit her again. When she ran away upstairs, I followed her. I swear, Jessie, I was just going after her to make sure she wasn’t going to hurt herself. There was already so much blood. I couldn’t tell if she was hurt worse than it seemed. I followed her up the stairs, and she attacked me again. We struggled. She managed to hit me in the face, this time with some piece of junk she grabbed from a pile on the stairs. I was woozy, couldn’t tell what was going on. I pushed her away and she fell...on the knife. Then down the stairs.”

Jessie’s eyes went wide, her mouth slightly open. “Oh. God. She died?”

“When I managed to get myself together, I looked for her, but she was gone.”

“The monster never dies the first time,” Jessie said.

Max shook his head. “She wasn’t...if I’d been a little nicer, if I’d helped her...”

“Hey—” Jessie took his face in her hands and centered his gaze on her “—you didn’t know what would happen. You’re not responsible for her issues. What happened to her?”

“The police found her wandering a few blocks away. She was detained for psychiatric evaluation. She got put on meds. We, um...we dropped the charges against her,” Max said. “And she never raised any against me. The last time I saw her, she seemed much better. She’d put on some weight, looked healthier. She was with some guy in a diner. She didn’t see me, and I didn’t say anything to her.”

“So what makes you think she’s here now?”

It was a legitimate question, one unfortunately he had an answer for. “Because every year since we split up, she’s sent me a birthday card. The same one. She must’ve bought a box of them or something. They all have a giant number one on the front.”

“Like for a first birthday?”

“Like she’s the only one for me,” Max explained. “It’s what she always used to say to me. ‘I’m the only one you’ll ever really love.’ But I didn’t love her, Jessie. I never even came close.”

Jessie shuddered. “Creepy. Wow.”

“You’re the first girl I’ve dated since Patty. I thought enough time had passed. Last year, she didn’t send a card. I figured maybe she was over it, but I guess not.”

“You think she followed us all the way out here? Slashed our tires? You think she killed Carrie? You think she’s the thing in the woods?”

He didn’t want to think so, but... “Yeah. I think maybe.”

Jessie shook her head. “Honey, there’s no way. First of all, how would she even know about this trip? You kept it such a secret. Even Kelly didn’t know. And you saw that thing. Whatever it was, it’s not a person.”

Something knocked on the front door.

Chapter 5

The sharp rap of knuckles on the front door startled Max so much that his hand jerked, knocking the mug of cooling cocoa to the floor, where it smashed. Jessie yelped, but he was already out of his seat and heading for the front door. Max yanked it open to the night outside. The rain had stopped, but chilly air swirled in, making Jessie shiver.

“Who is it?” she cried. It had to be a person, her rational mind insisted. A creature, a thing, a monster or even an inbred, freakish animal wouldn’t knock like that. It had to be a person. “Is it Freddy?”

“Son of a bitch!”

Jessie, avoiding the shattered porcelain, went after him, but Max was already on the front porch. By the time she got to the door, he’d pulled on the boots he’d left there the night before. In another half minute he was off the porch and in the front yard, heading for the trees.

“You stay here!”

“Max, wait! Where are you going?”

He jerked a thumb behind him but didn’t turn. “I saw her, Jessie. I told you I saw her! She ran off into the woods! You stay here.”

Even with no shoes or coat, Jessie still considered running after him. She paused, though, watching him head for the tree line. It would be stupid of her to follow him without getting dressed and getting a weapon, because no matter what he’d seen, it was better to have protection. As she turned to head back into the house, she saw what had convinced him so strongly that he was running off after his ex.

On the front door, painted in thick mud, was a giant number one.

“Oh, shit.” Jessie didn’t waste another second. Inside the cabin she found socks, her still-wet and muddy boots, her jeans still damp from yesterday, but better than the soft pajama pants she wore. She pulled a heavy sweatshirt over her head, but when it came time to get her ankle into the boot, she was stumped.

It hurt. A lot. She did it anyway, with a low, gritting cry as she seated her foot into the boot and laced it tight.

She took the rake she’d used yesterday. Also a big kitchen knife from the block on the counter. The irony of that wasn’t lost on her.

The sun had come up while she and Max slept. Even though the sky was still gray when he’d run off, by the time Jessie was finished getting ready to go after him, the sun had started to burn away the clouds. The air was still crisp, a perfect autumn day. It looked like the rain was going to hold off. With the knife strapped to her belt and the rake in one hand, her tightly laced boot providing sufficient support for her ankle, Jessie was ready to kick some ass.

No bitch, she thought, was going to get between her and Max.

In the front yard, she found the gouges his boots had left in the mud. But before she could follow them, the chugging, guttering mumble of an engine turned her toward the back of the house. Freddy came around the side on a battered four-wheeler, his wide grin totally out of place with everything else that had gone on over the past day.

“Hiya! Great day. Just coming to check on youse since the bridge washed out.” He pronounced washed like it had a letter R in it. Freddy paused. “You okay?”

“No.” Jessie pointed at the Suburban. “Something slashed our tires. And there’s something in the woods. And...Freddy...”

She didn’t know how to tell him right out that his sister might have been killed. No matter how creepy Carrie had been, Jessie was still hoping for the best, that she was okay. “We found something in the stream by the waterfall when the thing was coming after us. Carrie’s clothes. Some of her hair. I think whatever attacked us might have hurt her. Or worse.”

Freddy looked her over, his gaze taking in the knife and the rake, and maybe something in her face. His cheeks drained of color. “Carrie?”

“Your sister.”

“Oh, shit. Shit, shit!” Freddy hopped off the four-wheeler and ran to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. “What was it? What did you see?”

“Her clothes, for sure. Her hair,” Jessie repeated, trying to think about what she’d seen in the stream. No blood, but...”

“It wasn’t my sister. Carrie’s been dead for years.”

“No.” Jessie shook her head. “She was here when we woke up yesterday. She made us breakfast, and it was pretty freaking creepy, let me tell you. She told us not to go in the woods, but we didn’t listen. And then we went hiking to the waterfall and we were going to have a picnic, but this...thing, this huge thing came crashing out after us, and we ran—”

Freddy let go of her and started pacing. His boots squelched in the churned mud, obscuring Max’s boot prints and anything else that might have left its mark. “I thought youse’d be okay. It’s early yet, too early...but I guess if it really needed something...maybe I was wrong about the timing...”

“Freddy!” Jessie’s shout turned him. “Calm down. What the hell are you talking about?”

Freddy’s gaze was haunted. “What did you see?”

“I’m not sure.” Jessie paused, trying to put all the pieces into place. “What did I see?”

Freddy paced again, pulling at his hair and muttering. It took Jessie grabbing his arm to get him to stop. “My grandma always called it the Greedy One.”

“So...it’s not a person?”

“Not anymore.”

Jessie’s stomach turned. “What is it, then?”

“Don’t know. It lives in the woods all around here.” Freddy looked shifty. He backed away, hands up when he saw her expression. “But it’s not supposed to be hungry now! It’s too soon!”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jessie’s fingers gripped the rake handle so hard that her knuckles turned white. “Seriously? You’re trying to tell me there is really some...thing...in the woods and it eats people?”

“It doesn’t eat them! Not like you think. I mean...it takes them. Yes, it does. It needs people. It’s greedy for them, but it’s not...it doesn’t eat them. It just...takes what it needs from them.”

“Which is what exactly?”

Freddy’s eyes darted back and forth again, his mouth turning down. “Essence.”

Jessie slumped, her knees weak and stomach still churning. “Like...a soul?”

“No. Real essence. Um...it’s greedy, hungry for...” Freddy made a familiar, if off-color, gesture: a forefinger inserted into the hole made by his other fist, in and out.

“Sex? It wants sex?”

Freddy looked embarrassed.

Jessie’s laughter was so far from humorous that she was surprised it didn’t come out as a shriek. “It wants to what, fuck us?”

“It wants that feeling. The rush. An essence,” Freddy quickly said. “It feeds on that. It seduces its prey and sucks it dry.”

“It kills what it feeds on?”

“Eventually,” Freddy said. “It can keep them alive for a really long time.”

“Oh, God.” Jessie started for the woods, ignoring Freddy and the mud and everything but following Max’s boot prints. “Max!”

“What you saw wasn’t my sister!” Freddy shouted after her, but Jessie had no more time for him. No time for this.

She needed to get to Max before whatever had led him into the woods did.

* * *

The fall of auburn hair was the same. The slight build, the freckled arms, hands with long fingers. The face, though, was only barely Patty. Unformed, the eyes the wrong shape but the right color, the mouth a lipless slash. The thing in front of him was a monster trying to wear Patty’s face and body, and failing.

Every part of Max ached. He’d followed the monster straight into the woods and into a ditch lined with sharpened sticks and boulders. Nothing had punctured him too badly, thank God, but he was a mess of bruises and scrapes. He may have cracked a few ribs, too. Woozy from the pain, he’d been aware of something grabbing him by the back of the collar and dragging him through the woods to this slanting, ramshackle shelter built against the side of a cliff. It wasn’t quite a cave, though much of it was set into a huge crack in the rock. The rest of it had been constructed of broken trees and woven vines.

Now he sat propped against the rock, his shirt opened to the waist. The thing had been kissing him all over, its wet, slurping mouth leaving a trail of slime along his bare skin. The thought of it made him heave, but he couldn’t move even to turn his face and spit. Something in the saliva, Max thought blearily. Something like a venom that half paralyzed him and, disgustingly, acted as sort of an aphrodisiac as well. It burned, but there was no denying it also sent another sort of fire through him.

The Patty-thing shuffled in front of him, its hair obscuring that awful face. The body, from the back, bore no resemblance to Max’s ex-girlfriend. Broad, bony shoulders, the spine clearly outlined, knob for knob. Jutting hip bones. Sexless. The arms, too long and stretching longer. When the thing stood, its head brushed the makeshift roof.

It hadn’t spoken a single word, but now it whispered, “Darling.”

Max choked and tried to turn his head when the thing came close to his mouth and pried open his lips with its bony fingers to give him the darkest embrace. The long, slick stroke of its meaty tongue sent ripples of revulsion through him, but after a minute he found himself relaxing into it. Not accepting it, simply...unable to resist...

* * *

Jessie was no tracker. She’d gone hunting with her dad once in a while, more as an excuse for both of them to hike into the woods together and enjoy some one-on-one time rather than an actual hunt. She couldn’t remember her dad ever coming home with anything he’d killed. Still, he’d taught her how to look for signs something had gone through the forest before them—rubbed bits of trees, crushed grass, gouged earth.

Following Max wasn’t hard at all. He hadn’t been trying to hide his tracks, had left huge patches of bent branches and footprints. At least for the first few hundred feet into the woods. Then the trail, such as it was, became harder to find. With the ground so soft from the storm, she’d thought it would be easier; but in the cover of the deep shadows, everything got harder to see.

She listened instead.

Head up, muffling the sound of her own panting breath as best she could, Jessie strained her ears for any sound. Max’s voice, the crack and rustle of underbrush. Anything. There was nothing but the far-off rush of water and the beat of her heart in her ears.

She stopped herself from running pell-mell through the woods, screaming his name. That wouldn’t help, and might end up with her going in the wrong direction. The need to find him was staggering enough to knock her to her knees, but Jessie kept herself centered, focused.

The half-assed story Freddy had told her would have been completely unbelievable if Jessie hadn’t always harbored a secret fascination with the strange and unknown—and if she hadn’t seen at least part of the thing with her own eyes. Ultimately, it didn’t matter what it was. Jessie was going to find Max.

She gave in, at last, to the need to scream his name. Once, then again, even louder. She put everything she had into it, let her voice rise up and up until it cracked.

“Jessie!”

She heard but didn’t see him. “Max! Where are you?”

She turned at the sound of rustling brush, her rake raised and her hand on the knife. A moment later, a familiar black-and-blue plaid shirt emerged from the trees. Jessie let out a low cry and limped toward him. She was in his arms immediately, her face buried against his chest.

“Hey, now,” Max said. “It’s okay.”

Jessie looked at him. “What happened?”

His mouth worked and brow furrowed, but it took him a while to find the words. Blood had crusted along his hairline and in one corner of his mouth, though she couldn’t see any wounds. Max shook his head.

“It was Patty. I told you. I saw her, and I went after her.”

“What did you do to her?” Jessie touched his scalp with gentle fingers, looking for the source of the blood.

Max ducked from her touch. “Nothing. She went into the woods. I couldn’t see her. Let’s go back to the cabin. Get something to eat. I’m starving.”

“Wait a minute.” Jessie pushed onto her tiptoes to get a better look, but again he ducked away from her. “Stay still. I want to see where you’re hurt.”

“I’m not hurt.”

She hugged him again. “Thank God. Freddy had this crazy story about something in the woods, some sort of...thing...”

Max’s arms went around her, squeezing. “Freddy.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t have believed it except, you know...we saw something.” A chill scratched at her when she thought of the monstrous, misshapen shadow. “I don’t know what it was, but it was definitely weird.”

“It was Patty,” Max told her in a rough voice. “It was Patty.”

Jessie looked at him again, uneasy. “Maybe you should sit down. You look pale.”

Max kissed her. His mouth pried at hers, his hands roaming up and down her back until they settled on her hips and pulled her close. His grip was too tight, hurting. His tongue stabbed at her.

Heat spread through her; desire rose unexpectedly and fiercely. Burning. Crackling through her nerves like an electric shock, the sheer force of it weakened her knees so that she sagged against him.

Max’s mouth moved from hers to her throat, nipping and licking. One hand went between her legs, pressing her through the denim. She went crazy for his touch, arching, an inarticulate moan escaping her.

The world swam.

Max’s hands dug into her hair. He breathed hard into her ear, panting, his breath hot and somehow thick. He moved against her. The press of his teeth stung too much, too hard, and although Jessie sometimes didn’t mind a little pain, this was too much. All of it was—What did he want to do—fuck her right here in the middle of the woods with monster and ex-girlfriend and Freddy as witnesses?

“Max...”

He pressed her harder, his mouth working on her neck. Sucking. She was drunk on the pleasure, head spinning and stomach churning like she might puke or pass out.

This was wrong.

Then she realized what it was. Max smelled of fabric softener and soap and cologne, but the man mauling her throat reeked like a wet basement. Jessie put her hands on his chest and pushed, but he clung to her like a burr.

What had Freddy said? It was hard to think, exactly like she was hammered, though Jessie hadn’t been truly drunk since she was a freshman in college. She got a knee up between them, pressing his balls but not quite shoving hard enough to get him off her.