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“I said get up!” he barked, snatching my arm and yanking me to my feet. When I pulled my hand away, he held both his up, but that indignation remained. “Look. I don’tknowwhy, but I’m not going to let any of those fuckers get you.”
I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out his logic. It didn’t make sense. If it was anything like this pull I felt toward him, I didn’t know how to reconcile who he was anymore. This was no time for attraction. This was life and death. “That’s the whole point.”
His mouth pulled tight, eyebrows angled. He wasn’t taking any more shit from me. “What’s the whole point?”
“Even if we kill everyone in this place together, it’ll still be down to you against me in the end.”
He groaned, running his hand over the top of his head. “I know that, princess, but we’ll worry about that when we get there.”
The nickname triggered a hot wave of fury through me. I clenched my jaw and glared up at him. “Don’t.”
“Oh, I can see how this relationship is going to go. Don’t what?”
I pointed at him, ignoring the demented man making ridiculous insinuations, and stepped closer. “Do not call me princess. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve been through. I didn’t ask for you to force yourself on me like this.”
He stared at me for a moment, glowing red eyes wide with enthusiasm. Subtle twitches in his eyes and cheeks betrayed a storm of thoughts despite his practiced mask of insanity. Slowly, the corners of his lips seemed to curl impossibly wide from ear to ear. “If I was forcing myself on you, princess, you wouldn’t be complaining so damn much. So keep your mouth shut, or I’ll find a way to muffle it.”
I glared at him, my body temperature boiling with fury, but I tried to focus on keeping my breathing steady.
If he could temper himself, I would, too.
I only needed to stick by him for a while—until we made it to the top twenty-five, maybe.
And with him by my side, I had a better chance of taking out Ivan.
I’d have to find a box of matches, though.
Why hadn’t I brought any?
Chapter Twenty: Neon Nightmares
Tess
After stepping over thethree guys Reaper had dropped at the door, we crept down the hallway, our footsteps muffled by the thick layer of dust coating the floorboards. Each creak of the wood beneath our feet echoed ominously in the stillness of the haunted mansion.
Staying light on our toes, our senses heightened to the slightest sound or movement. The air was tinged with the metallic tang of blood and dust.
Moonlight filtered through the occasional window, flitting across the walls like specters in the night, leaving us wrapped in darkness.
In the distance, the faint sounds of a skirmish echoed through the corridors. A shout here, a thump there, followed by the ominous silence of the mansion calling for its eldritch. I strained my ears, listening for any sign of danger lurking around each corner.
Despite the adrenaline coursing through my veins, an undeniable sense of dread charged the air. Every step took us deeper into the unknown, where danger lurked inside every contestant, and every pathway held the promise of a new threat.
Keeping a step behind Reaper as we inched toward a T junction in the hallway, the temperature plummeted, like walking into a freezer. Goosebumps spread down my arms.
A large mirror loomed at the end of the hallway, its surface speckled with dried blood and a thin layer of dust, obscuring the clarity and distorting our reflections into twisted caricatures of ourselves.
I held my breath. As we drew closer, the sight became more and more unsettling. My reflection mimicked my gestures in an exaggerated way, with an eerie delay that sent my pulse into overdrive. Each step forward sunk me further into a surreal nightmare.
With only a few more steps, the figure greeting me was clearly anything but reassuring. I stared at my reflection, pupils dilated with terror, hands waving frantically over my head as if trying to ward off an unseen threat. Reaper held his hand out, holding me back.
With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I watched him turn to face the direction of my reflection’s gaze, prepared to fight, and peer down the hallway to the left. The shadows swelled, swallowing the faint light filtering through the windows and leaving nothing but darkness stretching out into the unknown.
Tense with anticipation, he nodded, urging me on with a subtle hand motion, his fingers curling in the silence. With each step forward, the floorboards groaned, adding to the tension like a suffocating fog.
I let out a slow, steadying breath, barely audible over the ghostly echoes of the haunted mansion and with one last glance back to the mirror, my heart skipped a beat. My reflection, head thrown back in laughter, alongside Reaper’s incongruent reflection, mocking me.
As our gazes met in the mirror’s surface, a chill swept through me. The evil reflected in her eyes—a dark glimmer of malevolence— reached out to coat my heart in ice. For a moment, the world around me blurred and shifted, and I was left wondering if the mirror held more than just tricks—if it captured the very essence of our fear and uncertainty.
