Page 132 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“You have ten minutes, Lillith,” he says, his lips brushing against mine. “Let’s hope those ‘fuck me’ heels are steady enough to give me a worthwhile challenge. Because I want to work for my prize tonight.”

ㅤ

The stretch of land around the pond is not well suited for fuck-me heels at all. I took them off three minutes into my head start, and I can’t help but feel that I waited too long to do so. I’m full of delicious food and my body hums with an intoxicating mixture of arousal and fear. I’ve been hunted before. Last year, at Beltane. But the way Damien leaned against the car with his arms crossed as I departed from him lingers lurid and ominous in my mind as my tights catch on wood chips and acorns and soft, fat pads of moss.

This property isn’t quite as wild as untamed forest, but it’s not kept like a Del Lune park. There are no manicured landscapes, no tastefully placed stones, no clearings perfect for picnics. It’s kept beautiful with magic in the wild way the portal to The Buried City gives way to bioluminescent caves. Brambles of blackberries laden with fat fruits block this or that way I’d like to go. Thick, unbridled arteries of tree roots crisscross the ground, making me stumble. I slide down supple mounds of mud and moss, and before I know it I am filthy and sweaty and breathing hard.

Twigs snap and send my heart to racing. I can’t tell if it’s snapped under the arch of my foot or the sole of Damien’s shoe. Every time, I stop where I am, like a doe, looking around me to find the threat, unsure if my eyes are blind to his camouflage, or if I’m being paranoid.

I wonder how long it’s been when the pale glow of the pond makes itself known. I can’t remember how long it’s taken me to walk here in the past. Ten minutes? Fifteen? Half an hour?

What if Damien is lost? What if I didn’t drop the wards enough for him?

I wonder this as I round the pond and vanish deeper into the trees, stepping through arachnean curtains of willow branches and ducking beneath dewy spiderwebs long abandoned by their architects.

What if he already gave up on finding me?

I look back over my shoulder, scanning everything I’ve left in my wake. Panic settles in. Maybe Damien really is lost?

When I look at the path ahead of me, he’s suddenly there.

I freeze, my mind blue-screening.

He’s... shirtless. And he’s changed his shoes. He’s wearing combat boots I did’t realize he owned. I saw him put that bag in the car before we left. I took him at his word when he said it was filled with blankets. For stargazing. But, he’s got leather gloves on, now. I feel stupid for being so naive.

He’s leaning against the gnarled trunk of a tree only a few feet away from me, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket, smacking on the palm of his hand and flipping it, repeating the action.

“You smoke?” I blurt stupidly.

He tears the plastic off of the pack, carefully depositing it back into his pocket before pulling a lighter out of the same pocket. He bites a cigarette out of the pack and strikes the flint of the lighter. His face glows in the lighter’s flame as the cherry of the cigarette burns red, reflecting in the black pits of his blown pupils.

He places the lighter and pack back into his pocket before grasping the cigarette between his thumb and index finger and taking a long drag. I watch as the white wrapping paper vanishes beneath the ember—as the ash goes silver and falls onto the wet dirt under his boots.

His chest expands, his abs contracting before he billows out a haze of smoke that disperses into ribbons of flotsam, the smell is acrid and enticing all at once. His eyes burn with cold fire; branding me like a stick of incense quenched upon the delicate skin beneath my collar bone.

He takes one more deep drag before stamping out his cigarette against the pale wood of the tree trunk.

“Run.”

It feels almost foreign when it hits my ears. A single word uttered, filled with smoke and fire and dread. And my response is animal. I am just wet feet and sharp nails and hard breath as I tear through a lattice of ivy, heading the direction of the rising moon.

Damien’s boots are heavy behind me, but slow, and as I run, they get quieter. I’m putting distance between us. My lungs ache and my stomach cramps, so I stop behind a wide-trunked oak, pressing my back against it as I stop to catch my breath. I have one stiletto heel grasped in each hand, the sharp point of each wielded like a weapon. For a long time I can only hear the sound of my breath sawing out of me. I swallow and force myself to quiet, inhaling deeply and letting the exhale out through tight lips.

Something lifts my hair. A stab of fresh terror takes over as I yelp and stumble back from the tree. My heel catches a soft bed of moss and I tumble onto my backside. Damien laughs, the sound cruel as he drops to one knee; he grasps my ankle in one large hand, dragging me through mud and dead leaves toward him.

“No!” I cry.

“No?” He laughs again as he grasps at my other ankle while I try to kick him. When he manages to brace his other hand around it and still my legs, I don’t think. I just panic and chuck one of my shoes right at his head.

It strikes true and he lets out a string of curses as he drops both of my feet. I don’t even stop to check on him. Right now, he’s hunting me and I need to flee. My feet slip in mud as I skitter upright, I run and run and run. I don’t even know where I’m going, I just go.

But I’m small. And I’m tired. And Damien has the stamina of a fucking marathon runner. It’s only a few minutes before I hear the thud of his boots behind me again.

I look behind me and it’s a mistake. He’s so close. If he decides he wants to be really mean, he could just grasp my hair and I’d have to stop. I suddenly regret making my hair longer for the date. It’s just a liability now.

I look ahead and see trees packed close together, just enough space for me to squeeze through. It’ll buy me a little time. My hands tremble as I slip sideways through between two lithe trunks, into a clearing. But I see at the same time that Damien finds it, a parting in the dense foliage. He comes barreling through it, moonlight coming odd off the hard planes of his muscle, off the faint violet of the bruise already forming around his eye socket.

He’s not laughing. He’s furious. I run, but the silky fabric of my dress catches and tangles in the thorns of another blackberry bramble.