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I scramble backward, crab-walking away from the body until my spine slams hard against the rough bark of an oak tree. I pull my knees tightly to my chest, the bloody knife still clutched in a death grip.

I’m shaking. A violent, full-body convulsion. The adrenaline lashes through me like millions of shards of broken glass. I can’t stop my teeth from chattering, the metal ball of my tongue piercing clicking erratically against my enamel.

Crack. Footsteps crash through the brush, tearing through the undergrowth. A figure bursts into the clearing. It’s him. The snarky, tattooed meat stick.

He stops dead in his tracks—and takes it all in a second. The dead man bleeding out. And me sitting against the tree, drenched, black hair plastered to my face, eyeliner smeared like war paint across my cheeks, covered in mud and blood, clutching a knife like I’m waiting for the corpse to pull a zombie.

The guy doesn’t move. He stands there, the rain soaking his own clothes, scanning me, assessing, calculating. The silence stretches, heavy, vibrating with tension, broken only by the sound of the downpour.

I swallow hard, tasting blood and rain. I gaze at the body, then at the man standing in the shadows. My lips twist into a grim, shaking smirk. “Welp,” I rasp. “On a scale of one to serial killer, I guess I’m a ten.”

CHAPTER 2

Gage

If she’s a ten on a serial killer scale, I am unequivocally an eleven.

After all, I’ve earned every red flag flapping in the storm around us.

But the man bleeding into the mud at her feet was a much uglier kind of monster. No discipline. No standards. No sense of occasion. A man crawling out of the dark like the world owed him a woman’s flesh and terror. Hands and teeth and entitlement.

Amateur hour, honestly.

He ordered “helpless victim” from the menu. Too bad the chef sent out “feral goth girl with a folding knife.” Tragic mix-up.

“H-he tri-tried t-to ra⁠—”

“I know,” I say quietly, kneeling before her.

She shuts her mouth.

I crouch a few feet away, careful not to move too fast. Not when she’s still holding the bloody knife. Probably with a good dose of female adrenaline running through her veins. Much stronger than the male version. Women can lift cars to save a child. Men audition for Jackass. But I digress.

Her knuckles are stark white beneath the blood.

“I heard you screaming,” I add.

It’s not quite relief. But her spine loosens, her shoulders sinking from her ears. It’s more like her body has been waiting to confirm the horror happened outside her head.

Her breath hitches. I observe her hands. Then she drops the knife and leans forward, frantically scrubbing her palms against the wet ground.

Once. Twice. Harder.

Mud smears her palms now. The rain thins the blood into little rivers of pink. She rubs harder like she can scrape the last five minutes off herself.

Nope. Absolutely not.

I move before she tears herself open. I’m not opposed to blood, obviously, but I prefer hers on the inside. Call me old-fashioned. Now, I’m directly in front of her, close enough that her wide blue-violet eyes snap to mine. I catch her shoulders.

“Repeat after me.” My voice is steady, practiced. “Three. Fifty-nine. Seven. Eighty-three. Eleven.”

Her dark brows pull together. “Wh-what?”

“Three. Fifty-nine. Seven. Eighty-three. Eleven.”

“I don’t⁠—”

“Say them.”