He woke some nights with the sound of her laughter in his head. He began to dream about her constantly. No other woman seemed to satisfy him and eventually, every fantasy he had was about her. He wanted her under him. He wanted to hear her screams, although he honestly didn’t know if he wanted to hurt her or pleasure her.
He kept in touch with her because he had to. He couldn’t let the relationship go, although he knew he was obsessing over her. When she’d emailed him and told him she was coming to his part of the Carpathian Mountains, looking for a particular stone or gem, he was certain she’d been just as obsessed with him. He’d been elated. Wild with joy. The dreams had turned so erotic he could barely eat, and he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
She couldn’t even tell him what kind of rock she was looking for, only that she knew vaguely where it was and she’d be able to find it. What kind of crap was that? Of course she was coming to see him. She had to be. She’d thought of him the way he thought of her. But then, all the way up the mountain, she’d played her stupid little game, teasing him, acting like they were just friends and nothing else.
She was nothing more than a damn cock tease and he was going to give her a lesson. He was a little sorry the others had followed him up. He still wasn’t certain he wanted to share Teagan with anyone, let alone kill her. But if he did, maybe the obsessive thoughts would stop and he could get on with his life.
A low moan came out of the night. Very low, a woman’s soft cry as if she was in pain. He shivered. He’d always liked that particular note and he worked hard to get it when he had a woman at his mercy. He paced around the fire, his eyes narrowed, looking into the thick fog.
Was Teagan out there? Hurt? The moan rose again, this time closer. The note played through his body like a violin might, soft and stroking. He stopped and stared directly toward the sound. His heart accelerated. “Teagan? Are you there?”
Silence met his call. He waited. He wasn’t going to step away from the fire, not with such heavy fog. He could barely see his hand in front of his face. The gray wrap of vapor seemed much thicker than normal, dense, a live wall of mist surrounding him.
Armend shook his head as fingers of fear crept down his spine. He’d hiked the mountains his entire life. They were his personal playground. He wasn’t ever afraid. Still, his hand dropped to the radio. Once again he didn’t pull it off his belt, but he needed the reassurance of it.
The moan came again, muffled, but definitely closer. It had to be Teagan. She was afraid of him.
“Teagan, just come toward the fire. We’ll talk it all out. Are you injured?”
He could almost taste her. Finally. He had her. Elation swept through him. His body hardened with anticipation. He’d have a long night alone with her and decide in the morning whether he’d share her with his friends and then kill her or just keep her for himself. There were a lot of places he could stash her and make her dependent on him. That might be fun. Hold her prisoner, give her food and water when he felt like it, force her to need him. His fantasy took off in his mind, and he really liked that idea.
Something moved in the fog, and his gaze immediately riveted there. The fog swirled, seemed to come alive. He saw a woman’s face pressing toward him through the gray vapor. No, the mist actually formed the face. He recognized his first kill. She swayed and moaned, staring at him with accusing eyes.
He gasped and stumbled back, nearly falling into the fire. All around him, in the tight ring of fog, faces began to appear. Women. Moaning. Calling to him softly, arms outstretched first in pleading and then to take him into the bank of fog with them.
Everywhere Armend looked, the women were there, surrounding him. Eyes on him. Arms out. Faces accusing. The sound of their moans continued to rise until he couldn’t hear anything else. Until the sound penetrated his bones, pierced his organs and frayed every nerve he had. He’d forgotten a couple of them, but each had been his victim over the years, his and his friends’.
“You’re not real,” he muttered. Then he raised his voice and shouted at them. “You’re not real.” He found his rock beside the fire and sat down because his legs trembled so much he couldn’t stand any longer. It wasn’t real. His mind was playing tricks on him.
Jerking the radio from his belt, he pressed one hand to his ears in an effort to drown out the terrible moan. He would never be able to hear that particular note again as long as he lived. “Giles, come in, over.”
Static answered him, and then faintly, very faintly, he heard a woman’s voice calling to him—over the radio.
Join us, Armend. Come to us. Forever is a such a short time to spend with us.
He dropped the radio into the dirt and kicked it away from him. “Shut up!” he yelled. “All of you, shut up! You’re dead.”
The moment he uttered the words you’re dead, those faces in the fog turned to skeletons, horrible bones with teeth and sunken holes for eyes. All of them. Surrounding him, bony fingers reaching for him.
The wind picked up and the women moaned louder, the sound making him feel sick. He couldn’t escape the terrible penetrating moaning note of pain, and now it was consuming his body, bit by bit, as if it were eating him alive. He could feel the reverberation biting into his flesh, taking him, wanting him to join the women in the fog.
He pressed both hands to his ears, trying to drown out the sound. The moan was physical, ripping and tearing at his body like teeth. The sound of their bones only added to his mounting terror. He circled the fire, trying to find a way to escape, but the ghosts had him completely surrounded.
Ghosts. He took a deep breath. The women were dead. He was alive. They weren’t real. They couldn’t come out of the fog and drag him into it. Very carefully he backed away from the few wisps that strayed from the main wall of dense gray matter. He found his rock again and slowly sank back down. He didn’t take his eyes from the thick fog bank as his hand reached toward the ground to feel along it for his radio.
The ground felt damp. Wet even. He dared to take his gaze from the macabre sight of the skulls with their empty eye sockets, opening their empty mouths and calling to him. He glanced down and froze. There on the ground, he could see tendrils of fog, much like the root system of trees, creeping along the dirt. Alive. Searching. He had a terrible feeling the creepers were searching for him.
What did roots do? They fed the tree. They were searching for him. For his body. His blood. He was nearly hysterical, and he tried to force himself to think beyond the fear. This couldn’t really be happening, no matter how real it seemed.
The moans continued, but one woman—his first kill—changed her note, her voice rising on the wind to a howl. A call to the hunt. He knew that sound. He’d heard it earlier. An alpha calling his pack to the hunt. Another chill went down his spine and his heart thundered.
He fed the fire quickly, building it up. All around him, along the ground, the veins of fog, tubes of gray stretched like the bony arms of the women in the fog bank. His body stilled. He felt them. The wolves. When he dared to peer into the dense wall of mist, he saw the red eyes staring back at him.
There was nothing worse in his imagination than to be killed and eaten by wolves. He counted at least seven in the pack. They surrounded him just as the women in the fog did. Strangely, the bony hands looked as if they were petting the wolves, although he couldn’t see the creatures through the dense fog.
He heard them. The growls and snarls. He felt them. The hair on his body stood up. His heart pounded so hard he feared he would have a heart attack. Occasionally he glimpsed a large beast pacing back and forth, waiting for some kind of signal.
The fog swirled, forming another shape. At first it looked like a wolf. A huge wolf. The animal turned its glowing eyes on him and then, to Armend’s horror, stepped right out of the fog as if it was really alive and not a part of the mass of dead creatures. The wolf took several steps toward him, and then he wasn’t a wolf, but a man.