Dying Forever (Waking Forever Book 3) (16 page)

Following the car as it
turned off Broadway and onto Hildebrand, Alison was careful to maintain a safe distance to avoid being detected. Realizing she was still clutching the useless phone in her right hand, she dropped it onto the passenger seat and resigned herself to continue the pursuit. At least she would know where they had taken Bryce and could report the location to the police.

They wound their way onto
Highway 281 and drove north for nearly an hour. Deep into the Texas Hill Country, Alison had only a vague sense of where they were as the car turned off the main road and onto a two lane flat top.

There was no other traffic on the road, so Alison had no choice but to allow the Town Car to pull nearly a half mile ahead of her
for fear they would see her. She slowed at every side road, and looked for tail lights or plumes of dust.

Ten miles from the main road, Alison slammed on her breaks and backed up. A thin cloud of dust on a narrow dirt road
to her right told her the three women had turned off the flat top.

Flipping her headlights off, and with only the illumination of her parking lights, Alison drove slowly down the deserted road.
She heard branches scraping along the side of her car from the narrow Mesquite scrub and cactus lining the road. The darkness was broken by a faint light over the next ridge. Alison pulled her car off the road and behind several low-lying mesquite trees. Pulling the handbrake, she quietly got out. Her leather flats made a faint crunching sound on the pebbled ground as she gently pushed her car door shut. Hitting the trunk release on her remote, Alison slid the spare tire cover off and popped the metal rod used to raise and lower the jack out of its plastic clip.

Holding the rod firmly in her right hand, Alison realized her palms were sweating.
Should I be doing this?
She never considered herself a hero. The closest she ever came to a self-defense class was a Krav Maga course she took while finishing her doctorate. After two sessions, she pulled a tendon in her hip and had to forgo the remaining five sessions.

You have to do this. You care for Bryce and god only knows what they intend to do with her.
Alison took a deep breath. The idea of Bryce being hurt, or worse, made her stomach cramp with fear.
Just make sure this is their last stop, and then get your ass to a phone and report it.
With a plan in place that didn’t involve the unrealistic expectation of Alison fending off three attackers, she made her way up the road.

With the exception of the faint glow coming from the other side of the hill, the night was pitch black. Her attention focused solely on the task ahead, Alison didn’t notice
the quarter moon and kaleidoscope of stars overhead, their brilliance no longer cloaked by the city lights. She did notice the stillness of the country being broken repeatedly by her quick, nervous breathing.

Crouching behind a low shrub, Alison couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing.
The three women stood in the glow of the Town Car’s headlights, the spans behind them cloaked in darkness. Christine and the two other women had tied Bryce’s hands and feet together with some sort of thin metal cord. Attached to the redhead’s hands with another cord was a large black metal box.
What the hell are they doing?

The women’s voices were muffled by the distance
. The apparent leader of the group, the woman dressed in the black trench coat with her face concealed by a black scarf, was pointing toward a slight rise ten feet to her right. Alison narrowed her eyes, trying to see what the woman was pointing at, but it was too dark.

Christine and the third wo
man picked Bryce’s limp body off the ground. The black haired woman took a handful of Bryce’s hair and twisted the woman’s head back. Leaning in, she whispered something to Bryce, and releasing her hair, nodded to the other two women.

Alison watched.
Her blood ran cold with fear at Bryce’s stillness. She was clearly unconscious or so weak she was unable to respond. Either way, Alison fought the urge to charge forward and free her immediately.

Alison was frantically trying to think of her next move, when a loud splash broke the stillness of the night.
Alison gasped, realizing the two women had flung Bryce into a body of water beyond the rise. The three women then stood in a line, holding hands, and staring into the night.

Come on!
Alison felt panic prickling up the back of her neck, knowing the longer the women lingered, the longer her friend stayed under water.

After nearly a minute, the
women walked back to the car. Backing up, the brake lights cast the road in a red hue. Fearing she would be discovered, Alison lay flat on her stomach. A wave of relief washed over her as she watched the car pull forward and leave the scene.

Dropping the metal rod, Alison bolted from the underbrush and charged into the darkness at a full run. Her eyes adjusting to the shadows
and she skidded to a stop at the top of the rise. With only the muted light of the moon to guide her, Alison slid down an embankment and stood at the edge of a large, lifeless, black lake.

Tears streamed down Alison’s face as she kicked her leather flats to the side, her feet sinking into the soft, cool mud of the shore. Slipping out of her jeans for fear they would weigh her down, the woman took a deep breath and dove into the murky blackness.

The water was warmer than Alison had expected, but absolute darkness surrounded her. Kicking with her legs, powerful from years of swimming, she quickly descended into the void. By Alison’s estimate she had swam down nearly fifteen feet when her hand sank into a wet, cold, slimy substance. She had hit the soft, muddy bottom of the lake.

Alison’s lungs began a slow burn as she desperately grasped at the darkness.
Unable to use the bottom of the lake as leverage to propel her back to the surface, Alison began long, powerful kicks with her legs while fully extending her arms as if reaching for the top of the water.

Breaking the surface of the lake, Alison
took in three deep breaths. Holding the last one, she dove back under. Hope of finding Bryce in the vast darkness began to fade. Alison forced her lungs and body beyond their usual pain threshold, refusing to surface until she found her friend.

But f
eeling the blackness of the lake begin to strangle her, Alison had no choice but to return to the surface or risk joining Bryce. Kicking her right leg to the side so she could begin her ascent, she felt her foot strike something hard. Alison bent at the waist and reached towards the object. The only sound she could hear was the pounding of her heart as she suddenly grasped a handful of long hair.

A burst of energy surged through her, giving her additional endurance. Alison grabbed what she thought must be the collar of Bryce’s
blouse and tried to pull the woman up. The fabric of the shirt tore and Alison lost her grip. She quickly propelled herself up; breaking the surface of the lake, she gasped at the air.

Her head throbbed
and her stomach cramped. Her body felt heavy and weak as she struggled to tread water. Alone in the dark, staring up at the fullness of the night sky, her gasping the only sound for miles, her mind latched onto the oddest memory.
If you are going through hell, keep going.
The Winston Churchill quote had been one of her high school swim coach’s favorite. He would yell it from the side of the pool just at that moment when Alison thought she couldn’t take another stroke.

Directly below her, in the
silent, pitch black water, Bryce needed her. Forcing her heavy legs to kick, Alison took as deep a breath as she could and dove under the water for what she hoped was her last time.

Relie
f washed over her like a reassuring embrace as she found Bryce within seconds. Surmising the metal box was not only anchoring Bryce to the bottom of the abyss, but was stopping Alison from being able to pull the woman to the surface, she felt along Bryce’s shoulders and down her arms. She found the thin metal cord that was restraining the woman’s hands and attaching her to the box.

With surprising ease, Alison snapped the cord, freeing Bryce’s hands and liberating her from the makeshift anchor. Wasting no time, Alison wrapped her arm around Bryce’s chest and began to kick furiously upward.

Grabbing the air in long gulps once she surfaced, Alison swam the ten feet to the shore with Bryce in tow. The redhead was limp and her body cold as Alison pulled her onto the embankment.

Wiping water from her face, Alison turned her attention to Bryce, who lay
on her side, motionless, next to her. The woman’s legs were still submerged in the water, but her hands were free of the metal cord and the merciless metal box still lay at the bottom of the lake.

Turning Bryce on her back, Alison pushed the woman’s long, wet, auburn locks
off her face. A loud gasp escaped Alison, and she covered her mouth in shock. Bryce’s usual paleness had taken on a faint blue hue and the veins along her neck and jaw line protruded, giving the appearance of a chaotic spider web.

The most shocking part
was the long straw-like metal rod stuck deep in the side of Bryce’s neck. Blood dripped from the exposed end of the shaft. Reaching across Bryce, Alison took the protrusion between her thumb and forefinger, but before she could extract the implement, a sharp burning sensation shot up from her wrist and along her arm

Unable to stifle a scream, Alison tried to
recoil away from the source of pain, only to realize she couldn’t move. Her eyes focused in the darkness and her body tensed with pain and fear as she saw Bryce’s mouth clamped down on her wrist, the muscles in her jaw bulging and flexing. The woman’s eyes flew open; their usual green was now an eerie iridescent green, the whites a vivid red.

Alison’s head began to spin, and she felt an aching cold creeping up her arm and into her chest. Just as quickly as it had started, the pain stopped. Alison’s eyes fluttered open, and she looked at Bryce. Her eyes
shone in the darkness and nearly inch long incisors, covered in Alison’s blood, protruded from her mouth.

“Run.” A low, guttural growl came from deep in Bryce’s chest. Alison couldn’t understand what was happening, but her instinct fo
r self-preservation kicked in, and she began to crawl backwards away from the creature that lay in front of her.

In a single, fluid motion, Bryce went from lying flat on her back to standing rigid
. She towered over Alison, her ankles still bound. Turning her head slowly toward the terrified woman next to her, Bryce’s neck popped and snapped as she tilted her gaze skyward, her lips parted by her protruding incisors.

“Run, Alison.” The use of her
name brought Alison back from the brink. She scrambled up the embankment. On dry, solid ground she found her footing and began running back toward her car. She didn’t remember grabbing her jeans, but found her car keys in the front pocket as she tumbled over the hood of the Honda and landed on her back near the driver’s door.

Stunned
, the air knocked out of her lungs, it took Alison several seconds to right herself and get in the car. Covered in mud and blood, she started the car and, though she would have no memory of it, executed a three point turn on the narrow dirt road and sped off into the darkness, having begun as the rescuer and finishing as the victim.

“That will be a hundred and twenty two dollars, Ms. Bailey.” The young man at the front desk of the Hampton Inn smiled broadly has he looked at Alison.

Too scared to go home, and not wanting to involve any of her friends or family in something she didn’t fully understand herself,
she stood in the hotel lobby in the pair of black sweat pants, a matching hoody, and her purple shower flip-flops she had in the gym bag in her back seat.

“Thank you.” She handed the man her credit card and leaned on the elevated desk, her legs feeling like jelly under her.

Taking the room key from the clerk, she made her way down the winding hallway of the hotel to the elevator. Relieved to see the elevator wouldn’t work without a room key being swiped, she leaned against the stainless steel wall and waited as she ascended to the fourth floor.

The room was cloaked in darkness and the air
was stale. Alison felt along the wall and flipped the light switch on. The queen size bed took up most of the space, leaving just enough room for two nightstands and a dresser/desk combination. Alison flipped the large, wall mounted, flat screen television on, needing the comfort of background noise.

The heavy, brown curtains were already pulled closed, and Alison checked and re-checked the deadbolt on the door before taking her clothes off. The harsh fluorescent lights of the bathroom caused Alison to squint before her image came into focus in the large vanity mirror.

Tears pooled in her eyes as she took stock of the
stranger in the mirror. Her short blonde hair was matted to her head with dirt and god only knew what other debris. Her face was streaked with mud and her chest and legs were covered in gashes and scratches from when she had run back to her car in nothing but a t-shirt and her underwear.

A sob escaped Alison when she looked down at her right forearm. Two angry, red bite marks sat in the middle of swollen, enflamed skin. The underside of her arm was cut
, bruised, and swollen from where Bryce’s bottom teeth had sunk into her arm. Examining the wound more closely, Alison was surprised it wasn’t worse given the horrific pain when the bite occurred.