The Darkest Embrace Read online

  “It wants that feeling. The rush. An essence,” Freddy quickly said. “It feeds on that. It seduces its prey and sucks it dry.”

  “It kills what it feeds on?”

  “Eventually,” Freddy said. “It can keep them alive for a really long time.”

  “Oh, God.” Jessie started for the woods, ignoring Freddy and the mud and everything but following Max’s boot prints. “Max!”

  “What you saw wasn’t my sister!” Freddy shouted after her, but Jessie had no more time for him. No time for this.

  She needed to get to Max before whatever had led him into the woods did.

  * * *

  The fall of auburn hair was the same. The slight build, the freckled arms, hands with long fingers. The face, though, was only barely Patty. Unformed, the eyes the wrong shape but the right color, the mouth a lipless slash. The thing in front of him was a monster trying to wear Patty’s face and body, and failing.

  Every part of Max ached. He’d followed the monster straight into the woods and into a ditch lined with sharpened sticks and boulders. Nothing had punctured him too badly, thank God, but he was a mess of bruises and scrapes. He may have cracked a few ribs, too. Woozy from the pain, he’d been aware of something grabbing him by the back of the collar and dragging him through the woods to this slanting, ramshackle shelter built against the side of a cliff. It wasn’t quite a cave, though much of it was set into a huge crack in the rock. The rest of it had been constructed of broken trees and woven vines.

  Now he sat propped against the rock, his shirt opened to the waist. The thing had been kissing him all over, its wet, slurping mouth leaving a trail of slime along his bare skin. The thought of it made him heave, but he couldn’t move even to turn his face and spit. Something in the saliva, Max thought blearily. Something like a venom that half paralyzed him and, disgustingly, acted as sort of an aphrodisiac as well. It burned, but there was no denying it also sent another sort of fire through him.

  The Patty-thing shuffled in front of him, its hair obscuring that awful face. The body, from the back, bore no resemblance to Max’s ex-girlfriend. Broad, bony shoulders, the spine clearly outlined, knob for knob. Jutting hip bones. Sexless. The arms, too long and stretching longer. When the thing stood, its head brushed the makeshift roof.

  It hadn’t spoken a single word, but now it whispered, “Darling.”

  Max choked and tried to turn his head when the thing came close to his mouth and pried open his lips with its bony fingers to give him the darkest embrace. The long, slick stroke of its meaty tongue sent ripples of revulsion through him, but after a minute he found himself relaxing into it. Not accepting it, simply...unable to resist...

  * * *

  Jessie was no tracker. She’d gone hunting with her dad once in a while, more as an excuse for both of them to hike into the woods together and enjoy some one-on-one time rather than an actual hunt. She couldn’t remember her dad ever coming home with anything he’d killed. Still, he’d taught her how to look for signs something had gone through the forest before them—rubbed bits of trees, crushed grass, gouged earth.

  Following Max wasn’t hard at all. He hadn’t been trying to hide his tracks, had left huge patches of bent branches and footprints. At least for the first few hundred feet into the woods. Then the trail, such as it was, became harder to find. With the ground so soft from the storm, she’d thought it would be easier; but in the cover of the deep shadows, everything got harder to see.

  She listened instead.

  Head up, muffling the sound of her own panting breath as best she could, Jessie strained her ears for any sound. Max’s voice, the crack and rustle of underbrush. Anything. There was nothing but the far-off rush of water and the beat of her heart in her ears.

  She stopped herself from running pell-mell through the woods, screaming his name. That wouldn’t help, and might end up with her going in the wrong direction. The need to find him was staggering enough to knock her to her knees, but Jessie kept herself centered, focused.

  The half-assed story Freddy had told her would have been completely unbelievable if Jessie hadn’t always harbored a secret fascination with the strange and unknown—and if she hadn’t seen at least part of the thing with her own eyes. Ultimately, it didn’t matter what it was. Jessie was going to find Max.

  She gave in, at last, to the need to scream his name. Once, then again, even louder. She put everything she had into it, let her voice rise up and up until it cracked.

  “Jessie!”

  She heard but didn’t see him. “Max! Where are you?”

  She turned at the sound of rustling brush, her rake raised and her hand on the knife. A moment later, a familiar black-and-blue plaid shirt emerged from the trees. Jessie let out a low cry and limped toward him. She was in his arms immediately, her face buried against his chest.

  “Hey, now,” Max said. “It’s okay.”

  Jessie looked at him. “What happened?”

  His mouth worked and brow furrowed, but it took him a while to find the words. Blood had crusted along his hairline and in one corner of his mouth, though she couldn’t see any wounds. Max shook his head.

  “It was Patty. I told you. I saw her, and I went after her.”

  “What did you do to her?” Jessie touched his scalp with gentle fingers, looking for the source of the blood.

  Max ducked from her touch. “Nothing. She went into the woods. I couldn’t see her. Let’s go back to the cabin. Get something to eat. I’m starving.”

  “Wait a minute.” Jessie pushed onto her tiptoes to get a better look, but again he ducked away from her. “Stay still. I want to see where you’re hurt.”

  “I’m not hurt.”

  She hugged him again. “Thank God. Freddy had this crazy story about something in the woods, some sort of...thing...”

  Max’s arms went around her, squeezing. “Freddy.”

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t have believed it except, you know...we saw something.” A chill scratched at her when she thought of the monstrous, misshapen shadow. “I don’t know what it was, but it was definitely weird.”

  “It was Patty,” Max told her in a rough voice. “It was Patty.”

  Jessie looked at him again, uneasy. “Maybe you should sit down. You look pale.”

  Max kissed her. His mouth pried at hers, his hands roaming up and down her back until they settled on her hips and pulled her close. His grip was too tight, hurting. His tongue stabbed at her.

  Heat spread through her; desire rose unexpectedly and fiercely. Burning. Crackling through her nerves like an electric shock, the sheer force of it weakened her knees so that she sagged against him.

  Max’s mouth moved from hers to her throat, nipping and licking. One hand went between her legs, pressing her through the denim. She went crazy for his touch, arching, an inarticulate moan escaping her.

  The world swam.

  Max’s hands dug into her hair. He breathed hard into her ear, panting, his breath hot and somehow thick. He moved against her. The press of his teeth stung too much, too hard, and although Jessie sometimes didn’t mind a little pain, this was too much. All of it was—What did he want to do—fuck her right here in the middle of the woods with monster and ex-girlfriend and Freddy as witnesses?

  “Max...”

  He pressed her harder, his mouth working on her neck. Sucking. She was drunk on the pleasure, head spinning and stomach churning like she might puke or pass out.

  This was wrong.

  Then she realized what it was. Max smelled of fabric softener and soap and cologne, but the man mauling her throat reeked like a wet basement. Jessie put her hands on his chest and pushed, but he clung to her like a burr.

  What had Freddy said? It was hard to think, exactly like she was hammered, though Jessie hadn’t been truly drunk since she was a freshman in