Chapter 5: Tara’s Escape
The forest was a cathedral of silence, broken only by Tara’s ragged breathing and the crunch of frost under her boots. Every shadow was a claw. Every rustle was a death rattle. She moved in a low, pained crouch, her side screaming where a broken rib grated with each step. The acrid, metallic scent of blood hung in the cold air, a trail she was trying to escape.
She found Ben first. He was propped against a spruce, his eyes open to the moonlight, throat a ruin of glistening red and white cartilage. His silvered knife was still in its sheath. He’d never even seen it coming.
A choked sob escaped her. She forced her legs to keep moving, skirting the clearing. Ruiz was next, his body twisted unnaturally, spine arched backward until it must have snapped. Seamus lay near the creek, face down in the freezing water, his dark hair fanning like weed. Xander was the worst. It looked like he’d been thrown through the trees. His leg was bent the wrong way, and the front of his tactical vest was shredded, along with what lay beneath.
Tara vomited, the bitterness searing her throat. Her mind, slick with terror, clawed for a handhold. JT. Where was Jeremiah? She hadn’t seen his body. The last image burned behind her eyes: the massive, gray demon, lifting JT clean off the ground, that monstrous head dipping to drag a long, proprietary tongue up the side of the young hunter’s frozen face. A capture. Not a kill. The thought was somehow more terrible.
“Hold on, kid,” she whispered into the oppressive dark, a useless prayer. She stumbled forward, driven by a survivor’s base programming: reach the vehicles, call it in.
The old logging road felt like a mile of exposed nerve. Finally, the bulky shapes of the SUVs materialized. She fumbled with the keypad, her fingers numb and bloody, and practically fell into the driver’s seat. The satellite phone was in the console. Her hand shook so badly she misdialed twice.
The line clicked, and a calm, authoritative voice answered. “Command.”
“This is Tara Finley, Patrol Gamma,” she gasped, the words tumbling out. “We’re at the Grid Seven site. It’s a massacre. Everyone’s down. Ben, Ruiz, Seamus, Xander… gone. Thompson’s son, JT, was taken by the entity. Alive.”
“Calm down, Finley. Describe the entity.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, seeing it loom over JT. “Massive. Nine feet. Gray skin, like stone. Muscled. Its head… like a wendigo, but smoother. Unholy strength. It moved faster than anything I’ve ever seen.”
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end, then muffled voices. A new voice came on, deep and granite-hard, laced with a tremor she’d never heard before. “Tara. This is Marcus. Are you certain of the description?”
“Sir. Yes, sir. I saw it. It took your son.”
The silence that followed was absolute, colder than the forest. When Marcus Thompson spoke again, the tremor was gone, forged into something deadly. “Kane,” he said, the name a curse and a verdict. “The texts were right. He’s woken.” She heard the sound of a desk being struck, a sharp, violent crack. “Get to the extraction point, Finley. Now. We are mobilizing. Everything we have.”
The line went dead. Tara dropped the phone, her head swimming. Kane. The stories were nursery rhymes to scare novice hunters. He was supposed to be a myth. And he had JT.
Inside the cabin, myth was claiming its prize with relentless, physical truth.
JT had lost all sense of time. It was a haze of heat, pressure, and the overwhelming scent of them both—woodsmoke, sex, and that primal, gray scent that was Kane alone. The demon’s stamina was inhuman, a centuries-pent libido unleashed upon his slender frame.
He was on his back now, ankles hooked over Kane’s mountainous shoulders, his body bowed and accepting a devastating, slow pace. Each inward stroke felt like it reached his throat, a total claiming. He was slick and open, used so thoroughly the initial burn had transmuted into a steady, golden thrum of pleasure.
“Look at you,” Kane rumbled, his hips rolling with tectonic force. “My perfect little fuck-toy. Dripping with me. Made for my cock, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” JT hissed, the confession torn from him. His own neglected dick lay hard and leaking on his stomach, untouched.
“Yes, what?” Kane demanded, pausing, buried deep, applying a subtle, internal pressure that made JT whimper.
“Yes, I’m your fuck-toy,” JT gasped, the obscenity flooding him with shameful heat.
Kane’s grin was terrifyingly tender. He began moving again, picking up speed, the rough slap of skin filling the room. “You are. My gorgeous, greedy slut. Taking every inch like you were sculpted for it.” He leaned down, his breath hot on JT’s mouth. “My precious mate.”
The juxtaposition was lightning in JT’s veins. Slut. Whore. Precious. Mate. The filth and the reverence twisted together, one making the other more potent. He was nothing. He was everything. He was being ruined and perfected in the same brutal thrusts.
Kane’s control began to fray. His rhythm became erratic, animalistic. “Gonna fill you again,” he grunted, his voice guttural. “Gonna pump my seed so deep into my beautiful whore it never leaves you. Mark you from the inside.”
The words tipped JT over. His climax ripped through him with a silent, arching convulsion, his channel clamping rhythmically around the massive intrusion. Kane roared, a sound of pure, unbridled completion, and drove home one last time. JT felt the hot, impossible surge, another flood joining the last, until he was dizzy with the fullness of it.
Kane collapsed over him, a mountain of spent power, careful to keep his weight on his elbows. They stayed locked together, breathing in ragged sync. Slowly, carefully, Kane withdrew. The resulting emptiness was a visceral shock, followed by the warm, unmistakable trickle of evidence onto the furs.
The demon shifted, gathering JT’s limp, sweat-slicked body against him, spooning his back to Kane’s chest. One massive arm curled possessively around his waist. The fire had burned low, painting the room in deep oranges and long, dancing shadows.
JT’s mind, shattered and quiet, began to piece itself back together. He should feel horror. Revulsion. He felt sore, profoundly used, and a terrifying, serene sense of rightness. Kane nuzzled the junction of his neck and shoulder, a gesture shockingly gentle from such a beast.
“Sleep, mate,” Kane murmured, his voice a low vibration against JT’s spine.
JT’s eyes closed. The last thing he was aware of was the solid, immutable heat at his back, the weight of the arm around him, and a single, coherent thought echoing in the ruins of his old life: This feels perfect.
Outside, under a cold, pitiless moon, Tara’s SUV sped down the mountain, carrying the warning. A war was being mobilized. And in the heart of the woods, wrapped in the arms of that war’s incarnate enemy, JT slept, a stolen prize unaware of the storm converging on the cabin’s weathered walls.