The Nightmare Game_Slayers Page 17

  “Sarah,” she called after the librarian. “Stop running. Come back to me, Sarah.”

  Chase’s prey was so close. Ten yards, maybe less. She was gaining on the librarian with every step. She just had to push a little harder to earn a mouthful of delicious bloody flesh.

  As the berserk rage consumed her, Chase felt the schism between her thoughts and her body gaping wider. Horrified, she understood that she wouldn’t be a mindless beast when she tore Sarah apart. She would be a spectator, watching as her hands tore the girl limb from limb, as her mouth chewed on the librarian’s heart and swallowed her blood in great, greedy gulps.

  Her talisman’s pattern was no longer bright green, but a deep crimson. She’d used the last of her Willpower on the Horrifying Apparition escape from the Ram, and her Fortitude was burning away. Going berserk had pushed her physical abilities to new heights, but it was killing her. If Chase didn’t wrest back control of her body from the hunger, she was going to die.

  Soon.

  “Where you going, freak?” a voice called to Chase from the forest ahead.

  A masked figure stepped out of the woods, a spiked bat clutched in his hands. A woman joined him, her elegant dress at odds with her surroundings and the wickedly serrated machete she twirled in her left hand.

  “Get out of my way,” Chase snarled. She brandished her knife and took a step toward the Sleepers. The hunger didn’t have time for these idiots. It needed the Martyr, and it needed her now.

  But the Sleepers held their ground and threw their heads to howl a primal challenge at Chase. The woman traced the razor-sharp edge of her machete with the tip of her index finger, leaving behind a thin red smear. “How you feeling, Slayer? You’re not looking so good. Drop your weapon and let us help you rest.”

  The man rushed forward, drawing his bat back for a head-crushing swing. Chase leaned forward, as if rushing to meet him, and then abruptly stopped and pulled her head and chest back to allow the bat to swing harmlessly past her. Her right arm was still too damaged to function, even if the hunger had masked the pain of the gunshot wound in her shoulder, but her left arm was ready to attack.

  As the bat sliced through the night air, Chase rushed in and hooked her left arm around the man’s waist. She drove her weapon’s extractor point into the Sleeper’s back on the left side of his spine. The blade bit in deep and hooked around the knobs of his backbone.

  Chase grinned and ripped the knife straight across, severing the Sleeper’s spinal column in one brutal slash. The hunger drank in the smell of blood and fear. These fools had delayed its pursuit of the Sacred Martyr, and it would make them pay for their interference.

  The Sleeper collapsed, twisting and falling into his partner as a guttural, horrified shriek escaped from the writhing black mask covering his face.

  Chase expected the woman to drop her weapon and run, fleeing into the hills at the sight of her mutilated partner. But the Sleeper didn’t even flinch as she shoved her wailing partner aside and rushed to the attack. The Sleeper screamed and raised her machete in a two-handed overhead strike.

  As the blade fell, Chase snatched the fallen man and raised his limp body like a shield.

  The machete’s wickedly sharp blade buried itself in the top of the man’s skull with a sound like a coconut dropped on a concrete floor. The man’s eyes bulged from their sockets, and he unleashed a quavering screech as his brutalized gray matter fired of a disjointed flurry of dying impulses.

  The Sleeper tore her dead partner from Chase’s grip and kicked him off the end of her blade. The surface of her black mask writhed and twisted, curling across its lower half like a demonic grin. “End of the road, Slayer. The bloodlust is burning you up. I can smell it.”

  Chase realized the woman was right. Her Fortitude was down to one, and it flashed red as her berserk fury gnawed away at it.

  But the hunger didn’t care if Chase was dying. Lost in the throes of violent passion, it wanted only to kill. To devour. The Sleeper stood in the way of that, and the hunger wouldn’t stop until that obstacle was removed and it had feasted.

  Chase lunged forward and swept her blade at the Sleeper’s midsection. It was a clumsy, angry attack, driven by animal fury rather than tactical skill. The knife whirred through the air as it slashed at the Sleeper again and again.

  The woman didn't try to block the berserk attacks. She leaped back, avoiding one slice after another, but her retreat was halted when her back slammed into a tree. Trapped, the Sleeper swung her machete in a wild attack and tried to rush past the berserk slayer.

  Chase reversed her grip on the knife and stepped to the side to let the machete’s blade slide past her wounded right shoulder.

  The Sleeper howled and darted past Chase, sprinting away in a desperate bid to save her life.

  But the hunger was faster. Chase’s knife drove deep into the Sleeper’s abdomen and the woman’s flesh parted under the curved blade, unzipping like a cheap costume. An apron of intestines flopped out of the wound, staining the Sleeper’s exotic dress with blood and filth. She gasped, took a single staggering step forward, and collapsed.

  Chase threw her head back and roared into the night. The hunger drank in the dying Sleeper’s fear, sharpening its fury on her pain.

  Then it pushed Chase to continue her pursuit. She staggered forward, desperate to catch the Sacred Martyr. She could smell the librarian ahead of her. Sarah had gained some ground while Chase dealt with the Sleepers, but she was still close enough. There was still time. All Chase had to do was catch Sarah and carve the token from her body. The rapture of the bloody feast would sate the hunger. She just had to catch the librarian.

  The hunger drove Chase like a whip cracking across her back. She bounded over fallen logs and boulders, straining her muscles past all human limits as she closed on the librarian.

  Sarah was so close, Chase could taste the chemicals of her cheap perfume on the air. The Slayer lowered her head and pumped her arms, hunger goading her to pounce.

  Chase spread her jaws, gulping in the sweet taste of Sarah’s terror. She stretched out her hand, and the knife appeared in her grasp. The weapon’s tip snared the librarian’s shoulder, digging into the meat and sending a spurt of blood into the air.

  A spear of raw agony drove itself through Chase’s heart. She stumbled and fell, her hands plunging into the leafy littler strewn across the hillside. The hunger demanded she press on, ignore this new pain, but Chase couldn’t rise. She roared in protest at the failing of her body. She’d been berserk for too long, and the rage was destroying her.

  A moment of clarity pierced the blood-red haze crushing Chase’s thoughts. She was weakened because she was berserk. She was berserk because she'd expended all of her Willpower.

  But what if she had more Willpower?

  Chase struggled to focus and turned her attention back to her talisman. She’d earned six orbs for killing the Sleepers in the Mercedes, and then three more for the Sleepers on the hill. She cursed when she realized the Sleeper had robbed her of one kill, cutting the orbs she’d earned for that fight in half. She prayed the nine orbs she had were enough for what she’d planned.

  Chase dragged all of the glowing red orbs over to the Willpower sphere on the throbbing image of her talisman, increasing its rating from five to six. Chase had hoped this would completely top off her Willpower, but no such luck. Though its total rating was six, Chase had burned five of that, which with left her with just one Willpower. She needed to figure out a way to replenish that, and fast, or the next time she used one of her powers she’d go berserk again.

  The hunger shrieked its outrage at being cheated and, for a moment, Chase thought she’d been too slow. She shuddered, certain that the last act of the berserk fury that had consumed her body would be to destroy her.

  And then the moment passed, and the image of her talisman burned brighter. The red faded into venomous green, and Chase saw that her Fortitude was no longer being consumed. It was still at one, right at death
’s door, but she wasn’t finished.

  The siren’s song of rest called to Chase, but she knew more Sleepers were coming. If they found her wounded and exhausted, they’d hack her to pieces.

  As if summoned by her thoughts, flashlights bounced through trees downhill from Chase’s resting place. Sleepers howled as they scrambled through the forest, and Chase knew it wouldn’t be long before they found her. She dragged herself up the side of a tree and leaned against it for support. She had to get moving.

  Chase hadn't wanted to play the twisted Nightmare Game. All she’d wanted was to find her parents them home safely.

  But this town, this game, had taken all of that away from her. She’d tried to avoid committing to the game. She’d tried to find where they were holding her brother and mother, so she could rescue them. She’d tried keeping one of the Sacred Martyrs safe so the game couldn’t end and no one would have to face the horrors of the sacrifice the Red God demanded. Chase had looked for ways to cheat around the rules of the Nightmare Game, but her search had failed.

  There were no options left. She couldn’t save everyone. She could barely save herself. But she wasn’t going to lie down and wait for these assholes to kill her.

  Chase lowered her head and shed a single tear. She wiped it off her cheek with bloody fingers, furious that she’d been driven to this horrific choice. “I’m sorry, daddy,” she whispered.

  They wanted to play?

  “Then let's play,” Chase said, and called her father’s Mask to her.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Mask

  For a split second, Chase felt her father’s presence nearby, like a warm hand on her shoulder. Then it passed, and Chase knew her father had gone with it. The mask’s power had been the only thing keeping his tortured body alive. Without it, he’d passed on to what Chase hoped was a better place.

  But that hope didn’t ease the pain of her father’s passing, which hit Chase like a wrecking ball. She stifled a deep, racking sob that bent her double. Tears gushed from her eyes, and she felt lost and more alone than she’d ever imagined possible. Her father, the man who’d taught her everything she needed to survive the worst night of her life, was gone. And he was never coming back. The pain of his loss crippled Chase, and she wasn’t sure she could go on.

  And then the mask came for her.

  It squeezed her face like a wet cloth pulled too tight over her head. She smelled blood and the corrupted stench of rotting vegetation. She gasped for air, but she couldn’t catch her breath through the mask’s crushing embrace.

  Hair-fine tendrils slipped through Chase’s pores and into her flesh, seeking purchase within her body. A burning pain ripped through the bones of her face as the mask bonded to Chase. She clawed at the mask in a blind panic, peeling two of her nails away as they scrabbled over the choking material’s rough surface.

  Chase struggled to pull the mask away, to reject its terrible power, but its grasp was inescapable. The mask wound its essence through her body, binding them together with threads of pain stitched into Chase’s soul.

  When Chase grew too weary to resist the mask, the pain vanished. The mask was part of her, and she felt stronger, more powerful than before. Spokes extended from the Mask symbol, leading to three new smaller circles labeled Armor, Dread, and Resilience.

  Adopting the Mask clarified the Talisman’s pattern for Chase. She instinctively understood the mask would protect her with its Armor, Dread would cripple her enemies with terror, and Resilience allowed her to bounce back from even the most horrible wounds.

  “This would've been handy an hour ago,” Chase grumbled, angry at how the sheriff had limited her ability by using her dying father to hold the mask hostage.

  As part of the more profound understanding of the Nightmare Game’s mechanics imparted by the Mask, Chase saw just how badly she’d been handicapped. Though she was stronger and faster than she’d ever been before playing the Game, without the Mask, she’d been all offense with no defense.

  The Sleepers were still howling through the forest as they searched for Chase, but either they were slower than she’d suspected, or her time with the mask had been much shorter than she thought. Her stalkers were at least a hundred yards away, a distance Chase increased by limping deeper into the trees. She found a cluster of bushy pine trees and hunkered down behind them to prioritize her mask’s aspects.

  Her Phantasm powers frightened her enemies when she used them, so Chase prioritized the Dread aspect. She chose Armor as the Mask’s second priority because she was getting tired of being sliced, diced, and battered every few minutes. That left Resilience as the Mask’s third priority. She hoped that wasn't a mistake, but she preferred being able to stay on her feet to the ability to get up after she’d been downed. If she played her cards right, Chase thought her low Resilience wouldn’t hurt her in the Nightmare Game.

  Though she’d already invested soul orbs into her Weapon, Chase found her attention drawn back to it. She still had three orbs left and pushed them toward the Cruelty circle. The pattern greedily absorbed two of the orbs, increasing Cruelty from nine to ten.

  Chase was startled to feel the weapon appear in her hand, and even more startled when it began to change. It was no longer a simple knife, but a sickle. The weapon’s handle was studded with skulls, their jaws stretched wide in silent, agonized screams. A grim smile settled over Chase’s masked features as she hefted the weapon. It was a terrifying tool of destruction, which fit her needs perfectly.

  Chase wanted the people of Crucible to fear her vengeance for what they’d done to her family.

  The Sleepers had moved farther up the hill, and Chase crept lower to avoid them. With the Mask and Knife squared away, she needed time to deal with the Victim circle of her talisman’s pattern.

  She tried to select Sleepers as her preferred victim type, but she couldn’t make it stick. It was too general, not nearly specific enough. Frustrated, Chase left the type of victim for later and turned her attention to the Victim circle’s aspects: Bloodlust, Vengeance, and Hunger.

  Chase set Vengeance as the third priority. This would only let her restore one point of Fortitude or Willpower when she harvested a preferred Victim type, but that was all right with Chase. She hadn’t been able to select a preferred victim type, anyway, so that’d have to be a bridge she’d cross when she came to it.

  She adjusted Bloodlust as the second aspect in the Victim sphere, which meant she would regain three points of Willpower, Fortitude, or some combination of the two every time she harvested a soul that did not belong to someone in her preferred victim type. That gave her the ability to gain more from non-chosen victims than her preferred prey, but there was a cost to be paid for that flexibility. If Chase harvested a soul that was not one of her preferred victims, it would deplete her Hunger by one orb. When her Hunger had no orbs remaining, she would no longer be able to harvest souls until she’d claimed one from her preferred victim type. The flood of information pouring into Chase from the image of her talisman’s pattern was a lot to absorb, but Chase found her experience with roleplaying and video games helped her absorb and use the new revelations.

  To offset the penalty she’d suffer for harvesting victims outside her preferred type, Chase placed Hunger as her number one priority in the Victim sphere. That gave her five points of Hunger, which meant Chase could harvest a soul from a victim outside those she preferred to restore Fortitude or Willpower five times before she would have to hunt down one of her chosen victims to start the cycle all over again. It would be a tricky balancing act, but if she could pull it off Chase would have far more choices in who she killed and what she gained from the harvest.

  Chase felt a flicker of queasiness at her callous disregard for life. She stamped down hard on it, and let rage takes its place. The people of Crucible had pushed her into this. They’d set the rules of the Nightmare Game, Chase was just playing by them. The brief rest had restored some of her Fortitude, and she had both arms in working
order again. It was time to make the Sleepers pay for what they’d done.

  “Ready or not,” Chase whispered, “here I come.”

  With her mask on, Chase didn’t even have to look to the sky to know there were still three unclaimed soul tokens on the loose. The number of remaining Sacred Martyrs burned in Chase’s mind as clearly as the green circles of her talisman’s pattern. The fact there were still so many Martyrs still alive told Chase the other Slayers must have been hung up battling Sleepers, too.

  With three tokens in play, Chase was confident she could win the Nightmare Game. It wouldn’t be easy, but she could claim their markers, make the sacrifice, and then get her family the hell out of Crucible. If she had to stay, so be it, but she wouldn’t let her mom and Paxton fall prey to this town’s horrific religion.

  With her Willpower at one, Chase knew she needed to harvest a victim sooner rather than later. Fortunately, there were plenty of Sleepers around that would serve as victims outside her preferred type now that she had her Victim aspects prioritized. They were screaming through the trees, hunting what they thought was a gravely wounded Slayer. None of them believed Chase was a threat anymore.

  Idiots, Chase thought.

  While the bulk of the Sleepers had headed up the hill, Chase trekked back down to the road. The burning pile of luxury cars provided a smoking beacon for Chase to follow. She crept through the trees searching for suitable prey.

  Black-masked figures in tattered suits were gathered around the burning pyre of the automotive wreckage. Some of the injured sat on the ground nearest the flames, cradling their heads in their hands or clutching other wounded body parts and groaning softly in shared misery. Others stood with their weapons over their shoulders, seemingly dazed by the events of the Nightmare Game.

  An urgent need to harvest souls stabbed through Chase like a stomach cramp. She wanted to rush down there and start carving the Sleepers up, and it took an enormous effort of will to hold her ground.