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Cass remained huddled on the ground, her arms around her still-chained legs, her shoulders shaking as she cried. She’d forgotten where she was for the moment, and the struggle she still had ahead of her, lost in the recollection of the key event that had shaped her life. Of course, her parents and everyone else had told her the shooting hadn’t been her fault, it had been a horrible accident, but that didn’t change the fact her brother’s death had happened at her hands.
Her father had blamed himself for leaving the gun unattended, if only for a matter of moments, and her mother had blamed her father as well. Cass had spent every day of her life since then hating herself and feeling like her parents hated her, too. Every time she looked at herself in the mirror, she remembered what she’d done, and she couldn’t help but feel that it was impossible for her parents not to feel the same way. She’d pushed them away, unable to handle their pain as well as her own. She’d deliberately been a difficult teenager, and as soon as she’d been old enough, she’d left home and moved to the other side of the country. They’d made a few attempts to contact her, but when they finally gave up, she couldn’t help but feel that they would have been as relieved as she was.
When the tears would come no more, Cass sniffed and lifted her head. She still had a life, but in a way, her parents had lost both their children on that horrible day.
They hadn’t deserved that.
Cass remembered the key she’d found. She wiped her tears from her cheeks with her good hand, marveling momentarily at the streaks of filth she’d wiped away with them, and looked back down at the chain. The hole on the padlock was small, like the key, and she gripped the key between the thumb and forefinger of her good hand. Her fingers were swollen, the tips covered in cuts, the nails torn down to the quick. The tremors that had taken hold of her since killing the real Magician continued to affect her, and it took her several attempts of trying to fit the key to the lock before it finally slid home.
She held her breath as she turned the key, a part of her expecting it to jam and refuse to turn any farther, but the lock released with a click.
“Well, look at that,” she said, marveling down at the open padlock.
Knowing she wasn’t going to need to use it again, she dropped the key in the dirt, and then used her good hand to yank the lock off the chain. The chain unraveled, and she dragged it the rest of the way off, letting it puddle on the ground. The metal caught her sore skin as it fell, and she winced, but she was finally free of the chains.
She could barely believe it.
With a groan of pleasure, Cass stretched out her legs. She rolled her ankles and then pulled one knee into her body, before repeating with the other. Already, she felt like she’d shed a suit of armor, her body lighter than it had ever been before.
Moving like an eighty-year-old woman, with every part of her stiff and hurting, she got to her feet.
A rush of dizziness hit her, but she was expecting it and waited for a moment to allow it to pass. She needed to climb up onto the wing of the plane to get in the door, and she didn’t want to risk passing out at the last moment and falling off and injuring herself.
A sudden cracking of wood in the undergrowth snatched her attention from the plane.
The hairs prickled on the backs of her arms, and she straightened and turned in the direction the sound had come from. She sucked in a breath and held it, her gaze fixed on the spot where she’d heard the noise.
The crunch of foliage came again, louder this time, more of a crash than a crack. She recognized the weight and timber from the previous night, right before an animal had emerged into the clearing and tried to make a meal out of the body of her abductor.
The bear!
Had the creature been following her? Perhaps it had decided that since she hadn’t let him have his meal the night before, she would do instead.
With her pulse racing and her breath quickening in her chest, she spun toward the planes. She needed to reach one and get inside so she could pull the door shut. Even if it meant she was trapped, at least she’d be safer than being out here.
Unable to run, she started toward the nearest plane—the one that had belonged to the real Magician. She moved at a lurching shuffle, her legs impossibly heavy, despite having rid herself of the chain between her ankles. Glancing over her shoulder, she tried to spot the animal between the trees, but there was nothing. Had she imagined it? Perhaps in her panic, she’d overreacted.
The crashing came again, even closer.
Her heartrate picked up, her pulse pounding in her temple. Her breathing was harsh and fast. She was close to the planes now, a matter of ten feet away, but still it seemed so far. She imagined the weight of saucer-sized paws on the ground. Each claw as big as one of her fingers.
A grunt and a snort sounded behind her, hot breath on the air. Instinctively, she knew the bear was right there, behind her.
Cass spun around, terrified to move. There, on the outskirts of the woods, was the same bear who’d tried to scavenge the corpse of her abductor the night before.
The plane was close, but the bear was so much faster than she was, especially as she was injured and exhausted. If she ran, it would catch her.
She refused to die like this.
“Go away!” she yelled, waving her good arm in the air. She was sure she’d read somewhere, or perhaps even watched on a television documentary, that a person needed to make themselves appear threatening when confronted by a bear. She wasn’t sure how threatening she could look, however, when she probably weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds by now and was clearly injured. “Shoo! I’m not your dinner, bear! Get away from me!”
The bear stopped and sniffed the air. It didn’t appear in the slightest bit frightened of her, however, and was more curious than anything. It took several steps closer, its huge body bustling from side to side. The animal was so big. Never in her imagination had she considered that bears were so huge.
The knife!
In her fear, she’d almost forgotten the weapon she’d brought with her. Keeping her gaze locked on the bear, she pulled the bag off her shoulder and yanked open the top.
“Stay away!” she yelled, though her throat was so sore, the sound broke halfway through. “I’ve got a knife. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Adrenaline had given her an extra boost, but she was still exhausted and weak and trembling.
She fumbled the knife, and it dropped to the ground, the blade embedding in the dirt, so the handle quivered in the air. She’d only narrowly missed her foot.
“No!”
She’d been trying to make herself as big as possible, but now she was going to have to bend over to pull the knife out of the ground. When she did that, she was going to appear vulnerable, and she knew the bear would attack.
She wouldn’t be able to climb the wing and get through the door and into the plane without the bear catching her. Not with her bad hand, and bouts of dizziness. He’d just yank her straight off the wing.
With no other choice, Cass bent for the knife.
The bear let out a roar and came at her at a run.
She huddled into a ball, holding the knife out with both hands, hoping the animal would impale itself before it got the chance to kill her.
But suddenly, it stopped.
She dared to lift her head.
The bear had drawn to a halt, and now she saw why. The shapes of seven women, all lined up together, holding hands, created a barrier between her and the bear. She could only see them from behind, and she’d never known them in real life, but she was able to name each of them now. Sonja Holland. Becky Dawson. Susie Banks. Meaghan Brunner. Maria Moore. Keely Smith. And Anna Whittle.
The seven women murdered by the Magician.
She was hallucinating; she knew that. Terrified, hunched down, waiting for the bear to leap for her, she’d conjured up the final few friends she felt she had in this world, women who’d understand some of what she’d been through.
The bear lifted itself up on its hind legs, opened its mouth, and growled. It shook its massive head, and then turned and bustled its way back into the woods, its wide backside hustling from side to side.
When Cass dared look again, the women were gone.