Craven Manor(69)

The shape paused between two trees. With the clouds blocking the moonlight, it was perfectly hidden in the shadows. Daniel could see only a pair of wide eyes.





Chapter Thirty-One





Despite Daniel’s fog of exhaustion and grief, something about that shape skulking between the trees seemed wrong. Daniel focussed on its eyes. The crows had plucked out one of the shadow beast’s, but the figure ahead of him had two.

“Hello?” His voice sounded awful, as though he’d screamed until he was hoarse. He tried to rub his wet hair out of his eyes but accidentally used the infected hand. The spongy, bulging flesh was horrifying.

The shape took a step forward. It was too small to be the massive beast Eliza had become. In the cloud-dampened moonlight, Daniel caught a glimpse of human skin. The gait was familiar. Bile rose in Daniel’s throat.

“It’s a bloody labyrinth here.” Kyle spoke in a stage whisper, one projected so loudly that Daniel had no problem hearing it through the drumming rain. “It’s cursed. It’s got to be. He won’t let me leave. Which way is out, Dan? You’ve got to tell me. Just point in the right direction. There won’t be any more trouble from me.”

He carried a bag. It looked heavy. The idea that he might have actually found Bran’s coins flitted through Daniel’s mind, but it was drowned out by cold, burning resentment.

Kyle took a step closer. The splotchy colour from earlier had drained from his face, leaving it grey and mixing sweat into the rain that coursed over him. He raised a hand to shield his eyes. Daniel could feel his cousin’s gaze skipping from him to the crumpled body at his side. He shuffled forward to hide Bran. To let Kyle gawk at him felt wrong. Irreverent.

“Tell me how to get out of here.” Kyle still spoke in a whisper. He had probably heard the fight, Daniel realised, and had been spooked. The alcohol was wearing off, and with it went the bravado. He was probably desperate to get to the safety of his home again, but he’d spent more than an hour lost in the living maze surrounding Craven Manor. In another life, Daniel would have felt pity for him. But all he had left was burning, boiling frustration.

“You’re to blame for this!” He couldn’t keep the angry tremor out of his voice. “I’ve got blame on my shoulders, too. So does Bran. And Eliza. And the people who killed Annalise. We’re all at fault here, but you were the lynchpin. If you hadn’t tried to rob the house, broken the tower door, told me about the town, taken the talisman—”

“The way out!” Kyle’s boots squelched in the mud as he lunged forward. His face contorted in fear and anger, he raised a fist. “You’ve got to know where it is! Show me, you bastard!”

Daniel raised his infected arm to point behind himself. Kyle gagged and staggered back as he saw the blackened, bulging flesh. What little colour had been in his face bled away. “What the hell?”

“This is on your head.” Daniel dropped the arm. He could feel the infection crawling through his chest and creeping up one side of his neck. He wondered if he would suffocate when it reached his oesophagus. That would be a mercy. “It’s on my head, too. Why couldn’t we have left well enough alone?”

“You’re not making any sense, man.” Kyle’s eyes didn’t leave Daniel’s arm. Gripping the bag with a shaking hand, he backed away, his steps unsteady. “Just… just stay there, all right? I’m gonna get out of here and… and I’ll send someone back for you, okay?”

That was a lie. Kyle clearly had no intention of looking back once he was out of Craven Manor’s bounds. Daniel tilted his head back to feel the rain across his face. The anger faded as though the water washed it away. Instead, he felt numb. His infected arm was prickling, but he didn’t want to see how bad it had gotten. He dreaded seeing the skin split, the fungus spilling out to cement him to the ground beside Bran’s body.

“Just… don’t try to follow me, all right?” Kyle was at the edge of the clearing. The shadows behind him seemed impossibly dense, like a wall of black that would swallow him up.

Daniel’s heart missed a beat. The darkness had blinded him, and the rain had deafened him to what had been going on around them. He tried to call a warning. “Behind you!”

“Stay—stay there—” Kyle’s eyes flashed as they watched Daniel and the blackened arm. He didn’t hear the grating, gasping breaths. He didn’t see the shadows beginning to coil around him. He couldn’t feel the single eye trained on the back of his head.

Daniel reached forward, but his legs refused to lift him. Kyle responded to the motion by taking another step back, right into Eliza’s open maw.

The scream was one of the worst things Daniel had ever heard. He threw his good arm over his eyes to block out the sight of the carnage. The wail only lasted two seconds, then Kyle gurgled and abruptly fell silent. The sounds of snapping bones and wet chewing noises followed.

Daniel moaned. He’d hated Kyle, but he’d never wanted the other man to die. He kept his head down, sickened by the slippery chewing noises. Eliza would come for him next, he knew. He inclined his head towards Bran’s side, where he’d last seen the ghost. “Annalise. Run. Hide.”

A flicker of movement illuminated her. She was sitting with her knees drawn up under her chin, arms wrapped around them, and head bowed so deeply that her hair hid her features. She shook her head vigorously.