Page 10 of Trick

The crack of glass breaking.

A roar…a wild animal’s roar tore through the air.

I stopped dead in my tracks and held my head.

What is going on? Have I lost my damn mind?

My head pounded with an instant headache, and my eyeballs felt sharp as razorblades—so sharp it was as if they were cutting my eye sockets.

I froze when sudden heat blew against my back.

My neck. The top of my head.

My curls flew forward, brushing across my cheeks.

I dropped my hands and slowly…oh, so slowly…turned around. Iscreamed,and my hands flew out in front of me for protection. I gasped for air and mangled the words, “Oh my god! Oh my god!”

Alaric stood in front of me.

His eyes were red, completely red. Like a bloody wound dripping down his face, his eyes swirling around and around, hypnotizing in their terror. His massive hand held a knife up above his head as if he had stopped in mid-hack at my back. His muscles quivered under his skin, rolling like a lazy river, each lap with a glow of red.

He stood frozen, heaving in great gulps of oxygen.

My own chest pumped up and down. Up and down.

I kept my hands between us up, ready for his strike.

We stood there.

And stood there.

A minute passed.

We didn’t move.

I wasn’t going to risk moving, my heart beating a brutal rhythm inside my chest. If I did, he might attack.

If I were going crazy… Well, he was already there.

Time kept ticking away. And still, we held firm.

His front door opened and shut from far away.

I blinked and sucked in air. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out for help. It took all I had to stay silent and not move, my legs beginning to ache.

“What in the hell,” a masculine voice muttered from the entryway. “Did I miss a party or something?”

Another ten seconds passed by.

My eyes darted to the side, peering past the creature that was in front of me, to stare down the hallway where a shadow appeared.

The shadow stopped in its tracks, staring at the scene before it, taking in the Alaric-creature and my frozen form. It talked—the man talked—in a furious whisper, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Then he retreated silently back into the entryway.

Tears formed in my eyes. He couldn’t leave me!

But he wasn’t.