If it hadn't been for Alek's hands dropping onto her shoulders, anchoring her in place, she would have slammed into the psycho from the woods.
"Can Alek come out to play?" the man asked in the same child's voice used to trick her into opening the door.
Her brain labored to process the fact the little boy was this tall, lean man, with his arms crossed loosely over his chest, his shoulder propped casually against the door jamb. Angry brown stains marred the front of his tattered shirt. Mud stuck to his black pants. His hair hung past his shoulders in dirty, thin strands.
He didn't even look at Alek. He focused on her. His anticipation and hunger to devour her slid around her body, his wickedness became an oppressive cocoon. A horrifying apparition with eyes so black the pupil melded with the iris, and skin, the pallor of someone who had been sick for a long, long time.
The crazed look in his black eyes told her his sickness wasn't physical.
"Geneva. Behind me. Now." Alek's cool, steady voice was in direct opposition to the terror and sense of evil that drenched her more than the wild rain pushing through the open door. Her instincts screamed danger and pushed her to run from the man at the door. Behind Alek didn't seem far enough. She sprinted for the bedroom, for Alek's strange, lethal weapon.
Her foot collapsed under the pressure. She crashed to the floor. Her knees and palms stung, ankle pulsed, heart raced. She flipped to face the stranger, scraped her butt against the floor until she scooted back as far as the sofa would let her.
The man at the door grinned while she shuddered, a few feet from him, unable to tear her gaze from his long incisors, and his crooked dagger-sharp teeth. "He can't be real," she whispered.
The man's tongue fondled one of the lethal points. "Keep lying to yourself while I deal with your boyfriend," he said.
His voice was devoid of compassion, throbbing instead with sadistic pleasure while she cowered on the floor. "Alek, you picked yourself a ripe one. She looks good enough to eat."
Her heart beat against her chest like a terrified butterfly desperate to escape imprisonment.
"She's not part of this, Sarko." Alek reached his hand out to her, never taking his eyes from the threat.
Sarko. The man who cut and bruised Alek.
"I can smell her fear. I hear her blood rushing through her body, her heart knocking against her chest. It's such a fucking turn-on."
"Geneva, don't look at him. Stand up and come to me," Alek ordered, his hand still extended.
It was one order she would have followed if she could have torn her gaze from Sarko and stopped her plunge into a deep, dank hole. The longer his eyes captivated her, the more endless the pit became. Sarko's voice echoed through the blackness describing the vile things he would do to her once she let him inside the cabin.
He terrified her. His words sickened her.
Yet, she wanted to let him inside.
She opened her mouth prepared to welcome him when Alek breached Sarko's mind control and pulled her out of the black hole. It took a few seconds to clear the dark energy from her head and realized she huddled in the protective curve of Alek's side. She buried her face deeper into his side, curled her fingers into fists. With her face turned away, she kept Sarko's odor, sour decay mixed with dirt from wafting up her nostrils. She resisted looking at Sarko again for fear of finding herself in the bottomless pit again.
