The Stalker

Pain engulfs me. My leg feels as if it is on fire, like it’s being roasted over an open flame. The metal teeth of the trap have torn through flesh and are sucking on the bone.

I throw my head back and howl in agony as much as in rage. When I open my eyes, Mia is still kneeling beside me. My angel. I still don’t understand how she’s here. I buried her in a snowy ditch. She was dead.

There was a big search for her and Will. I followed it online. But they never found the bodies. I study her. Is she real? She doesn’t look like herself. There’s an expression on her face that I don’t recognise. It comes to me just then what it is: defiance. She isn’t afraid of me and she wants me to know it.

I let out another howl of frustration, my hands squeezing my leg, hoping to stem the bleeding and mute the pain. The jaws won’t give though. The metal teeth keep gnawing.

With tears in my eyes I glance at Laura, my other angel. Why is she not doing anything to help?

‘Help me,’ I say to her again, as the flames lick higher. I can feel my heart straining as blood leaks out of me. My hands are hot and sticky with it.

Laura looks at me not with the same defiance as Mia, but with something I recognise all the same. It’s the look my mother used to give me: disgust. Like there is something wrong with me; like she hates me, like she sees the devil in me.

I blink in surprise. Has Laura been pretending all this time to love me? How has she hidden it so well? I thought I knew her. I thought she was different.

I lift a hand to touch her cheek but she pulls away and my hand flops to the ground. ‘You were my angel,’ I say to her. ‘You were meant to save me.’

‘Guess you’re going to Hell then,’ she says.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Laura

We stand up and watch Liam as he slowly bleeds out. Still, I feel nothing except relief. I understand finally what the Celts were thinking when it came to meting out justice to those who’d committed crimes against the tribe.

When Liam finally takes his last breath, it feels as if a great dark weight has been lifted off of me. I feel unshackled. The fear that’s crippled me these last months dissolves like my breath in the cold night air. It’s there one moment, gone the next. I could take flight.

I turn to Mia, who stands beside me like a statue, head bent, not taking her gaze off Liam’s face. She grinds her teeth and breathes hard as she looks down on Liam’s body and her shoulders start to shake violently. I put my arm around her. ‘Are you OK?’ I say.

She clings to me. ‘No.’