El's Chronicles: Shadow Island // Chapter 6 (bonus)

Chapter 6 (bonus)

I jolted awake as a blood-curdling scream sliced through the stillness. It was emphatically female. Then, as if on cue, a second voice chimed in, unmistakably laughing. It was deep and maniacal.

I was convinced that someone was being murdered in the woods just beyond the house. 

So I lay there, numb with fear but philosophically engaged, weighing my options, all of which came down to doing nothing or doing something.

I sat up, very slowly, and then got out of bed and did what any sensible woman would do in a moment of mortal fear.

I prepared for combat. 

First, I braided my hair into a tight, unforgiving rope because if I was going to be dragged into the woods by a psychopath, it would not be by my own vanity. My hair was my one obvious weakness. It was too long, too easy, too grabbable. I’d seen enough fight videos to know the truth: hair is a handle. Then I pulled on sweatpants and a hoodie. With the hood pulled tight.

Another scream tore through the dark like someone had taken a human soul and wrung it out over the woods. 

Suddenly I realized why this island was so empty. *People were being murdered in the woods. *

This was when I made an executive decision that Zan would be joining me in the fight to rescue the screaming woman. At 3:27 a.m.

His door was closed. I stood next to it for a moment, hand hovering, silently hoping that he wasn’t one of those people who slept naked. I knocked once, softly. Nothing. I knocked again, slightly louder. Still nothing. I opened the door an inch and whispered, “Zan.” No response.

I stepped inside, the room dark and calm and offensively peaceful. He was lying on his back (dressed), perfectly still and breathing evenly, the picture of a man whose nervous system had never been betrayed. 

I dropped to my knees beside his bed. “Zan,” I whispered, fast and sharp. “Zan. Wake up. We have a situation.”

He shifted slightly, like a man turning away from a minor inconvenience. His eyelids lifted a fraction.

“What,” he said, not as a question but as a tired accusation.

“Someone is being murdered in the woods,” I breathed and pointed toward the window. “There’s a woman screaming. It’s bouncing everywhere like she’s running, like she’s being chased…”

Right then the scream came again, higher this time, splitting the air clean in half.

Zan didn’t move.

“It’s a vixen,” he murmured.

I froze. “Evixan? You know her? Who is she? Is she a neighbor?“ I whispered, scandalized.

His eyes opened halfway. “It’s a fox.”

I blinked hard, recalibrating.

“No,” I said quickly. “Zan, wake up. Someone is chasing her. There’s screaming and… and there’s laughing. Like a man. Like he’s enjoying it.”

As if the woods wanted to prove me right, the laughter came next, rasping, delighted, completely unwell.

Zan didn’t even flinch.

“That’s also a fox,” he said. Then, after a pause, “They’re mating.”

I stared at him, waiting for the rest of the sentence.

“If it’s inside, wake me,” he mumbled, then rolled onto his side and left consciousness behind.

That was it.

Back in my bed, I listened to the horny woods carry on. She screamed. He laughed. The longer it went on, the clearer the dynamic became. Whatever had set her off, I was certain he was responsible. She sounded like someone who’d already explained herself several times. He sounded like someone who found that information interesting but not actionable. Then they made up in the most unhinged way possible.

Relationship goals, I thought, disgusted with myself, then finally fell asleep.