Chapter 6

6

WINIFRED CHAPEL

I 'm not sure what wakes me.

If it's the scent of dirt, of grass, of something that is just…not quite right.

If it's the breeze that tosses loose strands of hair over my face, tickling my eyelids, my lips.

If it's the awareness that there's hard earth beneath me where there should be a soft bed, and a distant crackling of woodfire in otherwise deafening silence.

Or if it's racing of my heart and quickening breaths as the realization that I don't know how I got here sinks in. Last thing I remember is struggling to keep my eyes open so I could finish the chapter I was reading. In my bed. In my room. In my house.

When my eyes fly open, it's a blurry bright circle I see first, cradled in shadows. The full moon.

Pushing to a seated position, hands splayed in the leaf-strewn grass, I look around, blinking away the last remnants of a heavy, dreamless sleep as I try to catch my bearings and make sense of my surroundings. Figure out where exactly I am.

Then, and only then, can I panic about the hows.

My attention snags on an orange flicker in the distance—the source of the crackling and popping sounds. A fire. Someone's here.

Chest squeezing with a combination of wariness and relief, I scramble up to a stand, in nothing but a silk nightgown that goes down to my knees, and start making my way toward the only sign of life in an otherwise dark and desolate forest. Without my glasses, I feel more disoriented than ever as I navigate with my hands and squinted eyes.

It doesn't escape me how… wrong this all feels.

The silence.

The stillness.

The fact I'm even here at all.

Maybe I'm dreaming.

At the thought, I give my head a rapid shake—something my nana used to tell me to do if I woke up from a nightmare, so that when I fell back asleep I wouldn't just fall back into terror. I pinch myself too for good measure.

If anything though, the acute stinging ache draws my attention to the mark on my left hand. The mark that I'd wrapped in bandages when I got home from school.

My fingers rip it off, and my stomach drops, my steps faltering to a stop.

The mark is still very much there…but it's dry. My pores have finally seemed to close up, making it so it's no longer seeping whatever that black stuff was.

I smelled it earlier, curious—hopeful it was just blood or sweat tinged black for whatever reason—only to catch the faint whiff of something burnt. Like the charred flakes on a slice of toast left too long against a flame.

I'd wondered if it tasted like it smelled, but I wasn't brave enough to try it.

I wonder if Ophelia ever did…

As if summoned by the thought of her, I suddenly tune into the fact that the crackling fire isn't the only sound to be heard.

I recognize the song being hummed instantly, and I find my feet speeding toward the break in the trees, my vision locked on those turbulent flames reaching for the moon and what looks to be a shadowed figure standing just beyond it.

"I Want You to Want Me" by Cheap Trick.

It's been years since I've listened to it, and it throws me right back to sleepovers at Ophelia's, listening to her dad's cassette collection in her room as she played with my hair, as we did our homework, as we poured over our favorite poets' words and discussed books we'd buddy-read.

I remember how she'd hum along sometimes when silence would take hold.

When I step into the small clearing, the humming abruptly cuts out. Despite only being ten feet away—if that—between the fire sparking embers between us, the smoke dancing in the air, the darkness hugging us in, and the fact I don't have my glasses, I can't make much out other than her long hair rippling freely.

And the fact she's stark naked, her skin practically glowing silver.

I instantly avert my gaze, my heartrate kicking up. It's no matter that I can't make out any details.

"You're here."

Everything in me stills.

Slowly, so slowly, she first turns her head, and I feel more than see her gaze boring right into mine over her shoulder before she turns fully around to face me.

It takes all my restraint to keep my gaze on her face.

The smudge of her full lips tilts up with a knowing, wicked edge. And when her tongue flicks out a second later to swipe maddeningly slow over her bottom lip, caught by my squinted, straining eyes, I can't help but wonder if maybe looking at her body would actually be safer.

Yeah, no.

With her hair swept behind her, save for the shorter tendrils that curl around her face and chest, there's nothing at all hidden from me. Her breasts. Her flat stomach. The jut of her hips and soft swells of her thighs.

What's between…

I'm grateful it's all a blurry smudge of pale skin and inky shadows.

Still, I gulp and look away, focusing on our surroundings instead. "Is this…"

"A dream?" she cuts in gently, her tone unreadable. "No, sorry to say."

I frown. She sounds…odd. And definitely not sorry.

"What's going on? Why am I here?"

The earth crunches softly with her approaching steps, and my pulse skitters with nerves, alarm bells ringing in the background. The closer she gets though, the further away it all becomes, her proximity clouding my senses.

And the fact we're in the woods, alone, it's so late, and she's naked…

All I can think is, Why?

Why am I here?

Why am I not running?

Why do I feel this growing gnawing itch inside me, begging for some kind of…relief.

"You can look, you know. I won't bite."

My gaze springs to hers just as she comes to a stop a foot away from me.

She tilts her head, lip curving—clearer than it was moments ago—the flames dancing in her glassy pupils making them all the more mischievous as she adds, "Well, maybe I'll nibble just a bit."

I swallow hard, forcing myself to speak. "You never answered my question. What are we doing here? Where are we? And why are you?—"

"Don't you hear it?"

A beat passes. "Hear what?"

She grins on a short, unexpected laugh that has a chill cutting down my spine. "The screams, Winnie. Can't you hear them?" She nods somewhere behind me. "From up there."

Frowning deeply, I twist my head around, eyes widening, and my stomach pitching when I see the black blurred silhouette of the Hollow Hill Sanitarium poking out above the trees.

The fact I can make it out—a shapeless blob that it is—shows just how close we are to the base of the cliffs. Closer than I've ever been before. Close enough, that I suddenly wonder if perhaps I might not make it home after all. As far as I know, no one has ever trekked this far and returned.

A loud pop comes from the fire, startling me, and I swing back around. Only to rear back with a yelp when I find Ophelia standing right in front of me, so close I can make out the sharp planes of her face and thick lashes. So close her body heat fans out over me like a furnace, making me wonder how long she's been out here, basking naked by the fire.

Now that she's right up in my space, there's no missing the sheen of sweat clinging to her temples, dampening her hair into long stringy ropes that stick to her skin, and gleaming off the narrow slopes of her moon-silver shoulders.

I resist searching lower. Especially now that I don't have the solace of poor vision to wall her off from me.

"I don't like this," I rush out stiffly. "I'm going home."

I go to turn away, when her voice stops me. "Not so fast. There's something we need to do first." This time, she sounds more like the Ophelia I know—bossy and sharp-tongued. Making me wonder if I only imagined that sinisterly soft edge that was there before. The razor-edged, calculating glint in her dark eyes… eyes that seemed a little too dark.

Just your paranoia talking.

"We were brought here for a reason."

I tense at her words, and while it doesn't sting or burn anymore now that it seems to have dried up, my gaze drops to the spot on my hand once more.

"You want this to stop, don't you?" she says.

"Wh-what do you mean?" I say shakily.

She blows out a harsh breath. Now, that's definitely my Ophelia.

I give a quick shake of my head. Not mine.

"Don't play stupid. You know exactly what this is about. We need to close the door we so idiotically opened so we can finally put this shit behind us."

I still.

"I think I figured it out. Your mark… It makes so much sense now."

"What does?" I hear myself say faintly, frowning down at my hand..

"We both gave it blood, right? The board. The…thing, we invited in. You cut yourself, remember? At the beach. It got a taste of yours, and then when it got mine that night…" Her voice hitches painfully, and my eyes fall shut. "We opened the door, Winnie. It's our fault. We let her in. And then…then we forgot to say goodbye."

I swallow hard. "Yeah, well aware," I say stiffly.

A long weighted moment passes. "You do know it wasn't because we kissed, right?"

This time, I turn to stone.

"That's not what cursed us, that's not?—"

My head snaps up, and I whip out, "How do you know? How do you know that didn't just…feed it. Like our blood. An offering, because it was a sin, because we turned away from God's?—"

She scoffs.. "Oh, be so fucking for real, Winifred. Your precious God doesn't give two shits about us or anyone in this God forsaken town, much less about two teenage girls kissing."

My jaw trembles with how tightly I mash my molars, as a familiar burn licks at the back of my eyes. "It goes against?—"

"If you say nature," she grits out, "I swear to whatever demon's got a hard-on for us, I won't be held responsible for my actions."

My face bunches, and I take a shaky step back. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She just purses her lips and stubbornly kicks up her chin, shrugging. And in doing so, my gaze flits down before I can help it, trailing over the prominent lines of her collarbone…

Lower…

I'm quick to rip eyes away, my face growing hot in a way that has nothing to do with the nearby flames.

She barks a short bitter laugh. "Thanks for proving my point."

I'm shaking my head. "That-that's not?—"

"Oh, come on. Can we quit the saintly act for one night?"

Anger builds in my chest. But before I can fire anything back, she adds, "Just long enough to get this over with."

Right. The door.

I meet her annoyed gaze head-on. "And how do you suggest we do that? The board burned, Ophelia. How?—"

"We don't need it," she says simply.

My brow furrows. "That makes zero sense." I quickly shake my head. "No, you know what, none of this makes any sense."

This time, when I go to turn around and head back the way I came, I don't know how I'm still standing upright when I find Ophelia is right. There.

Standing directly in my path, preternaturally still, brow arched. And naked.

Not that I forgot that little detail.

But right now, it's much easier to focus on all that pale, silky-looking flesh—all those gentle curves and sharp juts of bones, the subtle dips and valleys and the startling dark buds of her nipples—than the fact that it is humanly impossible for her to have moved that quickly.

As if she winked in and out of existence, defying the laws of physics.

I stumble back a few steps, hands raised to ward her off, mindless of the heat of the fire blazing hotly through my nightgown.

Ophelia remains where she is as her gaze drifts past me, a troubled look overcoming her furrowed eyes. "You see now?" she says so softly, I have to strain to hear her. "We're running out of time."

Blood thunders in my ears. "H-how did you…I…What?—"

"You're still a virgin, right?"

My eyes bug, and my hands drop to my sides. "Excuse me?"

"Forget it. Why am I even asking?" she says, shaking her head. "Of course you are."

Teeth gritted, nostrils flared, I shoot back, "And you? Are you a virgin?"

She studies me for a long moment, before cocking her head and replying simply, "Depends."

"Depends?"

She lifts a shoulder. "On what definition we use. You see, according to your favorite book…"

I roll my eyes.

"Only a man can deflower a woman, and take that preciously coveted bounty."

My nose wrinkles at that, but I'm quick to mask it with a look of indifference. If she noticed my reaction, she doesn't point it out.

"But seeing as I'd rather eat glass than allow a penis to invade my body—or more specifically, what's attached to said penis…because, truly, we can make do with the rubber knock-offs, and without all that extra"—she waves a hand, wrinkling her nose—"stuff."

My cheeks heat, and I drop my gaze to my dirt-caked feet.

"Not to mention the fact that the Bible was written by men for men…" She trails off. "Well, I'm just not quite sure what the rules are when you take the phallus out of the fallacy." She shrugs, drawing my gaze back to hers just as she smirks. "I suppose you're just left with sound logic."

She takes a step toward me, and try as I might to move out of her reach, I find myself rooted to the spot as she brings a hand up to cup my cheek. "One gold star virgin is better than none I suppose," she murmurs.

And with those puzzling words, she grabs me by the wrist, and starts dragging me around the fire to where I first found her.

"What are you doing? Where are you—" My panicked voice cuts out when I see the blanket spread over the ground.

Ophelia forces me to sit on it, before dropping to her knees in front of me. She then reaches over toward the corner, and I catch a flashing glint before she grabs whatever it is.

Faster than I can take my next breath, she flips my right hand over, and drags a knife right down the center of my palm.

I suck a hiss through my teeth, eyes widening at the blood immediately seeping up from the gash.

The sharp burning pain registers a second later, flooding my throat with thick tears.

"What…Why did you do that?" I choke out, ripping my hand from her grip to cup my uninjured one around my wrist. I dart my gaze wildly between Ophelia's, dread twisting low in my belly at the blank look in her eyes.

And either the flames combined with the darkness are playing tricks on me—that or I'm in shock—because her pupils…

They look bigger.

Not only have they completely swallowed up her brown irises, but they seem to have swallowed up some of the whites too.

Movement has my gaze dropping to her lap where she draws the knife across her left palm with one deep, clean sweep of the blade. Creating an identical wound to mine, one that instantly bubbles up with thick blood. She doesn't so much as flinch.

My heart thrashes against my ribcage, and I'm shaking my head.

This isn't right.

Something is…wrong.

But when I snap my gaze up to hers, readying myself to get up and run?—

I don't know what's wrong with her…what sort of trouble she got herself into…but I know I don't want any part of it.

—I find my best friend smiling back at me.

And just like that, I am lost.

"Winnie," she sighs, tilting her head, lips rising into the kind of smile I haven't seen her wear in years. One that meets her brown eyes, just like now. One that is soft and genuine and not attached to harsh narrowed looks and a steely jaw.

Somewhere under the daze blanketing over me, I can vaguely register those warning bells from before now screaming. But they might as well be an echo from the distant Heavens.

Not tearing her gaze from mine, Ophelia raises her hand, and I glance over to find thick streams of blood running down her arm, droplets splashing off her thigh. And the next thing I know, I find myself pushing up on my knees, and lifting my own wounded hand, mirroring her position.

Without a word—without any hesitance—as if compelled by some outside force, our palms crash together in a silent, yet deafening boom of thunder, one that shakes the world around us.

And for one hot, agonizing second where I can feel the sharp pain pulsing in my palm, I remember that I'm afraid.

My mouth opens—on her name? A plea? a scream?

I'll never know.

Because as soon as I go to rip my hand away and scramble away from her, she surges forward, crushing her lips to mine, pushing her tongue into my mouth.

And I'm frozen.

A low guttural sound that is more beast than human claws its way into my mouth and down my throat, reverberating in my chest. Drawing a shiver from me.

Ophelia…

Tipping her head back, she lashes the tip of her tongue over the roof of my mouth, flicking my teeth, before ripping away from me with a harsh exhale. Causing me to lurch forward with a gasp, as if she threw a rope around my ribcage and tugged it.

Slumped forward, I watch through hooded eyes as she throws her head back, tendons straining against her flawless, creamy throat. Her ink-black hair falls behind her like a waterfall, and before I even realize what I'm doing, I'm leaning forward and reaching around her, scooping it up in my fist, and yanking her head back all the way.

Her breath hitches sharply, and just before I dip my head, gunning my mouth for her neck, I catch the wicked tilt of a smile.

Hot sticky hands find my back at the same time my tongue lashes over her throat, slim fingers splaying over the thin material of my nightgown. She yanks me against her and my mouth yawns open on a gasp against the hollow of her throat. Teeth glancing off her skin.

I'm vaguely aware of my bloodied hand sliding down her arm, stroking along her bare back. The tang of iron in the air is cloying, and yet, if anything, it spurs me on—spurs us on. There's no room for questions or disgust.

I'm no longer me… just pure, unadulterated need twisted into a version of myself I don't recognize.

A version I feel like I have no control over. One that was forged from a culmination of three year's worth of repression and denial and heartache. And fear.

Fingers claw at my waist, bunching the hem of my nightgown to drag it up my body and over my head. Leaving me in nothing but my underwear.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, reality threatens to set in. What am I doing? How did we get like this?

But then Ophelia's beaded nipples are brushing my chest, glancing off my own hardening buds, and I find myself sinking back into the lulling, suffocating haze that is my desire for this girl.

A desire I can't for the life of me, in this moment, understand how I ever thought I could deny. Escape.

I'm blinded by it.

My hunger for her.

Consumed so terribly, that I know there will be no taking this back.

Will I even want to?

Ophelia reaches around me, fisting my hair that is just as long and untamed as hers, and forcibly rips my mouth away from her throat where I was leaving a trail of biting, sucking kisses.

With her free hand, she reaches up between us to clutch my jaw, forcing me to release her hair to grip her shoulders instead. Dragging my swollen, parted lips back to hers with bruising force.

We oscillate between plush, crushing kisses and ravenous open-mouthed gulps. Tongues wrestling, fighting for some sort of upper hand. While our teeth knock together, warring for some sort of unnamable union that has my nails biting into her skin.

Sounds escape from both of us—growls and whimpers and moans—as we writhe together, curves melding with curves. The hot heat of her bare slick core glides over my thigh, and instinct has me dropping my hands to her ass, adjusting the angle, so that I can grind my thigh deep against her sweltering sex.

A deep shuddery moan crawls up into my mouth, and the hand clutching my jaw shifts, a bloodied finger dragging between our panting lips—while the one still gripping my hair tightens—like it's her very own leash, keeping me tethered to her as I suck on her salty, coppery tasting digit.

I moan, rocking into her, taking as much as I give.

And then the world goes sideways, and I'm on my back. My eyes fly open to find that, save for the beautifully wild, vicious looking girl chasing me to the ground, darkness has devoured our surroundings.

And it moves.

Fingers trail from my throat to my belly button, carving out a tingly path that has me arching up, thighs squeezing together, my nipples aching, they're so hard. Her finger skims lower so she can drag the rounded tip of her nail back and forth along the elastic band of my cotton briefs.

"Ophelia," I whisper in a sigh, grabbing her head between my palms, guiding her to my heaving chest. "Ophelia. Please. "

"Please what?" she says in a constricted voice, muffled against the top of my breast.

I spread my legs for her as much as I can, and in a keening voice that I'll probably be embarrassed about later, say, "Touch me."

With a groan, she drops her mouth to an aching nipple, sucking it between her lips. At the same time, her hand dips under my panties, sliding down to cup me. Circling my swollen clit with her thumb, eliciting a gasp from my lips.

Curving a single, slim finger, she adds just enough pressure to drag the tip up through my wet slit in a come hither motion. I clench and whimper and shake.

It's so gentle…

So maddeningly teasing I could cry.

And then it's gone. Her touch. Her hand. Her mouth from my nipple. And I want to scream.

Pulling back to hover over me, inches from my face, she lifts her fingers to her mouth—the ones she just glided through my wetness. And she pauses just long enough to ensure I get a good look at my arousal clinging to her fingers, mingling with our blood, before sucking them between her lips.

Groaning, she rolls her eyes back. Lashes fluttering. Slipping her fingers free, she lowers her head, and something in me sharpens to attention at the glittering blackness of her eyes that nearly drowns them out completely. "You taste sweet, little bunny. Just like I knew you always would."

The shadows around her ripple, but just before I can latch onto that growing sense of alarm, Ophelia lowers back into my space, sealing her lips to mine. Thrusting her tongue into my mouth, she forces me to taste myself, once again pulling me under her spell.

"It's okay to want it," she rasps in between kisses. "What do they have that I can't give you? What do any of them have that could ever satisfy you the way I could?"

Her words are slow to register, my thoughts becoming sluggish, slow to form. What is she talking about?

A blood-slick hand splays over my sternum, fingertips grazing the dip in my throat, the heel rising and falling with my chest. Dragging it over my thundering heart, she hums. "Your body isn't the only thing starved for attention."

A keening sound squeezes from my throat, and I'm vaguely aware I'm nodding.

"You crave to be loved," she goes on, nuzzling her nose into my cheek. "Cherished and protected." A tongue flicks out, swiping over my cheek, and I shiver. " Owned ."

My chin trembles, emotion squeezing my throat.

"It drives you mad sometimes, doesn't it?" she taunts. "Fighting this. Shoving it all down."

Eyes blazing, I bare my teeth at her when she pulls back. It's as if her words summon forth all the resentment I've buried—all the bitterness and unfairness and rage that has been lurking deep under the surface since that night.

I had her, I had her…

And then I lost her.

"Yeah," she whispers, nodding, lip tilting. "There it is." She cocks her head, roaming her eyes over my face, my strained neck, my heaving chest.

My nails find her back, scoring scratches down her skin as I arch into her.

Chuckling, she reaches up to grab my hair and yank my head back as she puts her mouth right over mine and hums deeply. "Hell hath no fury like a girl fiending for what she won't let herself have…." she taunts in a murmur, before slanting her lips over mine.

I thrash under her.

"My little bunny," Ophelia says on a hot, sweet-tasting breathy sigh, and if I'm not mistaken, her voice is lighter—softer—than it was a moment ago.

Wrong…

Something's wrong.

And yet, I find myself rocking up into her, chasing friction, seeking those wickedly gentle fingers. "Please," I cry. I seethe through my teeth. "Stop teasing."

"Shhhh," she says in a hush against my cheek as she slips her hand back down my underwear.

My eyes fall shut as I push into her palm, begging for what I don't have the words to ask.

"I've got you, pretty girl." Rubbing me—soft at first, before growing more fervent—she praises me in between kisses to my neck. My chest. To each of my nipples. "You're so wet for me. Such a greedy little thing."

That's not her voice…

But just as that thought forms, a finger shoves into me—rougher than I'm anticipating. My mouth opens on a silent gasp, eyes popping wide to find glassy pitch black orbs daggering down at me—not a drop of white to be seen. It's made all the more terrifying by the wicked smile teasing her lips

Ophelia…

Squirming, I try to break free from her… from this girl who I've known forever, yet looks utterly unrecognizable right now.

This isn't right. Something's wrong.

But there's no use. Her hold on me is unrelenting. It's like trying to move a brick wall.

And my fear… it returns with a vengeance.

Shaking my head, I try to speak. Cry for help. But something streaks between us—a shadowy hand—and physically snaps my jaw shut. Covering my sealed lips.

A second finger wedges itself inside me, fucking deep into my tight channel.

And it burns, it burns…

But it also feels like heaven.

And if that isn't the most blasphemous thought to have right now.

"Oh, how much fun I'm going to have…"

My body quakes, eyes fighting not to roll back as my hips snap up with each rough thrust of her digits.

"You're mine now. Mine. And if anyone dares to try and take you from me," she practically hisses, teeth bared down at me, "I'll tear their throat out with my teeth."

With that, Ophelia dives down, right through the shadowy hand still plastered across my mouth, capturing my bottom lip between her teeth, biting down hard enough that I taste copper. At the same time, she works some kind of magic with her hand—fucking and rubbing me just right. Just where and how I need it.

And my vision shudders.

The world spins.

Pleasure unlike anything ever imagined shoots through my veins, gathering hotly in my core.

And when I finally can't hold it off anymore… I shatter so wholly and blissfully around her fingers, I swear I lift right off the ground.

And then nothing.

It all goes black.

Taking my last remaining thought with it?—

The door…