Excerpt - Raven
Romulus - Slasher
Note: Eh fuck it, have something from the other too. I'm still working on a title so it's just Slasher for now
Finally, when Kleo has taken too long, she scratches at her arms again and then marches off where she remembers Ben and Allie going. And, even with withdrawal, the hunting trips she'd taken with her dad gave her enough experience to immediately be able to pick up Allie's trail as she had snapped a lot of underbrush and disturbed… well everything.
“Logan, do you see-”
“Yeah.”
She shrieks and whips around when he's right behind her, punching him in the chest. “Don't do that right now!” She holds her heart, taking deep breaths.
Logan cringes and the Professor gives them an odd stare. “Sorry. But look, she's left blood that direction.”
Kleo looks where he points, vaguely able to pick up a dark smear on an even darker tree. But she can see the glossiness of it and she squints, moving to approach it and staring blankly at Logan when he stopped her and pointed down at a log. “Saints, Rags, I really should have left you.”
“Yeah, well, it's too late, now.” She huffs and then steps over the log, reluctantly letting him help her. “You know, I am curious what either of your plans are if we get to Ben’s body and one Ivy Hendrix is standing there carving it up.”
Professor Scott scoffs. “It's really unlikely for it to be Ivy-”
“Oh god, that is so unimportant, what if the murderer is there?!”
Logan nudges her towards the next blood spot and then took the lead, which Kleo was very grateful for. She knew Logan still took a lot of hunting trips with his dad and so at least would be able to track an injury path.
Of course, this did mean she was now there for basically no reason but she really didn't want to stay behind with Caden and Prestley. Look, maybe Prestley would stick up for Dani, but…
Between Caden and Logan, she trusted Logan to be able to keep her a lot safer than Caden. Logan is 6 foot and Caden is barely 5’8 and that was if you believe what he claims. Ragdoll just knew she's 5’4, herself, and didn't have to look up too high in order to meet his eyes.
Professor Scott speaks, however, following close behind them. “I will protect my students to the best of my ability.”
Logan and Kleo both give him unconvinced stares and he straightens his shoulders. “I'll have you both know that I am well trained in Jiu Jitsu and I am carrying a taser.”
“Ooh, a taser.” Kleo mocks and he sighs.
Logan snorts and nudges her again, both further down the trail and to get her attention. “You said you have that knife, right?”
“My butterfly knife,” she confirms, getting it out of her pocket. It's a beautiful knife, pink chrome with a black steel handle that had holes in it to allow the pink blade to be seen. And the blade itself was shaped to have hearts in the bottom of the blade. Kleo had been willing to sacrifice just a little bit of durability for the aesthetic, hoping to never actually need it.
Logan does chuckle softly at it and then he gestures back at Professor Scott. “Very you. I figure we just gotta run faster than him, so just stab him in the leg and take off. I'll carry you if need be.”
Professor Scott scoffs and Logan glances back at him. “What? You said you'd protect us, there's how.” Kleo laughs softly as she slides the knife back up her sleeve into her bracelets like she kept it when she needed it.
Professor Scott rolls his eyes before suddenly grabbing their arms right in time for them to see the giant spot of blood they were approaching. It looked like something had been dragged through the dirt, leaving behind so much blood they could smell it and Kleo’s eyes watered from the coppery odor, covering her nose. “Ugh-”
“That's something I always think is unimportant to cover in my class but… this much blood usually stinks.” Professor Scott sighs, his eyes going glassy.
Logan's expression became grim and he sighs as well, “I really just don't think this much blood came from Allie…”
The smear led directly to a puddle of blood just shortly in the distance and a drop falling into it alerts them all to look up. At first, none are even quite sure what they're looking at.
Irrationally, Kleo's brain labels it as more blood, but it's in the trees and there's something white holding in… whatever it is. And then she's the first one to make out the face of Ben Moore staring down at her, eyes wide. A gag forces it's way out of her mouth and she gasps, backing up immediately as she realizes what she thought was blood was the inside of Ben’s torso.
“Oh, what the fuck-” Logan turns away and Professor Scott just… stares.
He just stares at it.
The tv static overwhelms Kleo's vision for a moment and she hunches over. She grabs onto whatever she can to keep from falling over, which ends up being Logan's front pocket, and he catches her. It's a clumsy catch, his hand grabs her jacket and then the other arm wraps under her elbow. But she's grateful anyway and she breathes hard, making eye contact with her father in the distance.
Kleo slaps Logan's arm, unable to catch her breath long enough to speak. Logan drags her up and shakes her. “Snap out of it!”
Kleo cries and shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment and then he puts her back on her feet. “Kleo! Come on, we have to keep going so we can call the police, remember??”
“Right, right…” she shakily gets out her phone, breathing out with frustration at merely one bar of service. Still, she begins to dial as Logan starts to drag her and then she startles so hard she drops her phone as Logan cusses at top volume.
“Fuck! He's just- he's just taking off!” Logan grabs Kleo's hand and, despite her reaching back to her phone which now slid into the trail of blood, he yanks her to follow behind a quickly receding Professor Scott.
They lose him within minutes.
Both are too smart to keep running in the woods, and Kleo can hardly run as it is. She holds her sides tightly, trying hard to just get in even one full breath, let alone the several necessary to even keep running.
“I swear to god,” Logan pants and gives her the water bottle, “I'm gonna kill him myself when we find him.”
Kleo struggles with the cap and he sighs, yanking it back and uncapping it before thrusting it back at her. Her face burns but she accepts it and forces herself to shakily sip water while Logan begins to pace and touch the trees around them.
“That freak better pray I can't find her. You know what, he better, too.”
Kleo rolls her eyes and just ignores him, though she does hope this is just blowing off steam and not genuine confidence. “We need to go the other direction and call the police, Logan…”
He turns on her, pointing. “Why the hell do you keep harping on this?! They took seven hours to get here the first time, what makes you think they’re gonna get here in any less time than that?”
“Hey, I don’t know why you’re snapping at me! I didn’t do any of this and it was your best friend that snuck off into the woods in the first place. Isn’t his dad a former cop, why are you of all people arguing against it??”
“You hate the cops! You literally have 1213 tattooed on your underarm! So I ask again, why do you insist on them?!”
“Because when I get out of this shit, alive mind you, I want a police report already started!” Kleo throws her hands up.
[...]
Logan hooks his water bottle back on his hip and he’s silent for a bit. “[But… ]You are right. We do need to call them. They’re better than nothing. However, I’m gonna make something- two somethings clear. One, we are both getting out of this alive. And two, when we do, we’re gonna have that talk.”
Oh god, please die so I don’t have to have that conversation. Kleo immediately feels bad for the thought, as Logan doesn’t deserve to die just so she doesn’t have to reject him. She cringes slightly, still, and sighs. “Logan, I…” She trails off as she hears murmurs beside her.
No, muffled voices. “God, this fucking withdrawal…” She mumbles, as this was no new thing to her either. Actually this was a common hallucination for her, particularly when under stress. So, stress plus withdrawal made this very unsurprising.
However, Logan starts to glance around to his left and he shakes his head. “No. That’s not your withdrawal, Kleo. Someone…”
Oh, it really is you… Little Ivy Hendrix… I’ve been following your case since it happened.
“Is he… Is Professor Scott…” Kleo feels something rise in her chest. Mortification, disgust, anger… No, this was… something undefinable.
And then Logan is taking off again and Kleo does genuinely have to spend a moment deciding if she’ll follow him. But a sudden beeping noise to the tune of some action movie theme she only half recognized and she turns back around to stumble back to the blood, seeing Ben's expensive slide up keyboard phone lit up in the mud.
Kleo does not dive for it like her first instinct says to and instead she fumbles for her own phone, patting over her too many pockets to have on shorts at this particular moment and then she closes her eyes as her own phone begins to ring as well, much much deeper in the blood pool. So she sinks to her knees and gags as she reaches into the blood to retrieve Ben’s phone. Thank god rich people pay for things like waterproofing…
Her hands almost shake too much to put in 913 and they slide around the phone as she tries to slide the keyboard out anyway, so she just shakes the phone until the emergency call screen appears like it's supposed to and then she has to press the okay button almost seven times before she manages to get enough force in it that it gives her the popping noise and Ben’s phone is dialing the police.
She breathes a sigh of relief at a pleasantly neutral voice on the other line. “Please, please help me. My name is Kleo Baxter and I am… I'm at the Hendrix House… my professor brought us here for a field trip and and…” oh god, was she ever going to stop crying?? “Two of the… of the people we came with have been murdered and I'm terrified two more are about to be…
“Okay, Miss Baxter. I put your name in and a file popped up. You know what to do in this situation, right? Do you remember from when you were a child?”
“Yes ma'am… I um… I need to find somewhere to hide, but I can't do that… I'm out in the woods and I'm… I'm unable to climb anything and… and I-”
“Do you recognize your assailant?”
Kleo breaks into sobs again. “No… I have no idea who… who…” her stomach drops at a sudden low toned beeping over and she rips the phone away to find that it has lost service. Oh god, oh god, oh god.
Kleo knows she should find somewhere to hide, but then Logan's words return to her head, echoing inside of it so loud her head feels like it's vibrating.
She slaps her forehead before groaning as she has to bend over at the waist and then she's stumbling and crashing into the ground for a moment, crying as her arm is slashed open by a rock and immediately begins to bleed.
Mortifyingly, tears begin to well up in her eyes and she presses her hands to her eyes, shaking her head. “Oh Dina… I don't want to be doing this… Oh stars… Oh stars above, please save me…”
But she drags herself to her feet and stumbles to a nearby tree, grasping onto it for dear life and then doing the same to the next tree. Stumbling, blind, praying that she's going in the same direction as Logan.
The world spins like a barrel roll and she holds her head when she makes it to the third tree, frowning when she pulls her hand down and there's blood on it. She… hadn't even felt her head make an impact.
She touches further up her head and then she's screaming and slumping slightly as her hand touches cool metal. She sobs and shakes her head. No no no, she'd barely even gotten a chance to escape.
She again hysterically slaps around at her head and then she's only sobbing harder as the handle of the knife has disappeared and she only finds a slight split in her skin, the pain temporarily overwhelming her vision.
“KLEO!”
She gasps and her head yanks up as she hears Logan's voice screaming her name. “Logan?! LOGAN!” She again tries to get to her feet, but she stumbles and this time she's falling into a tree.
But she catches herself before she can hit its roots and then she's climbing over them, stumbling deeper and deeper into the woods in the direction she'd heard Logan.
Trees appear out of nowhere, a few send her to the ground, but she just gets back up again. She has to keep getting up, she has to keep going…
This time a giant black bird descends on her and sends her to the ground right before the back of some feet and she gasps as she recognizes the same brown oxfords she's made fun of so many times with her best friends, completely still.
[...]
The bird caws down at her and she shakes her head, sobbing so hard her entire body heaves and she leans her head back to release them loud and guttural though they have to fight through the angle of her throat.
She pats around on Professor Scott's legs once she could even slightly breathe and then she's stumbling back as pale hands reach out to help her up, making a cry and shaking her head. But she's caught before she can hit the ground again and then she's let go and the figure in front of her steps back.
Kleo again shakes her head but something inside of her, deep inside of her, tells her that it's rude to refuse to look at the person in front of her. And so she whimpers and rubs at her eyes with the backs of her hands before opening them and finally looking at the person in front of her.
Now the raven flutters and lands on her shoulder and honestly Kleo really had thought the idea of her being dead was unrealistic, especially as she fully takes in the woman. Tall, taller than Juliette's girlfriend Ruby, even, who was a De La Castilles, a family known for being tall.
Her face is covered with a mask that resembles the skull of a wolf, though too small to be real and matte black, and pale lilac colored eyes stare at Kleo. Lilac was a genetic mutation and technically an optical illusion, as there was very little actual blue pigment and nearly no other melanin or pigment. One of the many “odd” eye colors that those from any of the islands had.
Kleo's, herself, are the same rosy brown most from Celestos had.
And then over her body is black hunting gear, though some of it looks military grade. Black stuck out in this particular wood around them, and something about the confidence of such a color made Kleo sick to her stomach. “We were dead the moment we stepped off that bus…”
Ivy’s eyes shine slightly and then she's moving forward and Kleo is again moving backward and Ivy stops. She tilts her head and Kleo lets out a ragged breath at the innocence in the action.
The other woman's eyes are light with an unsettling mirth and she flutters her eyes before then furrowing her brows.
Kleo isn't sure what else to do but… well… she'd heard the professor talking to her and maybe if she couldn't convince Ivy not to kill her, maybe she could plead for something quick. “Ivy… right?”
Her eyes light right back up and she moves forward and now Kleo can see silver on the talons of the massive black bird, making Kleo whimper and again step back, hitting a tree. Again, Ivy stops and she takes a step back, furrowing her brows even tighter and then her eyes almost look… confused.
Kleo does stop to wonder if she's even really aware… “I'm um… I'm Kleo…”
Ivy stares at her again.
Kleo takes in another ragged breath and she looks down. “I um… You must have heard what Professor Scott said about you… and Logan… I'm sorry, they shouldn't say things like that…”
Movement makes her eyes flick up with panic and she sees that Ivy is merely petting the raven. “Mean!” It squawks and Kleo again whimpers with fear, though she knows that ravens have the ability to mimic. This species certainly could, at least.
Ivy gently hushes the bird and then she touches it and it flies away, and Kleo finds herself relaxing. This time, when Ivy moves forward, she forces down the flinch and then it's all her strength to focus on Ivy's eyes as the ants consume her when she's now only inches away from her.
She reaches up and touches Kleo's head, making her wince and squeeze her eyes shut. And then the wound on her arm is touched and her eyes flash back open as she jerks her arm away. Ivy flinches back and that causes Kleo's breathing to stutter.
“Please…” Kleo breaks, another sob resurfacing. “Please just kill me quick… I can't die like my mother… Stars please help me…”
Ivy reaches forward and then her hand cups Kleo's face and Kleo reaches up with both hands to grip her arm. But… Kleo's never been touched like this by anyone who wasn't family and she just can't help herself but press into the contact. Ivy’s eyes soften and it's now that Kleo realizes she's grasping something in her other hand.
She knows it has to be a knife and she just hopes getting stabbed isn't as painful as movies make it look. “Did you… did you kill your mom? Or… did your father…”
Ivy goes completely still and then she's looking away to glare at Professor Scott's body. Kleo doesn't, she can't stand the fact that he's staring at them despite his body facing the opposite way. Finally, she shakes her. “Your dad did it? He killed your mom and… and your sister?”
Ivy’s eyes narrow with venom for a moment and Kleo swallows another whimper, though the ants have started to consume her alive and the TV static has returned around her periphery. But she nods again and now she looks at Kleo and her eyes soften again.
Kleo starts to have to struggle to keep her legs straight, her knees trembling as they try to give up. She reaches back and grips the tree with her hand and then she's screaming as something fuzzy scampers over it and she yanks away from the tree as a massive spider scurries right up it.
She heaves a few more breaths before turning her head to stare at Ivy's chest as her body finally alerts her that Ivy's arms are around her. But she can't react, even if she wanted to, as her legs finally give out and she's sliding to the ground, though Ivy grips her tighter to keep her upright. “Please don't torture me…” she begs, weakly, her head falling back to stare up at the sky.
Kleo shakes her head when she's lowered to the ground and made to rest against the tree she'd just been against and Ivy puts her finger to where her own lips would be. Kleo's tears dry, though not as quick as her heart would like, and then she's hiccupping and sniffling. “I… I like your eyes…”
Ivy freezes up and it's all Kleo can do not to whimper and fall right back into hysterics. And then Ivy's face turns slightly red and she looks away from Kleo. Kleo pauses and then she softens, remembering what Logan had said about her classmates. Even if… she had killed a bunch of people, Kleo still finds herself feeling horrible for her.
Just like Kleo, she probably didn't hear nice things about herself very often. “I'm sorry for what Logan said…” she mumbles and looks down at her hands, playing with them to keep herself distracted. “I really don't think you're a freak… I… oh it- it really was you watching us…” her face burns and- ugh! She shouldn't feel so humiliated at the confirmed violent murderer watching her give it up for Logan!
Ivy turns back to look at her as she covers her face and Kleo flinches slightly when one of her hands is attempted to be pulled away. But Kleo relents and she lowers her hands, now avoiding looking at Ivy with her eyes. “I'm not… I…”
Why isn't she dead yet?