Chapter 54: Shots in the Dark

I left my stomach behind as I plummeted toward the darkness below, like a deployed parachute ... yet I didn’t feel the level of dread I’d expected.

I guess that made sense. After all, none of this was real. It wasn’t like they’d actually let me fall to my death or anything. I’d been reassured this wasn’t some kind of murder island. Besides, Nicholas didn’t seem the type to let someone die here. It’d be too anticlimactic.

The thing that was very real, though, was the biting wind that ripped across my bare chest—I might not die from impact, but in that moment, I felt like exposure could kill me.

Wait...

Those trees were closing in awfully fast...

I cringed, and panic started to rise in my chest, but then I felt a sudden pull on the harness, and my descent slowed at a rate that almost made me want to hurl. Suddenly, my stomach felt more like a lead weight than a parachute.

By the time I reached the treetops, I’d slowed to a crawl. As I started sinking beneath the canopy, I took one last look around. The moon and stars cast silver light across the treetops, and off in the distance, I could see a handful of structures peaking beyond the horizon—the glass dome, the tip of what looked like a stone finger, and a few other things that I couldn’t quite identify.

What really drew my attention, though, were the other figures suspended from cables like me. Some screamed and cursed. Some merely hung onto their lifeline calmly.

None of them were recognizable as anything other than silhouettes of people who could potentially be friend or foe—whether tonight or back in the real world.

I never knew being a billionaire could be this precarious.

“Right now,” I muttered, sinking below the treetops, “I’d give anything to just be playing X-box with Darrin.”

Branches roughed me up as I passed before breaking through and emerging into the much darker forest below. As soon as my feet touched the ground, I felt a tug on the line. The message was clear—lose the harness. I unfastened and stepped out of it just in time to see it quickly whip back through the trees and out of sight, leaving me very much alone in the woods.

On any other night, it would have been eerily quiet and oppressively dark.

Tonight, it was just eerie and oppressive.

As I looked around the arena, I found that my eyesight didn’t need to adjust as much as I expected. Lanterns hung at different points within eyesight, small fires dancing inside glass casings, creating halos of light that pushed back the dark like little force fields. One suspended nearly overhead on a branch, its light intensified by the thin tendrils of fog drifting through the air.

Another lantern sat on the ground about fifteen feet away, half enveloped in the thicker fog that crept along the ground, obscuring everything in a thin layer of opaqueness.

The steady thrum of war drums echoed through the trees, lending a primal edge to the already-barbaric concept of humans hunting other humans.

Despite knowing others were out there, a quiet sense of isolation settled into my chest. I didn’t know most of the people stumbling through the woods with me, and for plenty of them, there was no love lost.

I’d disrupted their businesses. I had more money than them. Erin and Natalie were both gorgeous.

They had plenty of reasons to enjoy my misfortune.

For all I knew, standing on that balcony with the Wyns might’ve been reason enough to put a target on my back.

And now, here I stood among them, surrounded in near darkness, feeling overwhelmed.

These woods were huge, and my girls were two needles in a massive haystack.

As I digested everything, I spotted a third lantern sitting atop a chunk of an ancient marble pillar.

Old marble ruins—it looked like the party’s theme was still in play.

Argus—or whatever his name was—had mentioned that there were traps down here. Could they be on brand with everything else? What did that mean? Mazes? A minotaur? Some nymphs with riddles?

A freaking Cyclops?

How would that even work? Animatronics?

“If I see a girl with snakes growing out of her head, I’m going to fucking sue,” I muttered.

As soon as the words left my mouth, I heard the rustle of something nearby, causing my heart to nearly leap out of my chest and run away, with or without the rest of me.

Fortunately, I had just enough pride in reserve not to completely lose it. Instead, I whipped my gun off my shoulder and raised it, pointing the business end at the bushes, still shuddering.

“Who’s there?” I asked quietly. “Come out, or I’ll—”

A jackrabbit bolted from the foliage and zipped past my feet before disappearing into the fog.

I somehow managed to keep quiet as I jumped out of the way, but since my finger was on the trigger, flinching had caused my gun to go off, and the loud snap of the tranquilizer dart firing startled me again. I immediately dropped to a knee and held my gun close.

“Fuck!” I cursed under my breath.

I’d just wasted one of three shots.

Seconds later, the steady thump of someone running faded into earshot, and I threw myself against one of the trees next to the shrubbery, staying low in hopes of not being spotted. I didn’t know why ... it wasn’t like the hunters were allowed to do anything to me. It just felt wrong to stay out in the open.

The footfalls stopped, and I heard someone huffing. In the distance, I could hear a peal of laughter followed by the murmur of conversation.

The heavy breathing continued, and then the steps grew closer.

“Anybody here?” a voice whispered, low enough that I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, let alone who it was.

I stayed quiet.

Precious moments ticked by as the stranger continued searching nearby.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the stranger turned and walked away. I waited in silence until their footsteps faded before standing and stepping away from the tree, listening for any sounds. I heard a distant shout ... the hoot of an owl ... but no nearby movement.

I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding—relief, exasperation, and several other emotions roiled in my brain. I felt raw ... like an exposed nerve. With the lighting, the fog, and the chaotic darkness, it was getting hard to remember that this was just a game. In reality, I’d survived way worse in the woods of Norway.

One thing was very real, however. The longer I stood around, the more likely the girls were to get tagged by someone else.

So I took a deep breath, reminded myself for the twentieth time that this was all fake, and put my big girl panties on.

And then I moved toward the broken pillar.

As I stepped forward, I noticed how soft the ground was. Most leaves still clung to the trees, but a healthy third of them had fallen, which would have normally made the ground crunchy. However, a recent rain must have swept through because everything felt cool and slightly damp—not soaking ... just spongy.

The fog, the ruins, the condition of the ground, the lanterns, and the distant sound of war drums all came together like a set for a fantasy horror movie. Even the sweet smell of leaf rot seemed stronger than normal.

Approaching the broken pillar revealed another piece of fallen marble—the remains of a carved man, whose eyes stared up at me blankly.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen a stacked black girl and a tiny, vaguely Indo-Caucasian woman?”

It simply stared back.

“Yeah ... didn’t think it’d be that easy,” I said, and plodded past the ruins, walking out of the halo of the lantern and into the darkness to find my girls. The distant howl of a wolf was timed so well that I was sure it had to be theatrics.