Her Darkest Nightmare (The Evelyn Talbot Chronicles #1) - Brenda Novak Page 0,1

worst of what she’d suffered. But she couldn’t focus on the heartbreak. That would only make her situation worse. She had to concentrate on breathing or maybe she’d simply … stop.

The fire must’ve burned itself out. She had no idea why it hadn’t consumed her and the shack, as Jasper had intended, but below that acrid scent she identified the sweet, cloying smell of decaying flesh. The stench had been getting worse, more stomach churning every day. Jasper had said it made him hard to have her friends watch, with their sightless eyes, what he did to her. He said they were all just hanging out together, having fun like old times—except her friends had finally shut their big mouths.

What he’d done to them made her skin crawl. How he talked about it, with such relish, was almost as bad. She couldn’t escape the vision she’d seen when she’d come looking for him—and surprised him while he was posing their bodies like mere mannequins. He’d said he killed them because they tried to make her break up with him by telling her he’d hit on Agatha at a party a week ago—as if their loyalty somehow made all of this their fault. He’d said he wouldn’t allow anyone to cause trouble for him.

He’d claimed he hadn’t been planning to kill her, but he certainly hadn’t acted as though he minded, as though she was any different or more special to him than they were. As a matter of fact, the more pain he caused her, the happier he became. The torture had ignited something in him, changed him. She’d never imagined anyone could be like that.

But she wasn’t dead yet. If she could smell what she could smell and feel what she could feel, the darkness was simply that—darkness. And her muddled thoughts? Whose thoughts wouldn’t be muddled after what she’d suffered? She had to fight the heaviness that dragged at her limbs and seemed to slow her heart, fight for her life. At least she didn’t have the fire to contend with. Good thing she’d been on the floor, below the smoke, or she probably would’ve died.

If she could make it to the highway, maybe she could flag down a passing motorist.

Lifting a heavy, unwieldy hand to her throat, she felt the stickiness of her own blood. She was lying in a pool of it. But the gaping slash in her throat wasn’t her only injury. She had a broken leg—it was crooked, which left little question—and had various other injuries. She could see out of only one eye and, in three days, hadn’t eaten anything except the gross substances he’d forced down her throat while enjoying the humiliation he caused.

Did she have even half a chance?

It was too late, she decided. No one could be expected to survive what she’d endured. She should use her last moments on earth to scratch a message into the dirt so that her family would know it was Jasper who’d killed her. At least then he wouldn’t get away with it.

But the thought of her parents created such a tremendous longing—and empathy for how they would feel to find her so badly used and broken—that she managed, with massive effort, to sit up. When she didn’t pass out again, she took heart and, feeling for something solid, grabbed Jasper’s stool to help drag her to her feet.

That was when the pain started. Why it suddenly rushed upon her out of nowhere she couldn’t begin to guess. But the moment she came upright, her entire body screamed out in protest. And when she put pressure on her leg—oh God! She nearly lost consciousness.

Focus! Keep standing! Push the pain away! Think of only one thing—what to do next!

That was getting out of the place where her friends had been murdered—where he’d asked them to meet him so they could have a “private talk.”

She feared Jasper would somehow realize the shack hadn’t burned and come back to investigate. But if she was going to live, she had to move now. In five minutes, or less, she might not have the strength or the presence of mind.

Considering the agony of every footfall, Evelyn had no idea how she managed to stagger through the rain-drenched woods. She wasn’t even sure she was moving in the right direction. It didn’t matter that she’d traversed the small path to the shack at least a hundred times. There was greenery everywhere, and it all looked the same. She could be