Page 14 of Captive Souls

The sun was quickly creeping behind the curtain of the woods, making me wonder if we would still be driving when it was completely dark. Sure, I didn’t know that much about my abductor—thankfully, not rapist or torturer. I had noted the manicured nails, the suit, the loafers. He worked for Stone in New York. It wasn’t a stretch to deduce that he didn’t have experience driving in the woods, the Appalachian Mountains. The roads weren’t reliable; turns often came seemingly out of nowhere, even in full daylight. The mountains played tricks on outsiders, as if they were sentient beings, aware of intruders in their realm. I’d always thought these ancient mountains were full of magic and wonder. With talk of dangerous, otherworldly beings roaming the woods after dark, a lot of people tread carefully there. The area had never scared me, not with the father I lived with day in and day out. Compared to him, faceless monsters were welcome.

And yet there I was, driving into the wilderness with yet another monster.

Asking him about his competence driving in the conditions wouldn’t be smart, and offering to drive would be even less so.

His posture was rigid, though it had been that way throughout the entire drive. He’d been awake … how many hours now? A badass he might be, but I was almost sure he was human. Despite my overactive imagination and fantasies about some ancient vampire being enthralled by the siren song of my blood, I knew that was less than likely.

Therefore, human. One who needed sleep. And without it, reaction times were sluggish, brain performance was hindered, concentration was more difficult.

I breathed a sigh of relief when we crested the hill and turned onto what looked like a very overgrown driveway. My body jostled as we hit dips and potholes, driving farther into the woods.

The headlights illuminated the cabin we were approaching. It was wooden, small, with a dense overgrowth of weeds and wildflowers bordering it. One of the shutters on the windows was askew, the other had fallen off entirely. But the roof was intact, and it looked vaguely habitable.

Our accommodations, I assumed.

Throughout the entire experience, I had prided myself on how composed I had been. Maybe in denial was a more accurate way to describe it. But right then, seeing the end of the road, so to speak, the reality of my situation set in.

I was in the middle of the mountains, without anyone knowing where I was, without anyone looking for me or coming to save me. I was completely powerless, at the hands of a strange, frightening man. On the orders of another man who wanted to terrify me into marrying him. If I escaped or survived this captivity, I’d just be trading it for another. Till death do us part.

My death would likely come first, since I didn’t think marriages based on coercion were long-lasting.

My hands began to shake, and my stomach roiled against the last few bumps in the road.

Spots danced in my vision, my breaths becoming rapid and shallow.

A panic attack. Understandable in the situation, but not ideal. Showing any kind of vulnerability in the presence of my captor could be my demise.

I tried to tell myself to calm my breathing, focus on something safe, stable. The problem being there was nothing safe nor stable in the car. Or in my life in general.

My breathing only grew more erratic as I understood just how far from home I was. How vulnerable. Worse still, these mountains used to be a home of mine yet now taunted me with what had been taken from me.

My lungs seized, no longer working. Pain speared up my arm as I came to understand that I was having a heart attack. Surely, I must’ve been. A feeling of doom covered me like a second skin.

Maybe a heart attack was a mercy. Nature trying to save me from an unnatural fate.

“Piper.”

My name was a command more than a title.

I opened my eyes more on reflex than anything. My vision was tilted, the world moving even though the car had stopped.

Of their own volition, as if he were a gravitational pull and my eyes were planets, they found their way to him.

There was no gentleness on his face, nothing soft or comforting. He was wearing that same cold, menacing expression he had when I first laid eyes on him. That helped, somehow. The predictability of it. Stability of it. My father had always been unpredictable. One moment he’d be smiling at you with utter adoration, yet seconds later, his eyes would be clouded with rage and violence.

“Knox,” he said quietly.

My eyelids fluttered. “What?” I asked, still gasping for breath yet, thankfully, not as badly.

“My name.” He cleared his throat. “Knox.”

Knox.

He was giving me his name. Because he saw me spiraling. Somehow, it was something to hold on to. An anchor, even though he shouldn’t be that. If I were assigning metaphorical titles to the man in question, it would be a blade, a weapon, something to hurt and cut and kill.

But still, I held on to the name. It served to tether me to the earth. To sanity.

Silence thrummed between us, neither of us looking away for a long while as my heartbeat steadied, my breathing eventually slowing to an even cadence as my fists unclenched.