Terrorscape (33 page)

“You like the fight,” she hissed.

 

“You don't fear me, though,” he said dryly. “Not
the way I want to be feared.”

 

“And how is that?” Anna-Maria asked, making a
face.

He smiled. “The fear of wanting something you
know shouldn't—and knowing you can't resist. You're
not innocent enough to understand, dear sister. Not
anymore. If you ever were.”

With that, he got up and began doing up the
buttons of his shirt. Anna-Maria eyed him hatefully,
lust and respect and scorn and fear and jealousy all
warring with the innate hatred and contempt she felt
for all her siblings. “Your ideal woman sounds weak,”
she spat. “Like prey.”

She had meant to bait him, but he smiled and
said, “Exactly.”

“On the contrary. I find the thought very…
appealing.”
“That's stupid,” Anna-Maria said. “You'll break
her, or else turn her into a mindless slave that grants
your every wish in fear of being cast aside. Either
way, you'll get bored.”
“I doubt it.” He fastened the last button of his
collar. “The hunt alone will keep me occupied for
quite some time. And there is the matter of capturing
her, taming her.” He grinned. “Teaching the lamb
how to lie with the lion, without succumbing to his
hunger. Should be quite the experience.”

“I'll
kill
her,”
Anna-Maria
blurted,
startling
herself. But the words rang true, and she meant them.
“I'll kill any female you take for your own. I won't let
you taint our family's blood.”

Gavin raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like a
threat, Anna.”

 

“It is. I'll do it. Maybe not by my own hand, but
she will die.”

 

“And you think one of our siblings will oppose
me?”

“We both know I'll most likely marry rich. I'll
have a stupid husband who will be generous with his
money and lax in attention to what I do.” She smiled;
it was a beautiful smile and filled with cruelty. “You
remember Snow White, right, Gavin? I'll be the
wicked stepmother. I'll hire a huntsman. He'll kill her
and bring her heart to me in a metal box filled with
ice.”

“Is that a fact?” Gavin said, taking a step closer.
“And what makes you think I'll let you do that?”
“Do you think you can stop me,
big
brother?

Compete with my wealth and resources?”
“You haven't got either of those things, yet.”
“And you don't have a woman,” she pointed out.

“Yet we speculate. Why? This isn't really about
the blood, is it? You don't seem to have any qualms
about mother whoring it up where she pleases.”

“You're the male,” she hissed. “You carry on the
family name.”

 

Gavin laughed. “I can't believe it. You're jealous.
Of me.”

“You're everything I want in a man. I see no
reason why I should settle for second best.”
His smile faded and he folded his arms. “Well. It
seems we have the makings of a bet.”

Anna-Maria smiled. “Yes. And it begins when I
take a husband and you take a mate.”

 

“What happens if I win?”

She paused to think. “I'll give your female a
generous dowry—if you don't kill her, first. The
amount will depend on that of my future husband,
but it should fancy any foolish whim she has.”

“And if you win?”

Anna-Maria put her hands on her brother's
shoulders and brushed her lips against his. “If I win,”
she whispered, “You,
big
brother, will fuck me in
ways my undoubtedly impotent husband-to-be could
never dream of and get me with child. Our child.”

“Like mother, like daughter,” he growled.
“Like father, like son,” she whispered.

They shook hands, both of them squeezing as
hard as they could to force the other to let go. AnnaMaria used her nails, which were quite long, but that
didn't seem to faze him. His grip was like steel,
however, and she was forced to let go when the bones
in her wrist felt like they might snap. She massaged
her hand. “Don't get too attached to your pet lamb,
Gavin, dear.”

And then she turned and went back inside the
house.

After a moment's pause, Dorian and Celeste
hugged him in a silent show of support, and followed
along with Leona after their older sister. Casting a
disgusted
look
at
his
mother,
with
her
victim
wrapped up in her arms the way a black widow
spider lures her mate into her web, he, too, went
inside. He had never lost a game before.

He was not about to start now.
Forward

One of my most common requests was people
asking me about the essay Gavin wrote in high school
(referred to obliquely in
Fearscape
).

I didn't include it in the original for several
reasons. 1) I wanted people to use their imagination;
2) I'm lazy, and am secretly using reason #1 to
rationalize it; and 3) hey, you guys read for fun. I
didn't think you'd want me to put pseudo-schoolwork
in here! This isn't literary analysis 101.

But you insisted, and I believe in the maxim
“Give the people what they want.” So here it is, by
popular request—Gavin's Essay.

Gavin's Essay

The Most Dangerous Game
, by Richard Connell,
asks a question many wonder but few dare vocalize:
“In a fight of man versus man—who would win? And
would morality ultimately triumph over our more
bestial
instincts,
or
would
we
succumb
to
our
bloodlust?”

Connell seems to think, no, we cannot. We cannot
escape the beast within us. The leitmotif of predator
and prey, of hunter and hunted, of man versus nature
—
his
nature—is evidence of this. Heavy symbolism
shows what happens when human beings—
homo
sapiens—
are put into situations so frightful that they
defy all convention.

And what do people do? They regress. Not in the
Freudian sense: this is a far more ancient regression.
Evolutionary, rather than developmental.

In times of acute stress humans revert not to
children, but to animals.

Predators.
Prey.

While a work of fiction, there are many parallels
between
The Most Dangerous Game
and real life. What
is fiction, if not a warped mirror image of reality?
Connell distorts and deceives, and the antagonist is
duly vanquished to give one a concrete sense of
ending, but his short story is, at heart, a portrayal of
man's animal instinct and its unending battle for
control of the dichotomy.

Like any other animal, human beings can be both
dominant and submissive, and sometimes act in ways
more befitting of animals.

Take the school shootings that one occasionally
hears about on the evening news. Our society acts so
shocked when its youth perpetuates acts of violence,
but one grows quite weary of being the hunted. It is a
tedious role to play; eventually, the strain becomes too
much, and the persecuted individual becomes, like
Count Zaroff, a hunter of men.

What does an animal do when cornered?
It
fights back
.

The cheerleaders would probably be the first to
perish, because, despite their natural athleticism, they
have never known what it is like to truly need to run.

The brawnier athletes, overconfident in their
limited physical prowess, would also be quick to die.
Their
rigid
adherence
to
social
norms,
and
superciliousness, would render them unable to be
innovative. Scientific studies have even shown that
dominant animals grow depressed and inert when
placed in subordinate roles.

The social trend-setters, with their adept mimicry,
will be quick to conform. But theirs is a superficial
ability, and will not have been honed by any real skill.
A flame engulfed by its own sense of splendor.

Indeed, the most likely individuals to survive
would
be
the
quiet
intellectuals,
cunning
and
vindictive. Their apparent weakness would cause
many to write them off in the initial sweep: a mistake
one would not live to regret.

Acknowledgments
Well, this is it, folks! My first completed trilogy! I
can't even begin to tell you how great it feels.

•
Louisa—my cover designer, and a total peach.
She's just an all around amazing person and I
heart her so much.

•
My fans from Fictionpress. They supported me
when I was just a little sixteen-year-old with a
humble dream, and I was surprised and elated
when so many of them found me again after I
went the route of self-publishing.

•
The PH whoars, and my partners in crime.

 

•
My family, for their wary encouragement.