Lyn || October, 2015.

"Stop her!"

The top ledge of the stone wall bit into the woman's palms as she struggled to lift herself over it. Her bare toes, numb from the fresh snow, scrabbled at the lines of mortar drawn between the blocks in a bid for better purchase. Pained grunts left her in white plumes of air as the woman used what strength she had in her slight frame to heft her body upward, her mending ribs wailing in protest. The long, glossy curls of her champagne colored hair tangled with the decorative spikes arrayed on the wall's spine.

She chanced a look behind herself toward the sprawling grounds and dormant hedge maze. The brick manor resided in the middle of the lot cleared of encroaching trees or bushes, the lines of the eaves and chimneys encrusted in ice. Frost upon the roof reflected orange rays cast by the setting sun and glowed, seeming to set the grand house ablaze.

Entranced by the idea, she paused at the wall's top, breathless, and stared.

Men in suits ran across the snow-clad lawn, their footsteps muffled by the white blanket of ice rolled across the grounds. Others came stomping through the iron gate. The words "Gaston Estate" were wrought in careful script upon the arch.

"Ms. Arden!" one shouted, the command like a whip breaking her stupor. "Aveline! Come down at once!"

She did come down, but not as the man wanted. Aveline passed her bare legs through the curved struts crowning the wall and allowed gravity to pull her down. Her hips wedged themselves between the unyielding bars and she twisted, motions frantic, and let out only one small cry of protest when the metal bit into her side and tore through the fabric of her nightgown.

Landing with uneven steps, Aveline stuck her hand through the ripped material, withdrawing fingers stained with red.

Blurry forms crashed in the hedges and she ran toward the skeletal trees still shedding the vestiges of their autumn leaves. Frigid sleet lain upon the earth numbed her legs, so Aveline paid no attention to the jab of fallen branches and dormant bushes or the lash of low-hanging boughs. She kept running.

Voices trailed her through the wood, seeming to echo from all directions as shouts and orders bounced off the trees and repeated into the distance. She sprinted for the road, then veered into the forest again when the baleful howl of dogs rose from the gatehouse.

Every breath filled her lungs with sharp needles of ice and burned in her dry, parched throat. Aveline pelted through the somber light of the gloaming hour and refused to hesitate, her mind reeling with a thousand different consequences and a thousand different punishments that awaited her should she be caught again. Her raw hands scrabbled at the peeling bark of the trees as she hit the trunks and threw herself in random directions, confusing the trajectory of her mindless pelt.

She did cross the road at one point, the sting of loose gravel against her abraded soles going unobserved as Aveline sprinted across the provided path. A sign waited at the wayside, illuminated by a flickering light, the bold words 'New York hunting season open' and the pictograph of a bounding deer both mottled with buckshot. Aveline ducked under the sign and didn't stop sprinting until she was lost in the trees again. 

Panting, she stumbled and clutched at the stitch in her side, choking on the sudden cry elicited by the pressure her fingers put upon the fresh wound. Tracks of chilled tears stung her cheeks, broken snowflakes trapped in the dark snare of her eyelashes, and the solid gems sewn into her decolletage sat heavy on her chest. The crack of gunfire ripping through the evening's quiet went unheeded, though Aveline couldn't ignore the continued baying of the hounds let loose from the house.

She shivered as memories of their hunting prowess flickered in her thoughts. 

Faster. I must go faster. 

Again came the distant shouts ringing through the forest. The approaching static of a radio being keyed sent Aveline racing forward with a hand clasped over her mouth, stifling her heavy breaths. The frozen brambles snapped beneath her feet, and the sound was followed by the crash of a thicker body giving chase. He was close, and she didn't know how he'd traced her haphazard trail with such accuracy, but the man was near enough for his own panting to be heard as his boots shook the earth under him. 

Aveline didn't turn to see. 

The voices from the radio pinned somewhere to his person trailed him in ghoulish pops and hisses, disembodied words striking out against the dark where they withered and died. She stopped weaving through the wood to disguise her passage and instead moved in a straight line, avoiding obstacles only when necessary. The man followed.

Ahead, the trees changed and the shadows stretched in new patterns, and before she comprehended the reason for the difference, Aveline leapt over the cliff's crumbling edge into the emptiness of the night air. She began to fall.

An arm shot out and wound about her middle, clamping down on Aveline's ribs as she shrieked her denial into the open sky. Her pursuer yanked the woman against himself and pinned her in place, grunting when her elbow struck him in the chest. The vest beneath his ironed shirt absorbed the blow. 

"Crazy bitch," he seethed as he held Aveline above the ground and she kicked at his shins and knees, her fingers prying at the gloved hand clamped around her broken bones. Splinters of pain alighted in her nerves when Aveline inhaled and her lungs failed to expand, crushed by the man's unforgiving grip.

Again the radio keyed as he shifted his free hand to his shoulder and manipulated the receiver clipped on his lapel. "Brian reporting in. I've got her."

The moment of silence succeeding the man's announcement was followed by a short, crackling order: "Bring her to me."

The voice spoke and Aveline's eyes widened, moonlight slashing across their copper color so they seemed to gleam crimson in her terror. Heedless of her wounds, the woman writhed and twisted, fabric tearing and muscles straining as she yelled and drove her frozen fingertips into the man's unprotected eyes.

He didn't release her. Even in agony, his sturdy arm about her middle tightened until weakened bones cracked and her screams mingled with his. Aveline kicked again and again, the solid arch of her heel striking the man's knee, and though he managed to cage her wild arms, he couldn't stop himself from buckling under her struggles. Swearing, blinded, the man stumbled, bringing his opposing foot up for balance, and then dropped it down—down into the nothingness beyond the cliff's torn edge.

Time did not suspend itself or allow for frivolous dramatics. The man clutching Aveline plummeted, the air howling in her ears as he struck something solid in his descent and thrust them both into a roll. Blow after blow, she met each strike before being flung into the starlit sky and then crushed against the rocks and old tree roots. The plunge ended as it had begun, with a sudden drop and an airless gasp, Aveline's back slamming into the ground, her skull saved by a thin pillow of dirty snow.

The forest echoed with the crash of their fall, and silence ate at the sound until nothing but the stilted quiet remained. Aveline stared unblinking at the stars with her bloodless face bathed in the moonlight, her hair wet and arrayed about her head in a leaf-matted fringe. Pain stole through her in random bursts, the ache in her midsection exploding as a fire does when doused in gasoline. The agony tore upward across her torso and along her bare shoulder, forcing a sob from Aveline as she rolled and the world righted itself once more.

Prone on the earth, the man in his torn suit and bloodied coat gurgled, releasing a fine mist of red from his mouth as it opened in silent torment. His twitching limbs, hung at grotesque angles, settled. The dim light stole color from the blood filling the craters their thrashing bodies had sown through the snow. Aveline's hand was pressed to her lips, holding in the building sob elicited by the sight of his white bones peeking through weeping flesh.

The man's eyes stared upward, seeing nothing.

Only when those unremitting hounds drew nearer and their howls chased terror along Aveline's spine did she move. Face tight and lined with pain, she fought stiffening limbs to heave the much larger man to his front so she could grab his coat by the collar and yank the covering from his body. The fabric tore, loud pops rising from his joints until the coat came sliding free. She struggled to wrap it about herself.

Breath after breath issued in white plumes from her mouth when Aveline rose, glancing toward the cliff and then the bare forest before her. Dogs bayed somewhere above, voices shouting.

"Brian." The disembodied name filtered from the man's radio. "Brian!"

Lyn ran for the trees and did not look back.