Bearilicious - Collection by Ashley Hunter Read Free Book Online Page B

months, she discovered surprisingly little of him. He would talk at length about the forest, home, and life, but when she asked him about himself, his past, he either changed the subject or shut up entirely.
     
    Tyler was not a man to be cornered and forced into an answer. When confronted, he met that force head-on and then left. The conversation would go the way he wanted it to, or it just ended. Period. Still, it wasn’t enough to make her want to leave.
     
    Tyler treated her better than she’d ever been treated, and she felt confident she’d crack the code on his silence eventually. A man like him was worth the effort.
     
    Kelly had lost track of time. The days bled together into a sort of natural bliss.
     
    Tyler left early that morning to check on a section of the forest that had caught fire a week ago, leaving Kelly alone in the cabin. By now, she knew what animals roamed the forest, how they traveled and what attracted them.
     
    Kelly didn’t fear anything in that forest anymore. So when she heard a scratching on the door, it was with a fearless heart that she unlocked and opened it.
     
    Daniel looked up at her and grinned. Eyes wide, bloodshot, his teeth grinding audibly.
     
    “I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
     
    "No,” she said, shaking her head. “You can’t. Why.”
     
    When he stepped forward, she stepped back. She should’ve slammed that door in his freakish face, but panic and reflex dictated her movement.
     
    “You don’t call, you don’t write. What’s a man to think?”
     
    Metal scraped wood as he dragged the axe behind him when he followed after her.
     
    Kelly moved to keep the couch between them, but he just stepped over it.
     
    “Go away,” she said. “You better leave now. When he gets home, he’ll kill you.”
     
    “What are you talking about? I’m here, Kelly. I’m home.”
     
    “Leave me alone!” she shrieked, backing away.
     
    “All I wanted was to love you. Why don’t you love me, too?” Even as he asked, he raised his axe over his shoulder and swung it to decapitate her. Kelly ducked, the axe chopping into the wood of the wall.
     
    Feet planted, Kelly charged, shouldering Daniel out of the way and ran.
     
    “Not again, Kelly! Not this time,” he called behind her.
     
    She didn’t need to look back to know the sound she heard was that of the axe coming free.
     
    Legs pumping, Kelly burst out of the cabin, and slammed the door closed behind her to give Daniel something else he had to do to continue chasing her.
     
    “TYLER!” she screamed with all the power in her lungs. The name of her savior echoed through the eerily silent forest. It was as though the animals and insects knew evil when they saw it, and hushed themselves lest Daniel know they existed.
     
    She continued to run through the forest toward the burned section, all the while screaming Tyler’s name.
     
    Behind her, Daniel was chewing the distance between them like a shark. His legs were longer, stronger. Daniel was a born killer, and she was his prey.
     
    When she felt that familiar, shaking hand on her arm, she flailed again.
     
    “You can’t fight it,” he said as he struggled to hang onto her. “We were meant to be together, Kelly!”
     
    “Get off of me! Tyler! Help!”
     
    Tears stung her eyes as she saw Daniel bring the axe up above his head. Those eyes were impossibly wide, his yellowed teeth dripping with saliva.
     
    His hold on her arm was too tight, and she couldn’t get out of the way of the falling axe. Kelly closed her eyes and screamed.
     

 
    IV.
     
     
    A bear’s roar drowned her out, and suddenly Daniel’s fingers tore free of her arm. The psycho shrieked as the largest bear Kelly had ever seen bit down on his shoulder and shook him.
     
    With a great twist of that massive neck, the bear slammed Daniel against one tree, and then back against another.
     
    Bones snapped. Rearing up on its hind legs, the bear threw Daniel to the ground, and then