Another sigh escaped Sylvia's lips as the dream nourished her, as satisfying as a wholesome roast dinner on Thanksgiving Day. Vengeance was a dish best served sweet with the fluttering of eyelashes, the parting of lips, and the ache of unrequited desire.

That sultry moan lured Alex to follow Sylvia off the bus. He stalked her from afar with a growing, inescapable Need crawling up his throat, scampering like a rat across his mind. His craving cried out to Sylvia, desperate for satiation while she did all she could to ignore its call.

Not yet. Not yet.

Chase me.

The demand echoed in Alex's mind--Sylvia made sure of that--and it drove him into a frenzy. His shape morphed into that of a masked hunter while the most grotesque, violent images flooded her mind. Ones of love forcibly taken, wrenched from the hands of innocence.

Alex's true form.

His Need fueled her power and her anger as she led him to the very place where he'd harmed all those women in the past.

I need proof. And you're going to give it to me.

"Here?" asked Alex, wide-eyed. "You led me here?"

Tucked into an evergreen forest, the Great Oak stood before Sylvia and Alex. The Witness. The One Who Had Seen It All. The tree creaked as it swayed in the wind, revealing all of Alex's secrets one by one like a young girl unable to keep a friend's confidence.

It was true. All of it.

And more.

"No!" screamed Alex at the Oak. "You betrayed me!"

It did indeed. For an unconscious mind can never lie.