When I woke up, I felt like a broken porcelain doll. I was lying on a black leather sofa in front of a huge glass wall. It was morning and the sunlight that came filtered through the window was gray. Beyond the glass was a large body of water. Was it the ocean? Was it a lake? I couldn’t see the other side. Rubbing the back of my neck, I sat up.

Where was I?

I let my head fall back onto the couch and replayed my last memories. I was in the car with Schroder. We were at Pierce’s mansion. He got one whiff of my blood, went psycho, and attacked Kilmeny and Kelly. Then he banged me on the side of the head and that was the end. Now the most important question was whether or not Schroder had beaten The Scissor Man. It wasn’t ‘where am I?’ It was ‘who am I with?’

Looking out the window, I determined that I was nowhere near the city because there was no major body of water very close by.

No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out why I should have ended up in a place like this if The Scissor Man had won. That meant Schroder had probably killed him and brought me to this place—probably a second home of his where he could drink my blood and kill me whether I drank his blood or not.

Was that what was happening?

I was right the first time—I was already dead. It was only a matter of time before that monster stopped my heart.

I checked my body. A horrendous bruise had spiked out from my forehead where Schroder had hit me with the gun, but other than that there were no other lesions. This surprised me. I expected him to drink my blood at the first opportunity.

Looking around the open floor plan, the kitchenette was too small to be practical (another piece of evidence that I had been kidnapped by Schroder). Stairs led up to a second floor. A door hung on its hinges revealing the edge of a toilet seat. Another door obviously led outside.

I lurched to my feet. It was probably locked, but I had to give it a try. Wobbling, I made it to the entryway, where my shoes were sitting beside the door. As quietly as I could, I sat down on the floor and pulled them on. Then, I tried the doorknob. It gave. I winced, expecting an alarm to sound, but it was silent. I opened the door and stepped outside.

Crisp air cooled my hot skin. It felt especially good on my bruised head. A light mist curled around the house reminding me the shirt I had borrowed from Dudley was inadequate.

I expected to see a car parked next to the house, but there was none. There was no driveway, no garage, no fence, no neighbors, and absolutely no houses anywhere on the distant rolling hills. The grass around the house was unkempt and the grounds were wilderness. A little lane marked in the grass seemed like it hadn’t been used in ages and it only led to the back of the house toward the water.

Feeling like I had no choice but to follow the path, I wrapped my arms around myself and walked down it. It began as grass and quickly became sand. The landscape beyond startled me as I realized how large the body of water in front of me was. It wasn’t a lake. It was something much bigger. I was at a place I knew nothing of. I could be anywhere on the planet.

Walking down the shore, I found a dock, but there were no boats moored there. I didn’t know what to do, other than to continue along and see what I could find. There might be other houses, other people, a boat—something to help me find my way back.