Chapter One
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Ily
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I’D NEVER WISHED FOR DEATH before.
Even on my darkest days when I wondered why I’d been abandoned on the steps of a hospital, I’d always been grateful to be alive.
I might have been born unwanted, but I’d been cherished from the moment Krish spotted me. I’d become a sister and a daughter. I’d been kissed and hugged, doted on and adored. If anything, I was grateful to my birth mother for giving me up because I’d found exactly where I was supposed to be.
So no...at no point in my blessed, happy life had I ever heard the whispers of giving up.
Until now.
“Fade away,” hissed a drugged delusion.
“Die so you don’t have to feel the pain,” whispered a roaring tiger head mounted on the wall.
The dead zoo crushed me from all angles, puncturing me with antlers, horns, and tusks. Even if Peter hadn’t forced psilocybin down my throat, I would’ve struggled in this room.
Struggled not to hear the phantom screams of death.
Struggled not to be affected by the stagnant energy of slaughtered things.
But with the drugs?
I didn’t stand a chance.
Henri’s voice trickled down and down into my soul.
“I told you what would happen, little nightmare. I told you what exists inside me. I told you.” Over and over again, his raspy, drunken voice repeated. “I told you what would happen. I told you...”
A vortex.
A spinning, sucking hellhole binding me to the X-shaped cross where he’d imprisoned me.
I shuddered as his tongue slid over my cheek one last time, catching stray tears before he pushed away.
He sighed as if he hadn’t taken a proper breath his entire life.
He flexed his shoulders as he finally slipped into who he truly was.
The illusion of him with bat wings and vampire fangs returned, painting a morbid fantasy of his shredded, skin-webbed wings fluttering behind him, kicking up dust motes, and sending feathers of dead birds shivering.
I blinked and tried to see past insanity. Tried to cling to sanity.
But it was no use.
I only saw a fallen angel.
A devil born from a man.
With a huff, Henri unwound his fingers from my throat. They fell away, trailing down my chest before he put distance between us, coating me in ice after he’d burned me with brimstone.
I couldn’t breathe as he stumbled back, alcohol stealing his steadiness.
With a groan, he raked both hands through his hair and looked at the domed ceiling.
With his head tipped back and blood streaking his upper lip from my kick, he looked as if he implored the heavens to give him a second chance.
To let him fly into the clouds and save him from the despicably dark things crawling through his spirit.
But no deity answered.
No spearing ray of light appeared.
The fog swirling by his legs only grew thicker, congealing like blood as his chin tipped down again, and he sucked in another huge breath.
His hands balled. His tattered wings retracted and folded down his back, the bone-clawed tips kissing the bloodstained carpet below.
And then...his eyes locked on mine.
“I told you what would happen, little nightmare. I told you what exists inside me...”
Every atom inside me froze, all while my hallucinations grew stronger.
The unexplainable attraction I held toward Henri chose that moment to tear out my stupid, useless heart.
His grey gaze was the hook, puncturing the pathetic organ.
His cold smirk the line, tugging on my ribcage.
And his blackened voice the final yank, ripping me from existence, delivering me flopping and gasping at his feet.
“I’m finally free.” His voice echoed in my buzzing mind. “Free.”
I trembled as he smiled. Not the fake, perfected smile of a cop playing the role of a sadist but a monster who was truly, finally free.
He’s free, and I’m...
dead.
“Let yourself die. This is just the beginning...you don’t want to endure the end,” a hummingbird whispered.
“Death is better than what he’s about to do,” a crocodile, forever trapped in water-like epoxy, croaked.
“I’m glad you decided to finally stop fighting who you truly are, Henri.” Victor’s vile tone cut through my delusions. “Just in time, I might add. Then again, I’m still unsure if I should let you live or die...”
“You’d kill me the moment I’ve come alive?” Henri muttered. “Bit unfair.”
Victor didn’t reply for a while, his face carefully cold. Finally, he said scarily softly, “I’ll postpone my judgement until after...how about that?”
“Fine.” Henri nodded, his face etched with shadow.
For a moment, I saw things as they truly were.
Henri just as a man—his black t-shirt rising and falling with heavy breaths, his black slacks so severe compared to his bare feet.
Peter just as a slave—kneeling on blood-dripped carpet, the cuts across his torso like red scripture scrawled into his skin.
And Victor as a king—sitting with his legs primly crossed on a rattan peacock chair. His lambskin slippers tapped out an impatient beat while his black dressing gown parted, showing navy silk pyjamas beneath. His hands folded over the gun he’d held to my head, resting like a deadly pet on his lap.
With a tight smile, Victor ordered, “Now you’ve strapped her down, choose a weapon.”
“A weapon?” Henri’s voice dabbled with drunkenness, lazy and hostile.
Victor pointed at the table full of rusty, unhygienic torture devices. Even the barbaric thousand-year-old instruments displayed in the Tower of London were better looked after. Two of the knives had dried blood on them, and the thumbscrew looked as if it had a torn piece of flesh.
Oh God...
My delusions pounced again.
New wings sprouted from Henri’s back, and the blood-speckled white carpet beneath my bound and buckled feet poured like a river, swirling around Peter’s knees across the room.
Peter gave me a despairing smile.
His dark honey skin began to glow as if he’d been anointed by the divine.
Strands of light feathered from him, dancing past Henri and soaking into my chest.
I sucked in a breath.
I felt Peter’s regret at drugging me.
Tasted his fear.
Heard his sorrow.
With lamenting birdsong erupting around the room, I forgave him.
Forgave him for drugging me.
For making this impossible for me.
For destroying me.
With a soft growl, Henri swayed toward the table holding such nasty things. In my narcotized eyes, the weapons morphed into sentient beings, vampiric daggers just begging for a bite and hissing clamps just waiting to suffocate.
Running his fingers over the array, Henri selected a particular blade. Holding it up to the glittering chandelier, he ran his thumb over the dull rustiness. His nose wrinkled as he slammed it back down again. “They’re not sharp enough to cut cleanly.”
Victor smirked. “That’s the point. Makes you work a little harder for those sweet drops of ruby.”
Nodding as if he followed Victor’s twisted logic, Henri slowly stepped away from the table. “But what if I don’t want to work harder? What if I want her blood to pour easily, freely, and all over my goddamn hands?”
Victor shrugged. “Then I’d say you’re shit out of luck, as I don’t have anything that sharp.”
“I do.” With a smirk, Henri shoved his hand into his right trouser pocket.
No...
Sanity came roaring back.
Don’t show him.
Don’t reveal what you smuggled in—
“I want to use this, if it’s all the same to you.” With a flourish, Henri held up the fatal little switchblade I’d woken up to him inspecting in his room. A blade he’d hidden the moment I’d noticed and then smothered me with his half-naked body to keep me quiet.
I gasped as memories of what he’d done after that ricocheted through me.
I relived it, not just recalled.
A movie of us played out before me. A doomed, depressing hologram as Henri rocked against me, rubbing my clit with his cock, offering me chocolate in the form of an orgasm. An orgasm that’d torn through me. An orgasm that was the last piece of goodness I’d ever feel.
Victor stiffened in his chair, his fingers tightening around the gun. “You brought a fucking knife into my home, Ward?” Raising the weapon, he aimed the muzzle at Henri. “Care to tell me what that was for?”
Henri didn’t look at me.
No shred of the man who’d begged me to play along with him existed.
He was merely an animal that’d prowled out of its cage—a beast slowly growing accustomed to its new freedom. “If you must know, Vic, I brought it as protection.”
“Protection? From what?”
“From you.”
Victor scowled. “Why would you need protection from me? We’re the same...you and I. Or at least...that’s what you’ve attempted to convince me of. Whether I believe it or not remains to be seen.”
Henri shrugged and flicked open the switchblade.
He hissed under his breath as he ran his thumb along the sharp, pointy end.
“To be honest, I’m having a hard time remembering much right now.
My mind is quiet for the first time in decades.
My thoughts are so fucking calm, it’s eerie.
” He slur-chuckled and tapped his temple with an unbalanced sway. “Must be the booze.”
“Possibly. Or...it’s because you’re finally done with bullshit.
I saw the change in you when she kicked you.
I see it still.” Victor studied Henri before standing and gliding like a creature of the night toward a narrow chest of drawers.
“I’m still open to killing you if you don’t fully step into who you truly are, but...
I’m willing to see how far you’ll take this.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were finally waking up—just like you said—and that’s why you’re no longer afraid. ”
Opening a drawer, he rummaged around before removing something. Oiling his way back to Henri, he said, “Hold out your hand.”
Henri spread his fingers and offered his palm, his arm unsteady. “I’m not afraid of you, you know.”
“Oh, I know.” Victor smiled like a doting father as he dropped the item into Henri’s grip. “You were afraid of yourself.”
Henri shuddered and fisted the item. “Fuck yes, I’m afraid of myself. I’ve been afraid all my life.”