3. Chapter 3
Asher
I wake up to my whole body burning.
Fuck, why does it hurt so much? I’m supposed to be high; I’m not supposed to hurt.
I put my hand up to my face. I’m hot, uncomfortably so, but I’m burning at the same time, like when you’ve neglected to wear gloves in the winter cold and wash your hands in scalding-hot water when you get home. That icy burn. That ache.
“Good. You’re awake.”
What the fuck? My heart jumps in my chest as I turn toward the voice, where a young man enters the room.
He’s tall and lean, with long raven-black hair curtaining a pale and angular face, and his eyes?…
They’re unfathomably dark, like two black holes.
He’s dressed entirely in black to go with them, making his pale skin appear ghostlike.
What in the black-metal serial-killer bullshit is this?
I draw my knees up to my chest, heart pounding. “What happened?”
“Found you out there,” the man says, his hair shifting over his face as he jerks his head toward the door. “You could’ve died.”
Coughing, I brace my elbows on the floor in an attempt to get up. “I have to get out of here.”
“Of course,” the man says. “But not yet. You’re too weak still.”
Unease tingles up my spine as he closes in, but he doesn’t touch me—instead, he crouches to poke the fire.
He’s got an awkward way of moving, like a teenager with a recent growth spurt who isn’t quite yet used to his elongated limbs.
This guy isn’t a teenager, even though there’s something ageless about him.
He’s creepy, for sure, but there’s a weird sense of beauty to him too. Like an elf or something. A dark elf.
He turns to look at me. Our eyes meet, and his stare is one I can’t look away from. His face seems to lack the usual mannerisms and slight shifts in emotions of a normal person. He doesn’t smile, not even a little, and his eyes are completely dull and expressionless, as if they’re?…?dead.
The fire flickers behind his back, its heat lulling me back to exhaustion. I’m too tired to care about anything. I just want to sleep?…
“Go ahead,” the man, who by all intents and purposes appears to be my savior, says. “Go back to sleep. You need it.”
Yeah, I do?…?I curl up in front of the fireplace like a dog, and the last thing I see before I fall asleep is my savior’s coal-black eyes. Watching me. Guarding me. Is he guarding my well-being, or is he making sure I don’t run away?
When I wake up, I feel a little better; my limbs aren’t as heavy and my skin not as sore. That bone-deep, chilling burn is still there though.
“Are you hungry?”
I startle, turning around and finding my savior sitting by the kitchen table, eating what looks like a chicken leg.
It’s small, though, smaller than a chicken.
He keeps looking at me while he eats, and I find myself unable to look away from that all-consuming gaze.
He would fit in a nineteenth-century photograph, expressionless and sallow, eternally captured in timeless beauty.
“My toes hurt,” I mutter.
My savior nods and keeps eating his chicken, dove, whatever it is.
“Am I going to lose them?”
He wipes himself clean on a napkin and rises from the chair. “Let me see.”
My breath catches in my throat at his approach.
He’s not very broad, but his height makes up for his lack of bulk, and he must be strong to have carried me into his house from the street.
As he crouches in front of me, I force myself not to flinch away.
He’s helping me, after all. If what he said is true, he saved my life.
It all comes crashing back to me like a blow to the chest.
Lilith kissing that guy at the party. My own grief and witless anxiety leading me to snort oxy in the middle of the street like a moron. I could’ve died, but maybe that wouldn’t have been that bad?…?At least I wouldn’t have felt anything. No pain. I would’ve just drifted away in sleep.
The dark-eyed man bundles up the blanket to expose my feet, and it’s only then I realize I’m naked.
“What the hell?” I nearly jump out of my skin.
“Be still.”
“Y-You undressed me!”
“Your clothes were all wet by the time I got you inside.”
Fuck, this is creepy. Beyond creepy. “H-How about my toes?” I don’t know why my voice is shaking so badly. I’m not cold anymore, not really, though I feel fucking strange. Exhausted.
The firelight flickers over my feet. The tip of my big toe is completely white, and my savior presses down on the skin, making me hiss.
“Does that hurt?”
“Yeah, what the fuck do you think?” I pull my foot under my thigh, protecting it from his long pale fingers.
“But you feel it?”
I nod.
“Good. It’ll be a while until the blood flow returns properly. If I wouldn’t have found you, you would have fallen into a deeper sleep than you’d be able to wake up from.”
Yeah?…?He keeps saying that.
I wrap my hands around my knees, clutching my legs to my chest. “Maybe that would have been just as well.”
“What?” He frowns, showing the most emotion yet.
I scowl, looking sideways. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Not with a stranger.
Not with anyone.
My brother’s face resurfaces in my mind, and I pinch my eyes shut. Leave me alone, leave me alone?…
When I reopen my eyes, my savior is crouching before me, offering me a piping-hot mug of some kind of liquid.
“Here.”
“What is it?”
“Chicken soup. I slaughtered one just a few days ago. The last one.” He says that last part in a lower voice, as if he doesn’t want me to hear.
“The last one? How many did you have?”
“We had twelve, Auntie and I.”
“Auntie?”
He doesn’t reply, instead motioning for me to drink the soup. I sip the liquid, and it heats me up from the inside out.
“Aren’t you going to ask what happened to me?” I mumble.
My savior shrugs. “I know what happened. You got drunk and high, and you fell asleep in the snow.”
“How’d you know I got high?”
He raises a brow, as if to say, What do you think?
I groan. That obvious, is it? I look a little gaunt and pale, sure, but I didn’t think it was that bad.
“What’s your name?” I ask, tired of referring to him as “my savior.”
“Noah.” He goes quiet after that, and I raise a brow.
“Aren’t you going to ask me for mine?”
“I already know your name, Asher Dalton.”
The soup goes down the wrong hatch, and I heave, “Did you go through my stuff?”
My savior—Noah, apparently—sends me one of his leveled stares again, giving me a one-shouldered shrug, as if saying, Obviously .
Fuck, he’s creepy. There’s something off about him. I can’t put my finger on what.
“Well,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I’d better be going, then. Thanks for everything.”
“Sure,” Noah says, something stiff in his voice. Stiffer than usual. “But you should eat some more first. Let me make you a sandwich.”
I don’t really want a sandwich, but I’m also too tired to protest, so I just shrug and put the mug down.
Noah returns with his sandwich as promised, and I take a few bites of it, trying to look anywhere but at him yet failing, my eyes dragging to him like he’s a magnet. He’s so focused on me, so unrelenting in the way his gaze always finds mine. It’s not?…?like that . At least, I don’t think so.
I know how people look when they like me, girls as well as guys.
Noah doesn’t have that particular glint in his eyes; he just seems fascinated with me, as if I’m a stray animal he found on the streets.
It’s probably fine, even though he’s weird.
I’ll just eat this sandwich, regain my strength, and leave?…
I tilt my head back in a deep yawn. Fuck, I’m so tired. Maybe I can just lie down and sleep a little more, and then I’ll go?…
“It’s okay,” Noah says. “Go back to sleep.”
Will you watch over me? I want to ask, but I’m too tired to do more than mouth the words as I sink into the blankets by the fireplace, belly full and mind a haze. I’m warm, at least. That’s something.
The next time I wake up, I’m somewhere else.
Not by the fire.
I’m lying on a small bed, and the only window is a mere sliver, way up by the ceiling.
What the hell?…?Where’s Noah?
When I lift my arm, something rattles by my side.
No way?…
Eyes going wide, I stare down at my arm.
The fucker! He’s looped a chain around my wrist and fastened it with a set of padlocks. Heavy and rusty, the chain leads to a hook on the wall beside the bed.
What the fuck, what the fuck? This can’t be happening!
“Oh, good. You’re awake again.” Noah appears by the doorway at the foot of the stairs. A basement, then. It has to be.
“Wh-What are you doing? Let me go!” I crawl further up the bed, rattling the chain.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to panic when you woke up.”
“This is supposed to make me not panic?”
I can’t believe this guy. What is this? Some sort of BDSM dungeon? Aside from the handcuff, there’s no paraphernalia I can see, but any second now, he’ll bust out a whip or something.
Fuck, am I going to die?
Sweat beads on my forehead. I feel dizzy, and not in a good way. It’s funny—the thought of killing myself has crossed my mind more times than I can count, but faced with the prospect of dying by someone else’s hand, the pang of resistance is staggering. I don’t want to die. Please …
“Calm down,” Noah says. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Well, excuse me, but that’s pretty fucking hard to believe,” I snarl, voice choked with the onset of tears. My brother, Ethan, always used to say I make things harder for myself by being too impulsive and not knowing when to shut up, but I’m sure he’d freak out too in my position. Who wouldn’t?
Tears of fury spring to my eyes, and I plaster myself to the wall as Noah approaches and sits on a chair in front of the bed. At least I’m dressed again. This would be even creepier if I were still naked.
“Did you drug me?” I ask, voice shaking with anger and fear.
Noah gives a one-shouldered shrug. “You needed sleep.”
“Uh-huh. Well, what did you give me?” I feel groggy as hell. Zombie mode, and not in a good way.
Noah just looks at me, resting his forearms on his knees. He’s wearing a studded belt and black jeans along with a long-sleeved black shirt. No band print, though he looks like he’d enjoy the most hardcore Norwegian black metal.
“Are you thirsty?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Hungry?”
I shake my head again, but then I remember that if he has to fetch me food, he’ll have to leave me alone, and leaving me alone means I’ll have time to figure out an escape plan, so I start nodding enthusiastically.
“Yeah, I’m hungry, actually. Starving.”
His upper lip does the most minuscule uptick—more of a grimace than a smile, and his white teeth gleam in the darkness.
“I’ll be back.” He stands up and gives me a final glance over his shoulder. Is he wary of leaving me alone, or just hesitant to let me out of his sight? The latter is creepier, so in my mind, I settle for the former.
“Are you sure this isn’t some Buffalo Bill bullshit?” I ask.
“Buffalo Bill?”
I fidget with the chain. “You’re not gonna?…?fatten me up and wear my skin as a suit, are you?”
“I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you, didn’t I?” he says, but with his toneless way of speaking, it doesn’t do much to reassure me.
His heavy boots thunk on the stairs as he leaves.
When I’m alone, I start looking around with more urgency, trying to find some tool to get my wrist loose.
I get up from the bed, but the chain doesn’t let me get far.
There’s a shelf on the other side of the room.
A couple of abandoned chairs in the corner.
Other than that, I can’t spot anything of use.
My head starts spinning, and I sit back down on the bed with a sigh. Maybe I should give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Besides that, I’m so tired, and I feel so awful?…?I don’t even know if I’d be able to escape in this state, even if I tried.
He hasn’t hurt me yet, after all. Rather the opposite, really—he saved me. If he hadn’t found me and brought me here, I’d be dead by now, unless someone else had found me. It sure wouldn’t be Lilith; she’d be busy fucking that guy?…
A groan tears from my throat, and I squeeze my eyes closed. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
I always do this; I like anyone who likes me.
Lilith swept me into her world, and I didn’t protest—too lost in the pillowy land of drugs and parties.
Asherland, where there are no worries in the world, where you just go with the flow.
Where you let people kiss you with no protest, even if you don’t like them.
You just like them because they like you .
The thing is, I actually happened to like Lilith. Most of the time, anyway?…?When I was high, anyway?…?Yeah, maybe she wasn’t that good of a person, but who is? I’m sure not. My brother and my parents have made that clear.
I bury my face in my knees, feeling unmoored and unlike myself. I don’t know how much time has passed since my last hit, but I can tell I’m going to go into withdrawal soon. Fuck, if I can’t get any opioids, I at least have to get some weed. Noah doesn’t look like a smoker, though you never know.
One of my teachers in high school—an old lady with a limp—smelled like weed all the time, and I caught her on the school grounds once after class.
“I won’t tell anyone if you let me have some,” I said, grinning as I pointed to her joint.
She laughed and gave it to me. She always seemed to like me, unlike the other teachers, who despised my restless ways and unfocused rambling in class.
I was always more interested in talking to my friends than doing schoolwork, which made the contrast with my brother painfully obvious.
Ethan being only ten months older and us looking like twins to boot, the teachers treated us like we were the same person.
Of course, I could never live up to my brother’s studious ways, so I didn’t even try, and my parents always focused more on him anyway.
The eldest. The heir.
They bought him piano lessons, a private tutor after school?…?Whereas I bounced around friends’ houses and played video games until late into the night.
I squeeze my eyes shut again. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it …?It’s so fucking hard not letting the thoughts in when I’m sober.
When I’m high, nothing bothers me. I can be the life of the party, not caring what anyone thinks. Hell, I’m nicer when I’m high. When Lilith caught me sober a few times before we got our hits in, she complained about my downturned mouth and curt tone.
Some people are just better humans when they’re high on their favorite drug, and is that so bad? My life is a mess to begin with, and at this point, I need my drugs to feel good. Or just to feel normal; I don’t really know.
I won’t do it all my life, mind you—I can quit when I want to, but there’s no fucking way I’ll let some weirdo kidnapper call the shots.