Chapter 9 #2
Now, I’m battling the need to rip him a new one.
But talking to the demon means being in his presence for longer than necessary, despite the fact that it’s making the gray world a little more colorful, and that’s a bad idea no matter which way I cut it.
That knowledge is throwing me—that much is clear from my shitty response.
“Maybe. Do you like watching people sleep?”
“Another difference. What you call watching, I call terrorizing.”
For what? To sate his boredom? I think the fuck not. “I’m shaking in my boots.”
“You will be.”
I scoff. “You’ve had four days to make it happen. Either you’re slow at adapting, or you’ve got nothing left to give.”
That’s the type of statement that would have left me with Mother’s handprint seared into my cheek. Being disrespectful. Taunting when the only solid thing I have is bluster. Opening my mouth when I should be keeping it shut.
I wrap my new coat around myself to stave off the chill in the air, and I’m almost delusional enough to think it’s working.
“I can make the rest of your immortal existence miserable beyond measure.”
“Give it your worst. I’ve been in hell my entire life.”
A prickly grin dances across his lips. “Go on. Tell a demon your sob story, then.”
I shake my head. So he can use it against me? No thanks.
“Do it. Try. Make me more miserable than I already am. From where I’m standing, you need me.
If not, you’d be out of this shithole already.
Now, what do you want? We both know you aren’t here because we enjoy each other’s company—and don’t start saying fix it, because I’m done having that conversation with you. ”
He cocks a brow, and I internally grimace. I sound like my mother.
Unless he’s got some answers to our situation or is going to tell me where the grimoire is, our continued interaction is pointless.
Another pebble hits my shoulder, and my anger gets the better of me. I grab the empty pot closest to me, and I throw it. The moment I hit him, I know I fucked up, but I can’t bring myself to care.
The clay shatters against his stomach as if he were a solid wall, and he lunges for me. My four days of improving my strength seems utterly useless when I don’t turn to mist beneath his touch like I planned.
Strong fingers dig into my bicep, hard enough to bruise a living person, then the world tips upside down and air punches from my lungs from the hard crush of his shoulder against my stomach. It doesn’t matter how hard I try, my body stays solid, trapped in his hold.
“Put me down, you asshole!” I scream, beating his back.
The bastard kicks down the rickety shed door and sends it careening across the field. I have zero desire to find out why he had to wake me up at the ass crack of dawn or why he’s now lugging me into the forest in the opposite direction of the manor.
If I weren’t already dead, I’d be worried that he’s going to kill me and hide my body—the one I haven’t been able to face because it’d be like accepting the finality of my life.
I can’t even muster the energy to be scared when two other emotions have taken up every inch of my brain.
Fury, I can handle. What’s far too foreign for me is that sick thrill that’s shooting up my spine from the feel of his strong hand clutching my upper thigh, inches away from my center. It’s the cause of the breath rushing out of me and the reawakening of my dormant libido.
His hands are big, each spanning the width of my thigh. A single jostle and he could slip higher—closer. My mouth dries; I’m torn between two warring emotions that each make the other more potent.
I hit him harder, struggling with everything I have, even at the risk of making both my nightmare and newfound unwanted fantasy come true. Something just as bad happens: his fingers clench the soft flesh, and fear, desire, and bloodlust become one.
“Where are you taking me?” I snarl with a nice hard slap to the back of his head. Which, apparently, was the wrong move because one second I’m flat on the ground, the next I’m being dragged through the woods by my arm, the hand around it a steel grip.
The want disappears, and the two remaining emotions have me clawing at him out of sheer desperation.
Everything I do is useless. Digging my heels in does nothing. Hitting his arm is fruitless. I don’t bother screaming because what would be the point? No one is around. All I can do is try to keep up since the asshole has no patience for my tripping.
“Would you use your goddamn words and stop acting like an evil demonic child?” I snap, stumbling over a tree root only to fly right through a bush.
“God is dead, sweetheart. We killed him.”
What the fuck?
“Wow. So impressive. That doesn’t answer my question.” I pant, staggering behind him as we move deeper into the forest. At no point does his hold become painful, but it’s upsetting all the same.
I wish I could say I know this land like the back of my hand, but unfortunately, my parents detested outdoor play. Lord forbid we get our white dresses dirty.
None of it looks familiar until I see a rusted peg stabbed into the earth to indicate the boundary line up ahead. What the hell is this psycho doing?
When willing my body to become smoke beneath his grasp doesn’t work, I drop my weight—which does nothing either.
“What are you—I can’t go through that,” I protest, fighting harder the closer we get. I know how this is going to go. “There’s a force field or some—”
I cry out, my arm contorting as I slam into the invisible barrier, while he waltzes right through, unperturbed. My face smushes against the boundary and smashes into it again when the demon tries dragging me through once more.
“Stop!”
He doesn’t. He keeps pulling, keeping me trapped against the makeshift prison bars. I dig my nails into the hand curled around my bicep, and he hisses.
“Let go,” I growl, wedging both feet against the barrier. It’s as if I’m defying the laws of gravity because I look like I’m floating.
My back hits the ground when he suddenly lets go, but my second of freedom ends horridly when he grabs my ankle to haul me through.
It’s the first time I get the chance to look at his face; to see the sheer desperation etched through every line in his forehead and the deep divot between his brow. His frustration is on par with how I’ve felt all the times I’ve tried getting out of here.
But there’s something more to it—a sense of panic.
For the first time, I realize something that he likely never wanted me to know: the demon has weaknesses and staying here leaves him vulnerable.
Why? No one looks like that unless they’re running from something.
The struggle only lasts for a couple more seconds before he drops my foot with an aggravated huff then paces briefly, running a hand down his face and through his hair. I scramble to my feet as I watch him, then fist my hands at my sides.
“Are you insane?” Who the fuck does this entitled bastard think he is? B- for his creativity, but fuck him for the execution.
He crosses the barrier to round on me. The fury oozing from him is potent enough that I can taste it at the back of my throat. He’s pissed? How does he think I feel?
He doesn’t get a chance to say a word. My fist soars through the air and lands squarely on his jaw, and his head whips to the side. Then I advance on him, pointing a finger right at his face.
“Don’t you dare pull that shit again,” I snarl.
In a split second, rage shifts to shock then the barest flicker of amusement before settling back on anger. The asshole moves forward so we’re even closer, our chests a hair away from brushing.
Each of our ragged exhales mingle like toxic fumes that poison my brain as we stare each other down, neither one of us willing to back away.
He smells like sin and every wrong, depraved thing in this universe, and it’s delectable. It’s the type of cologne that sinks into my bones and burrows deep into my marrow as if entwining with my ghostly DNA.
This feeling—this burning in my veins—it’s heady. Livening. Exhilarating. It makes my skin prickle and my stomach tighten in a way it shouldn’t.
He leans forward, getting right in my face, lips twisting into a vicious sneer, and once more I watch the way they move as he speaks—a moment of weakness. “I think I preferred you when you were crying. Your wailing made my ears bleed less.”
His words come out like venom, and I throw it right back, lacing my tone with faux pity.
“And being around you gives me indigestion”—not to be outdone, I angle closer too, until there are only a couple inches between us—“yet you don’t see me being a little bitch about it.”
The demon jerks away like being so close disgusts him. “Fuck off.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me? I’m already dead, asshole.”
His eyes flare with psychotic glee. “Now there’s an idea.”
He draws something wooden and pointy from his pocket.
Is that a stake?
I step back.
Fuck him.
Fuckhimfuckhimfuckhimfuckhim.
I hate that motherfucker with every fiber of my undead being.
My eyes swing between him, the weapon, and the invisible boundary that he could always try dragging me through again—then to his lips and the way they curl with his scowl.
Walk away, Sable. I hear Ella’s voice at the back of my mind, talking me down from getting into another fight at school that would make our parents lose their minds, and I listen.
I’m not going to win this. Not yet anyway. This demon has a truth, and I’m going to find out what it is.
Then he can threaten me with that stake all he wants.
If he brings me down, I’ll take him with me. I summoned him after all. It’d only be fair.