Chapter 13
Azhrael
This man has been here for nearly two days.
I count the hours in the rhythm of his heart. The slow, stubborn thump of a muscle that wants to stop but cannot. Not while I hold it.
The others leave and come back, leave and come back.
The house settles. Sera wraps her arms around my form before she goes to work, a gesture of faith, and I feel the ghost of her warmth for hours after.
James's boots thump up the stairs. Eddie's footsteps are softer, measured, a man who moves like the shadows inside him. The door closes behind him.
And then there is only Vincent and me.
He hangs from the shadows I've grown from the ceiling and wound around his wrists and ankles and throat. He dangles like a puppet whose strings have been cut but whose master refuses to let him fall.
His feet are a memory of structure. James's work, beautiful in its thoroughness. The bones no longer remember their arrangement. They float in the soft meat of his soles, fragments of a foundation that will never bear weight again. His kneecaps angle sharply away from each other.
He is awake now. I make sure of it, and I stave off enough of his pain to keep him conscious for as long as possible. Sera wants him to suffer on her terms, not his body’s.
His eyes track me when I move. They are the only part of him that still has any fight, and even that is fading. The fear has eaten the rest. It sits in his chest like a second heart, beating in time with the first, and I feed on it.
"Hell…awaits," I rasp, and that’s the only promise I’ll ever give him, one I remind him of every time we’re alone.
His throat works. A sound escapes him, half question, half sob.
"Not…finished." I drift closer. "She."
He tries to speak. His throat is dry, cracked, the words scraping out like stones. "What…what are you?"
"Cold," I say. "Shadow."
I lean closer, my face inches from his. He cannot look away. I will not let him.
"Hers."
His breath hitches. A sob builds in his chest, but it doesn’t escape. He’s full of them, pressurized, ready to burst when she returns.
My shadows feed him dreams while he sleeps and while he’s awake.
I shape them, showing him her face in a thousand variations.
Sometimes she is the woman he remembers—broken, bleeding, crying in that alleyway.
Sometimes she is the woman she has become—crowned in shadow, her eyes full of stars that burn.
In every dream, she wins. In every dream, he loses.
That mercy I give him is the certainty of his defeat.
I drift back, circling him. The shadow-chains creak. His weight shifts, and a small sound escapes his throat—pain, exhaustion, his body's endless complaint.
He still hurts despite my efforts to keep him alive and conscious.
I stop, and the air around me drops ten degrees. Frost crawls across the ruined concrete floor. My shadows yank his joints even harder.
Now he really hurts.
I smile, a crack in the dark, a glimpse of something vast and hungry.
Silent tears cut down his face. I catch one on my fingertip and bring it to my mouth.
Tastes like a rapist.
I shout my displeasure at the foundation of the house, and dust and debris rain down.
"Burn. Burn. Burn." I grow with each word, the shadows thickening around me. "Here. Now. Burn."
Heat blooms under his skin, invisible, but I can feel it. He gasps, tries to pull away from nothing, but the shadow-chains hold him fast.
The heat builds. Sweat beads on his forehead, drips down his temples. His breath comes faster, shallower.
Then he screams, a raw, tearing sound that bounces off the walls. He thrashes in the shadow-chains, twisting, trying to escape a fire that exists only in his own mind.
"Stop," he begs. "Please. Stop."
I don’t let them stop, not for a long while.
Then finally, the heat vanishes. The phantom flames gutter and die, and he is left gasping, shaking, whole but shattered.
I drift closer and place my hand on his chest, over his heart. It hammers against my palm like a trapped bird.
He sags in the shadow-chains, weeping, and I retreat to the corner where the shadows are thickest. I will wait. I am good at waiting. I have been waiting for her for longer than he can imagine.
And when she returns, I will be here.
Ready for more.