Chapter Fourteen
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Henri
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VISION WAS A FUNNY THING.
I’d once read—on a marathon binge about the make-up of the world and why we fucking existed—that the world was holographic. I read that within every raindrop, blooddrop, breath, and cell, we carried the entire code of the cosmos.
I hadn’t understood what the author had been jabbering on about. How the quantum realm was just energy waves until we actually looked and then it became whatever we decided it should be.
But...as I ran through rain and lightning, I began to understand.
The storm fragmented reality—twisting normal things and making them otherworldly.
The thunder rearranged the frequency of the very ground I ran over, making the earth fizzle and fry beneath my feet. The dense liquid in the air saturated my lungs with newness and power, making it hard to breathe.
All of that tried to distract me.
But something drove me.
A gnawing in my chest.
A jagged kind of needling.
Urgency I’d never felt before hurtled me through the rain in search of something...someone...her.
The girl who’d run.
The girl who’d awoken me.
The girl I had to find.
The undone weight between my legs kept me far too ferocious. The memory of her using me to chase her pleasure only ensured I chased her to relieve mine.
She owed me.
I wanted her to put me out of my misery.
To accept her place.
To respect me instead of ridicule me.
I needed her.
I needed her to need me.
I need...more.
I ran harder.
Searching.
Needing.
A plastic gemstone glittered at the base of a goddess statue, her marble hair cascading to the ground and her arms wrapped around a bowl of forbidden fruit.
I didn’t care what was inside.
The only treasure I wanted was Ily.
But I snatched it up anyway and kept running.
Where are you, little nightmare?
Hunting her was not good for my sanity.
With every step, I reverted deeper and deeper into a prehistoric animal.
I couldn’t stop images of what I’d do when I found her.
How I’d fall on her, fill her, bite her—
Christ.
“Ily!” I charged through bleeding water and flinched beneath the might of nature. “Where the fuck are you?”
I wasn’t the only animal out here.
There were others.
Too many others.
She’s not safe.
Up ahead, my eyes locked onto a scene.
A scene I couldn’t make sense of.
A crowd of blackness.
Two creatures of darkness.
And there, on the grass, a third fell onto whatever prey it’d caught.
A part of me cringed in sympathy.
Whoever had been caught would suffer.
But...I had no time.
No morals to stop them.
I have to find her.
I went to veer to my left.
To leave the predators to their kill.
But...
Something.
Unexplainable wisdom.
The harshest throttle of knowing.
My hand clutched the stupid gem, and my legs slowed.
A man’s shout rippled through the watery night.
A man high on lust.
A Master getting off on doing unspeakable things.
I waited for an answering scream.
The tears of his prey.
Only silence.
A heavy, oppressive silence that felt...different.
Silence that wasn’t just silence.
Silence that tugged me, taunted me, and cloaked me with far more energy than it should.
Energy that seemed...familiar.
My heart wrenched.
My feet stopped.
Breathing hard, I glowered at the satanic ceremony up ahead. Curtains of rain blurred the world, flicking it between reality and dreams.
That sensation of elseness.
That awareness of someone.
I’d felt that pull once before.
I’d sensed Ily’s eyes on me before I’d ever spotted her in the club.
Her energy was a tangible thing, threading with mine, binding me to her even as I fought so fucking hard to bind her to me.
You’re making it up.
You’re drunk on the hunt and—
I shivered as another buffet of sentience quaked through me.
I swiped at my eyes, trying to see, but...I knew.
I knew before my brain could make sense of pictograms and pixels.
Vision could come in many forms.
Knowing could strike even the lowliest of creatures.
And this...it bypassed my paltry eyes, and I saw.
I saw with my fucking heart.
And I ran.
With a roar, I charged toward them.
They had her.
They hurt her.
They’ll die.
The storm was my friend as I threw myself into whatever entity existed within me.
The diabolical.
The despicable.
The immoral and unhinged.
The strange sensations of my youth returned, but I didn’t shut them down this time or convince myself they weren’t real.
Familiar black hunger poured through every vein.
My hearing sharpened until the splashing of every raindrop ricocheted in my ears.
My nose became acute, scenting the musk of sex in the gloom.
And my teeth ached as if they lengthened, ready to tear flesh from bone and lap at hot marrow.
I ran faster.
The two men standing with their pants off saw me first.
Their greedy grins fell as I hurtled toward them.
With a snarl, I threw the stupid gem and hit one of them squarely in the forehead.
He stumbled backward, rubbing the mark only for the one on the ground to wrap his hand around a girl’s throat and shift his hips.
Time seemed to slow as I looked at the jewel beneath him.
Black hair.
Thunder-dark skin.
Unparalleled beauty that fucking obliterated me.
Sickness gushed.
Possession flared.
And when I noticed her slack and empty face...
I
snapped.
I wasn’t human.
I was death.
Everything became a hologram as if I’d stepped through the fabric of time and space.
I became one with everything.
My hands snatched at bodies. My fists punched against bone.
The feral shouts of men were drowned out by thunder as I hit and hit and hit.
I punched over and over.
I kicked. I killed. I shed off the restrictions of gravity and physics and was free.
Screams sounded. Curses bellowed.
The snap of feeble bodies and the satisfying delivery of my punishment.
I snatched at the animal on the ground and threw him straight through the air. I caught him before he landed and slammed him with inhuman strength into the ground.
He grunted.
He was naked.
I grabbed his cock and tore.
He screamed.
Fingers snatched me as I choked him.
Eyes locked on mine as I killed him.
But I wasn’t aware.
Not really.
I was there but elsewhere.
I was floating and furious, violent and vicious.
No pain as men struck me from behind.
No awareness as my fist closed around someone’s windpipe and twisted.
He went limp.
I went rogue.
I kicked the bastards trying to hurt me.
I attacked with every atom.
I lost all sense of time as I became carnage itself.
A man sobbed as I broke him.
Another bellowed as I tore him apart.
I relished in midnight-black blood.
I fed on their pleas.
Dined on their agony.
I siphoned down and down into darkness until I didn’t remember why I fought.
I didn’t know why I lost myself so completely.
Or how I’d ever stop.
All I knew was they had to die.
Die.
All of them.
Every single one—
Garish sunshine suddenly blinded me.
I hissed and raised a hand as another sun snapped on and another, trapping me in a triangle of blazing light.
“Stop. Immediately!” A voice boomed through the slapping rain, ringing in my teeth.
The only bastard still alive instantly dropped to his knees. Blood smeared his bare chest, his hands trembling as he raised them. “T-This man attacked us. Shoot him! He killed Dax and Roger!”
“Stay still. All of you!”
I stepped toward my final nemesis.
I licked my lips at the thought of feasting—
“You move, and we shoot!” Another spotlight, another holler. “We gave you an order! Obey it!”
Words.
I spoke those once upon a time.
They wriggled through my desperation to destroy...bringing with them memories of why.
The darkness in my mind receded.
The creature within me paused.
My hands flexed, feeling the tug of torn skin and the hot throb of bruises.
I looked at the carnage by my feet.
Two men.
One with his neck at an unnatural angle and another with a massive contusion where his mangled cock hung.
Both unconscious.
W-Where is she?
“The Master Jeweler is on his way,” crackled the loudhailer. “Do. Not. Move.”
Shielding my eyes, I looked up at the fortress walls. Massive spotlights angled toward my little massacre, and vague silhouettes of guards aimed sniper weapons in my direction.
The urge to keep killing bubbled in my gut.
I wanted everyone in motherfucking pieces.
But...
Her.
Spinning in the slushy grass, I searched the ground for—
“Ilyana.” Her full name fell from my lips as I darted to her side and fell to one knee. She sat up in the rain, her head down and blue-black hair sticking to shock-washed cheeks.
I wasn’t prepared for the slap of emotion.
The fist of feeling.
The godawful punch of home.
My heart stopped, then restarted, syncing to hers, always to hers.
“Ily...”
She didn’t react as I gently touched her shoulder.
I splayed my hand on her icy skin and grunted as two polarising, primordial forces collided within me.
The beast inside me raged with the primal urge to fuck her as my right as conqueror.
I despised that another had put his hands on her.
Put his scent and DNA and—
She cried out as I squeezed her shoulder too hard.
I ripped my hand away.
Fucking calm down, Ri.
Flexing my fingers, my nostrils flared as I did my best to tame myself.
To save her from the unleashed anarchy within me.
I didn’t trust myself around her.
Didn’t trust I could touch her kindly when every part of me was mean and nasty and noxious.
Never taking my eyes off her, I sucked in deep breaths.
I focused on her and only her.
She caused such chaos inside me.
Such awful things and precious things.
Shame filled me that I hadn’t protected her.
Despair that I’d been too late.
She didn’t look at me.
I really needed her to look at me.
I needed to know.
What did they do...?
Inhaling a shuddering gasp, she drew up her knees and hugged herself.
She looked so small, so fragile.
The killer inside me raged again.
My monster refused to back the fuck down.
I was feral and raw, and both man and beast wanted to gift her every gory trophy I could.
To present her with the cock that’d hurt her.
To give her the hands that’d dared touch her.
The tongue of those who dared taste her.
The motherfucking souls of any and all who dared possess her.
Including mine.