Chapter 4 #2
“You dare to wear the disguise of a girl…you even smell human,” he whispers intimately into my ear, his low words brushing against my skin like velvet.
“Yet you do not fool me, demon.” The hellhound cups my face.
His fingers gently brush the underside of my jaw and he tilts my face up.
His gaze searches mine. He has absurdly long, curly lashes, the colour of fine gold.
“Death always comes. Even to something like you, demon, there is always a way.” His hand drifts down to my neck, and he rubs his thumb up and down my throat.
“You are a fucking curse on the world.” I don’t think he is aware of the way his thumb brushes back and forth over my jugular, testing my pulse.
Until his thumb pauses. He frowns as if he doesn’t like the feel of my weak pulse fluttering in his grip. “Tell me about my pack.”
I swallow, and his grip tightens. I freeze.
The prey animal in me recognises the danger of this beautiful man and the precipice of the thin ice I stand upon.
To have fire magic, to be a hellhound, he has to be an old, powerful shifter.
I see the violence and age in his eyes. A thousand years of battle, war, and pain.
My heart hurts for him, for the loss of the man he could have been.
So many deaths, so much pain. It has turned him into a monster.
In the quiet times like this—between his violent attentions—I usually talk. I tell him everything about my life.
Everything.
Nothing is off limits. Almost every thought I’ve ever had in my head waffles out of my mouth.
I tell him. Our time is so intimate. He knows me better than I know myself.
Yet he doesn’t believe a word I say. God, I tried my best to convince him.
Before my screams robbed me of my voice, that is.
Now I have no voice left to talk, I have nothing else to say, to prove.
This hellhound has cut me open, and my secrets have poured out.
He has ignored every single one, picking through them with disinterest and grinding them beneath his boots.
Who I am doesn’t matter.
His presence is intense. Now that I can no longer speak, we communicate with energy alone. It vibrates around us.
When I continue to ignore him, his eyes flame with his fury.
“I’ll let you heal if you answer my fucking questions,” John bellows.
He tightens his hold on my throat and slams his fist into the pillar beside my head.
My ears throb as his angry voice echoes around the room, and my insides feel like they have liquefied.
I slow-blink. A mixture of blood and sick bubbles from my lips.
I try one last time.
I widen my eyes and try to plead with him, plead to the logical side of the man, the rational side trapped inside him, caged in by the monster. John curls his lip and continues to stare at me, his dislike nearly palpable.
John knows magic doesn’t work on me. I explained it all to him, yet he mockingly still believes that I’m the mastermind behind his stolen pack. That I’m a demon.
“I will let you heal if you answer my questions…”
I close my eyes in defeat. No matter what the monstrous hellhound wants, I can’t answer those questions.
How can I answer them when I don’t know?
I feel his breath against my cold face—hot breath. My own breath rattles. He lets go of my throat. A click and a rattle, and with deft hands the hellhound releases my wrists from the chains.
With my hands free of the chains, my useless body flops to the floor with a bang. My head hits the unyielding concrete with a crack. My already dodgy, fading vision goes black.
Wow, you really do see stars, I think as my vision comes screaming back with multicoloured flashes of light. I think of all the cartoons I watched as a kid that I scoffed at, and I mentally apologise. Stars are a thing.
The hellhound growls with poorly concealed contempt.
I lie where I’ve crumpled. Compared to everything else, the pain from the blood rushing to my newly released wrists, arms, and shoulders fades into the background. Wow, wishes do come true. Didn’t I wish for the comfort of the floor?
I settle in and watch John prowl towards the edge of the circle. Deliberately he smudges the hand-drawn lines with a shiny boot.
What is he up to now?
“No tricks, demon.” Yeah, 'cause I’m so sneaky.
“Crawl. Leave the circle, heal yourself. Crawl, demon.” I give him a look of what I hope is total incredulity at his ridiculous demand.
Crawl? Is he taking the piss? Perhaps a few hours ago, but now?
What would be the point? Not that I can heal myself here or on the other side of the stupid, useless demon-trapping circle. Still not a demon.
Mhm. Do I attempt to crawl…offer the very last of my dignity?
No.
No, the floor is the softest I’ve ever felt, I’m happy to stay here.
Die here.
In response to my lack of movement—in John’s mind, I guess I should scuttle across the floor like a demon cockroach —he strides back towards me, grabs hold of my ragged top, and drags me across the floor, onto the other side of the circle.
I moan in pain. I scream in my head.
“Heal, damn you,” John barks. I can feel more blood soaking into my ripped top—the fabric sticks wetly to my skin.
He runs his hand through his short, blond hair in frustration.
He looks down at me, his legs wide apart, his big muscly arms across his broad chest. He drops his chin.
John taps his fingers against his forearm impatiently. He waits.
He waits.
Bloody hell, John, you’ll be waiting a long time. The breath rattles in my chest. My heart slows. I can’t take a full breath.
I didn’t realise that the human body had the ability to feel so much pain.
A person could go mad. I thought, wrongly, that after a while, your body would shut down, that the nerves would stop firing and then everything would become one big…
well, I imagined it would be like being wrapped in cotton wool.
Muffled. Perhaps it’s me and my creature DNA that keeps the pain so vivid?
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God, make it stop, please, please make it stop.
“Why aren’t you healing?” His fiery eyes have turned green. He prods me with his foot. Careful, John, you don’t want to get your shiny boots dirty, I think dimly.
I wonder if when the sun rises, I’ll be lying in the half-circle of light…I’d like that. Will it touch my face?
I guess I’m done.
“Why aren’t you healing?” He drops into a squat and pushes the hair away from my face. He stares intently at me and lets out a low growl. I can’t respond —nothing works. After a few seconds, John picks up on my broken state. “You piece of shit. You fucking manipulating piece of shit.”
I blink. Each time I open my eyes, the time between gets longer and longer.
If you fall asleep, you will die.
That is okay. I’m ready.
I don’t notice that John has left until he returns with a potion vial. He tips the whole thing onto the skin of my throat; it trickles down the back of my neck. He might as well have splashed me with some water.
What a waste of a healing potion.
“Why aren’t you healing?” he says again, and his voice has changed. Gone is the harsh whisper, and instead, I almost fool myself into thinking he is concerned.
“Why aren’t you fucking healing.”
Because.
Magic doesn’t work on me.