Chapter 22
Seraphina
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
The last thing I hear are those words, the last thing I see before Damien returns to the house is his eyes dark with desire.
The thought that he’s not finished with me yet makes me shiver in anticipation.
I find myself hoping for the punishment he promised me.
Not that I don’t like the sex. But right now, I want something more.
When I suddenly feel a hand fall over my eyes, I shriek in surprise, then shriek louder when I feel myself getting stuffed in the trunk of the car. Both shrieks come out very muffled, first by the hand, then by the trunk. Before I can overcome my shock, I’m submerged in darkness.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I wasn’t thinking of this sort of punishment. I wanted to get, well, flogged, or spanked, or something. Not shut into a cramped pitch black space.
Doesn’t Damien know I’m claustrophobic? Doesn’t he realize how traumatized getting buried under the ground was?
Maybe he does realize it, and he wants to claim that fear, transform it. Or maybe he has no clue.
Or maybe he really is that much of a sadist, and he wants to hurt me.
All three of those possibilities feel perfectly plausible. All three of those possibilities are Damien all over.
But what makes me nervous, beyond the cramped space, is that I didn’t smell him. I didn’t smell the scent of cologne.
And the hands felt… different.
But it all happened so quickly. I probably didn’t even get the chance to smell him or to understand what kind of hands were being clapped over my mouth.
Nonetheless, anxiety overwhelms me, even as I tell myself that it’s only Damien.
It’s only Damien. It’s only Damien. He won’t hurt me.
I force myself to repeat the words silently, to let them echo in my mind. I will them to relax me. But the panic creeps up, tasting bitter in my throat.
I hear the motor vibrate underneath me, and the car sets forward. I take a deep breath. Damien just wants to scare me, that’s all. He loves me, but he wants to scare me just like I scared him. Then we’re going to fuck again, and it’s going to be amazing.
But somehow, something feels wrong. Very wrong.
I start to hiccup with the need to cry, but my eyes are dry with fear.
The words I repeat to myself over and over have no meaning anymore.
The fear twists itself into something absolutely intolerable.
A headache begins to beat at my temples, overpowering all other thought and sensation, and I wonder just how long I’ve been in this car.
The fact that I have no way to tell makes it even worse.
At last, the car stops. I hear the crunch of gravel as footsteps walk around the car. Then my heart practically stops in my chest.
It’s not just one pair of footsteps.
How is that possible? Have I misheard? But no. Like when I was stuck underground, I can’t see, I can’t move, I can’t do anything but smell and listen.
I smell the close air, the sweating leather, the thick lining of felt. Somewhere far away, pine trees, fresh air, an abstract sort of freedom.
And the sounds I hear, right now, are footsteps. Two pairs.
What the fuck is going on?
Did Damien bring along someone else? But no one was there. Did Logan somehow come in the three seconds between my getting placed in the trunk and the car driving off?
Or… is it not Damien who’s driving the car?
My breath strangles in my chest as that thought further implants itself in my mind. And a moment later, when the trunk is lifted, my worst fears come true.
It’s not Damien.
Instead, the two people who are peering down at me are none other than…
Gabriel and Aaron.
“What the fuck?” I say, but the words are spoken out loud now.
Gabriel smirks. “I see our little mute girl is not so mute anymore.”
I barely have time to register what that means—they must have been keeping track of me for a while, if they know I was mute—before Aaron yanks me roughly out of the trunk.
“Damien made things easy for us,” he snickers. “Leaving you in that open trunk while he hunted for the keys that he’d left lying right on the fucking lawn. Must be getting soft with old age… or with love.”
He pretends to gag on the last word, and I grit my teeth in anger.
Aaron roughly clasps a hand around my hair and pushes me forward.
For the first time, I notice my surroundings.
We’re in the midst of a thick forest of pine trees, lost in the rolling hills of Vermont that I’ve seen from the windows of our new home.
But Damien can trace me here, I try to reassure myself.
Damien will follow the tracks of the car. He’ll find me.
But soon, I’m not so sure. We plunge deeper into the forest, Aaron continuing to clutch my hair, guiding me forward, punishing each of my hesitations with a firmer tug on my hair.
I know I should refuse to budge, should make them kill me right here, near the car, so that Damien can at least find my body.
But that damn survival instinct won’t let me alone.
If there’s even the tiniest sliver of a chance that I can survive, my body automatically seizes it, no matter what my brain has to say about it.
We continue to walk for what feels like an eternity, my mind grappling first with my impending fate, then with Damien’s probable reaction, then with Gabriel being alive after all.
Damien had assured me he was dead, yet here he is, standing and breathing in front of me.
How is that possible? How could Damien have gotten it so wrong? How could he have let Gabriel live?
Resentment battles it out with worry at his reaction when he finds me gone. But fear wins out when we arrive at a small shack. Gabriel unlocks the door and Aaron pushes me forward.
For the first time, in the dim glow of the lightbulb that flickers on, I notice Gabriel’s appearance. He looks positively haggard. His eyes are set deeply back in his skull, and with the purple shadows around them, he looks like a skeleton.
It doesn’t help that he appears to have lost about half of his body weight. And one of his arms is missing.
I swallow hard and face my captors, unwilling to be the quiet girl of my past.
“What are you going to do to me?” I question defiantly.
“Shut up,” grunts Aaron.
“Why? Why do you need me to shut up? We’re in the middle of the woods. Are you going to kill me?”
“Not yet,” smirks Gabriel. “Aaron, get out your phone.”
The other Angel fumbles in his jacket and finds the cell phone, which he passes to Gabriel.
“What are you going to do with that?” I ask.
He ignores me, turning it on, which strikes me as weird. Why would Aaron carry around a turned-off cell phone? Unless it’s being tracked by Devil? Hope bubbles up as I wonder whether the phone could allow Damien to find me.
But that makes no sense. If Aaron knows Damien is tracking that cell phone, the last thing he would do is turn it on now.
I’m probably reading far too much into things. Which I guess is logical, since I’m hanging onto any detail that might save me.
“Relax,” comments Gabriel, lighting up a cigarette. “You won’t die. That is, as long you play your cards right.”
I stare at him, shocked. “I won’t die?”
“I’m kind of over the whole burying you in the ground thing,” he says smoothly, taking a long drag.
“Especially since you have a tendency to just not stay buried. You’re like a fucking bed bug or something.
You infest everything, and you’re impossible to get rid of. Anybody ever tell you that before?”
I shrug. I don’t know if he thinks he’s hurting my feelings, but I’m long past caring about that kind of thing. I’ve been through far too much to allow playground taunts to faze me.
So I wait patiently for the part where he tells me how I won’t die. I expect there’s some sort of catch.
There is.
He takes another drag of his cigarette. “You know, I’ve had a lot of time to think about how I was going to get my revenge. Ten fucking months holed up in a Columbian prison. Not the kind of place I’m used to. The kind they send plebs to. I haven’t forgiven Aaron for sending me to it.”
“I hardly had a choice,” protests Aaron. “You were bleeding out…”
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway. One of my arms is gone, and I want to keep the other one. Which means I’ve changed my mind about hurting Damien the way he hurt me.
Corny as fuck, wasn’t that, to kill his girl because he killed my brother?
Who fucking cares, right? Losing your arm and getting five fucking blood transfusions in a Columbian prison has a way of changing your perspective.
So anyway, now, I’m done with the whole grief thing, and I’ve decided I’m going to cut the bullshit that is Devil right at the source.
I’m going to kill your little boyfriend.
” His eyes fall on my wedding ring. “Your little husband, that is.”
“In that case,” I ask, my mouth dry, “why did you kidnap me?”
“Why do you think?” he shrugs.
I look at him in confusion.
“To draw him out of his little hole, of course.”
I grow cold at the implication. So he means to use me as bait. I’m going to cause Damien’s death. That thought is even more unbearable than the idea of living my life without him. If Gabriel has his way, I’m going to live my life without him while knowing I’m responsible for his death.
I feel slightly faint.
“I’m going to kill him,” chuckles Gabriel. “It’s going to be fucking slow. And you’re going to watch him bleed out. You’ll be helpless to prevent it. Then, I’ll decide what to do with you. If you behave, maybe I’ll spare you. If not…”
He gestures with his thumb, showing me exactly how he plans to slit my throat if I don’t ‘behave’.
I stare at him for exactly seventeen seconds before I realize what I have to do.
The only way to save Damien, the only way to keep from living without him, knowing I’m responsible for his death…
The only possible way out… is to die.
I’m going to have to die.
If I’m gone, I can’t be used as bait.