CHAPTER 31 #2
Had they been privy, I suspected they’d have turned a blind eye, so long as I continued to report progress. And didn’t die. While I maintained a sense of legitimacy in the labs upstairs, here, in my private lab, I could get away with anything–even murder.
It hadn’t been without coaxing that I’d agreed to take on my father’s research.
Upon his deathbed, I’d vowed that his lifelong studies would die with him.
It was Lippincott who’d encouraged me to consider it.
To investigate the potential for curing my own affliction.
He’d agreed to fund the research, and worked to reinvigorate interest in it, after my father had turned the entire academic community away from himself.
I needed it to be a success.
I was desperate to untangle myself from my father’s humiliating legacy.
The room tilted and shifted as the toxin pulsed through my veins.
A euphoric high swept over me with the intense surge of dopamine.
Grunting and moaning, I tensed and flexed as the toxin worked its way into my bloodstream.
While it failed to return my sense of touch, each dose lessened the seizing episodes with which I suffered. And, of course, stoked my libido.
I reached for my phone, and Lilia’s paused video.
Stop this , my head urged. Not her .
What was it about the girl that had me breaking my own rules?
Perhaps it was knowing that Lippincott was watching her. That she unwittingly swam in a placid sea where sharks lurked beneath the surface, and the vulnerability spoke to me.
Maybe it was the way she challenged me and defied all of my prejudices against her, that unbreakable resilience that I found so utterly alluring. A shot of fire in my veins that stoked my blood.
I was drawn to her, for reasons I could neither justify nor understand.
A realization that annoyed the shit out of me.
She was an itch on my brain that I couldn’t scratch.
The maddening shimmer in the corner of my eye during lecture that distracted my thoughts.
The kind of girl who seduced with nothing more than a single glance. A bite of the lip.
And she’d captured my attention with steel hooks.
I wanted to know more about her, who she was, where she came from, how that brilliant mind of hers worked.
It wasn’t right, though.
I pushed the phone out of reach, because fuck, I’d have easily gotten off like every other pervert who’d watched that video.
Instead I eased back in my chair, and sprang my cock free.
In the past, I’d have called Gilchrist to ease the ache and transport me to the kind of bliss that escaped me most times during sex.
I closed my eyes, imagining the last session with Gilchrist, when I’d had her on her knees, her lips wrapped around my shaft.
An edge of disappointment rode every stroke of my hand.
Her rhythm was always off, and for some reason, she mistakenly believed I enjoyed the feel of her teeth against my cock.
I could feel myself frowning as I pumped my hand up and down my shaft, the flesh growing soft, as the fantasy didn’t quite do it for me.
A new image flashed through my head.
Fiery auburn hair.
Arctic green eyes.
Soft, pouty lips exploring my flesh.
My body hardened as every drop of blood shot straight to my cock.
Before I could stop myself, I was fucking my own hand to the visuals of Lilia—her short skirt hiked up and no panties, teasing me.
While my stomach lurched and flexed with an unsettling discomfort, my cock reveled in it.
Fist pounding out a beat of intoxicating depravity, I imagined it tangled in her hair, using her mouth in the most exquisitely filthy ways.
I kicked my head back on a blast of light that hit the back of my skull.
Hot jets exploded onto my fist, slickening the final strokes.
Body shuddering, I let out a groan, a fucking groan.
I never made a sound when I came, but the agony was bittersweet.
I rested my head against my arm, banging out the final spurts, and shuddered again.
Breathing hard through my nose, I tried to catch my breath, and it was when my conscience finally caught up to me that I groaned again, but that time in frustration. “Fuck.”
Just like that, Lilia Vespertine had become more than a student.
She was a serious problem.
* * *
“I can feel them. Inside my guts. You put them there! You son of a bitch!” Barletta paced inside his cell, hobbling from one end to the other. “Th-th-they crawl in and out, and in and out.”
“Relax, Mr. Barletta.” I scanned the walls, noting more wet stains–multiple spots where he’d likely relieved his sexual cravings.
The urge to stifle a gag had me wishing I’d brought a dab of Vicks for my nose, or NeutrOlene to spray.
I’d gotten used to the smell of dead bodies, but this was something else entirely.
“No! I will not relax!” He slammed himself against the bars of his cage. “They’re eating me from the inside out! You don’t think I can feel it!”
I let out a sigh, my head still wound around an annoying redhead with a smart mouth. “They only begin to consume at death. What you’re feeling is a surge of growth. And perhaps hallucination.”
“I want them out. Get them out of me!” He pounded against the bars with what had to have been a painful crack against his knuckles. “Please!”
“In time. I promise. Have a seat.” I gestured toward the chair he’d knocked over earlier with his little tantrum. “I’ll finish my story, and give you some water.”
Wary eyes stared back at me, brimming with distrust. “Not some small piddly ass Dixie cup of water. I want a full glass! With ice.”
“Consider it done.”
Hands trembling, he pulled the chair closer to the bars and took a seat, seemingly calmer than before. With the progression of the disease, his outbursts would eventually become increasingly violent in his desperation to escape.
“Aside from the crawling sensation, how are you feeling?” I asked.
“My muscles ache. Sometimes, I feel like something’s crawling on my skin.
” He scratched at his arm, grimacing, as if he could feel it then.
“And I’m seeing my fucking son. Constantly.
Only, he isn’t my son. He’s some … warped version that carries a hammer and tells me he’s gonna break my skull open. ”
Oh, the justice of guilt. It was almost too entertaining at times. “He isn’t real, I can assure you.”
“He feels real.” Eyes wavering with a shine, he looked away. “So fucking real.”
“It’s your guilt toying with you.”
He lowered his gaze to his fidgeting hands. “You ever see hallucinations of your brother?”
“Yes,” I answered honestly. “Frequently.”
“So … that call your old man received. The one you told me about in your last story. What was that about?”
It was sickening, the way his question sucked the joy, the rapture, right out of me. The toxin’s euphoric effects sobered into something dark and twisted that pulled at my stomach. “I actually didn’t find out until much later. Not until I learned of my brother’s fate.”
Liquor in one hand, I stare down at the deadly jagged rocks, where the ocean’s waves crash in a chaotic spray of water. The world billows around me in the same rhythmic pattern, setting me swaying back and forth. The words of my father echo inside my head in a vacuum of toxic thoughts.
“ Don’t do it .” At the sound of Caedmon’s voice, I turn to see him standing beside me. Not him, though, but the intangible version of my brother who visits me nearly every night.
The sight of him fills me with shame, and I turn back toward the rocks below. “I failed. I’mma failure.”
“ You’re not. This is Father’s doing .”
“It shoulda bee’me.”
“Stop it ,” he chides in his usual impatient tone. “ Stop being a whining cunt and get off this ledge. You’re too fucking smart to waste it on guilt .”
“I have nothing, Caed. Nothing.” Without my brother, whatever callous part of me that remains has been sliced in half with his disappearance, leaving nothing more than a husk. “I feel empty and carved out. So hollow, it’s cold.”
“ Listen to me .” His voice is pleading, and even in my drunken haze, I can sense the desperation in it. “ Father has something they want. Find out what it is and set me free .”
“It’s pointless. He’ll never tell me.” I throw back another swill from the bottle of liquor and sway again.
“ Of course he won’t. You have to find it yourself, Devryck. Damn it, think! ”
Caedmon’s voice holds a sobering anger that pierces through my drunken haze. “He keeps all his secrets in his lab.”
“ Yes. Very good. ”
“It’s his life’s work. They want it.”
“ Yes. Precisely. ” His tone, brimming with hope, anchors my focus.
“How?”
“ You know how. You’ve seen it, tucked away. Locked in that closet. ”
“The safe?” I can visualize it in his office. In the back corner of that closet. The small safe, where he stored mother’s picture after I broke it.
“ Yes. What’s inside the safe? ”
“Aside from her picture? I’ve no idea. I could never open it.” Who the hell would’ve wanted his failed experiments? The study that disgraced our family name.
“ Find a way. And for fucks sake, man, get away from the edge. You’re making me nervous .”
An erratic gust of wind kicks me off balance and I stumble backward. My footing falters. I slip on the rock.
The ground slips from beneath my feet, and I slide against the slippery stones, the searing jagged surface slicing at my stomach as my fingers catch on the ledge. “Fuck!” I dare a glance below, where the ocean beckons me to let go. It taunts me to release my hold and slip into the void.
“ Get back up, Devryck. Climb! ”
I tighten my muscles and pull myself, arms trembling with the effort.
“ Pull yourself up! ” His words are a painful screech that jabs my skull.
“Ahhhh!” The agony hammers against my bones, while my muscles lock themselves into a deadly rigidity. “I can’t! I’m going to fucking die!”