A strange silence stretches between us. Even his quiet companion shifts uncomfortably on his feet.
“It’s ok,” I remark, pulling my sleeve down. “It couldn’t have been all that bad. After we were both healthy enough, they sent me home…with her.”
Rage flickers in Phenex’s golden irises, and for a moment, I swear black eclipses the whites of his eyes. “How could that be? Why didn’t anyone intervene?” He shakes his head, as if trying to rid himself of the image. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, the sound just a rumble of his deep voice.
I lift my marred shoulder. “That’s what happens when you’re poor. Keeping us any longer would rack up a bill that my mother couldn’t pay. We were a problem, but just not their problem.”
I don’t know why I’m telling him all this. I don’t know why I’m divulging my scars to not only a complete stranger, but to someone who had a hand in my abduction. But there’s something about Phenex—something warm and comforting—that makes him familiar. Like maybe we were friends in a past life.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep, cleansing breath, as if he’s trying to exorcise his own demons. With lips slightly parted, he looks at me with the face of a man that has dreamt my nightmares, and has felt my agony.
“When did the graying begin?”
I gasp. How did…how did he know?
“It’s one of the first signs,” he continues, as if hearing my thoughts. “Your hair turns gray around the age of eighteen. It’s almost instantaneous.”
“How did you know about my hair?” I ask in disbelief.
He smiles that smile that makes me scoot a little closer and lets my gaze settle on him just a little longer. “I told you—I know everything about you. Almost, at least. And the signs are quite predictable. The hair, the cluster of freckles on your spine, the nightmares, the aversion to silver.” He nods toward the hoop threaded through my nose. “Maybe we still have time.”
“It’s titanium,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “I’m allergic to silver. How did you…how did you know all this? What does it all even mean?” I hadn’t told anyone—not a single, living, breathing soul—about what had been going on with me. Not even Sister, although she knew about the hair and the nightmares. Considering our entire apartment was about as big as this bedroom, it was hard for her not to know about the terrors sleep would bring. That’s why I chose the nightshift. She’d be left to sleep in peace every night. And I’d be left to thrash and scream and cry in the daytime…alone.
Phenex looks back at Jinn as if asking for permission. Of course, he receives no response.
“There are seven signs. Seven physical symptoms that will lead up to your Calling. Some are as simple as your hair losing its pigment. Others can be more…alarming.”
I shake my head, unable to absorb his words. “Wait. Back up. I don’t understand a word you just said. My Calling? Calling for what? That makes zero sense.”
Abruptly, as if some internal switch has been triggered, Phenex jumps to his feet, clutching the pen and pad in his large hand. “L will tell you. When it’s time.” He and Jinn both turn on cue and begin to make their way to the door. No explanation. No goodbye. No promise of rescue or release.
“Wait! Who is L? And why can’t you tell me why I’m here? What the hell is going on?”
Phenex pauses mid-step and turns his head to one side, giving me a view of his sculpted profile. “Your mother was telling the truth.”
Before I can even grasp what he’s said, he’s gone, leaving me to dangle somewhere between confusion and disbelief.
It’s hours before I hear the door unlock again.
Darkness has fallen. The kind of darkness that only breeds violence and crime. The kind of darkness that shrouds our deepest depravities.
I rub my tired eyes and try to focus on the shadowy figure entering the room. He locks himself inside with me before taking the armchair at the opposite wall. The sight of him turns the blood in my veins into molten lava. My breath catches reflexively, as if breathing in his presence is forbidden. The sound of my heartbeat serves as a sort of hedonistic soundtrack—a carnal, infectious beat that preludes the promise of corruption.
He looks at me with a gaze filled with ire. Even in the dark, it seems as if those silver eyes glow. Nervously, I grab a pillow and squeeze it to my chest.
“What do you want with me?” I whisper.
Dead. Silence.
“Why am I here? Who are you?”
He doesn’t reply. He just watches me…unnerving me like he did the first time he set foot in the store. He wants me to fear him, and I can’t help but give him what he desires.
“Are you…are you going to kill me?” My voice cracks on the last two words, barely audible to even my own ears.
I think I hear him snicker in response, but I can’t be sure. Night shrouds his face, making the moment all the more menacing. He could attack, and I wouldn’t even see it coming.
“Dammit, answer me!” Red-hot anger simmers beneath icy trepidation. “Why am I here? What do you want from me?”
“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, Eden.”
The sound of his voice is the bass line of a sensual song—deep, penetrating and melodic—vibrating my insides into liquid. I squeeze the pillow tighter to my chest, holding myself together and praying his words won’t find me in the dark.
“Why?”
Minutes pass. I don’t even think he hears me until he responds.
“You’re the next one. But you cheated your death.”
“What? I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I’m not—”
“You are. You were bred for destruction. I was sent to stop you.”
I swallow against the desert dryness in my throat and force myself into a sitting position. My head still throbs from the blow to my head. The blow he inflicted.
“Who are you?” I ask again.
Before my befuddled mind can register his advance, he’s on the bed, crouched over me. He stabs a fist in the headboard above my head, pinning me in with his body. Heat rolls off his panting frame in feverish waves of fury.
If we were lovers, he’d be sliding inside of me, fucking me while gripping the heavy oak wood against the wall. I’d be clawing at his back, chanting his name, begging for him not to stop…
The forged image flashes in my mind for merely a heartbeat then fractures into a million broken pieces. I blink once, trying to remember where I am…who I am. But it felt so real. So vivid that I twitch between my thighs. I reach out to reality, struggling to come back to the here and now.
This man—this monster—is not my lover. He’s not here for pleasure. He only revels in pain.
“You know exactly who the fuck I am,” he sneers, the venom of violence dripping from his tongue.
“What? Get off me!”
“How long have you had her?” he shouts, his nose just a mere inch from mine. “Show yourself, you coward! You have no idea what you’ve just done!”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” I scream, pushing against his chest. He’s made of cut steel and smooth marble. I doubt he even feels my hands pressed against him.
He grabs my face with the other hand, roughly gripping my chin. His fingers are ice picks digging into my skin. “Come out now! You can’t hide in there,” he fumes, bringing his face as close to mine as humanly possible. So close that I can feel the heat of his breath and the brush of scruff along his jaw.
“I don’t understand what you want! Get off me!”
Anger chokes my voice, and frustrated tears sting my eyes. I lift my fists to strike him but he easily defers them by knocking them out of the way. I try to buck and kick myself free, but he locks my thighs between his knees. I’m caged in by his massive body like a broken-winged bird, utterly helpless and defeated. His eyes bore into mine, emitting a thousand shades of contempt and disgust. He hates me. It’s evident in those striking eyes made of frosted moonlight.
I’m
ready to give up, to let the fear and anger swallow me whole. And then I feel the brush of his dark hair against my brow. I yelp in surprise when he dips his head and presses his forehead against mine, our noses, our chins, our lips, just a breath away. I feel his entire frame shudder above mine, and he gasps aloud.
“What are you doing?” I shout, pushing him away with all my might. I somehow muster enough strength to heave his body off me. He remains on the bed, yet looks at me with a mix of alarm and awe.
“Adriel,” he breathes.
“What? What the hell is wrong with you?” I scurry from the bed and press my back against the wall, trying to put as much space between us as possible. My skin still burns from his phantom touch.
I watch in disbelief as he struggles to compose himself. His breathing labored, he fists the sheets at his sides. Ripped mounds of cut muscle flex from wrist to shoulder, making the dark ink embedded in his skin dance in the shadows. When he turns his head towards me, his eyes are closed, his mouth screwed in a grimace carved out of pain.
“Adriel.” His voice is strained, as if a foreign feeling is stuck in his throat.
“Eden. You know my name is Eden. I’m not Adriel. I don’t even know who Adriel is.”
“Adriel, you can’t do this. You know what he’ll do to you.” The words crack under the weight of his obvious torment. He opens his eyes and reveals full moons of desperation. I don’t understand, and I don’t want to.
“Are you deaf? I just told you, my name is not Adriel!”
“Don’t do this,” he continues without hearing me. “You won’t survive. He’ll use you. You’ll never find your way back.”
“Stop it! You’re insane!” I scream. Fueled by frustration, I launch myself from the wall until the tops of my thighs hit the bed. “Just please, let me go. You have the wrong girl.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You can’t?” Maybe I’m still delirious from the drugs or woozy from the bump on my head. Or maybe seeing him so dejected makes him appear like less of a threat. But, stupidly, I press into the mattress, getting so close that I make out the inscription etched on his forearm in the dim moonlight. It’s…Bible scripture? Ironic, considering everything about him is sin incarnate. “Listen here, asshole. Obviously you’re off your meds and grabbed the wrong person, thinking I’m this Adriel. Just let me go now before shit gets worse. I won’t go to the police. I won’t tell anyone. I just want to go home.”
“No.”
“No? Why not? I’m not who you want!”
“No.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I scream, heat snaking up my arms from tightly clenched fists. “Are you deaf? I said I’m not Adriel!”
Emboldened and stupid, I grab the pillow closest to me and fling it at his head. It hits him with a soft thud and tumbles off the bed. It’s a whisper of an assault, and probably felt like nothing more than fluttering butterfly wings against his tense, squared jaw, but something in him…snaps. Like whatever spell he was just under two seconds ago that left him raw and open has been broken. That wasn’t weakness I saw before. That was mercy.
In a blur of movement, he snatches me by my hair and hurls me onto the bed. My scalp stings from the sudden force, yet I don’t even have time to cradle my aching head before his hand grips my throat, impeding precious oxygen from my shrieking lungs.
“Don’t ever. Do. That. Again,” he sneers, fixing that cold, stormy gaze on me. “Listen very closely. Your existence is dangling from a very thin thread. Try me again, and I’ll snap it, by way of your neck. An eternity of damnation has not made me a patient man.”
I open my mouth, but no sound escapes. Hardly a whistle of air. I’m held hostage by his stare, brewing with centuries of destruction and rage. They swirl with delicate tendrils of chaos, coaxing me, pulling me into hopeless depths of despair. Don’t look. Don’t look. But his glower is magnetic, holding me in place. And I feel it.
Agony.
Horror.
Evil.
Wickedness so black and so bleak that it brings tears to my wide, unblinking eyes. My soul cries, thrashing against the hold of his malevolent gaze. Physical pain racks through my body, a million shades of torture painting my nerve endings. I want to scream—need to scream. But I can’t. Just as my body is bound and gagged, a prisoner beneath powerful muscle, my senses have been taken captive. I can’t blink, can’t speak, can’t move. I am nothing but a sack of burning flesh, writhing within from the terror reflected in those gray eyes.
From far away, I hear a voice, calling not to me, but to him. Through my own inner anguish, I can’t make out the words, but it’s enough for him to slowly pull away, taking that sin-speckled stare with him. I cough and sputter as oxygen floods my lungs and force myself up on trembling elbows, gulping air. Lily stands at the doorway, her face a mask of alarm. Not for me, but for the cell phone outstretched in her palm.
“I’m sorry to interrupt but…” She looks to me as I clutch my neck, tears streaming down my hot cheeks, then looks to the animal leaning back on his knees, still snarling with disdain. “L, we have a problem.”
I should have known. I think I already did.
Lily steps into the room, her eyes darting between me and…L. He was the man who took me. The man who makes the decision whether I live or die. The man who pulled me out from under a bloody corpse and knocked me out cold with a blow to the head. My skull continues to throb with the remembrance.
“What’s wrong?” His voice is flat, unfeeling. As if he hadn’t just been choking me a second ago, while hypnotizing me with his vicious stare. I still can’t be sure of what I saw, what I felt.
“Her sister…she’s calling.”
Sister.
“So?”
“So…she’s left at least a dozen messages, and has resorted to calling everyone Eden knows. Left me a voice mail, threatening to file a missing persons report. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.” Her keen, blue eyes slide to me, as if to say, “It’s more trouble than she’s worth.”
L rakes a hand through his midnight black hair, a heavy, irritated breath flaring his nostrils. “Fine. Take care of it.”
“No!” I cry out, despite the hoarseness in my voice. “Please, I’ll do anything. Whatever you want. I’ll cooperate. Just please don’t hurt her.”
They both look at me, perplexity resting on furrowed brows. I’ve just handed over my ultimate weakness.
L bounds off the bed with a seamless swoop of his legs and takes the cell phone from Lily. My cell phone. “Is Toyol on patrol?”
Lily nods. “Already on it. And Andras is monitoring the CPD mainframe.”
“Good. Have him listen in.”
Lily swiftly leaves, shutting the door behind her. L turns to me then, eyes wary, calculating. “Call her.”
Without a second thought, I lunge to grab my phone from his grasp. He pulls away, causing me to nearly collide with his rock hard chest. “Tell her you’re fine; you’re with Lily. Tell her you decided to move in with her to give her space with her boyfriend. Tell her you’ll be back to get your things and that you love her. Make her believe it all. But if you allude to anything about us, this place, why you’re here…she’ll be dead before she can even press the End button. Understand?”
Why I’m here…? How could I tell her something that I don’t have the slightest clue about?
My voice quivers. “Yes. And when should I tell her I’ll be back?”
He tosses the phone on the bed, and strides to the armchair across the room, folding his muscled frame in with complete control and grace. “You won’t be back.”
I tear my eyes from him, afraid to let him see the tears welling in my eyes. I’ve cried so much in the past days. More than I’ve ever cried before. More than I cried when the state locked my mother away and placed me into foster care. More than I cried when the nightmares began when I was twelve. More than I cried when they tried to separate me and Sister, the only person that ever
showed me a shred of kindness and love.
I have to protect her. I have to do everything in my power to keep her safe from these monsters. I don’t doubt that he’ll kill her if she goes to the police. Hell, I’m pretty convinced that I’ll meet the same fate sooner or later.
But I’m expendable. No one would miss me. No one’s life would be irrevocably rocked by my passing. And honestly, no one would be surprised that I had fallen into the wrong crowd. So it’s fitting that I was taken, not Sister. Not an innocent equally as good and kind. I’d been forgotten a long time ago.
I pick up my cell phone, still warm from his palm. It brings me back…back to having that same hand around my neck just minutes ago. Back to him ripping my sweater to shreds and touching my naked skin.
The image hits me so hard that I gasp aloud. His hands on my bare thighs, creeping higher, higher until they are beneath my white slip. Those long, thick, commanding fingers finding the wetness at my apex. Teasing, stroking, punishing…
I suck in a harsh breath as the vision dissipates as quickly as it flooded my mind. I saw it. Felt it. My panties grow damp at the haunted memory as if it’s a part of me. As if he was inside me. I shift uncomfortably on my knees.
“Something wrong?” The asshole has the nerve to look smug—amused, even—as if he dug into my mind and planted the forged remembrance himself.
“No,” I lie, refusing to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’s rattled me.
“Well…” He waves a hand in my direction, bored and ready to get back to whatever dungeon he crawled out of. “Get on with it.”
I look down at the phone in my sweaty palms. It would be so easy…a two word text to tell her to call the police. Or I could simply press 911 and pretend to be talking to Sister. He’d never know. He’d never even suspect I’d be so bold to defy him. But then I remember his words to Lily, instructing someone—Andras—to listen in. I don’t doubt that they’ve tapped my phone, and probably Sister’s phone as well. But maybe it’ll be enough…enough to warn her. Maybe he’ll be too distracted with slaughtering me that Sister will get to safety.