I knew I should hold my tongue. Making him lose control would only end badly for us, but...I couldn’t fucking stop myself. “Your daughter came to me like a broodmare. She begged to spread her legs for me. Pleaded me to impregnate her, all so she’d never have to work again.” I laughed, low and ugly. “That alone earned her a death sentence, but how was I supposed to kill her quickly when she had the audacity to tell me she was better than the girl I’d fallen for?”
I glanced at Rook as the violence from that night returned. Whisper had been my accomplice—he’d had my back, just like always. “She believed I would choose her over Rook. She was a goddamn idiot, and it gave me thegreatestfucking pleasure to prove her wrong.”
Roy choked on a swallow. “Y-You’re lying.”
The call connected to Lydia’s voicemail, the tinny echo of a chirpy girl telling the caller to leave a message.
His knuckles turned white around his phone.
And for the first time since waking up, I heard a heartbeat.
Just his.
The single, violent flurry.
It fed me just enough strength to shove away a little of thenausea. The faintest hum of the hearts belonging to the other men filled my ears. They stood silently watching by the wall. The last of the board members. The ones I still needed to exterminate. My anger grew and I tried to feed off them as well. To focus on lifeforces and heartbeats...stealing their energy for my own.
Rook figured out what I was doing.
Her heart reached for mine.Take from me. Do whatever you need.
No way.
Never again would I hurt her like that.
Shoving her out of my head, I focused on the men instead. Men who deserved to die. Men whowoulddie. I would devour each and every bastard who thought they had the right to manufacture, harvest, and torture others just because they could.
Roy staggered a little as if he felt me tugging on his nasty existence.
I stole a little but not enough. It seemed the angrier he got, the easier it was to absorb the energy he flung my way so...I leaned forward until the straps cut into my wrists and the scientist beside me cringed away.
“She didn’t just die, Roy. She begged. She got down on her knees and offered herself up like a whore. She told me her dear ol’ daddy promised her the world if she could get knocked up with an Ashfall. She would’ve done anything I asked. Let me do whatever I wanted. But she hurt the only woman I’ve ever loved, so I ripped her throat out with my bare hands and watched her bleed out all over the floor.”
The phone slipped from his fingers, bouncing off the carpet.
His heartbeat roared with ferocious hate; I focused on stealing everything he gave me.
With a groan, he clutched his chest as if he felt the first pangs of a heart attack and then...he snapped.
Launching at me, his hands locked around my neck. His thumbs crushed my windpipe as he hauled me forward against the straps.
Pain exploded as he roared in my face, “You motherfuckingbastard.”
Emotions and energy surged out of him in a sickening rush as he strangled me. It poured straight into me like a crashing ocean.
“Lucien!” Rook struggled to get to me. “Lucien!”
I sank into the feast Roy Swift offered, taking everything even as his fingers tightened. There was nothing clean or bright abouthim. Just sick and sticky and...it turned from salvation to poison.
I gagged as my system rejected his energy. The fire didn’t kindle and his hands tightened, wringing me closer and closer toward death.
I tried to stop the flow of his lifeforce. To break the link between us. But I didn’t know how. I’d thrown open the walls between my heart and his, and every corrupted, rancid thing in his soul crashed through mine, rupturing something deep, deep inside me.
I jerked as a wet, racking cough exploded from my lips. Black tarry blood splattered all over his face and chest.
“The fuck?!” He cringed and backed up, wiping his eyes, trying to get the blood off him.
I coughed again, retching as if my very soul wanted to leap from my body and fly free.
