Page 22 of Grace

The walls around me were gray, and the room smelled of wet soil and musty furniture, mixed with the disgusting odor of moldy rags. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling, casting a dim light over the room.

I was lying on something soft. I wasn’t bound. My arms and legs lifted, then fell back onto the worn, smelly mattress.

Then… our eyes met.

I was weak and afraid, my heart racing, my body trembling. As I was watching him, hot tears streaked down my cool face.

He was sitting on a chair at the end of my bed. Watching me. Without blinking. He was looking at me as if I were a work of art made just for him.

I stared up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. My face twisted, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Tears pooled in my ears—I tasted their salt on my tongue, then felt the moisture slide down my parched throat.

I gasped for air, my lungs burning, my lips trembling.

“Where am I? Where did you bring me? Let me go!” I demanded, my voice cracking. I clenched my fist and slammed it into the mattress.

“You can’t do this! You are… a murderer! You killed him!”

“I saved you,” he said in a deep, calm voice, then stood up.

“I saved you, Grace.”

He took a step toward me. I jumped out of the bed.

I was unsteady on my feet from the adrenaline, my face contorting in pain. I sagged against the cool wall. My whole body was in pain.

Chase stopped.

“You saw the way he looked at you. He wanted you. Your innocence.” He grasped for excuses.

He confused me. My stomach churned. I couldn’t reconcile the two men inhabiting the same body. The protector… and the kidnapper.

“You can’t know that,” I protested weakly.

“He might never have touched me. And you…” My voice broke. “You’ve killed a person. And kidnapped me. You really must have smoked your brain away!”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go.”

“Why, Chase?” I cried, trembling.

“You can’t do this to me! You can’t imprison me! You can’t take my freedom—my life—away!” I shouted.

“You are an eyewitness.”

“I won’t say a word to anyone, I promise! Okay? Not a word, I swear! Please—let me go!”

“Oh, Grace…” He shook his head with a cruel playfulness, his eyes burning with inhuman desire.

“Your teacher was only an uncomfortable complication that had to be dealt with. Sooner or later, I would have brought you here anyway.”

Why?”

“I’ve already told you why. To protect you from monsters.”

“To protect me from monsters? Chase, you are a monster!”

A dark smile played on his lips.

“Yeah. But I’m the better kind.”