Page 29 of Pareidolia

I’m going to get off while a man is dying in front of me and a monster has his… what, shadow tentacles playing with my dick? I’m not even sure if it’s the touch, the kill, or the sensation of emotions tearing through me that’s making me feel this way.

Or maybe it’s just the fact that I finally feel like someone—something—sees me for what I really am. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like I’m wearing a mask, and it’s so fucking good I realize something…

“I have to go.” I have to fight to get the words out of my chest, but I know it’s true. I can’t be here—I can’t do this.

I like it entirely too much.

“Go?” Nox’s voice is a low, deadly syllable that trills through me and tingles against the edges of emotion still lingering in my head. If I were anyone else, I’d feel that now—fear at the way he said it.

The fear of knowing that one word is a threat.

“Yeah, go,” I insist, because I want to feel more.

I want to drink down the emotions of every person I can touch, every person I could kill.

And I want to know what the sweet tingles of fear in my head would feel like if it was my own. If I let Nox get to me—truly show me.

“Aspen…” It’s one more warning, but I shake my head. My fingers come up, my left hand digging into the snaking black veins exposed all along my right arm.

“I’m not…” I am a monster. I just dug my fingers into an open wound so I could fucking get off on someone’s pain and terror. “I’m not willing to lose myself for this. You’re just a fucking campfire story, Nox… and maybe I’m a monster too, but I can’t get lost in the forest with you.” Not if I don’t want to completely lose myself in the process.

I turn before he has a chance to say anything, and start walking. I half expect him to chase after me, to tell me I don’t have a choice. But when I look over my shoulder, Nox and the man’s body are gone.

I’m left with nothing but the physical proof of what happened as the black veins twist and writhe painfully in my arm, silently punishing me for walking away.

CHAPTER 11

NOX

He… left.

He left, and I hadn’t considered the possibility that Aspen running away after what I just shared with him would be… infuriating. I’m not a creature that shares. I’ve never felt the desire to settle with some kind of mate, to chase the human dream of a red thread, or the supernatural idea that bonds can form when you bite and fuck.

I’ve never shared what I am—what I do and how I feed—with another living being.

But I shared with Aspen.

I shared, and he ran, and I’m starting to realize that somehow his apathy brings out a rage in me that runs deeper than anything I’ve felt before. Maybe it’s just that the part of me he took made space for it in its absence.

With my arms around him and my shadows holding him, while I experienced his wonder and desire at feeling fear for the first time, I felt a new emotion. One that I’d tasted a thousand times from humans, but never as my own.

Longing.

And now that he’s walked away, I feel another.

Fury.

I’m going to kill him.

It’s the simplest solution. It’s the only thing I can think as my wings unfurl and I take to the sky after dropping the body we’d destroyed together so deep in the forest that no one will find it but the animals.

I’m going to find him, and I’m going to tear him apart—if I rip his arm from his body and devour it, the shadowed parts of me that he stole will be back where they belong.

I don’t eat flesh, but for his betrayal, I’m willing to make an exception.

I feel him on the edge of my senses, a presence that exists within the forest. He both stands out and belongs, a strange combination that makes my skin prickle and my senses scream.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt out of control, since the mindless, endlessly hungering shadow that I was before I took shape completely consumed me.