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I stare, too stunned to move, too frightened to speak.
Chapter15
Sophia
The tiny twitchof Lucas’s tail—his fuckingtail—is enough to send me bolting through the underbrush.
He’s a monster. A real life monster.
My heart races, pounding in my ears nearly as hard as my feet pound against the ground. Carlin was torn to shreds by a dragon. I saw it with my own eyes. That thing that attacked us shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t exist.
But Lucas killed it. He killed it, becausehe’s just as much of a monster as it was.
The forest blurs around me. Deep shadows seem to lurch at me, fallen trees rising up to tangle my feet, branches reaching down to grab me.
I don’t know where I am or where I’m going, and I don’t care. I have to get away from him. There are people somewhere, there have to be. My chest hurts, my legs hurt, but I keep running. I can’t stop, can’t let him catch me or—
A thick gray arm loops around me as I jump over a log, knocking what little air I had out of me. Lucas spins, pinning me against a tree, and I stare up at his demonic face, every molecule of my body vibrating in panic.
“Sophia.”
If I close my eyes, I could almost pretend that the Lucas I know is speaking my name. Except there’s no fucking way I’m going to close my eyes when a fucking demonic creature has me pinned against a tree.
My pulse is hammering so hard that it’s making me feel sick, and I stare up at his dark, shadowy features, forcing words past my numb lips.
“What… what are you?” I croak.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
There’s a familiar bluntness to his tone. Okay, it’s definitely Lucas.I think.
“Clearly it isn’t obvious, or I wouldn’t have asked,” I snap and lift my chin slightly, a touch of defiance strengthening my spine and my voice. It’s hard to tell with his new features, but I think I see a touch of approval in his expression.
His voice is clear, commanding, and so deep I swear I can feel it vibrating the air as he speaks. “I’m a demon, Sophia.”
He flaps his wings as if to emphasize the point, and his horns glint in the dwindling light. A demon fits what I’m seeing, but the problem is, it doesn’t fit what I know. I reach up a hand and touch his arm, swiping my fingers across it. They come off clean. Not makeup, not soot, not whatever was gushing out of the other monster. Feels like skin.
“A demon,” I repeat stupidly, my mouth forming the words even as my mind runs away from me with a dozen thoughts. “H-how?”
He raises a brow, “How what? How did I come to be on Earth? How do I exist? Be specific.”
Lucas’s precise, admonishing, icy tone coming out of this monster’s mouth is too surreal to process.
“How do you hide those things?” I ask, pointing at his horns. A choked laugh comes on the tail of those words, and I bite my lip.
You sound hysterical, Sophia. Get it together.
I swallow a great deal of effort and take a few long, deep breaths with my gaze fixed on a perfectly normal bit of bark on the ground.
“Call it magic if you like,” Lucas says dismissively. “The man who attacked you in the alley was also a demon. The disguises are necessary.”
Humor is the only armor I have to protect me at this point, and honestly, I’m happy to embrace it rather than letanyof this sink in. What if it’s not actually happening at all? I remember my mother screaming and carrying on conversations with her hallucinations when she had truly debilitating episodes. Did I inherit whatever it is that makes reality and fiction impossible to differentiate for her sometimes? Would I know if I had?
I can deal with the thought of this being some sort of absurd dream better than I can deal with it all being true, so for the time being, I decide to treat it like the former. Giving the demon Lucas a strained and slightly unhinged smile, I shrug.
“Ah, well, I’ll just go ahead and cancel my appointment with the neurologist then. I was a bit concerned about hallucinating glowing red eyes in the face of a homeless man, but now that I know he’s a demon, that’s clearly not a problem anymore. This is great news. I’m obviously perfectly sane.”
“Yes, you are.” Lucas’s blood red eyes narrow a little. “Just ignorant, until now. The supernatural exists. And, as I told you once before, the world is more dangerous than you could ever imagine.”
