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The growl when he forced the words out was more animal than human, but I looked at him. I studied his eyes and took a moment to look beyond them. I saw the same things I always did—anger, pain, and a streak of reckless abandon that put everyone around him in danger.
But really, all I could see was his black eyes.
“Nothing,” I whispered.
His hand retracted from my neck, and Emrick stared at me for a beat longer before returning to his seat. “That’s right,” he muttered, pulling the van back into the traffic. “Nothing.”
We drove for hours, and I littered him with questions about the people in the back, who had gone silent since our heated exchange, all of which Emrick ignored. This wasn’t a surprise to me, but I needed to keep talking. Obviously, it was overstepping a major boundary by going out back when he was dealing with business, a call I wondered if I was going to pay for with my life.
Yet, for some reason I couldn’t explain, I didn’t feel fear. Anxious, yes. But not fear for my life. Was there still hope in me there was good in Emrick and he wouldn’t kill me? Or had I simply resigned myself and accepted my fate?
We left the city boundaries, and I sighed, leaning my head against the cool window and staring outside as my breath fogged up the glass. I did say I wanted to leave this city one way or another.
I’d prefer it not to be this way, though.
Twisting my lips, I sighed again. Well, I had wanted to see what Emrick was capable of with my own eyes, and I guess now I was going to see it up close and personal. I should be more concerned, panicking and yanking at the door handle. My eyes flickered to the door, and I almost laughed out loud when I saw both the handle and the winder for the window had been removed from the old van.
To prevent escape.Clever.
Maybe if I offered to help him kill these people, he’d let me live.
While it wasn’t ideal, I could stomach it. It wouldn’t be the first time.
When Emrick finally slowed down, I couldn’t have even told you which way I’d need to start walking to get back to the city. Everything beyond the scope of the headlights was black, and he pulled off the road, the van bumping uncomfortably over the uneven terrain before he came to a stop.
Leaving the headlights on, he stepped out, slamming the door behind him. Scrambling to undo my seat belt, I awkwardly shifted over his seat and out the driver’s side door, racing around the van as he dragged out the people from the back. Tugging them by their clothes, he dropped them into the dirt. First, the two men, then the woman. They had already begun begging for their lives as they were moved from the van, and one by one, Emrick roughly lifted them to their feet, shouting at them when they took a moment to find their footing on the uneven ground before yanking the sacks from their heads.
When he slid a gun out of his back pocket, on instinct, I cried out, “Wait!”
He didn’t stop, checking the bullets and sliding the cartridge back in with a click.
But his hands were shaking.
Surely, he’d done this countless times before, so why was killing an issue now?
Aww, hell, I had to try again.The pull to this man was too strong, and no matter what he did to me, all his back-and-forth bullshit, I had to try. There wasn’tnothingin his eyes, there wasfear and pain, and if I were here to save him from doing something he’d rather not do, then maybe it would start to redeem me for whatIhad done.
Selfish, seeking redemption through saving another, but some childish, perhaps foolish part of me, thought maybe we had been brought together for a reason.
Did I believe in fate? I didn’t even know anymore. I had my path laid out before me, a glittery gold road that led out of this city and away from my past. Until him, until I saw in his eyes the same thing I saw reflected in mine when I stared in the mirror. I could go back and forth all day with myself, trying to convince myself to give up and move on. But it was too late, he was intertwined with me now, in my mind. Giving up on Emrick would feel like giving up on myself.
Whatever these people had done, there were other ways he could deal with them.
“Emrick…” I cautiously approached him, placing a hand on top of his when he kept the gun down and his face tilted toward the ground. “You don’t have to do this.”
He moved so fast.
Flinching as the cold metal of the barrel was pushed against my forehead, I held his eye contact. “What do you know of what I have to do?” he growled out.
“Is that why I’m here, Emrick? You’re going to kill me?” Somehow, I was able to keep my voice steady. Did I hold that much faith in the man in front of me? My heart rate increased as I followed his arm with my gaze until his hand was too close to focus on, and the gun was nothing but a black blur between my eyes. With only the moonlight and the glow of the headlights around the front of the van, I could barely see Emrick’s face, impossible to tell what he was thinking.
He pushed on the gun, and it dug into my skin. “Did you know what he was when you fucked him?”
His question took me completely off guard, and I fumbled for a moment to find the words. In my head, I had played out a number of things to say and ways he could respond. Yet what he had asked me wasn’t even close to anything I had considered him asking. “W-What?”
“Did you know he was a demon? Did the danger excite you?”
There was so much rage in his expression, rage which seemed to flower from nowhere, and within seconds, it was consuming his entire being. From the moment he looked at me, it bubbled to the surface and took over. Hehatedme, he loathed the very ground I walked on, and yet, I had no idea why. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stuttered, “Demon? What—”
