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“The Hadleighs already sent me after you,” he said, and my stomach twisted into a knot. “That was Kent’s last command: bring you to him, alive. Make your disappearance look like an accident. Leave no evidence that you’d been taken to be murdered. Your family would have had a funeral without a body.”
He said it so calmly, but there was something like anger in his tone. It didn’t take much to imagine how truly horrifying it would be to be hunted by Leon,trulyhunted.
I never would have escaped.
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“Kent had lost the grimoire. I didn’t have to do shit he said anymore.”
“But if he’d had it...would you have come after me?”
He stiffened a little, and was silent. Then, finally, he said roughly, “Kent tried and failed to sacrifice a girl before. Juniper Kynes. He got Jeremiah and Victoria to lure her into the woods. Drug her. When she ran, he sent me after her.” His teeth clipped together, again and again: a slow, irritated click. “I lost her in the woods. There were consequences for failing to fulfill Kent’s orders, so I did everything I could to hunt her down. But she escaped me.”
I couldn’t imagine being able to escape him. It seemed impossible. “She got away? Did she live?”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” he said. “I’m shocked she managed to fight off the Eld all these years. Kent considered her a loss, and they went after her brother instead. That one was successful. Marcus is sleeping with the God now.”
I shoved out from under his arm, staring at him in horror. “Marcus? The boy that got stabbed on campus?”
He nodded. “The first sacrifice. Two more to come.”
“Did you kill him?” I whispered, the knot in my stomach pulling tighter and tighter.
“No.” His voice was firm, his eyes bright in the dark as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Kent would never allow a demon to perform a sacrifice. One of his own little cult, hisLibiri, need to wield the knife. Prove themselves to their God. It would be a waste of the God’s favor if I did the killing.”
My breath came out shaky but relieved. He’d already admitted to killing people—numerous people, probably dozens—but somehow it still mattered whether or not he’d killed an innocent like Marcus.
He was staring at me. Watching me. Consuming me with the fire in his eyes. “Does that make me less monstrous?” he said, his voice quiet in the dark. “Does it somehow make me redeemable, that I didn’t wield the knife? That I only dug up his corpse? That I only did the grunt work?” He didn’t really expect me to answer; he just kept going. “Do the atrocities I’ve committed get a pass in your mind because I had to choose between obedience and torture? Would you have forgiven me for taking you, if you knew it was to avoid pain?”
I gulped. His voice was tight, as if he was still in pain, as if whatever tortures Kent had inflicted to force his obedience were still lingering. “You wouldn’t have taken me.”
He scoffed. “What the hell makes you so certain of that?”
“You wouldn’t have,” I whispered. I didn’t know why I was so certain. Perhaps it was just that flawed survival instinct again, imagining I was somehow too special to die.
Or perhaps it was because I could so vividly remember him picking me up in his truck as I was walking home in the dark. Perhaps it was because I could still hear the fury in his voice when he’d said, “I don’t know why the hell you think it’s a good idea to go walking around in the dark, but you need to cut that shit out.”
“Why did you protect me, Leon?”
He looked appalled at my question. He shook his head, but I insisted. “Why are you protecting me? Why? What makes me any different than the last girl?”
He was really scowling now; his hands were working inside his jacket, as if he was clenching and unclenching his fists. His jaw, too, was tensing. But I let the question hang. I wanted an answer. There was a hell of a lot going on that I didn’t understand, but him? Us? Whatever the hell that meant? I wanted to know.
“I decided I wanted you,” he said simply, but the words barely made their way out from between his teeth. “I saw you, and...and I felt…” He winced, as if the word stung.Felt. What did a demon feel? “Not anger. Not hatred or fury. You…” He turned his face away, staring back into the trees. “You’re a light in the dark, and I’ve been in the dark a very long time.”
His words were like fists beating against my heart. It hurt, somehow, to hear something so genuine from him. And it terrified me, to feel it tug at me, to feel those beating fists press into my heart andpull.
He looked at me again, and I forgot how to breathe. “I want you. Irrevocably. But I can’t settle for less thanallof you. Body and soul, Raelynn. We demons, when we see something we like, we need to possess it. It’s in our nature.”
He took a step toward me, and I took a step back. He smirked at that, his sharp teeth so white in the dark. “Does it frighten you, to be so desired? To know I want you regardless of time or distance? To know I want you as mine, wholly possessed without question?”
How could I be frightened of the very thing I’d wanted? I couldn’t imagine being desired so determinedly that eternity wasn’t a question, but a demand. It was not only a promise of protection, of safety. It was a promise of ownership. Desire. Bondage. A reassurance of forever.
“I can’t settle for less.” He circled me, slowly, shoes crunching on the twigs and leaves, his voice deepening to a growl as he said, “It’s enough to drive me to madness, Rae, wanting you sofuckingbadly. But I’ve lingered on Earth for too long now.” He laughed humorlessly, and I felt the familiar caress of him getting inside my head, the subtle influence that made my spine tingle like fingers brushing over my skin. “I want to have you, but I can’t unless you agree. That’s the curse of it all. I can’t—” He cut himself off, wrestled with the words, then, “I can’t linger here and watch you die.”
I blinked rapidly, as if he’d slapped me. “I’m...I’m not going to die.”
“Oh, but you will. You will, as all humans do. That light will go out and death willtake youfrom me.” It was so dark, I couldn’t see his face now. Only his eyes, preternaturally bright. “But with your soul, death can’t touch you. The God can’t touch you. Nothing,nothingwill take you from me.”
