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Rafe pulled at his arms but they wouldn’t move. His wrists were bound to the bedposts.
“Fuck,” he said again, wincing at the hard throb behind his eyes. But it came out muffled because someone—probably the head-basher—had stuffed a dry and sour-tasting wad of fabric in his mouth, pushing it in so deeply that he couldn’t spit it out. As soon as he tried to swallow around it, he gagged. It was one of his father’s old socks.
If you throw up, there’s not going to be anywhere for it to go, his brain whispered, as his chest heaved violently. Only by clenching his fingers and breathing through his nose was he able to stop the panic. But the more he tried not to think about being gagged, the more he felt it and tasted it.
The door swung open at that moment, letting in an anemic stream of light into the otherwise dark room. The figure he’d seen before strode by, swathed in black robes, carrying a bundle of crumpled papers that looked like they’d been taken from his father’s desk.
The face that had alarmed him in his drunken stupor was a mask. It sort of reminded him of those Japanese demon masks, except cheaply made and without nuance or texture. It also looked vaguely familiar for some reason, although why that should be, Rafe had no fucking idea.
He watched in silence, jaw clenched, as his attacker tossed the papers onto a pile that looked like it had already seen several other trips. There were pictures from the wall—oil paintings, it looked like—several old books, the broken chair.
The figure made several more trips. Rafe, listening carefully, was able to track their progress to his father’s study and back again. It gave him a distraction from the mounting discomfort in his throat. They were tall, though not as tall as him. There were only several inches of air between the doorways and his head. This person had nearly a full six inches of clearance. The robes made it difficult to tell figure or form, but the way that they walked made them look like a man.
On the last trip, they returned empty-handed, except for a bottle of his father’s whiskey. But not to drink—that was when he realized the danger, when they began sloshing the amber liquid richly over the pile of papers and trash. They were building a pyre.Hispyre.
This room was going to be burned with him in it.
Rafe began to struggle a bit more desperately then, pulling so hard that the bed knocked back against the wall with a sound that made the masked figure look up.
And Rafe was left with the chilling suspicion that behind the mask, they were smiling.
“Aren’t you the stallion.” The hooded figure’s voice was strange, distorted. Beneath the mask there was light synth and a bit of reverb. “I can see why she keeps you around. She’s such a cold and back-stabbing little bitch; I’m sure it takes quite the pounding to fuck through all that ice.”
Rafe’s eyes narrowed.
“You should really be thanking me. I briefly considered leaving you all strung up for her to find just likeSatan’s Key. But now I don’t have time to recreate a proper sacrifice.”
They watched him a moment longer, before turning back to slosh more alcohol around the room, and then the bed, as well, which made him stiffen.
“Don’t worry,” they added casually. “It’s the smoke inhalation that’s most likely to kill you in a fire. I left the window open, so you’ll probably survive. You just might not look so pretty when you do.” They punctuated their words with a final splash, soaking his face and clothes.
Despite Rafe’s muffled protest, they lit a match and tossed it, causing the flames to rise up in a black burp of smoke, with flickering orange-white tongues that spilled out in gleaming veins following the glistening trails of the alcohol.
“Tell the little whore I said hello,” said the masked figure, as they carefully circled the mountain of flaming debris. “Not all demons reside in hell.”
With those final words, they slipped out the door.
Leaving Rafe straining against the bed as the fire began its greedy approach.
Chapter Twelve
The Idea of Me
Emergency services were already parked in front of her house when Donni pulled up at the curb. All of her organs felt as if they had been taken out and chilled on ice before being inserted back into her body. There was a firetruck and a squad car. No ambulance. Was that good? Or bad?
There hadn’t been an ambulance when her husband had died.
She hadn’t realized how fucking rattled she was until she went to remove her keys from the ignition and seen the tremors in her hands. When she finally was able to remove them, she dropped them on the floor, and then bumped her head on the steering while trying to get them back out.
Several of her neighbors were in their front yards, trying to look like they weren’t watching. There were more than a few parted curtains, too. All those unseen eyes—
Did one of them belong to a killer?
She scrambled out of the car, nearly stumbling in her mules. Something in her stomach dropped when she saw a woman in a firefighters’ uniform escorting a taller, bent-over figure from the front door.
Rafe, she thought, and that unbearable ice-feeling returned.
Was he hurt?
