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“The Demon’s not going to attack me when I’m doing what he wants,” I pointed out. “We’ll meet someplace so public that Alexander won’t attack me there.”
“You know how Cain’s going to feel about this, and the only thing at stake for you is a spanking,” he muttered. “Which you enjoy anyway.”
“Stellan,” I murmured, pouting before I leaned in and kissed him. “Yes, Cain will hate it. But we all need Remy and Pax back. I can handle Rebecca.”
“I know you can.”
A few minutes later, I texted Rebecca.
Mom, it’s Cain. I’m using a burner. Can we meet?
The text hung for so long that I was sure she was conferring with Alexander. But in the end, the text I received back said:
Yes.
* * *
As we walkedto the café where she wanted to meet, Stellan was on high alert, ready to draw his gun at any second. I felt safe with him beside me; I worried about him, though. Cain was being irrational obsessing about me being the one in danger.
I was sure the Demon would try to take another one of my men from me next. He was peeling away the people I loved and trusted.
I wondered if he wanted me to love and trust him again.
He had to know that ship had not just sailed, it had hit an iceberg and sunk to the bottom while Enya played in the background.
Then I glimpsed a familiar face passing by. Clarissa Adams. The beautiful brunette who had starved and abused her kids mercilessly behind closed doors. If anyone else had intervened, maybe she wouldn’t have ended up on the Demon’s table, with her kids’ wounds recreated on her body over and over. I’d been the one to dig the tip of a blade into her skin as she screamed.
She had tried to die many times, only to have the Demon shock her back to life, until she finally went still for the last time.
I froze for a second, then kept moving. But Stellan noticed, slipping his arm around me even as he slid his right hand inside his jacket, ready to draw. “What is it?”
“I thought I saw someone I knew,” I said. “But it can’t be. Like most people I’ve known best… she’s dead.”
Stellan dared a worried glance at me.
“I’m fine,” I promised.
But then I saw another set of faces in the crowd. David Layton and his wife. She had lured in young girls for him to rape, including her own little sister. They had owned the local dump, and they had buried the girls in the trash.
Or at least, that was the story the Demon had told me.
We had kept them suffocating slowly in a living sarcophagus, taking them out to torture them. The Demon made me cut pieces off his penis, one by one. I’d sutured the wounds each time so he didn’t bleed out. He’d screamed until he couldn’t scream anymore, until he could only make a desperate hiss of pain.
I shook my head, and they were gone, replaced by the face of a true stranger.
“Aurora,” Stellan said into my ear. “Stay with me.”
I used to ground myself with physical details in the world around me, and I did the same now. The way his cologne smelled. The feel of his warm, hard side against my palm, because I had looped his waist without even realizing I needed him. The colorful tattoo that ran down his forearm.
“Always,” I whispered.
I didn’t want to tell him what was happening. But Stellan looked at me as if all my secrets were safe with him, his gaze tender.
“I keep thinking I’m seeing people the Demon killed,” I whispered. “His victims. Like at the party…”
Stellan’s arm tightened around my waist. “Christ, Aurora, I’m sorry. I’m sorry we did that to you.”
“I’m alright.”
