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Cassie.
Me.
I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t stop the never-ending sickness in my soul. It was like black water that felt like it was drowning me.
The blood I’d spilled.
The blood I’d enjoyed spilling—all of it, all the years and memories poisoning me.
Iwatched Ember…Ella. I watched the love of my life as she broke and cried her soul into the ground. Her sobs convulsed her body as her own memories repeatedly attacked her. I never understood until now why I’d never been able to catch her, why my Little Shadow was like a ghost. But now it made sense—all of her connections and habits.
I never followed her unless she was chasing down prey. Could I have saved her from this pain had I known the truth sooner?
I saw my Little Shadow go to this apartment once. Thinking it was probably someone’s place she was hunting, I ignored it, writing it off as unimportant. But the night I saw Ella at the art gallery with that guy, I followed her home. She passed out by my dumpsters that night, making sure the whole neighborhood knew she was there.
After she had woken up and started walking, it was the apartment she went to, but she never made it. Those fucking assholes had gotten to her. Ripping her red dress to shreds and knocking her out.
I’d been so angry that I hadn’t been close by, taking too long to find where they took her. Those vital moments were a mess in my mind as I had blindly searched for her in those tunnels.
Rubbing her hair now, I looked at her, letting my lips trail down her cheek, her jaw, her neck. Letting her know I was here and that I was irrevocably hers.
“Cassie,” she whispered on repeat.
Cassie was the unfortunate girl that Markus got his slimy hooks into—she was the one he liked and took up to Boston. The one that my Little Shadow killed in order to save my life. That girl had been her sister.
I knew that she was related to a cop, but I never would have dreamed that the cop was my Little Shadow. The door swung open, and I jolted. The plaster puffed out on the sides as it smacked the wall and stayed embedded into it. My senses were muted from my worry for my Little Shadow.
Four men barged inside, and all of them had on police uniforms. None of them were the cops from earlier.
“Well, well, well,” one of them said—an authority booming from him as his men flanked his sides.
I shielded Ella, her body not so much as moving. Her sobs still had control of her.
“I mean, really,” the man continued. “I never would have thought to play out this fun little story—the cop falls for the killer?”
I glared at him. My body was unable to do anything but protect her from their gazes. Plus, I knew if I walked away from her, they could hurt her.
“Awe, little Ella,” he crooned, stepping forward and roaring as the two cats ran and attacked his legs.
Hissing and puffing up, the little black one scratched his thigh to ribbons, the two bolting away when he swung his arm angrily at them.
“Go skin them,” the boss ordered a guard to his left.
The man looked at his bleeding leg and hesitated.
“Uh…boss?” he said, looking off down the hallway where the two cats fled.
“Yes, you…you buffoon! Now!”
Reaching into my boot, I grabbed one of my knives and tossed it straight into the eye of the “Buffoon,” watching his body plop loudly onto the ground.
The little felines were long gone now, hopefully safe outside the apartment. Ella would never forgive me if something happened to anyone else she loved. I knew that for a fact, and her little cats did come to her rescue after all.
“Interesting,” the boss said, eyeing me suspiciously. “Could it be that the killer loves his captor back?”
Chuckling and grabbing my knife from the dead guy’s eye, he turned to his other lackey. “Get the male. Do whatever with the cop.”
Steeling myself and trying to rouse Ella to no avail, I prepared myself for the lackey. His big arms hurled down with a baton he had grabbed from his side, and I felt it smashing into my back as I shielded what was mine.
