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For the love of all that’s holy, please don’t.
I grin brightly at my mistress, ignoring the other two Terrors as if they’re not even in the room. “I’m thinking of you.” Then I wink, just as the article instructs me to do.
Chase mentally face-palms.
Aliana just stares at me, her eyes bugging out of her head. “Um…”
Step one. Completed.
Now on to step two…
13
ALIANA
"Is this hell? Am I dead?"I ask dazedly under my breath.
I must be. Either I'm dead or I'm in the middle of a fever dream. But this feels more like my personal hell than a hallucination, so I'm going with dead.
The Empty Man is...winking at me? After interrupting what was turning into a fucking verbal war zone between me and Dev? God, this monster has no sense. Neither of them does. If I am dead, I'm stuck in the afterlife with a bunch of idiots.
"Not dead, love," Tesq reassures me. "Would never let that happen."
"Fuck off. I'd be the one to save her," Dev snarls, still bound and determined to argue about something.
Once he latches onto his anger, he’s like a damn dog with a bone—he won’t let go.
Where the hell is Creep? Someone needs to make a sarcastic comment and make me laugh at the absurdity of this moment so I don't start punching Terrors far above my power level.
Shit.
I probably have a power level. I'm not sure I want to know what it is.
Shaking my head in disbelief, and trying to ignore the queasy feeling in my gut about my newly discovered identity, I watch as Empty tosses aside some magazines and stands. He stretches in a ludicrously uncomfortable-looking way that makes his shirt pull up to show Chase’s abs. His back pops. I try not to grimace, but it sounds painful.
With a smug twist of his lips, Empty finishes his back bend and gives me a sultry look before he tries to saunter around the bed. But he forgets that Chase was limping in the subway on the walk here. He stumbles a bit and has to grab onto the bed frame.
I try to swallow my laughter, reminding myself he's probably dehydrated and starving and a tad bit delusional right now from all the torture. That, or Empty hardly ever used a human body before this. Perhaps it's a combination of both. I use that to excuse the wink as well.
He still looks far too arrogant as he steps over the dead monster on the ground and beelines for my abandoned ravioli. He pours the can's contents straight into his mouth until his cheeks are protruding like a squirrel's stuffed full of nuts. Yup. Starving.
The tiniest glimmer of pity sparks in my chest.
"We aren't done fighting," Dev reminds me, and when I turn back to him, I can see a gleam in his eyes that's definitely sexual.
The brutish, controlling beast in him thinks of disagreement as foreplay. Yelling is a caress, throwing objects equates to heavypetting, the sort of sick and twisted mentality that...that I don't want to admit works for me on some level. The most basic one.
Fuck, maybe it's my monster side that likes it.
Now I'm questioning every goddamned part of myself when I don't want to be. What I want to do is more of the stabbing shit that I started but didn't get to finish. Fucking monster and his death pill.
I turn away and force myself to forget about how tight my lower belly feels from Dev's sizzling gaze. Since murder is currently off the table, and sex with that asshole is definitely out of the question, I focus on fixing the one tiny problem in the room I can actually address. Hunger.
I grab an apple from a pile in the corner of the countertop and give it to Empty, saying, "Here. I'll look for some meat."
His crunch becomes the soundtrack in the room for a minute before Fluffy decides to make a snack out of one of the dead monster's arms. A disgusting pop and crunch, followed by a ripping noise, fill my ears before I hear her start to chew.
For me, it's the bone crunching that does it. The clink of her tiger teeth against shards of bone. That little sound parade makes my shoulders scrunch in disgust, and a horrified tickle runs down my spine as if it's happening to me. Ridiculous, I know, but some sounds are just like some flavors—disgusting.
