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“We need to leave. Now.” I wrap my free hand around Chase/Em’s wrist, but he doesn’t allow me to tug it away from my face.
He simply…stares at me. Without that cantankerous, argumentative glint in his eyes, he almost looks like a completely different person.
“You came for me,” he whispers as he continues to stroke my cheek. “After everything we’ve done, you came for me. For us.”
The smile carved into his luscious mouth is grim, the crack in his personality vulnerable and deep, fathomless darkness swimming in his eyes. When have I ever seen a smile on either of their faces that wasn’t full of malice and mockery?
“Em…Chase…whoever the fuck you are… We need to leave.” I tug on his hand yet again, and Chase/Em heaves out a weary breath.
“Sometimes I wonder if this is what I deserve. If my fate is destined to end locked away, tortured, forgotten…”
“Really? Now is the time you pick to be all philosophical?” I arch an eyebrow at him incredulously, even as I scan my surroundings for potential threats.
Anxiety claws at my insides.
We need to get out of here. Now.
3
THE CREEPER
My hands move on autopilot,though my head’s in an utter daze. But instead of dizzy stars winking around my forehead, there are black specks, which just remind me of all my childhood beatings and how my vision would flicker.
I don’t feel the hits of the monsters attacking me, hardly see them as they rush forward, don’t acknowledge their pained screams as I slam them into shadowy portals and then zipper shut the openings with a pinch of my fingers—usually when their bodies are halfway through. The spray of blood and squelch of guts squeezed until they’re severed serves as a backdrop sound because the percussive force of my heartbeat is so much stronger.
Staring past the slides and rusting machinery set up in this giant meat-packing plant long ago, my eyes lock onto a door with a small, inset window on the far side of the massive room. There, watching the fight, gazing with a brutal smugness out at the carnage he’s orchestrated, is my father, his golden dragon tail swishing behind him.
Hatred so strong and putrid that my throat closes and my vision narrows—my senses overloaded by visceral loathing—rains down from head to toe, soaking me.
Of course he’s behind this. How could I have failed to realize that?
The Eights and Nines have only ever battled us on an individual level before. Melding together for a cause isn’t the way of monsters; it’s the way of men. Humans are weak, and individually, they can accomplish almost nothing.
But, banded together, they banished monsters for centuries.
Relegating us to the realm of fairy tales, so that even small children failed to believe in us.
My father always hated that. How before monsters rose up and the Ebony Kingdom was created, monsters were dwindling, waning, scrapping for existence. He’d been a huge supporter of the uprising, of monsters uniting—even if he knew it was a temporary reprieve and schemed to murder all his co-conspirators.
Didn’t expect his son to murder him though.
Failat murdering.
Goddammit.
A rush of self-loathing engulfs me, and I swallow the taste of acid—though along with it is a fatty little bit of gristle from the last monster I just finished off.
I bet my father’s loving this little reunion. I glance at him again and note a white-haired monster standing sentinel just behind him, guarding him.
He’s such a fucking coward. Always getting other monsters to do his dirty work for him.
Back from the dead—I still can’t believe it.
Fuck.
I should have ripped him into tiny pieces and fed him to the Empty Man’s menagerie.
I glare into the tiny manager’s office he’s holed up in. Light fills every corner of the space, beaming out of the narrow window, glinting off his golden hair, his horns, his scaled tail as it curls into a question mark.
