AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He nearly chokes on a cough, and I allow him to spit a mouthful of blood to the ground. Then his swollen eyes latch on to Halen. “He wants her.”
A feral rage takes hold. I hear nothing but the roar inside my head, feel nothing but the pulsing demand beating inside my veins to destroy.
He wants her.
I sniff back my fury and tug his head harder. “Whereis he?”
I can feel the mix of panic and uncertainty stirring within Halen. Despite her convoluted morality, she knows how this will go. That’s why she’s looking at me and not him, those fearful eyes blinking too fast, her lips trembling.
“Kallum, he bit off his tongue.” She covers her mouth with her hand as the guy in my grasp begins to convulse. A gurgled choking sound fills the air as I shove him to his back.
Blood trickles from his open mouth as shock cords his spasming body. I spot the discarded mass of flesh on the ground.
“An offering that won’t save him.” I roll my head along my shoulders, then wrench him to his knees and hold him upright by his collar. “Maybe he can provide a written statement,” I say, and oh, I love the seething glare she gifts me.
Halen embodies every emotion on the red spectrum, her vitriol so eloquently lends to passion to inspire an array of shades in her color pallet. I feel like she’d be impressed with my psychology reference.
I lower my gaze to the knife gripped in her hand. She knows what has to happen. We’ve been here before.
It’s just us on a darkened stage, hidden within the spindly copse of trees, the threat of the storm our backdrop, the ink-swollen clouds casting her eyes in the silver hue that cracks right through my sternum and makes the dead muscle beat.
Halen gives her head a firm shake, clearing the white streak of hair from her vision. “This isn’t the same as Landry,” she declares, pushing back against her rampaging emotions. “I’m not in immediate danger.”
My smile is dark, my predatory gaze on her stating otherwise.
“That’s not why you drove a bone into his jugular, sweetness.” Nor was she in immediate danger when she tore a hack professor’s face off.
All the dirty little truths I whispered in her ear, she can’t deny any of them, not when I felt her shatter in my arms. She can’t hide the blaze I see raging in her depths, the storm brewing darker than the electric atmosphere around us. The elements are all hers, the charge in the air building with her ferocity as she tries to rein in her rioting emotions.
She’s so beautifully torn as the dark chasm opens wide beneath her.
She looks away, unable to maintain eye contact around the mutilated man in my grasp as he sputters blood and saliva. “Hernandez called for help,” she says. “Backup will be here soon.”
My disappointment in my dark muse might as well be a tire iron to my face.
She hugs her arm tighter around her waist. Blood stains her sleeve where her stitches have once again been torn. She clutches the knife, protecting the evidence.
I exhale the discontent from my inflamed lungs. “I should’ve just tried to eat you,” I say, not masking the disdain in my tone. “You would’ve forgiven me a whole lot faster for that, apparently.”
Like a crack of thunder, her anger strikes the air between us, and I love the wild flicker in her eyes. “You want to talk about Devyn?” she says, contempt lacing each word. “All right, let’s talk. You wanted her dead for no other reason than to protect yourself. It was never about any threat to me.”
I lick the blood from my lips, savoring her venom. “If you have something to accuse me of, sweet Halen, then just come out with it.”
She tips her chin up defiantly. “You were communicating with her while at Briar. You manipulated her—” She grits her teeth, the hand at her waist curled into a tight ball. “You used her to get to me, and now she’s in danger because of you,thealchemist.”
I swipe my free hand over my mouth, working the aching tension from my locked jaw as my eyes track admiringly over the bruises along her face. “You wear your violence so beautifully.” My sigh is anguished. “I’d say it’s a shame we have to go to extremes to bring it out, but honestly, the deviant in me finds it so fucking hot.” I tighten my hold on the guy’s head. “If I’m going to be punished like a bad boy, then I might as well do something to be punished for.”
Her wary gaze drops to the convulsing man in my grasp, and panic flares within her. “No—” She grips her hair, shaking her head. “This isn’t who we are. Thiscan’tbe.”
I cock my head. “And why is that?”
The dejection that touches her eyes almost caves my resolve. “Because killers eventually get caught.”
Her grief bleeds between us in a river of blood and denial. She’s lost everyone in her life, and I read the anguish in her lovely, distressed features.
If we fear a thing too much, for too long, it is inevitable that we manifest it.
She takes a hesitant step forward. Then another. Coming to stand at my side, she touches my cheek, her gaze pleading. “You didn’t lose me in the wreck. I’m right here, Kallum.” Her words are a gentle whisper as she gives voice to the destructive fear annihilating my mind.
