Shane (Damage Control 4)

She gets up and plops herself beside me on the sofa. “Do you mind?”

I shake my head, staring a bit too long at her mouth and the curve of her tits before I manage to look away. “Suit yourself.”

“You should eat something,” Seth says as I jot the date at the top corner of the paper and start sketching. “You look like shit. Have you eaten anything today? Or yesterday?”

“Sure I did.”

“Yeah, and what was it?”

“Doritos.” I’m hatching and crosshatching, turning the white paper dark. Faces emerge from the black, white, with bulging eyes and open mouths.

Cassie laughs outright, and I stop for a second, look up. God, she’s beautiful, her head thrown back, her blue eyes glittering.

I smile a little as I return to my drawing, but soon the smile slips as I sink into the image. Into the memory. My pencil digs into the paper, leaving deep grooves, outlining a figure lying on the floor, long hair spread like the rays of a dark star.

He will get up and save himself, I chant to myself. He will get up.

Get up, Shane.

Get up.

Flames, fangs, poison, flashes of light, hands, blades, screams—

Something warm presses on my arm, a light

weight, bringing me back. Grounding me, tethering me. What…?

I blink, and it’s a small hand. A woman’s hand.

Cassie leans in and stares at my drawing. Then she says quietly, “Oh my frigging God. Is this hell?”

Chapter Four

Cassie

Demons with claws and gaping maws with long teeth, and darkness and pain. The lines are hard, the outlines harsh and jagged.

There’s a figure at the center of this swirling eddy of chaos. A man, naked, spread-eagled, his long hair spreading around him like a blanket.

The force of the image strikes me like a physical blow. I want to touch it. To touch the artist who’s sitting hunched over it as if in pain, long wet hair trailing on the paper, smudging the lines.

What does it mean? It’s like a riddle. A puzzle. Where does all that pain come from?

“It’s you,” I whisper. “The man in the middle.”

He frowns, those exotic dark eyes searching my face for something. Then he leans back and snaps the pad shut, hiding the drawing, his gaze turning hard and flat.

I pull my hand back, unsure of what to do.

“I think we should be going,” Manon says, and Seth starts gathering the dirty napkins from the table.

“We should.”

Something like panic flashes over Shane’s face, there and gone so fast I think I imagined it. He clutches his drawing pad until his knuckles turn white.

So strange. I mean, he wants us to go, right? He’s made it pretty clear, both this time and last time I was here.

“I’ll put the pizza in the fridge,” Seth says, carrying the two boxes into the kitchen. “You really should eat something, cuz.”