Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)

I was shaking from the effort to keep the sick down. Overfed, for days… and still I’d torn the bodies apart.

And I’d do it to that little girl too.

Cuddling me to him, petting my hair like his prize kitten, he hummed at my ear. “Take her throat. One sip. Just one. And that will be the end of it.”

But I’d run to him, I’d let him hold me. I’d drunk more and more and more. Hadn’t we agreed?

I couldn’t think straight with her screaming. Another wave of blood purged from my belly, falling over my lips to dribble down my chin like a cheesy zombie horror flick. I must have looked like the worst kind of demon.

I certainly felt like it.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad in my pit filled with splintered bones and rotting organs.

“Oh, and Jade…” My hair was gathered in a fist, toes set to the floor so I was made to look up at the menace I’d smeared in filth. “If you kill the child, Ethan will die in the most diabolical of ways. I’ll toy with him. I’ll make him suffer, maybe for years, until his mind is nothing but a waste of human mush. And then I’ll make you eat him too.”

Fucking asshole.

Threats and mind games and blue dresses and pain. Cock and fucking and quotas and eons of slavery.

Child’s brains scattered on the floor, the half dead carcass dragging itself to its glass coffin to die.

No more nursemaids, or cuddles, or milk.

My virginity had been sold when I’d bled as humans do. The man had left money on the table, laughing when it was over, and I asked for him to keep me.

“Didn’t think your kind existed anymore.” Because his cum had been tainted a soft pink from the breaking of my hymen. And he’d checked before tossing cash to the nightstand the brothel’s madam would collect after he’d done up his pants.

His name had been Gerard.

He’d died in the war despite his family’s attempts to keep him from the draft. Malcom had assured it. Somewhere on a beach in Normandy.

And in my mouth was a little girl’s neck, and on my tongue was the pure-born thing that gave her eternity. She tasted of heaven.

And it made me sick.

Still I swallowed.

I always swallowed, every last thing my father made me do.

Staggering, I dropped the doll in the blue dress, half-dead atop my pile of rot. Her heart beat on.

Mine raced, raced so fast I was sure it would burst. Blood came from my nose, and my eyes, and my ears. It came from my womb just as it had that first time.

“Jade?”

Was that fear in Malcom’s voice?

Bits of someone’s rib cage jabbed into my spine, the whole of my body seizing. Pupils blown, I stared into the dark, whispering, “I loved Gerard.”

Lips to my ear, hard body pressing mine to stillness in the gore, Malcom whispered, “There never was a Gerard.”

Chapter Fifteen

When I woke, he was there. When I slept, he was there. I ordered Chinese takeout, he was there, beside me and silent at the table as I saturated fried wontons in mustard sauce and stared into space.

Malcom no longer relied on the cameras to track my every move. Not even the sun kept him from the darker corners of my apartment. He thought to converse with me.

As if sitting in Ethan’s chair, moving out Ethan’s things and putting his things in their place made him a fixture in my world!

Refusing to look at him, trying my damndest for days to ignore him, I finally met the startling clarity of his eyes, and said, “I don’t love you in return.”

“I know you don’t.” Reaching for an eggroll, Malcom made a show of joining my dinner. He even took a bite, chewed, and spit it out in a napkin so quickly it was almost unseen. “These are disgusting.”

It had been two weeks. No texts from Ethan. His clothing, his collection of designer watches, all packed up and shipped out before I’d been released from the pit. He had not come to grovel, to say he’d like to keep me.

His uncle had not emailed with demands for wedding dates. And instead of mourning like I wanted to, I was saddled with a lurking houseguest who’d dared hang his trousers and sweaters in my closet.

The male used my ironing board.

Made me coffee in the morning and brought me fresh croissants.

And he touched me almost constantly unless sunlight kept him at bay.

Even now, under the table, his foot pressed against mine. And if I moved, he followed. My routine was so programed in his brain that he handed me cosmetics as I painted my face.

He’d stolen my perfume. My credit cards. Every last bit of jewelry Ethan had ever given me.

When I’d demanded my necklace back, Malcom had deeply frightened me. I was pinned and his fangs were in my throat so quickly, I wasn’t even sure how we’d gone from the walk-in closet to my bedroom. He drank without permission while I fumbled beneath him and gasped for air. It wasn’t until I was weak and limp that he pulled away, wiping red blood from his mouth.