“The necklace?” His question is a roar as it crashes against my ears.
The last of my energy focuses, and I stare into his heated, deranged eyes. “My partner—”
Easton blinks, reactive. Then my arms are released, but he maintains a vise grip around my throat. My hands drop to my sides, my arms feel useless, but I use what fight I have left to claw at his forearm, trying to tear free.
He pushes in closer, his face so near mine I can’t help but see past the scars. There’s a man beneath the demon with blue eyes—and he’s deceptively striking. This terrifies me as much as his strength, as much as his choking hold on my neck. I want him to be a disfigured beast.
His heavy breaths push against my mouth. His gaze roves from my face to my chest, eyes lingering there as my own breathing comes faster than before. Terror coils around my spine. I try to escape, but his forearm is made of iron, locking me in place. He reaches for me…and a scream lodges at the base of my throat, petrified like every muscle in my body, as I feel his coarse fingers graze my chest. He clasps the silver charm and yanks the necklace from my neck, leaving behind a burning trail from the chain.
“This doesn’t belong to you.” His voice rumbles against my ear as he pockets my necklace.
I barely have time to take a full breath before he moves—even more frantic now—to the snap of my jeans. He yanks them open and shoves his hand down the front of my pants.
Panic spikes my chest. Tears brim my eyes as anger bites my nerves.
He removes his hand, my bra clutched in his grip. “I’ll take this, too.”
I’m released just as suddenly, my legs failing to support my weight, as my whole body shudders with spent adrenaline. I sink to the floor, my arms weightless, unable to shield me. My throat burns, so raw. My body’s fight or flight response is tapering down, sweating out the panic like poison from my pores.
My heartbeat vibrates in my ears, the whoosh-thud so loud I don’t hear him leave. But when I look up, the cellar is void of his hulking presence. He took with him the key to my escape—and the one possession I had to remember Hudson.
He’s crazy. That’s the only sense I can make of his reaction to my necklace. He’s more than disturbed—he’s absolutely unhinged.
When I’m nearly composed, I drag myself toward the flashlight he left behind. The cuff still cinches my ankle, but I’m free to move. Because he lost control.
That changes things. He’s not in charge. Rage governs him.
And when a person can be controlled, it’s only a matter of finding the right buttons to push to take that control yourself.
He tore the damn spike from the slab. Which means if I push him too hard, too far…
He could break me as easily as snapping a twig.
Using the flashlight, I inspect the door. There’s no latch or knob on this side. There’s not even any hinges. It appears as if it’s been welded into place, one solid block of concrete…but that’s not possible. I watched him open it. I know there’s a trick…
I search the walls, looking for a hidden window. Or another door. I wasn’t knocked out for that long. Not long enough to leave the Seattle area. That means this cellar might not be below ground. There are no basements here, at least not in any house I’ve ever seen.
I listen for the tap to come from the other side of the wall. Hoping, praying that I’m not alone. It’s a sick wish, I know. For another person to be trapped here, tortured like this. But that feels surreal. The cellar so still and desolate now.
I’m alone.
It’s not until I’m falling asleep, my body depleted and drifting into an abyss of fraught sleep, that I recall what he said. I hear his voice come to me in a lucid dream.
Recognize the handiwork?
His face… Those scars. The pain I saw on the man’s face buried beneath the monster. He may have suffered, but he won’t steal one ounce of sympathy from me. I’ve seen the carnage. I felt the vileness in him when he held back from choking me. He’s a killer.
I turn the light off to conserve battery power.
I wear the shirt he gave me. I think about the spike he tore from the stone floor.
And I wait.
8
Catacomb
Luke