My eyes narrow and I can feel the shadows shift around me, pulled tighter by the fury boiling under my skin.
“Oh! I’m so sorry,” I sneer, my voice dripping acid. “Am I boring you, little human?”
She doesn’t even flinch, she just uncrosses her arms long enough to wave them around as though she’s a child mocking an adult.
“No, that’s just all my excitement leaving my body. Can’t you see how ecstatic I am to be here?” She throws her hands up, her wrists flicking. Her eyes roll so hard I half expect them to stick.
A low growl coils in my throat. “Don’t be a smart ass,” I snap, letting the heat rise in my voice, my eyes burning brighter. “It doesn’t suit you.”
With all fake innocence, she tips her head to the side, just before her smile twists.
“You’d know what suits me, would you? You don’t know shite about me.” She spits the words out.
My hooves scrape the stone as I step forward, closing the distance until her mockery is forced to tilt up to meet my flame. “Oh, I know everything about you,” I hiss, my voice sinking low,poisonous. “Every last pathetic, desperate little detail.” I lean in closer, the heat from my skin pulsing out like a furnace. “I know your dreams and secrets. I know everything. I even know the sound you make when you beg.”
Finally, a crack in the armour she’s wrapped herself in since I dragged her to this rotten pit. I watch it flicker behind her eyes, the confusion, the flicker of memory and I feel it in my bones. I’ll take what I can get. Vulnerability tastes just as sweet as fear.
With shadows crawling up my spine, I step even closer and let her see the hunger in my flame-lit eyes. When she doesn’t flinch, I let my hand slip into her hair, my fist tangling deep. Twisting until the strands bite into my knuckles. She hisses but doesn’t cry out. Good. I like it when they don’t break too easily.
In one smooth pull, I drag her up. Her weight dangling from my grip as if she’s a puppet with cut strings. We’re face to face now and her breath hits my skin, warm and defiant. “You made a deal with me ten years ago.” I let my voice rumble low, like a growl wrapped in silk. “Did you really think I’d turn my back on my own property? Did you think I wouldn’t keep an eye on my investment? Hmm?” I tug her hair tighter, just enough to draw a sharp breath from her. “It’s not every day I chain a human soul to mine.”
Her lip's part and I see the realisation dawn, a flicker of something raw.
“That was you?” The words slip out before she snaps her teeth shut, retreating behind that dead stare as though she’s flipping a switch inside herself. Her walls slamming shut again.
For a heartbeat, just a heartbeat, something cold scrapes at my ribs. Guilt spreads through me like wildfire. But I crush it, grind it to ash as I twist my grip tighter, dragging her face an inch closer until my forehead nearly grazes hers.
“Of course it was me,” I snap. “Who else would it be? There’s only one diabhal worth selling your soul for and you gave yours up so sweetly.”
Her mouth twitches. The softness bleeds out of her eyes.
“I don’t care who you are!” She spits the words as though they taste foul.
Something inside me coils. This woman,this fucking woman,has no idea what she’s inviting in when she turns her fear to stone. I lean in and let my lips brush her ear. A whisper of flame against her pulse.
My rage tears at my skin like claws. Her indifference needles deeper than any blade. How? How does she look at me,and shrug as if I’m nothing more than a passing storm-cloud? My grip trembles with the urge to shake sense, or fear into her.
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” My roar cracks the walls, rattling the stones. I haul her closer, shaking her so hard her head snaps back. “You should be afraid,” my words rasp out.
When her eyes find mine, they’re iron-hard and sharp enough to cut through me. “Why?” she spits, her voice dripping with acid. She yanks her shoulder free from my grip, her lips curling intoa sneer. “Because you’re thediabhal? Oh look!” She lifts her hands, mock trembling them near my face. “I’m shaking in my boots.”
The world goes red. My vision tunnels and all I see is her mouth and the blasphemy dripping off her tongue. Without thinking I shove her hard. She hits the stone floor with a sickening thud and a strangled moan and I stand over her, my breath heaving, and shadows clawing at the corners of my sight. “How dare you speak to me like that.” The words tear from my throat as if there’s a beast ripping free of its leash. My claws twitch. I want to rip her apart so badly. She doesn’t even flinch. She just lies on the ground with one arm thrown over her eyes as though she’s blocking out the sun. Is she mocking me? Or dead? I prod her ribs with my hooves, the barest nudge.
Then I hear a growl from beneath her arm. “Fuck off, you big red oaf.” She peels her arm back, her stare a dagger in my gut. She pushes herself up on her elbows, her hair spilling wild around her shoulders like a crown of thorns. Her mouth curls. “What do you want from me?”
The words hang in the air as if they’re an invitation or a threat, I can’t tell. My mind burns with a thousand answers, none fit to speak aloud. I open my mouth, about to tell her exactly what her soul cost her, but the sound dies in my throat.
Click. Click. Click. Footsteps behind me, each one echoing like a hammer strike on bone. My stomach twists. Fuck. Just when I thought this couldn’t sink deeper into the pit.
A voice slithers through the air, cold and amused.
“Well, well… what do we have here?”
The scent of brimstone and rotting lilies fill the air. I don’t turn yet. I don’t have to. I know that voice.Fucking foirfe.(Fucking perfect.)
It’s been ten minutes, maybe less, since the last time, however I still check the camera again. My thumb hovers over the screen, smudging it as I refresh. Nothing. Still no sign of her. My chest aches as I scan the empty living room.
I’m a fuckingeejit.I should’ve stayed. I should have waited on that damn sofa until she drifted back through the door and into my hands. Instead, I’m pacing sterile hallways that reek of bleach and lost causes, pretending I can focus on patients when my mind is rotting from the inside out with thoughts of her.
