Give in to your nature. Be what you were always meant to be. Take your due.
He drew in a ragged breath as the darkness in him surged up again. His skin tingled, the heat beneath it spreading. No. Not like this. The house had got a taste of desire, and it wanted more. It wanted her. It would use him to get her.
‘No,’ he murmured to himself as if he could make it real, make himself believe it. This wasn’t right. He felt like he was being forced into something. He’d felt that since the first moment she had arrived. Like they were both beingmanipulated. Like something was trying to push the two of them into bed together. And then what?
When they lost themselves in each other again, in that wild pleasure, what would it do? What would they do? Had it been like this for Theo and Sally? Had the house manipulated them like it was trying to manipulate him? Because if so…they had not had any choice, if the entity infecting the Hall made them, had forced them…
Then it wasn’t a betrayal, was it?
And he wasn’t the monster he feared he was, tied and bound to this place, created to serve and protect it. Made to love against his will…
Because he had loved. Loved Sally, loved Theo.
He had been in the cellar and he had sensed it. He didn’t have a name for it. No one did. Just…the thing in the cellar. Sally had called it an old god. Professor de Wilde had called it a dark entity in his notes. Theo had called it the monster. And sometimesthat bastard.
Chambers had made sacrifices in the earth beneath the house, that was what they said, that he had died there. He had woken it through rites of blood, and shed the last drops of his own there in the end.
Nick was no stranger to the other, to the way it moved through human flesh and changed it. But the communion he found in the wild wood was so very different from this. Now he was at war with himself, torn in two by conflicting powers. One from the shadows and the dirt, the other from the trees.
‘Oh Nick, love,’he almost heard Sally’s murmur of dismay. The scent of wildflowers rose around him but so too did something else, something rank and putrid.‘Nick, what have you done?’
It wasn’t his fault. It had never been his fault. The anger that rose inside him was blind and furious.
If anything, it washerfault.Sally’sfault…
He’d had a life and lost it. And after that, after the fear and the pain, he’d been at peace. And she had stolen it from him. She had stolen everything from him…
His hands shook. He balled them into fists at his sides. That wasn’t right, was it? It couldn’t be. Because he loved her still, beyond reason, beyond rationality. Sally was everything. It was written on his bones.
‘I told you not to touch her,’Theo whispered, his voice full of sorrow. Had Theo known this would happen? How could he have known?
‘Nick? Are you okay?’ Alex’s voice cut through all the echoes of the past. Even now, even hurt and upset, she saw him in pain and she cared. How could she care so much? He’d done nothing to deserve it. Nothing. Alex’s hand, still shaking, touched his face, her fingertips so light and cold against his flesh.
‘No,’ he said again. His own voice sounded strange to his ears, slurred and deep, a growl. He was losing himself. Those weren’t his thoughts. He needed to get out of the house. ‘Stay here,’ he told her, aware of the rough edge to the words. He couldn’t help it. ‘Don’t follow me.’ He needed to get away from her. He needed…
Her…her body against his again, her skin pressed to his, lips on him and his on her…gasping her name as he filled her…making her his at last, again and again, until he had all she was able to give, and then still more and taking and taking and…
It was too much. Far too much. The need, the hunger, the urge far too strong. It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. Nick had always been a careful lover, giving and open, and the demands coursing through him right now were as far from that as it could get.
The darkness was too strong. Chambers reaching out, determined to use him. To hurt her.
The bastard…
He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He wanted her. Too much. Far too much. As much as he had ever wanted his wife. Or any other lovers. More. Far more. He didn’t know if that was real. Not anymore. He didn’t know if any of it was real…what he felt for Alex, or what he had felt for Sally, and Theo…
He didn’t know if anything he felt was real. Not now. It broke his heart. He could feel it cracking in his chest, his racing pulse tearing it apart.
He justcouldn’t.
Nick bolted for the door leading outside, down the hallway, through the kitchen and out into the night, sprinting for the woods as fast as he could. It was like an infection, that thing beneath his skin, in his blood, trying to make him into someone he was not. He could hear Chambers’ laughter ringing through his head.
He needed the green, the wild. Like Sally had said, he needed salvation from something even more ancient and less human than the monster even now intent on using him. They had brought it here, the two of them, him and Alex, drawn the wild into the house and tangled themselves together with it.
They had woken it. And they had woken the house.
And that was dangerous. Especially to a de Wilde. He had to get away from her, away from Alex.
CHAPTER 33
