“ISAAC!” Esme was on her feet and running, before I even noticed, moving at a speed I had never seen in all my years of knowing her. I hadn’t been able to process it and my hand narrowly missed her shirt as she hurtled into the open space. As if witnessing an angel rise from the depths of Hell, Isaac lookedup at her, wonder and hope painted across his stupid face. And then in an instant, his expression contorted into something closer to pain and guilt as Grave grabbed her before she could reach him.
“ESME!” he screamed, as he thrashed against Caldwell, a man surprisingly strong despite his age. As Isaac writhed desperately to reach her, Caldwell pulled out a knife and pressed it to his throat. Without thinking, my legs had carried me into the dimly lit opening. I could hear Thallor’s footsteps close behind me as he chased after me. In a fog of panic, I was sure I could hear him calling my name, but I couldn’t stop…not when my best friends were at risk.
Tears streaked down Isaac’s face, and he showed no signs of stopping as he screamed out repeatedly. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I love you, Esme. I love you more than you can imagine. I’m sorry. I was drowning.Drowning.I was in such a dark place. I didn’t know how to pull myself out.”
Caldwell pushed the knife into Isaac’s throat again, beads of blood pooling from beneath his jaw. Esme screamed out again, biting the man who held her.
“I didn’t want them to hurt you. I didn’t want them to hurt you. I didn’t want this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I had to push you away to keep you safe.”
“ISAAC,” Esme called out, thrashing again as she tried to reach him.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” he called out to her through broken yells and choked out sobs. “I hate it. I hate that you are here. I hate that I hurt you. I never,ever,stopped loving you. I never wanted any of this to happen.”
But before I could make it to them, my knees buckled underneath me, and I hit the stone floor hard. In that moment, I knew fear as I’d never known it before, as two pits of molten crimson bore into me, before flicking past me and turning jet black.
I wasn’t sure if it was my mind playing tricks on me or something truly demonic, but shadows seemed to flinch away at him as he moved into the room. I felt like I was suffocating. Suffocating under the weight of his presence. The only sound that reverberated through the space was the sound of his boots on the wet, sticky, blood-soaked church floor.
“All this commotion for me?”
Where Thallor’s form had been captivating and beautiful, Aamon was a creature sculpted from nightmares as his body convulsed and writhed, becoming more human as he walked. The terrifying, beastly parts of him retreated until he was suspended, some mockery between the two. He wore a long black coat with an intricate pattern, and an expression that made my skin crawl. His mouth had a small silver ring pierced through it.
Just like Thallor, he had skin the colour of dusk that was beginning to fade into a stark pale complexion that highlighted the red of his eyes and the deep obsidian of his wild, unruly hair. He had high cheekbones and looked almost dead behind the eyes as he rotated his neck from left to right.
I’d always considered myself to have a stomach made of sterner stuff–I had to when nausea and anxiety pulled at me from all angles, day after day. But the way his twisted, curling horns retreated into his head in a sickening fashion almost had me heaving up the entire organ in disgust.
I watched in fear as the short-haired woman crawled toward him, eyes shimmering with misplaced hope. He looked down at her and sneered before pulling her up to him in some mock display of affection. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but when he plunged a hand deep into her chest and pulled out her still beating heart, I knew I’d never quite be the same again. Her body hitting the floor echoed through the high walls, drowning out the sound of my sobs.
“Filthy,” he snarled, before sniffing her heart and tossing it to the side. The chains around his neck rattled as he stepped forward, closing the distance between himself and me. And Thallor. My heartbeat against my chest so aggressively, I was worried he would plunge his hand inside mine and do the same. He cocked his head and looked down at me in a smile–or whatever the jagged fang equivalent was. Either way, it was so terrifying I assumed I’d already died.
Every part of me was paralysed.
“I can smell your scent on her brother,” he sneered. “What filthy, disgusting creatures.” He took a singular step toward me, and all the air left my lungs. I could hear footsteps behind me moving forward. Tentatively. Slowly. “I know you always had a thing for keeping pets, brother. But, I didn’t know you liked to fuck them too.”
He spat the words like vitriol. Like the idea of us–humans–left a bad taste in his mouth. I could feel the searing heat of his body momentarily lap at my skin as he pulled at one of my loose curls. This was what true fear felt like. In the limited minutes I’d spent in Aamon’s presence, I felt like he had branded me, marred the goodness of my soul. Each and every passing second was agonising, and I couldn’t fathom what eternal torment from this male would be like.
“Don’t fucking touch her, Aamon.”
“Or what?” Aamon snarled back. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t dare look up to see him. A laugh escaped his lips. A horrid, grating sound. “Don’t fucking tell me you care about her. You always were a pathetic fool, Thallor.”
“Master,” Lester Grave said, cutting in and crawling toward him. “We have summoned you. Our offering—” he said as he motioned toward the pile of dead bodies before pointing toward Isaac and Esme–who had run over to him the moment she wasfree of Grave. “If you want, we can show you a more up-to-date presentation.”
Aamon cocked his head to the side, taking in the man kneeling before him. If I didn’t already have a burning hatred for Aamon, a need to right all the wrongs he had inflicted on Thallor, I would have smiled at the expression etched on his face. A deeply ingrained disgust at not just this man but humans in general. To him, we were fleas. Vermin. Parasites that did nothing but want and take as we squandered our pitiful existences.
He placed his foot on the dead body of a greying woman in her forties. She had draped over the man to her right, and Aamon kicked her to the floor, letting her body roll, sending a splattering of red into the air, raining blood. “Hmm, well, I can appreciate the dedication that has gone into summoning me.”
“Thank you, my prince,” Grave said as he pawed at Aamon’s legs. I couldn’t help but agree. He truly wasfilthyanddisgusting.“We have heard stories of the gifts you can bestow. Please offer us this blessing.”
Aamon scoffed as he looked down at the man before turning toward Thallor, who was now stood in front of me, shielding me from his brother–the only thing that could have offered me any reprieve from the fear that had run rife in my body.
“You see, brother? All they do is take,” he spat. “This is what I have tried to instil in you. They do not deserve our fucking mercy.”
“You push them beyond their morals and then pass down judgement, Aamon,” Thallor snarled in a low, violent voice–one that was as equally terrifying as his brothers. “They represent everything that you are.”
“You dare speak to me like that?”
And the energy that emanated from the male sucked all the air out of the room. Lester and Caldwell backed away, as ifsuddenly realising the danger they, like the rest of us, were in. I looked up to find Isaac cradling Esme in his arms, both their eyes clamped shut. If I wasn’t on the verge of sobbing myself, I could have probably gotten on board with the‘if I can’t see it, it isn’t there’tactic. I might have even found some strange sense of comfort in the denial of pretending that this nightmare wasn’t unfolding right before us.
But Aamon was real in the way Thallor was real.
