She tried again, desperate for any sign of the otherworldly eavesdropper.
“Perez! I need you to come back and help me. Please!”
After long moments of silence, she choked on a sob. Hot tears spilled from her eyes, running in streams into her ears.
If Roselyn stole the watch, perhaps Perez went along for the ride. She didn’t really understand how Perez’s soul was chained, but his presence could go wherever it wanted. He’d eavesdropped on a few of her private conversations with Logan, among other things. So, if Roselyn had the vessel, could Perez still go about as he wished, or was he trapped wherever Roselyn had stowed her stolen goods?
Releasing a pent-up breath, she hoped Perez was as free as a bird and trying to get to her or someone who could save her.
Logan.
Yes, she’d accept help from him, even if it meant seeing him, and reading the disappointment and bitterness etched into his face. If it meant she could get out of this alive, she’d beg him.
She pulled at her restraints, straining to loosen their hold. Hope stuttered in her chest, fading into a dull ache.
Angelous emerged from her blind spot and stood over her, and she gasped.
His eyes were filled with something she refused to name.
She shivered, part chill, part fear.
His ear-to-ear smile splintered her resolve. Her breaths came in a rush, her heartbeat pounding erratically against her chest, and she pulled frantically at the restraints.
He chuckled. “It’s best not to fight. It will only mar your perfect skin.” His voice held a note of censure, as if she were a recalcitrant child in need of chastisement. He slid his eerily warm hand over her wrists, and a cry wrenched from her.
Wherever his skin touched her, a crawling sensation pushed against her flesh.
“Let me go! What the hell is wrong with you?” Her hoarse voice strained beneath the assault of air from her lungs.
She lifted her head and spotted her ravaged fingernails. When had that happened? The answer came quick—when she was looking for the watch. The magical pocket watch she stole in 2025. Magic happened, so miracles could happen, too. Hope flickered brighter in her soul.
She sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes. If she wanted to live, she needed to get her shit together.
Don’t fall apart now.
Easier said than done. She breathed in again, and Angelous turned from her, walked to a table a few feet away, and began lifting knives, one at a time, to inspect each one. Fear flew through her blood like a murder of crows, intent on swarming her heart.
“Are you going to kill me?”
Busily organizing his knives, he didn’t bother looking up. “Not right away, no.” His tone was matter-of-fact, his manner calm and easy. Her breath burned her throat as each exhale brought with it the fire of bile-laden saliva.
Terrified of the answer to her next question, she swallowed the ball of horror and groaned. “Are you going to rape me?”
He whipped around, nearly overturning the knife covered table, and he peered down at her with a look of disgust so vehement she would have drawn back in shock if she weren’t tied down.
“No!” Leaning over her, close enough for her to smell the scent of something sour on his breath, he spat, “You are a filthy human being. Imperfect. Unholy. Not worthy of being a true child of the Heavenly Sire. Your body only yields diseased fruit, contaminated by sin, and left to rot beneath the impurities of your depraved desires.” Pulling himself to his full height, he peered down at her with an air of divine superiority. “As a Chosen Child of my Heavenly Sire, I am forbidden from findingdebased pleasures among the human swine. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at your nakedness without vomiting.”
That explained the scent she’d smelled on his breath.
He smiled, the promise of pain twinkling in his eyes. “That will all change once I’ve begun my masterwork, once I’ve begun slicing away at your imperfect flesh, once the blood begins to run, and the color of your skin begins to pale.Thenyour naked body will be worthy to look upon.”
She closed her eyes as the tears of fear rolled free. Dear God, this man wasn’t just crazy; he truly believed he was on a mission from Heaven to kill her, to make her into some twisted sort of human canvas for his bloody, gory art.
Trembling, she turned her head, fighting back the nausea threatening to weaken her further. From beside her, she heard him pick up and put down a knife, then another. He was deliberating on which one to use to make the first cut, murmuring to himself in contemplative tones as though he were trying to pick a pair of shoes to wear.
After several minutes, he turned back to her. While he’d been busy choosing, she’d been trying to wrap her mind in a threadbare cloak of courage and hope. But when the wicked edge on the knife he psychotically caressed came into view, the dam holding her fears and panic in check exploded.
He’s going to hurt me. He’s going to slice and dice me until I bleed to death. This can’t be happening.
