Then the candles blew out, and darkness swallowed the room whole.
Only the sound of his steps filled it now. They were slow at first, then faster and uneven. The heavy thud of his boots on the wood only got closer, and closer to me. My limbs were weak, but I pushed myself to reach the handle of the door. If I could just…
“Fucking your ass is one of my top five reasons for being here,” it sneered, and the words did something to me. Something I promised myself I would not address, not after the last time, nottonight and not ever.
“Damian, stop, please…” I begged, only to be met with a laugh. The sound was so cruel, echoing loudly like it didn’t fit inside one’s throat.
Then I found the knob and pulled myself up. I couldn’t bring myself to look back, I just scrambled to my feet and ran. The hallway stretched too long, the shadows warping into shapes that moved even when I didn’t. My socks slid against the floor as I grabbed the walls for balance, my nails scraping paint. I could hear him, feel him, coming behind me. The sound wasn’t just footsteps anymore, it was everywhere. The ceiling, the floor, the walls, the very air seemed to pulse with it.
“Run, our brave girl,” the voice taunted. “You always did like a good chase.”
Something slammed into the wall beside me, a fist or maybe the wind, I couldn’t tell. I turned the corner, my heart hammering so hard it hurt, and I nearly tripped over the coffee table. My lungs burned, and my hands shook so badly I could barely grip the door handle to the kitchen.
Damian stood at the end of the hall, motionless, his eyes black and skin so pale, but it wasn’t him anymore. The way he smiled, the way his head tilted as he looked at me, it was someone else looking through him, someone I knew wasn’t about to let me go.
“Where are you going, Elena?”
I stumbled back, slamming into the wall, then spun and bolted through the kitchen doorway. Pots clattered off the counters as I ran past, sending echoes through the house. The floor beneath me shook again, harder this time, making the cabinets bang open, dishes flying out and shattering. Damian had said if anything went wrong, all I had to do was lure the ghost out of Max’s room, then find my way back into the circle of candles and salt, so that was the plan. I reached the back door that led to the stairs, and my hands fumbled with the lock, slick with sweat. Ipulled and twisted, begging it to open, but nothing.
“Please,” I gasped. “Please, please…”
“Run faster, brave girl. I love it when you try.” His voice was closer now, a whisper against my ear that wasn’t supposed to be there.
The handle gave way, and I threw the door open, stumbling on the floor, the sharp pain on my forehead meant I had cut my skin, but I didn’t care, I got up and made a run for it, back to Max’s room, my brothers room, the only safe haven Damian said I should run toward.
Chapter Twelve
damian
Elena’s scream pierced the hazein my mind, sharp with an enormous amount of panic, and for a heartbeat, I registered her fear. Then the pull hit, and I was no longer entirely me. It started in my chest, like a clawing, writhing sensation; a cold weight pressing into every muscle, every nerve. My hands trembled against her as I held onto her, my fingers dug into her skin, and my own voice was strangled somewhere deep inside as something else demanded to speak, to move, and to feel. I tried to resist, God, I tried, but it was a battle I couldn’t fight. The spirit shoved its way through me, consuming the spaces between my thoughts, twisting my own heartbeat into its desired rhythm.
“Let me go! Damian!” she screamed in my grasp, fighting her way out. The lit candles were still arranged neatly, and I knew what she was trying to do…I had told her. But it was of no use now, the candle couldn’t protect her anymore, because I was still flesh and blood.
“I think you know your struggles only makes me want to fuck you more, Elena,” I said, holding her steady as she tried to avoid my gaze. “I think that’s why you fight this even when I can smell how fucking wet your cunt is.” As the words left my mouth, a shiver ran through my spine, mostly because of how right the entity was. I really could smell how wet she was, and it had me seeking answers I dared not assume.
But something about being trapped here, wherever here was, felt familiar, like the first feeling I had when I saw the house, and walked through its door. Like I had been here before, trapped in a cage while still being used as a puppet. My thoughts couldn’t understand why, why this felt so wrong, yet so familiar, like my skin remembered a piece to the puzzle my memory could not.
“I don’t…I do not. Let him go, let me go, please,” she begged, and I caught a glimpse of her through the darkened haze, her wide eyes, her trembling hands, and the way her body fought in my grip. She looked like she was trying to hold herself together, to be brave. She smelled of fear and desperation, but there was a hunger there too, a raw, somewhat arousing feel that I couldn’t deny coming from her. Even as the possession pressed through me, I felt it; her presence, the way it pulled at the corners of my mind, beckoning something dark and forbidden.
“We are one and the same, brave girl, and tonight, we both will be fucking you back to your fucking senses. After tonight, you’ll know never to end a life this good.”
“Damian…” her voice trembled, caught somewhere between a plea and panic. I wanted to respond, to reassure her, tell her that I was fighting this, trying to come back to her, but it wasn’t entirely me anymore. The spirit spoke through me, in a jagged voice, sounding so cruel, yet intoxicating, threaded with heat I shouldn’t have felt.
My body moved on its own, and before I could realize what it was making me do, my tongue was on her face, licking it in aslow, deliberate motion. I swear I thought I heard her whimper a moan. Then I smirked at her, our eyes locked together as I watched the realization of what she had done dance across her face.
“I can still feel your pussy around my cock, troublemaker,” it hissed, and my body obeyed, moving in ways I hadn’t commanded. “And now he can, too.” And fuck, I really could.Fuck!I could feel it and I couldn’t understand how I could feel and know these things. I was drawn to her, magnetized by her fear, by the desperate way she clutched herself, by the deep clawing of her fingers against my skin. Every instinct told me to stop, to pull back, but the other presence…it urged forward. My own desires became tangled, corrupted, and impossible to separate from its.
“Fuck you!” she spat. Her hair whipped around her face as she struggled, her breath ragged, and somewhere deep, I recognized the pull: the fear that made her flesh electric, the terror that made her skin ache, the frantic energy that made every muscle in my body strain toward her.
She finally fought her way out of my grip and stumbled further into the room, barely managing to put space between us before I was upon her again. My hands gripped her arms, nowhere close to being gentle. The grip was possessive, furious, alive with the spirit’s dark intent, but beneath it, there was a part of me, the real me, trembling with the weight of what we were becoming. The forbidden hunger that had nothing to do with right or wrong.
“Stay,” the voice rasped through me, harsh, mocking, and intoxicating. “You try to deny me, Elena, but we both know…We all know who you belong to.” Her wide eyes met mine, and I saw it all there: the dread, the heat, the desperate, chaotic need she couldn’t name. I felt it too, it was twisted, and corrupted by the presence that ruled me now.
She screamed and the sound ignited a spark of some kind of twisted, chaotic pleasure inside me, the kind that belonged to fear and heat intertwined. I should have stopped, and a part of me did, clawing at the edges of consciousness, and fighting to reclaim control, but the possession laughed, a throaty, low, and cruel sound. It whispered in my ear, into my bones, and into the space between heartbeats. “You’re mine to use, mine to want…mine to unravel.”
Then it focused us back on her. Her struggles were futile, her breath ragged, and as she twisted to get away, I could feel the dark satisfaction, the intoxicating wrongness of every moment. Her panic fueled the possession’s strength, and even as I glimpsed at the real me, trapped beneath the surface, I understood one haunting undeniable truth: the entity might be in control, but something about this, wanting her, hunting her down until she submitted completely, was exactly what I wanted…needed even.
“Feeling you like this, baby…” I stopped, realizing the last word wasn’t the spirit’s, it was mine. I had said that, and I could almost feel it smile inside me. Like it mocked me for being just like Elena, fighting when deep down, this was what I wanted.
