“That’s right. I am killing him.”
“No, please—please don’t.” She can hardly draw a full breath, and the sound of it is intoxicating. I reward myself with a glance. Tears stream silently down her cheeks. “I know who you are. Don’t do this.”
A laugh tumbles out from between my lips before I can stop it. “You know who I am. So? Why should I spare your boyfriend?”
She hesitates. That hesitation confirms what I already knew—this is Demeter’s daughter. This innocent creature, the one her mother named Persephone, radiating innocence and terror…
Hesitates.
“He’s not my boyfriend.” There it is. “We’ve never…. We didn’t say we were together. We were going to….”
He couldn’t convince her that they were in love. Something less than a man sags in my grip. I’ll give him this—he fought longer than I expected him to. But Persephone has delivered a killing blow.
“You were going to meet him, weren’t you? All alone, in the middle of the night. And then what?”
“Go to the city.” A mournful half-sob. “Then go somewhere else, somewhere my mother couldn’t find us.”
Interesting. A girl like Persephone, running away from Demeter? An intriguing choice, though not what the fool in my hands had in mind. What he had in mind was a double-cross. I could laugh in his face.
But.
Persephone is leaving power behind. Why would she want to? She should want to stay, and be heir to her mother’s twisted legacy.
Unless, of course, she didn’t have access to that power.
Why wouldn’t she? Demeter will need a successor someday. In her line of work, most people don’t grow very old.
“That’s not going to happen now,” I tell her casually. “You must know that.”
“Why not?” Such an adorable struggle. She clearly doesn’t want to sound plaintive, yet she does. “You could let him go.” In my peripheral vision, I see her hands lift, then fall helplessly back to her sides. “If you let us go, we would never bother you again.”
“You won’t bother me again regardless.” I’m committed to killing him now. I want the adrenaline and the release. The world will never miss a nobody like the one I’ve caught. “Really, you should be grateful.”
“Grateful for what?” Persephone comes a tentative step closer.
“That I’m going to let you watch. If you hurry, you might even get to say goodbye.”
I’ve been toying with the bastard. One swift snap and this is all over. The summer wind kicks up, and the train whistle wails across the night, setting Persephone into motion.
She runs across the grass and throws herself against my arm, her legs pressed against Conor’s side. He snaps at her, growling, and a bark tears loose into the air. But save for his trembling body he doesn’t move. He holds himself back, though nobody runs at him that way. Nobody runs at me that way.
No one but Persephone. Here she is, ready to get torn apart.
“Down.”
Conor backs off, but he’s not happy about it. He puts his head down on his paws. He shakes almost as much as Persephone. A cool wash of adrenaline meets my blood, probably from the shock of her touch. Persephone isn’t strong enough to pull my arms away from her boyfriend or break my grip.
Through her sobs, I realize she’s not trying to.
She’s trying to get my attention.
Her not-boyfriend makes a horrible sound, halfway under the ground already, and Persephone gasps the sharp gasp of all women since time immemorial.
“Please,” she cries. “Don’t kill him. There must be something I can do, something—”
Oh, the sweet thing. She clings ineffectually to my arm. Nothing would be better than to let her think she’s coming with me of her own free will. Nothing in the world.
“I’m not here to make a bargain.”
Her eyes are huge and dark, tears glistening on her chin. She licks her lips.
“I’ll do anything.”
Something shifts, a boulder rolling away from the open mouth of a cave, dawn splitting the sky above. I’m taking her. The world has presented me with an opportunity, and I’m seizing it, whether that opportunity fights me or not. The tears, and the begging, and the noble sacrifice—I want more of those things, too. And I shouldn’t. I absolutely shouldn’t. I should kill the man as an object lesson in being more careful and let her run back to her mother’s house.
I let the fool in my hands fall to the ground.
It’s a sudden drop, and he has no time to catch himself. His body spills onto the dirt in a heap. Is he breathing? I don’t know, and I don’t care.
Persephone lets go of my arm with a fresh wave of sobs, the pitch rising.
Conor gets to his feet.
I put a hand on his head. “Wait. You might still get your chance.”
He makes an impatient sound.
“Decker,” she gasps, and I roll my eyes. Decker. Not my love, not darling, not any other term of endearment. Just her ticket out. And here she is, swooning for him like they’re Romeo and Juliet.
“Deck, wake up.” He coughs once and rolls over onto his side, knees folding up into the fetal position. Pity. Persephone collapses to her knees and puts a hand on his cheek. “Oh, I thought it was too late. I love you. My god, I thought it was too late.”
She loves him now. How precious.
I give a sharp whistle and shadows detach from the trees. The train echoes the sound. It won’t leave until I give the order, but Persephone doesn’t need to know that. I pluck her up by the waist—she’s practically weightless—and she kicks, twisting in my hands.
“No, no, let me go!”
This puts Conor on edge. He nudges my shin, baring his teeth. He wants a piece of her. I want a piece of her too.
I slip one hand around her throat. Fuck, she’s delicate, her pulse fluttering underneath the skin. Persephone goes still and stays that way when I turn her to face me. She pants as I run the pad of my thumb over her chin. It quivers, along with the rest of her body.
“Are you going to kill me now?”
My men step up behind her, but she doesn’t turn her head. Two of them hook their arms under Decker’s and drag him away, giving us a wide berth. Her eyes follow his slumped body. The man won’t shut up. All the groaning, the whining—fucking pathetic.
“You said you would do anything to save him. That was your bargain. Are you telling me you’d rather be dead?”
A flicker of fear is chased off her face by a nameless expression, determination flaring in her eyes. She glances down at Conor, the whites of her eyes glowing in the moonlight. “No,” she whispers. “I want to live.”
I lean in close, bending down so my lips are level with her ear. Her heart beats hard under my fingertips. She smells sweet, like roses and sunshine and something unique to her. It must be the fresh softness of her. Fuck, the things I’m going to do to her, dangling her not-boyfriend on a string as if she’ll ever be anything but mine. The urge to throw her down into the dirt is so strong.
But now that we’ve had this little performance, it’s best for the train to move on. I’m no longer interested in dealing with Demeter tonight—not now that I have her daughter for my very own.