“Well, that’s rich.” I snorted. “You left him for eleven years.”
He slammed to a stop.
Lightning-fast, he grabbed my cheeks, digging his thumbs against my cheekbones. “Do you think that was a fucking choice?!” His lips pulled back over his teeth. “You don’t get to question me when I’m finding it hard to believe a single fucking thing you’re saying, when you’re out here in the dead of fucking night, running away with a broken chain—the very same chain that broke my brother’s mind.”
I gasped and grabbed his wrists, trying to pull his hands off my face. “Let me go.”
His thumbs just pressed harder against my cheekbones, threatening to crack them. “Not until I get the truth out of you.” He bent forward, grazing his lips over mine. Dry and papery, death and destruction all in one. “I’m very skilled at getting the truth out of people these days.” He kissed me again, a fleeting threat. “So, I suggest you use these pretty lips to tell me what I really want to know.”
I fought him, but he just held me as if I was nothing. Nothing more than a moth about to be squashed. “Did he take you for his own? Did he use you like he’d been used? Did he break you like they broke him?” He shook me. “I hope he did. I hope he found a way to get retribution. To prove to himself he’s more than just a fuck toy. Is that why you’re running? Because he trapped you? Abused you? Where the fuck is he? Answer me.”
My teeth clacked together, biting my tongue. Blood filled my mouth as pain bloomed along my cheekbones. I scratched at his wrists, digging my nails deep. “You have it all wrong.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“I’m not running from him.”
“Try again.” His hands slipped from my cheeks and clamped around my temples, crushing my skull. “Go on, hurry up. My patience is almost gone.”
Tears oozed from my eyes as I continued to fight. Fight against an unmovable wall with no heart. “You’re hurting me.”
“I’ll do a lot worse if you keep lying to me.”
“I’m not lying!” I kicked at his legs. “Let me go!”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know!” Fear once again crashed through me. Where was he? Was he okay?
God, Kas! Where are you?
“Convenient.” He crushed my head harder, a vise ready to crack me in two. “One last chance.”
“Stop it!”
“Tell me what I want to know!”
“Stop hurting me, and I’ll—”
“I’ve had enough.” His fingers feathered out over my head, delivering pinpricks of agony as he pressed harder, building pressure and shoving me into blinding pain. “I’ll find him myself.”
“Please—!”
Jareth—if it even was Jareth—suddenly disappeared.
A blur barrelled into him, his hands ripped from my head, his fingers taking strands of hair with him as he was snatched away and yanked into the dark.
CHAPTER TWO
I’D MOTHERFUCKING KILL HIM.
Whoever the fuck he was, he was dead.
I let loose.
All the anger inside me.
All the worry.
The heartache.
The pain, the shame, the abuse—it all mushroom clouded inside. Black and riddled with rot. Twisted and disfigured, an entity I could no longer control.
It ballooned and smothered everything.
It overtook my soul, turning me empty and free.
Free.
Fuck, I was finally free.
Free to make them pay.
Free to embrace the never-ending violence inside me.
I’d run from this level of anger for eleven goddamn years. I’d hidden from it. Ignored it. Done my best to forget it, but it was always there.
A companion inside me. A whisper in my head. A scar that never healed, just waiting to pour forth and kill everyone who ever hurt me.
It wanted blood.
It wanted their blood.
It wanted apologies and pleas—it wanted to raze the world of every bastard and bitch who ever hurt my family.
It kept growing.
Swirling and hissing, blocking out the forest, the valley, the moon.
I forgot about Gemma and the way my entire being broke apart seeing her hurt by someone else. I forgot about any rules I’d fought to abide by. I gave up trying to be good.
This was me.
This thing.
This monster.
Free.
The black virus spilled out of me, shooting down my arms and into my fists.
It poured out of me like a disease.
A plague ready to wipe out everyone.
It granted sick, sick power after a lifetime of imprisonment and amnesia.
It was a fever and a cancer all in one.
And it cracked me wide open.
I howled as I splintered apart, becoming more than just a man.
I was invincible.
I was reckoning itself.
I didn’t turn my back on my memories this time.
I didn’t hide.
I didn’t fucking cower.
I welcomed them.
The doors in my mind flung wide, the chains snapped free, the locks broke open, and every thrust, slice, curse, kiss, and torture flooded me.
It all flooded me.
It suffocated and crippled. It butchered and slaughtered.
But it also granted a strength I’d been afraid of. Revenge that burned and left nothing but blackened ash. Retribution and vindication that brought so, so much fucking hate.
My fists struck something hard.
His jaw perhaps. His ribs.
I couldn’t see through my fury.
I just kept hitting.
Punching.
Clawing.
Killing.
Pain lashed up my arm, reminding me it wasn’t fully healed.
I didn’t care.
I used it to throw another punch.
And another.
We rolled together.
I was stronger.
When I shoved him onto his back, his arms swung as the undergrowth swallowed us whole. He grunted and fought for breath as I knocked the wind out of him, pinning his throat to the ground.
I struck his head.
I kneed his stomach.
I stopped thinking and just attacked.
Time blurred as we fought.
Sweat rivered down my back as my enemy returned what I gave. A sucker-punch caught me in the rib cage. A well-placed knee got me in the gut.
But I paid him back again and again.
Blood smeared.
Agony flared.
Cries and howls shredded the night sky as we rolled in bracken and leaves.
I wanted him to die.
He represented every man who’d done wrong to me. He was every asshole I’d ever had to endure. He was my enemy, and I would slice him open, pull out his entrails, and let the valley beasts pick his bones clean.
His knee came up, jabbing into my side.
I buckled sideways.
He scrambled away.
I went after him.
Grabbing his ankles, I yanked him back, throwing strike after strike against his back, shoving him from his knees to his face.
He didn’t have time to talk, doing his best not to die.
I relished in that.
I made him afraid.
I hit wherever I could.
He wasn’t human.
I wasn’t human.
He was every evil I had to eradicate.
There was no room for him here.
No room for him, period.