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SCENT OF BLOOD

DIYA

“A re you scared, Doctor?”

I stopped behind a tree, sharpening my ears. The voice was soft and hollow, and it was coming from Doctor Tomlinson’s cottage. I quickened my steps until I was close enough to hear him, to see what was happening.

“You deserve to die screaming, Doctor T,” the angry voice said, filling the eerie silence that wrapped around the trees. “And you will.”

Shit. I had chosen the wrong time to go for a walk.

I peeked through the wooden windows, my heart hammering in my ears.

The cottage was dark, except for the single white bulb hanging from the ceiling, and Doctor Tomlinson sat in a chair, eyes wide, white shirt branded with blood.

Oh. This is bad.

“Please.” The doctor trembled, his eyes filled with tears as he looked up at the man standing opposite him. “Please.”

“She trusted you to help her, and you betrayed her, and sold her to a fucking monster. You killed her, Doctor T.”

I should have left by then; I should have run screaming bloody murder. But something in his voice pulled me closer. Maybe it was the rage laced with desperation. It was familiar.

“I-I didn’t. She was sick in the head,” Doctor T’s voice ended in a whimper when the hilt came down hard on his skull. “None of it was real. She was hallu-hallucinating.”

The man standing opposite Doctor T wore a black mask, which covered his entire face.

“Hallucinating?” he growled, grabbing Doctor T by the hair. “I found the letters you stole from Riley in your cottage, Doctor T. She wasn’t hallucinating. You knew everything, and you fucking used her,” he growled, low, vicious.

Trembling, cursing, I pulled the coat tighter around me, keeping to the shadows.

Doctor T looked up, his face crumbling under the weight of his fear.

“No, no, Asher. Pl-please.”

I stumbled back, lips parted, heart pounding.

Oh.

Asher. Asher Maddox, my delightfully brooding patient, who never spoke a word during the four months I’d treated him. And here he was, talking so eloquently.

I always knew he was trouble, even when he sat on my couch, all squinty-eyed and silent, I could tell. Now, here he was, bathed in shadows and sins, neither broken nor haunted… in all his twisted glory.

Asher had been the star of my wet dreams for months now.

It was unprofessional and unhealthy.

As a psychiatrist, I was familiar with how obsession worked and the way it consumed rational thoughts and distorted your senses.

Did that stop me from craving him, dreaming of him, letting my thoughts spiral down dark, tempting paths? No.

“Don’t lie to me, Doctor T. I’ll make this as painless as possible, but only if you give me something in return,” Asher said.

The fury in his voice was a mating call to the long-buried need within me, making my body burn alive with adrenaline. I hadn’t felt this alive in a while.

“As-Asher, I don’t know anything. Please.”

“If you want to play it like that….” Asher said, chopping off Doctor T’s middle finger. “Are you still going to say you know nothing?”

This man was raving mad, and I was mesmerized by the last stitch of sanity lingering in his eyes, and the lunacy just beneath it, clawing to break free.

I bit my lip, swallowing a gasp as the dagger sank into the doctor’s shoulder. He let out an ear-piercing scream that echoed off the wooden walls.

“Tell me now, and I’ll make your death painless. Do you want to go through this for another hour?” Asher growled.

“Pl-please. I don’t know anything. You have to trust me. She killed herself.”

“I told you not to lie,” Asher said. “One more chance. I want a name, and then I’ll put you out of your misery.” Doctor T howled when Asher pressed the dagger into his right eye.

“He made me do it,” the doctor whimpered, his resolve finally breaking.

“Who made you do it?”

“I don’t know. I only had to open the back door when everyone’s as-asleep and someone else would take the girls out.”

“So no name? Okay. Die, then, Doctor.”

“No no no. Ha-Hannigan.”

“Is he the one who killed Riley?”

“I-no,” the doctor slurred. “The one who drove them to him.”

“Where can I find him?”

“He-he owns The Gates,” Doctor T gasped, and Asher nodded.

“That wasn’t too difficult, was it? You wasted my time and made me do all of this for nothing,” Asher said with a deep sigh.

Asher Maddox didn’t suffer from PTSD or any of the diagnoses listed in his medical file. He wasn’t at the asylum to get better. No. Asher was here on his terms, playing his own game. And we were all just pawns.

“I didn’t have a choice,” the doctor stammered. “I ha-had to save myself. He-he would have…”

“Oh, one always has a choice. Always. I have a choice now: to kill or not kill.”

“Pl-please, please. Don’t,” Doctor T begged.

“And I’m choosing to kill you now,” Asher said, his voice soft, kind, as the dagger went into the doctor’s stomach with a sickening squelch. He stood there, unmoving, and waited... until everything went quiet.

He studied Doctor Tomlinson before dutifully closing the backpack filled with his torture instruments and gloves, then walked out, whistling .

The rippling roar of voices inside me faded as I watched him vanish beyond the overgrown trees. I slowly backed away from Doctor T’s cottage, whistling the same song, jogging back to my cottage.

Locking my cottage door behind me, I shrugged off my jacket and tossed it onto the table before collapsing onto the couch with a long sigh.

“This is such a fucking mess,” I muttered, hoping the past I’d buried in New York wouldn’t come clawing its way back because of this murder.

After Detective Knight took me into question about Toby’s death, I decided to leave New York behind and disappear. I found a job in Hollowhaven Sanatorium, in Hollow Heights, Georgia, which was supposed to be a boring town with no dark secrets.

I was wrong.

Oh, this was supposed to be a fresh start. A chance to start over, to outrun the shadows I’d left behind.

And here I was, once again. Caught in the middle of a murder.

I couldn’t let Asher Maddox ruin the life I had carefully built upon lies. Oh, no.

“Open.”

I jumped up from the couch with a gasp when I heard the incessant knocking.

“Open the fucking door. NOW,” Asher said, voice low and urgent. “I’m getting very impatient here.”

Taking a deep breath and composing my face into one of fear, I pulled the door open, and my breath caught.

Shadows played across his body, accentuating every hard line and defined muscles as if he were sculpted from the darkness around him.

I took a shaky breath.

“Wha-what do you want?” I asked.

“Move,” Asher gritted out, pointing his dagger at my chest.

I took a step back, and he followed me in, his gait lazy.

“I don’t want any trouble,” I whispered, looking up at him.

“What were you doing out there in the middle of the night?” he asked, taking a step closer, and I took one back. I already knew how this dance went. My back hit the wall soon, and he closed the distance between us until I could smell him all around me.

I didn’t need to see his eyes to know they were on me. I could feel them, sharp and burning, cutting straight through me.

The mask made him look even more unhinged and disturbingly magnetic.

Oh, Sweet Krishna!

I hated how my breath caught, how heat coiled low in my belly.

I wanted him like this… on top of me, his skin flushed against mine, his hands wild on my body, his cock buried deep within me, his body feeling every flicker of my pleasure, fueling it into something uncontrollable and feral.

Not the time to realize you have a mask kink, Diya. Not when the man standing before you might carve you open.

It was madness to be turned on by someone who had come here to kill me.

I should have been thinking about escape. About survival. About anything other than the way his nearness made my body burn with need.

This is rock bottom.

“I couldn’t sleep. So, I went for a walk. I-you don’t have to do this,” I said, my voice shaking.

“You talk too much,” he said, pressing the cold steel against my lips. “Hush now, you psycho.” He scoffed. “I’m going to talknow, and you’ll listen like the good girl you’re not . Tonight didn’t happen. You saw nothing. If you breathe a word of it to anyone, I’ll know and come for you. Do you hear me? Blink twice for yes.”

Fucking bastard.

Every part of me wanted to not blink, to push him until I broke him.

I blinked twice.

“Good,” he said, his dagger moving down my throat. “You’ll stay alive until I’m safe,” he breathed. “Pretty lips…” He cleared his throat. “Keep them shut, yes?”

I blinked twice.

“You’re a quick study.” He chuckled, amusement clear in his voice.

I gritted my teeth. Oh, how I longed to punch in his throat, tie him to my bed, and then kill him. Slowly, sweetly.

But I wasn’t a fool. I knew I wouldn’t win this fight, not like this. Not without a weapon. He was at least a few pounds heavier and a few inches taller and had the advantage of the dagger.

Later. I'd deal with him later.

He turned me around, pressing me face-first into the wall, and then leaned in, his lips brushing my ear. “Don’t say a word.”