Page 36 of Blood Claims (Garnet Dagger Mafia #2)

BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

F ear.

Stone cold hard fear.

That’s what this was. A chill that shook me to the bone and made me tremor on the hook I was hanging from. Because in my dreams I had subconsciously always known that it wasn’t real. That I had the chance to escape him just by waking up.

But this time was different.

This time, he was really here, and this was the kind of nightmare you bled through. This was the one where I actually got to see his face, as he reached up and lowered the hood attached to his long jacket.

He was a demon!

He had to be. Half of his face looked like the grim reaper had taken hold.

Black leathery skin stretched over bone…

or was that just what his bones looked like when stripped from flesh?

Each line of half his skull could be seen.

One void of any of the dark features that were etched into his flesh on the other side.

His hard expression was one that I could even see from across the room.

That strong jawline of his was surely carved from stone… it was unmovable.

The shadows he commanded were swirling like angry serpents under his jacket, as if just begging their master to let them free. To release the chaos they’d just had a taste of outside of this room. Shadows I had come to know well, thanks to them always chasing me in my dreams.

“Don’t fucking move or I kill the bitch!” Avellino said.

I could feel the butt of the gun shaking against my temple, telling me he was just as afraid as I was.

But I swore I could see the barest hint of the demon gritting his teeth, a tiny muscle in his jaw jumping.

His eyes started to glow a darker silver, the Hellish side of him taking over as darkness seeped across the part of his face that looked human.

“That won’t work for me,” he said, his voice holding such an unnatural depth to it, I would have believed the devil had taken his place.

I swallowed hard, knowing one wrong move and I would end up with a bullet in my brain and it would all be over.

My last thoughts would be of the brothers I had fallen in love with.

Brothers I hadn’t trusted, and now the result was getting myself killed.

Because either way, I was dead, even if the gun didn’t go off.

The Shadow master had done what he said he would…

He had come for me.

“And it won’t work for you either,” the threat at the door added, making Avellino bark back,

“I’m the one with the gun, asshole!”

But in keeping his eyes on the enemy, he wasn’t keeping them on the real threat as it made its way toward him. Those shadows hadn’t just been confined to his body after all. No, they were creeping through the broken window, flowing across the wall until they went out of sight behind us.

“Not for long,” the demon said with a jerk of his head, making all the shadows rush forward at once. I screamed but it was nothing compared to the sickening sound of bone crunching right next to my head. The howl of pain quickly followed at the same time the gun dropped to the floor.

This all happened on fast forward at speeds I couldn’t track.

One second, the man was by the doorway and the next, he was right in front of us.

Avellino’s neck found itself in the demon’s huge hand before being lifted from the ground and tossed singlehandedly across the room.

The crashing sound was followed by moaning, but the shadow man didn’t care.

He simply stepped closer to me and even when stretched out like this, he was still so much taller.

He grasped my chin, gripping it in his long fingers before lifting my head up. My eyes went wide as I took in the first up-close details of his face.

“Hello, Little Rabbit,” he said, his voice lowering to a far less scary tone. Almost as if he were happy to see me. Which was when the insane part of me decided to answer.

“Hello,” I squeaked, and this actually made him smile, a dark and terrifying grin that had me swallowing hard when his fangs peeked through.

“Now close those pretty eyes for me and don’t look, or it will give you a new nightmare to fear,” he warned, his fingers now caressing down my jawline as he took his time to map the details on my face.

That glow of silver came back momentarily before he heard the groan of pain coming from the side of us, where the wall was a crumbled mess of broken plaster board and splintered wood.

His eyes seeped right back into terrifying, where the black consumed their entirety.

This was when he ran his big palm down the front of my face, prompting me to close my eyes.

And as for me, I was left shaking like a fish on a hook to the horrifying sounds of death.

The sounds of someone being ripped apart and the screams of pure agony as it happened.

Until finally, after what felt like a small eternity, silence fell upon the room.

Although, with my eyes still held shut as tightly as I could, I screamed the second I felt his hand touch me.

“AH!”

“Calm down,” he commanded, making me do as I was told and hold myself still when I felt his hands frame my hips to stop me from swinging. But then I felt his fingers come to my neck, and this was when I finally braved asking,

“Can I open my eyes now?” I swear I could hear him smile.

“Yes, but unless you want to lose that fancy dinner of yours, I wouldn’t look toward the desk,” he replied, making me wonder how he knew about what I had eaten… Had he been watching us all night?

Either way, I took this advice seriously as I opened my eyes and saved myself the lifetime’s worth of revulsion by keeping my gaze to the man in front of me.

The details of his face were strangely fascinating me, especially now he was this close.

I could now see that the half skull part of his face was actually a leather mask.

Instantly I wanted to know why and what he was hiding underneath it.

But seeing as I wasn’t insane, naturally, I didn’t ask.

But then his intense eyes went to the bite on my neck, and I flinched when he growled, looking to where I gathered he had left the remaining pieces of Avellino’s body.

“You’re still bleeding,” he stated tensely, as if the sight of my blood affected him.

But I just couldn’t tell from the half of his expression on display what it meant.

His full lips thinned in a harsh way, before he opened his mouth and let his fangs emerge fully, making me gasp.

One of his hands snapped to my waist and gripped it tight, preventing me from moving as I tried to jerk away from the sight.

But he offered no comfort nor explanation as he bit into the side of his palm, drawing blood instantly to the surface.

Then once most of his hand was dripping crimson, he reached out to the bite at my neck.

He rubbed his blood over the wound, which instantly started to take effect, just like when Victor had done the same after the witch had attacked me.

However, the difference was that it didn’t burn quite as much, and I put this down to it being a smaller injury with less skin that needed to heal.

Once this was done, I was left panting, my head hanging down as I tried to calm my heart with deep, slower breaths.

Something easier to do when he stepped away from me, now picking something off the floor that I couldn’t see.

And considering he had gone back over to where the body was, I decided to close my eyes and not focus on the sounds.

Grotesque sounds of liquid squelching, as if some kind of weapon had been used to gut the remains.

It was sickening enough that I started humming to help drown it out.

I didn’t know what he was doing, and I didn’t want to know. I only looked again when I felt him stepping back up to me. I glanced down to see him wiping his hands on a piece of cloth, riding himself of the blood that now stained the material. Blood that I had a feeling wasn’t just his own.

“Now I will ask once more, do you wish for me to take you from this place?”

I frowned before the memory of the same question penetrated, because he had asked me the same thing in the dream. But when I hesitated, he told me,

“I assure you, more are on the way and although I welcome the fight, I cannot account for your safety whilst I… dispatch them.” He paused first to look toward the last man he ‘dispatched’, making his point.

So, I nodded, but this wasn’t enough for him because he collared my throat enough to push my face up with his thumb under my chin.

“I need to hear it,” he ordered and in response, I released a shuddered breath before telling him,

“Yes.” To which he grinned and again, it enticed another shiver out of me.

“Good little rabbit,” he replied, before stepping into my body so he was right against me.

Then he banded an arm around me and lifted me off my feet, while simultaneously reaching up with his free hand to detach my bound hands from the hook.

But instead of setting me down or cutting the rope, he instead brought my arms down over his head.

Doing so by ducking into the space so my hands remained bound to the back of his neck.

The pain as blood started to flow back into them made me whimper.

“The ache will ease,” he told me, surprising me enough to want to question why he cared. But I refrained out of fear because I didn’t know him or what was likely to set him off. And so far, he hadn’t hurt me, only saved me from the ones that wanted me dead. So, I guess by this point it was…

Better the devil I knew.

The devil who quickly scooped up my legs as if I had just met the dark prince in this twisted fairy tale.

Or was he the demon knight who was now carrying me away from this Hell I just endured?

It would seem so, and his protection didn’t end there.

Because he also shielded me from the new horror he created as he reached up with the arm supporting my back so as he could turn my face to chest.

“Keep your eyes closed,” he warned, stepping into the warehouse.

The slight glimpse of bloody red corpses was reason enough to do as he asked before the details could take root. I felt so small in his hold, his big arms enveloping me and keeping me to his wide chest as easily as if I were a child.

“Now take a breath, for this may feel… strange,” he said, and before I could ask what he meant, I gasped when I felt it.

The first dark caress of what I knew must have been his shadows.

But despite how badly I wanted to look, I kept my eyes closed tight, fearing what I would see.

And he must have known, because my body shook for a few seconds before he held me tighter through the internal panic.

It felt a bit like water rising, a cold, icy chill consuming pieces of me as it swirled around us.

Like a liquid tornado, keeping us captured at the center, until our bodies felt like we were floating.

As if we were in the eye of the storm and it was one he held me through, refusing to let go.

And whether it was foolish or not, I, in turn, latched onto the only safety I could feel.

I buried my head into his chest, my forehead against the hard planes of his pecs, the steady heartbeat telling me how calm he was.

An easy thump I followed, counting the beats, and keeping my mind anchored to the refuge of it.

But then, all at once, the feeling left, and as if fear had me frozen against him, he told me,

“It is done.”

I took that as being the all clear to now open my eyes, and what I found next was nothing short of incredible!

“What… what is this place?” I asked, looking up the steps to find a hauntingly beautiful Gothic manor house. Hell, it could have even been a castle for all I knew, it wasn’t like I had ever seen one in real life before.

It made me wonder what it would look like in the daylight because, like this, it was mostly frightening but in a strange, ethereal beauty, kind of way.

The huge, arched wooden door, that most definitely looked like it belonged on a castle, stood at the top of the arch of steps.

Thick, chunky, lengths of dark wood with hammered metal hinges and black rivets.

A door made even more intimidating with its two soaring towers framing either side of the entrance.

The dark gray stone was old and weathered, with vines of ivy trying to creep its way up the walls. The collection of tall glass windows were like dark fingers reaching up to the sky, thanks to there being no lights on inside. Nothing to cast a warm glow or welcoming sight for its owner’s return.

Because he soon answered my question as to where I was now, making me realize I had just exchanged one kidnapping for another. Only this time, it wasn’t a dirty, blood-stained warehouse.

It was his…

“Home.”