Page 26 of Broken Shadows (Corrupt Shadows Duet #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Evie

Shutting out the desire for benzos, alcohol, and sex suddenly feels like the hardest thing in the world. As if there’s a part of me that wishes we can all stay in this house forever, trapped in a blissful delusion.

I glance down at the bridge beneath me, my eyes tracking the shadow of a large water wraith ominously slipping under my feet—a reminder of what happened to the souls who came here and thought the same thing.

Lorcan’s at my side first when I walk away from the house, his illusion already shattered, although I feel the desire pulsing through our bond like an elastic band that could snap at any moment. My ass is still aching from earlier and all I can think about is him taking me again like that, again and again until I’m so sore I can’t walk.

Careful, Little Witch, Lorcan says into my mind. You smell like you need to be fucked.

I smirk, wanting nothing more than to tease him into chasing me again. But we can’t. We have to keep going and not to mention, we’re surrounded by my friends. Damnit. How can he occupy my thoughts like this so damned much?

We keep walking and I exhale shakily, pulling a loose shard of grass from my hair and bite my lip.

Aiden clears his throat from behind us, and I glance over my shoulder. Aiden and Gideon walk a few paces behind us, followed by Rosa and Ezra, who can’t keep their eyes off each other.

Rosa catches my eye after ogling Ezra’s muscles and I lift a brow. I mean, I get it. It’s not like I haven’t felt the allure of a demon brother. In fact, I still can’t keep my eyes off him now.

Rosa points toward a forest of tall, brittle gray trees wearing a crown of purple leaves. “That wasn’t here earlier.”

“It was,” Lorcan says with a grunt and shoves his hands in his pockets. “We just couldn’t see it through our haze.”

Rosa shakes her head, her fingers pressing against her temples. “I should have known better,” she says, breathlessly as she cradles Gomez in her arms, “than to have lost myself in a blissful feeling. Especially one artificially created.” Her brown gaze travels briefly to Ezra, who's waiting a few paces behind us, then back to me and sighs. “Let’s go. Hopefully, Lucifer’s Court is just beyond those trees.”

Gideon shakes his head. “It’s another trial.”

“Ever the pessimist,” Rosa retorts, but Gideon’s right. It probably is.

I glance over my shoulder. The house fades the further we walk, like an out-of-focus photograph. The heightened desire slips away the further we walk, the feeling quickly replaced with uncertainty.

I breathe in Lorcan’s scent, my stomach flipping at the smell as he comes up beside me and slides his hand in mine. I guess we’re holding hands now. My heart does a little stutter, to remind me I am falling, even though I shouldn’t. He’s a demon and while things have been fun, seductive, and even intimate, Lorcan cannot love me. Demons cannot love.

Yet, with a gentle squeeze to my fingers, I’m reminded of all the things he’s said, of all the sweet touches and caresses and wonder if he can and if he does. It’s just he was so thoughtful of me earlier, of my pleasure and consent. Surely, it means something.

His dark eyes find mine as he side-eyes me, his voice sultry and deep in our bond. What are you thinking about, Little Witch?

Heat flushes my neck and cheeks, and I look away. Nothing.

He clears his throat, then speaks through our bond. You’re flustered. Now I’m really intrigued.

Don’t be, I bite into his mind. It’s not about sex.

Fuck. Why am I acting like such a bitch? I don’t look at him when he tugs me closer.

His voice comes through tender, more inquisitive. Are you thinking about us?

I don’t answer. Because why? Am I embarrassed about feeling this way? For falling for him. Oh, Hell. I really am. Every word he spews is either a fucking bruise to my heart, or the ointment that heals it.

The rest of the group walk forward onto the purple-leaf carpeted ground and into the entrance to the woods, while Lorcan pulls me to a halt, turning me to face him. Those eyes. My gods. Then his lips, so perfect that all I want to do is a spread a kiss over them.

He pushes a lock of hair from my eyes, his thumb dragging goosebumps over my cheek. “I am just as intrigued, if not more, about matters of your heart, Evie.”

“I—I know you care about me, but how much do you… you know, care?” Gods, I’m fucking rambling. What the hell is wrong with me?

His smile widens and my stomach flips. “Read the letter,” he says, as if sensing my question. The one I’ve wanted to ask since he came out of that mirror: Do you love me?

“I thought you said to wait until after the trials?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “You need to hear what I have to say now.”

I peer behind him to the group, who have disappeared into the fog beyond the trees. “It’s in Rosa’s bag. Can you just tell me?”

He smirks. “Can you tell me first?”

My eyes narrow. Fucker. “Fine. I’ll read the letter.”

“Let’s go find Rosa then,” he quips. “Wherever the Human Rainbow has gone.” His pastel-green eyes are swallowed by blackness as he peers into the trees. “Stay close.”

I nod and follow him past a rickety, wooden sign unfittingly labeled Wildflower Woods. Flowers punctuate everywhere an ‘O’ would be in the words, the carvings crisp and defined despite the overall wear of the wood itself. A dark greenish-blue ivy crawls up the post and around the edge of the sign, and I suspect it’s the only thing holding it upright.

Goosebumps prick my ankles as a dense, glowing fog creeps around my feet, swallowing the trees ahead in a ghostly wave.

“Rosa?” My voice echoes, the sound so lonely as it’s lost in the eerie silence.

A twig snaps up ahead, drawing my gaze to a large, dull cobweb caught between two branches. A shudder skittles through my bones. “That must be one big ass spider.”

Lorcan’s eyes narrow. “What spider?”

I point at the cobweb. “None, it’s just a web.”

Lorcan’s brows knit together, a pearl of sweat on his forehead as his focus turns to the underbrush. “Did you hear that?”

A panicked flutter sounds in the beats of his heart as he leans closer. “I swear, I heard a fucking snake. Probably Ezra.”

“Maybe,” I say with a shrug. “But I’m not really scared of snakes.” My eyes lift to the web hanging dully under the gray sky. “Spiders, on the other hand?”

Boots hammer against the ground ahead, multiple footsteps, crunching leaves and twigs like bones.

Aiden appears in the tree line, tendrils of fog shrouding him like spectral fingers. I back up a few paces when he looks at us and screams. The blacks of Aiden’s large pupils gloss with unseen horrors. Behind him, Rosa follows, thickets of brambles slashing at her arms as she looks right through me.

“What’s wrong?” I shout, and Lorcan's grip tightens around my palm.

“Ghosts!” Rosa screams and runs in the opposite direction.

Lorcan pins me to the spot before I can chase her. “She’s hallucinating,” he spits, then takes a step toward Aiden, who falls to his knees, kicks his legs out from behind him, and scrambles backward.

“No!” Aiden’s yell pierces my eardrums as he scuttles until his back presses up against a large trunk. The bark crumbles under Aiden’s touch, the wood of the tree bleeding crimson rivers. “C-c-clown.” Aiden points at Lorcan, tears streaming from his bloodshot eyes. “P-please, no.”

Lorcan’s panicked expression shifts easily into a psychotic smirk. Aiden jolts, his hand clutching his chest and crumpling the fabric of his purple shirt as Lorcan jumps close to him, hands extended with the creepiest smile I’ve ever seen. “Boo.”

“Ahh.” Aiden clamps his eyes shut, his fingers desperately skating over the bleeding tree trunk, as if it might save him.

Shaking my head, I grab Lorcan’s arm and pull him back to my side. “Stop terrorizing him… and enjoying it.”

Lorcan chuckles darkly. “I can only promise to stop.”

“Aiden, it’s okay. It’s Evie.”

Aiden stumbles over his words when he finally climbs to his feet, point a shaky finger at me. “You ate Evie?”

“No, I am Evie.”

Aiden’s jaw slacks. “You’re not her!” Aiden’s cry echoes deep into the chasm of the woods and my eyes widen.

“What the fuck?” I say, stepping backward.

“Your words are changed in his point of view,” he explains and looks around.

His hand is back in mine, but his fingers are furry now, and all too warm and twitchy. My eyes drift upward, and I notice Gomez, who disappears into the branches above.

My eyelashes flick up as I watch his wings curl around his body in an attempt to get out of the thickening fog surrounding us.

A chill creeps over my body, my breath coming out in a puff of smoke as I turn to look at Lorcan and instead discover a spider the size of a human, the creature’s body glistening with tiny brown hairs.

I drop the creature’s leg and scream, and the spiders looks at me, taking me in with those black, soulless orbs. Clicking erupts from its mouth when it drags the top of its leg over my forearm, its sticky threads grazing my skin in a sickening, gentle caress.

Heat burns through my legs as I turn and run into the dense woods, the tall, blue grass feathering my thighs.

My feet ache as I navigate the uneven, mossy mattress below, littered with rocks. Webs stretch across the path ahead, strands of ghostly threads caught in the dappled light, and I divert into taller grass.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Tick, click, tick.

The spiders clicking sounds through mine and Lorcan’s bond, halting me. My breaths come in ragged bursts, my lungs aching with each breath of icy air.

Lorcan! Lorcan!

Bile bites the back of my throat, and I slowly stand. A tickle glides over my shoulder. I shiver under the chill wrapping me when the tickle turns tangible, gliding down my arm.

A scream tears from my dry throat, echoing through the clearing as I notice the body gift-wrapped with web, suspended between two gnarled branches.

Threads surround me, caught between the gray, cracked bark of the trees, glistening with the promise to ensnare me if I get too close.

Suddenly, I’m the fly.

I pivot again, ducking under a web, my stomach gliding against the feathery grass. I grab a branch, the bark crumbling, turning into sticky blood oozing through the gaps in my fingers as if the trees are people, bodies even, and I realize that like the other trials, they probably are. Souls who never got out of here.

Click. Hiss.

My eyes flick upward to the source of the sounds—gigantic spiders, their spindly legs curling inward as they descend from threads of web toward me.

“No!”

My mind races, adrenaline coursing through my veins when I run again, the woods blurring around me.

Wait.

This is a hallucination.

His words from earlier come back to me with ease. That’s all it is. A fucking hallucination.

It’s not real. Not real.

I clamp my eyes shut.

“Not real,” I yell this time as more clicking sounds through our bond. “Not real. I am not afraid.”

I hold myself still, going against every primal instinct in my body. How many times have I sought things that make me afraid? I used to long for terror and I won’t let damned spiders me my downfall.

A fog of silk creeps around my body, encompassing my every limb until I can’t see anything but web as spindly legs make quick work of me.

My heart sticks in my throat as my powers thrum, begging for me to at least attempt an escape, but I hold still instead and allow myself to be taken my these eight-legged horrors, keeping my eyes closed.

Either I’m incredibly fucking stupid, or this works.

After a minute, the sticky silk leaves only threads of phantom feeling on my skin. I blink. Once, then twice, and look around at the still woods.

No spiders. No webs. It was a trial and from the sounds of distant screams and yells, I’m the first to break out of it.

Gomez’s chirps reach me through the sporadic screams and oppressive silence. “Gomey,” I exclaim as he uses his wings to climb down the trunk, his little claws gripping the bark. Every few seconds, he pauses to look at me, and I notice the little purple leaves clinging to his shining, black fur.

He reaches the last branch, then swoops down and lands on my hand. I bring him to my face, nuzzling my lips and nose into my little puffball.

“Are you okay?” I whisper into his fur, and he lets out a contented squeak, playfully tugging at my hair. “Go on, jump on,” I say with a tap on my shoulder. He curls up against my neck, using my hair as a curtain as we walk through the woods. “Don’t worry,” I say when he chirps and squeaks. “We’re going to find Auntie Rosa now.”

A hiss pulls my attention to the underbrush. A snake. A real one, or at least a Hell snake. The creature’s brown and red body coils tightly, ready to strike should I come too close.

Gomez squeaks and I shush him. “Don’t act like prey around predators,” I whisper.

An icy breeze circles my body, carrying the pungent smell of decaying vegetation with the recent fragrance of rain.

A glimmer of green comes into my vision as Rosa runs through the woods without looking where she’s going, her face buried in her palms.

I race to her, calling her name. She uncovers her face then claws at imaginary figments on her skin. “It’s not real. Come on, you know how to see through imaginary bullshit better than anyone.” I grab her by the shoulders and shake her. “You’re a goddamned therapist and the strongest person I know. Pull it together.”

The tough love aches my heart, but it seems to do something . Her blinking slows, and the golden rivers in her irises shine a little more. “Ghosts.”

I shake my head. “It’s all a hallucination.”

She lets out a tense breath and pushes me back at arm’s length. “Do you see that tree?”

She points behind me, so I whip my head around and then nod.

“And that grass, there?”

I nod again.

“That snake?” I arrow my gaze toward the direction she’s pointing and watch as a brown tail slithers into the tall grass.

“Yes, I see it.”

She swallows thickly, her throat bobbing. “The ghost next to you.”

I look around me and shake my head. “There’s nothing there.”

She nods and closes her eyes briefly. When she opens them again, she pulls Gomez into her arms. “What a perfect little distraction,” she whispers to our bat while tickling him behind the ears. “None of this is real,” she tells Gomez as if it’s some big secret. “Were you afraid too? You flew off earlier.”

He squeaks sadly, and she snuggles him tighter.

“We need to find Lorcan,” I say. “I ran from him earlier because I thought he was a gigantic spider.”

Her eyes flash with concern. “Oh, Hell no. Maybe I should be thankful all I had was ghosts chasing me.”

“Spirits,” I correct, only because it’s important to know the difference between them when we’re literally surrounded by them here. But she waves a hand, ambling ahead and no longer listening.

Lor? I’m coming back, I whisper through our bond, but am met with a chilling silence.