Page 1 of Burning Demons (Burning Torments #1)

Chapter 1

Tate

“Happy birthday, Tate!”

Smile . Nod .

“Happy birthday!”

Smile, nod, and lift my glass .

The venue was horribly decorated in silver and gold. Dozens of tables with huge centerpieces of what looked like upside-down chandeliers held glittering 18s to mark the occasion.

The lights overhead were dimmed enough so the thousands of candles could do their work. Did it say more about me or the guests that I entertained myself by scanning those flickering flames to find one that had been snuffed out over searching this crowd for a friendly face?

At the far end of the room, empty and awkward, sat a lonely table with seating for twelve. It was my table. The one Mother set aside for me to invite my friends to this event celebrating my life. She wouldn’t have noticed I no longer had any friends since that detail didn’t concern her.

“Happy birthday, Tate!”

Right. Smile . Nod .

A peal of laughter rose above the din, causing my inner ear to contract and shudder. Catherine Decker Moreau—Mother, the woman of the hour—stood across this insanely huge room with acoustics too well designed for its own good, surrounded by her faux friends.

Thankfully I was safe from her immediate presence while standing next to the cake. She wouldn’t come near it, thinking the calories would rub off on her somehow just by being in close proximity. I eyed the monstrosity in the shape of a champagne bottle pouring over glasses made by some dessert chef I had never heard of before Mother wouldn’t shut up about him.

Every detail was edible, so said Mother. From the frozen, cascading liquor to the larger-than-appropriate bubbles in the edible glasses. Why Mother picked the design, I had no idea. Eighteen, not twenty-one, oh brilliant one . Even the banner across the bottom that read Happy Birthday Tate Decker was edible. I only knew that because a chunk was missing, showing off the cakey insides and some sort of white pudding layer.

I rolled my eyes and turned away from it. Fuck me, I needed a cigarette to settle my—everything.

“Tate, how are you doing?” an older, balding man asked as he closed the last few feet between us. Andrew Spellman, if I wasn’t mistaken about his name, worked with my stepfather at his law firm. Shorter than me and thin, he was one of the nicer ones who seemed genuine whenever we had an occasion to meet.

“Hi, Mr. Spellman. Enjoying the party?” I asked.

Spellman smiled and nodded. “Yes, of course. Your mother certainly knows how to throw a grand event.”

That she did. And that was about all she did. Parties, pills, gossip, and her disappointment for me, her only child, were all ways she made sure her spotlight was never-ending.

“Have you tried the cake?” I asked to take the focus off Mother before I said something I shouldn’t.

Spellman leaned around me as if it were needed to see the freak of cake nature behind me. “Not yet. Is it any good?”

A legit smile curled the corners of my mouth. “Nope.” I stood back so we could admire the thing side by side. “It’s a bit intimidating, isn’t it?”

Spellman chuckled. “I’m glad you said that and not me. If it weren’t for servers cutting pieces of it, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

I pointed at what was supposed to be champagne bubbles. “Maybe the herniated balls?”

In spite of his age and stuffy bow tie, Spellman laughed. “They need to be put out of their misery. Good God, I hope the inside doesn’t have some sort of raspberry filling. That would be just awful.”

“I think it’s more of that white creamy stuff.”

We turned to each other at the same time, blinked, then laughed.

Spellman nudged his glasses off his nose and wiped at his eyes. “Oh God.” He glanced around. “This entire party has taken on a new light.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “It was nice seeing you again, Tate. I hope you have a great birthday.”

“Thank you, Mr. Spellman.”

As soon as he walked away, the isolation of my life seeped in. I preferred being alone most often, except tonight. In a room full of people here to celebrate me, their attention was focused on Mother—or him . I wouldn’t mind it except that instead of merging with the walls as I did at any other event, I was forced out onto an illusory stage for all to see.

Alone.

The well-wishes were as useless as flash paper. Thin, like the skin I held my terrified reality in.

The ever-present icicle poised over my neck dripped, sending a biting cold down my spine and over my shoulders. Oily smooth and crawling with a thousand tiny fingers at the same time. I didn’t need to turn to know what caused the sensation. Or, rather, who caused it.

Franklin Angus Moreau IV, my stepfather, came into my life almost five years ago. The chain he had spun around my neck refused to let me do anything other than turn and acknowledge his eyes on me. Along with Mother, the three of us made a grotesque triangle of mutilated love and disgust.

Mother’s third husband funded the lifestyle she had grown accustomed to with her first and second husbands. Franklin gave her the financial freedom and avenues for the society she craved. The public persona she fueled with fake adoration and care and in private supported with chemicals and abhorrence. In return, her contribution to their twisted marriage was—me.

Cold, gray eyes that had haunted the air I breathed for over four years stared unblinkingly at me, and I couldn’t turn from the pull. Darkening with lust, they undressed me, and I couldn’t cringe from the touch. Frozen, as much from fear as self-loathing, I stayed as still as a statue and let him finish.

Once his eyes hit my shiny Oxfords, the spell broke. He turned to a man on his left and laughed. Did he talk to his friends about me? Did anyone else know how he touched me in private? How he called me his? How until a few months ago, I thought I was his?

My ideas and feelings toward Franklin lay as twisted and confusing as the roots of a tree. They ran deep. When I tried to find their ending, a starting point to unravel my own thoughts where he was concerned, I found myself in a darkness so profound I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open. Lost. Broken. And some broken things couldn’t be fixed.

Did he really care for me as he claimed?

Did I care for him?

Franklin and friends nodded with raised glasses in the direction of Mother, and like the well-trained pet that I was, I too turned to her as she smiled and graciously bowed her head in recognition of my stepfather. This whole thing was such a macabre act of family .

Mother had a wild weekend in Florida her freshman year of college and came home with a little present she found out about months later. Too many months later, to hear her tell it, and she couldn’t legally abort me. Yes, my mother-of-the-year had told me on several occasions how her life would have been better without me in it. Or maybe it was that if she’d known how I would turn out, she would have gone through with it, would have ended me before I began. Who knew. The story changed depending on which bottle she was tits-deep in.

Sure, it had hurt the first time I heard those loving words, maybe the second time also. What kid wanted to hear that? But if it weren’t for Mother’s drug-laden, drunken rants, I wouldn’t know half the shit I did about my life.

My eighteen years had been sad ones. Not nearly as bad as they could’ve been, I supposed, but probably not as great as they might have been if Dad’s little swimmers had found some other womb to set up shop in.

I curled my fingers, yet again, wishing a cigarette were between them.

Mother and I had never gotten along. How could we when she did her best to convince me I was the root of all the bad things that ever happened to her?

Then, Franklin came into our lives.

Before him, I had floundered worse than a ship in a hurricane. Mother was a horrid woman, corrupt, selfish, and rotten to the core. Her ugly center was carefully hidden behind a thin veil of Botox, skin cream, and prescription drugs.

Mother handed over her thirteen-year-old son to Franklin without hesitation, and in my naivety, I assumed he would fill a much-needed role in my life.

He didn’t. Not exactly.

Their courtship was short. Mother was blissed-out. Franklin was eager for us to settle into our new lives as a family. At fourteen, not even a full year after I met the man, Franklin showed me what he was really after.

His smiles turned calculating.

His hugs became suffocating.

His gaze dug under my skin, and the press of his fingers lingered long after I was out of his reach.

After the first time he came to my room in the night, I had run the gamut of emotions and reactions. Fight. Flight. Anger. Fear. Numbness. Then finally, acceptance. I convinced myself early on that I liked it. That was one of the things that had me so fucked-up now. I did enjoy. I came every time; Franklin made sure of it. Sometimes it was blindingly euphoric. That had to mean it was something good, something I liked, right?

I just … I just didn’t know anymore. Anything. I didn’t know my own feelings or my own mind. I didn’t know right or wrong. I risked a glance at Mother and Franklin; both were in the middle of crowds, laughing and chatting away. Sometimes I didn’t know them either. I couldn’t equate the people they were now to who would be at home later.

There were times when I imagined the rest of my life and the distorted lines between Mother, Franklin, and me didn’t seem so misshapen, almost tolerable. Those times weren’t that often and were usually broken apart by the spiked sledgehammer that was Mother’s drunken tirades. I learned a lot through those rages. Like the conversation Mother and Franklin had before they got married. The agreement they formed, negotiating his access to me as if I were property.

That truth forced my love for Franklin to drain like pus from a wound. What once was the bright spot in my world dimmed to sickly gray. What once gave a semblance of comfort became hollow and cracked.

My two nightmares, Mother and Franklin, so very different from each other and killing me all the same, tossed differing glances at me for the remainder of the party. At times, she would gesture my way with a practiced expression as if to say, yes, my baby is turning eighteen . Franklin stayed glued to one spot, letting his admirers come to him as a king should. He laughed from the gut, smirked when he caught my eyes on him, and winked as if we shared the same thoughts.

We didn’t. I was sure of it.

I moved on occasion, trading one spot near the cake to one near an ice sculpture, then back. The dim lights were too bright to disappear in. Sweat dampened my neck under my collar. Out of sheer habit and training, I stood straight, smiled, and commented without thinking. Inside, I screamed, I cried, and I begged my mind not to break.

The party ended by midnight, and the limo dropped us at our building’s entrance not long after. I didn’t bother to track where Franklin went once inside. I knew his habits well. He would grab a drink, something dark and smokey. He would undo his bow tie and top button but leave all of his tuxedo on. I left most of my clothes on as well, knowing the routine, and had only hung my jacket on the valet stand when an ice cube clinked against the glass of the tumbler in his hand. I didn’t turn or acknowledge him standing in my doorway, just reached for my cufflinks.

He came to me before I got too far with undressing myself, preferring to do it instead. He sat his glass on the dresser with an exaggerated slowness, letting his fingertips slide through the condensation. I eyed the thing as if it had personally offended me for not keeping his hands busy for longer. Franklin reached around me, undoing my shirt buttons from behind while locking a knowing glare with mine in the mirror.

When he moved his agile fingers to the clasp on my pants, my vision grew dark. Shadows crept in with the roaring in my ears, closing tighter and tighter, drowning all else with every tug of material as he undressed me, until I saw and heard nothing. I knew nothing. Shapes were abstract. The touch and pressure on my arms and legs, my scalp and back, were vague.

I can do this , I whispered into the silence of my mind. My body reacted through muscle memory, needing no direction from me, and my mind floated.

When he finished, when I finished, he left me on my bed. The darkness clouding my vision cleared as Franklin reached my doorway. He didn’t look back. Shoulders straight and head high, not a single regret to be found, he left my room as confidently as he had entered.

I waited in stillness for the penthouse to quiet for the night. His room wasn’t near mine. I couldn’t hear him retire, pleased with himself, but he did. He liked routine.

Hot, wet trails of shame and defeat streaked my temples into my hair. This couldn’t be my life, could it? Would I end up like Mother? Addicted to pills to numb the disappointments? Hating everyone around me? Hating the one man who enabled my life, but hating myself more for the things I let him do?

I flicked my gaze to the door. How long had it been since he left? Long enough? I swallowed a groan at the ache in my body as I stood.

“One. Step,” I whispered. After the first one, came another. And another. My legs wobbled, but I made it to my bathroom and into the shower.

The steam cleared my mind. The soap washed away the lingering scent of Franklin’s cologne. With every passing second, my movements became surer, quicker, purposeful.

An alternative, a way out of this hell, came to me weeks ago. It had taken me far too long to reach for it, but I had my reasons. Franklin’s touch was like a reset on my brain. All the progress I had made, the determination to leave, withered. But each time he left me, it became easier to reclaim the ground I had created. I wouldn’t be powerless any longer.

I didn’t bother drying fully, just wrapped the towel around my hips and padded into my closet. Buried in the back, under a monogrammed gym bag still stiff from never being used, was the phone I bought myself. A phone with no ties to Franklin or Mother that would become my lifeline.

Sniffling away stray tears, I glanced over my shoulder at the doorway into my closet, half expecting to see him yet knowing he was in bed asleep. Franklin always slept deeply after … No . Stop . You aren’t going there . I twisted around and turned the phone on, letting it come to life while I stuffed clothes into the bag.

It was early, but I dialed the number I had memorized and as it rang, I reached for another bag with shaking hands.

He would answer.

He had to answer.

The line picked up with a shuffling noise and my heart stopped in my chest. If this didn’t work, I’d think of something else, but it had to work. Something had to work. I couldn’t … I couldn’t do this any longer.

“Hello?” came a gruff, sleep-deepened voice.

“Dad?”

A pause lasted long enough for fresh tears to pool in my eyes, then fall when he finally said, “Tate?” A little stronger, more awake, he added, “Everythin’ okay?”

No. No, it wasn’t, and I was afraid it never would be.