Page 14 of Executing Malice (Jefferson Rejects #4)

LEILA

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The hallway breathes.

It scuttles in the shadowy grime clinging to every surface.

It moves and shifts, alive beneath the peeling wallpaper slick and swollen with rot.

The stench of damp wood and rusted metal clings to the air.

To my skin. I taste it at the back of my throat.

Feel it beneath my bare feet as I shuffle along hardwood soft with filth.

I don’t know where I am, yet I know every crack in the walls. I know every is door barricaded.

I know I shouldn’t be here. Out in the open.

Prey.

But I can’t move. Roots have forged from the decay and bind my feet while the house groans around me. A sound of pain.

Hunger.

Somewhere ahead, folded in the absence of light where I know I should never go, a baby cries.

A woman screams.

The raw shriek of agony splits through my skull and turns my bowels to liquid.

The baby wails a sound too wrong before it’s silenced.

And I’m sobbing in its place. I’m kicking and thrashing against the roots coiling with living force up my ankles, around my calves.

I fight to find the baby. To protect it, but I’m brought to my knees as the roar of a monster swallows sound itself.

“Shut the fuck up!”

I do.

I mash my lips together, but he’s not talking to me.

He’s screaming at the woman now hysterical in her grief. Lost in her own nightmare and beyond comprehension when the first crack of fist on bone echoes across the void. It rains dust like gray snow from the ceiling. I choke on it even as I squish both fists into my mouth.

It’s not me and I still whimper. I curl into a ball on the floor and wait for my turn. He will tire of her and storm out in search of fresh blood. A new body to break.

“You bitch! You stupid fucking bitch. I told you to keep it quiet when I’m sleeping. I told you...”

Another scream rips through the endless corridor. Closer now. Too close.

He’s coming.

Whining like a beaten dog, I scramble. I kick and claw, but the vines tighten. They pin me down. Hold me in place.

“No...” I beg. “Let go. Let go!”

The light overhead buzzes. It dances with the excited chitter of flies trapped in a jar. It claps on and off in rapid succession, expanding the shadows, crafting claws that stretch...

“Aila.”

A hand closes around my wrist and I’m dragged to my feet. It’s so rough and violent, I stumble. The vines tear through flesh as I’m ripped free.

“No!” I scream, fighting for freedom from the monster.

“Stop. It’s me,” the familiar voice whispers in my ear, breath hot against my neck. A boy’s voice. Urgent and safe. “I have you.”

I twist to face him, to see his face, but it shifts.

A blurry snapshot dissolving before my eyes even as I struggle to hold on to it.

He is no more than shadows and a body too skinny to be natural.

Still, his hold on me is firm, protective as I am dragged away from the door at the end of the corridor.

Our feet leave streaks of grime through the maze of hallways and doors. We never slow, not even when the pounding of feet grows faster and louder right on our heels.

I’m shoved into a room ripe with piss and mold. Filmy light filters through unwashed windows to spill over stained, yellow paper curled in the corners. A mattress with no sheets. Broken toys. A single light fixture with no bulb.

I’m thrown to my knees, caught only by the crispy fibers of the carpet.

“Under the bed,” he commands, voice a raspy rattle of terror.

“What about you?” I’m reaching for him, not wanting to go alone.

A bang echoes behind him, and we both jump.

He whirls and shoves me. Hard. “Now!” he snarls.

Openly sobbing, I crawl. Every breath jagged, tattered remains of my resolve as I do as he says.

The underside of the bed is low. I have to get on my belly and still, the rusted springs catch my hair, claw down my back. The carpet scratches my palms, my naked knees.

The boy crouches after me and I think for a second he’s going to join me, but he just stays there, hands planted on the floor, face out of sight.

“Don’t come out, understand? No matter what.”

I nod because I can’t make my mouth work.

Then, he’s gone.

I watch his filthy feet scramble to the door just as the weight slams into it again. He braces himself against the other side. Arms wide.

I scream and slap my hands over my ears. It doesn’t muffle the crack and bang that reverberates through the walls.

Thud.

The door jumps.

The boy grunts.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The hinges scream.

The frame rattles.

The boy grunts with the effort. With the weight of protecting me slamming into his back. His feet dig into the carpet, an anchor against the inevitable.

It doesn’t help.

The banging never stops. The rage roars like a wave rising up from the ocean. The voices on the other side howl with fury.

“I’ll kill you, you little bastard! I’ll fucking kill you this time.”

“She’s mine, you piece of shit. Give her to me and I won’t use the curling iron again.”

“Let me in or you won’t eat for a month!”

The boy roars through his teeth. He screams back words that jumble and dissolve. There is nothing but the hollow howl of his pain as he fights to keep them out.

Still, despite all his efforts, his feet slip.

That momentary give is all the monsters need for the door to splinter.

The boy is thrown to the ground and a boot bigger than a ship catches him in the gut.

Another in the head. Something hisses and the long slash of leather unfolds.

It swings and the snap rips through my very soul.

I scream and thrash to reach him.

To grab any part of him and drag him under with me.

To climb over him and protect him.

But no matter how hard I claw at the space between us, he slips further away. The distance stretches, unraveling until he’s swallowed and I’m alone, wailing into the void.

The bed vanishes.

The room fractures.

I’m swallowed by everything and nothing.

Shadows curl around me like monstrous hands and I’m dragged onto my back. The world becomes a hollow chamber of rippling silk, distorted puddles that shimmer like oil on water.

There are no floors. No ceiling. Just a breathing darkness that extends in all directions.

And I lie naked at its center. A pale figure drifting on a surface with no texture. It exhales beneath me. Then expands. The darkness slithers up, rising from below in ribbons of smoke. Tendrils that wind over around my legs. Up around my hips.

It brushes my belly.

My throat.

Pulls apart my thighs.

Brushes the seam of my sex.

Latches with the sweetest little suckle. A tentative taste. A test.

It drags through my folds with a teasing sweep that flares heat low in my belly. My body instinctively rises to the familiar nudge. My knees fall further apart of their own accord, and I surrender to the tongue tip circling my opening. Dipping in.

“That’s it,” the deep, phantom voice purrs, “I have you.”

An achingly sweet sense of safety presses back the dream. Erases the terror. It coaxes my hips to lift in offering. My thighs quiver with the effort to give everything.

“Please...” I beg the darkness.

And am rewarded with the deliberate flick of my tender clit.

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I bolt awake, a scream lodged in my throat.

My body heaves as it tries to pull upright only to catch on the restraints and slam down on the mattress. My brain fumbles to assess, to piece together the torn edges between reality and dream, but all it registers is the dark room and the greedy mouth at my core.

“What...?” I rasp, partially choke as my piercing is nudged again and I fall back with a sob.

Something holds my wrists. Sturdy straps that bind them over my head while strong, unyielding palms hold apart my knees. In this position, I’m powerless. Open and helpless. I’m nothing, but at his mercy as he laps at my pussy like it owes him money.

Somewhere deep, deep at the very bottom of my mind, I know he shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be filling me with his fingers or flicking my clit with his tongue. He shouldn’t be in my house.

In my bed .

I’m ashamed that I don’t care when all my body is capable of registering is how close he’s already gotten me in my sleep.

“Please...” I beg the massive shadow sliding a third finger home and curving up towards my outer wall. “Fuck! Please ... please...”

A deep, dark chuckle rumbles against my soaked cunt.

“Please what, Leila?” he drawls my name with the deep plunge and curl of his fingers. “Please stop? Please don’t? You need to be clear.”

My arms twitch violently against my binds. It jerks the headboard. Makes the frame creak.

“Don’t ... don’t stop,” I pant, forcing my hips down for him to take more.

He groans a sound between amusement and pride that vibrates against my already sensitive peak.

“You wake up to some stranger eating your cunt and instead of being scared, you’re begging me not to stop.

” He pumps harder. Faster. “I could be anyone,” he taunts, tracing my clit with maddening precision.

“I could be a psychopath who keeps you like this just to fill your hole up like the fuck doll you are.”

His fingers drive into me so deep, I see stars. My scream chokes on a moan as he forces me closer to the edge.

“Yes ... yes... ”

I can’t breathe.

My entire body writhes as he systematically dismantles me from the foundation. It thrashes and grinds, meeting every assault until my ears buzz.

“Greedy little cunt,” he hisses. “You want this? You want to cum in my mouth? Beg. Beg me to fuck you raw, to pump my cum in your unprotected hole.”

He’s crazy.

I may not have had sex with anyone, but I’m on the pill and I’m not stupid enough to let some stranger cum in me bare.

“Condom,” I snarl back.

“No.” He bends his finger and hits that spot that sends my head back on the pillow. “You’re giving me a baby, Leila.”

My toes curl as my orgasm coils and rises.

“No!” I hiss through gritted teeth. “I don’t even know—”