Page 152 of Phobia

“Okay.” I nodded. “Find me later.”

The relief was evident on him, in the set of his shoulders, in the way he smiled. As he disappeared through the crowd, leaving me with Judah and Lazarus next to me, my mind started running wildly, trying to figure out what he needed to talk to me about.

My eyes flicked toward Judah, and he was already looking at me.

The smug look on his face wasn’t something I wanted to see. Especially not right now after the cryptic words from Gabriel.

I didn’t like it at all.

Chapter 13

The muffled sounds coming from the girl tied to the same bed where Danika was last year were getting on my nerves. The stench of fear penetrated the little room I used for my experiments, seeping into every crevice on the floor, every single hole in the walls. I knew it would be days, if not months, before I’d be able to eradicate the dark stain of her fear from this place.

Her body thrashed and turned, trying to get out of her restraints, but there was no use. She should’ve known that there would be no use fighting anymore. What Judah Blackwood wanted, he got, and she was the shiny new toy he wanted to play with.

I didn’t care much about her or whatever was going on in her mind, but I hated the fact that I still helped him, that I still had too much to lose now that Danika was back. But if everything went well tonight, he would have no more power over us.

His family might have had influence over many people in Winworth, but there were others who wanted to see them gone. There were others who salivated at the idea of the Blackwood family completely disappearing from this world because they posed a threat to their own organizations. It was true what people said—the enemy of my enemy was my friend, and Judah wouldn’t know what hit him once I delivered that final blow.

I had to listen to him going on and on over the past year about how he still wanted to catch Danika. I had to listen to the plans he created for the two of them. I knew what an obsession was when I saw one. I knew where my obsession stemmed from, but his… It originated on that night a year ago, when she slipped through his fingers, and predators like him, like me, didn't like our prey getting away.

“Please,” the girl on the table begged, her voice barely muffled by the cloth Gabriel pushed into her mouth.

Stupid girl.

Lured in by the false pretenses of men who only wanted to use her. She thought she was getting an invitation into the lives of the Founding Families, but she only fell into the trap they created for her. And this one—this one was Gabriel’s catch, but that fool couldn’t bear to watch this. He couldn’t bear to see another young life destroyed so that his buddy Judah could get the little harem of Maidens he planned to use for the Order.

My head cocked to the side as the girl started pulling her hand out of the leather restraints, only to get stuck midway with the blood flow now completely cut off from it. Tears ran down her cheeks, soaking the shirt she had on. If remorse was what she looked for in me, she was highly mistaken.

She would think twice the next time she got invited to a party like this.

My legs ate the space between her and me, my hands itching to get this started, to get it over with. I picked up the beige manilla file Gabriel left for me and opened it up. I chuckled. She was the exact same age as Danika. An orphan with no one to come looking for her.

Her parents died a couple of years ago, leaving her all alone in this world.

“Shhhh,” I murmured, when her cries increased, those dark eyes searing into me as if that would help her to get out of here. “It’ll all be over soon.”

Silky hair spread around her head, the wayward strands sticking to her sweaty face, and I understood what Judah and Gabriel saw in her. She looked innocent, untouched, almost Fae-like, with almond-shaped eyes and a little nose perched above full lips that were now wrapped around the cloth in her mouth.

My finger traced the tear cascading down her face, fascinated with the descent. I could feel her pain as if it were my own. Even though I knew that a normal reaction would be to help her, releasing her from here, it didn’t have that effect. Instead, it only spurred me on, and as if my body had a mind of its own, my hand wrapped around her throat, my smile tilting on my face. “You’re gonna look pretty in red,” I murmured.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

That voice, her voice, had me spinning around in a second, releasing the girl from my hold.

Danika stood at the entrance to the room, her eyes narrowed at me and the girl behind me. Her anger was as palpable as the manilla folder in my hand. I could see the questions appearing one after another in her eyes as she took a step closer, then another one, and another one, until she stood only a couple of inches away from me, looking at me with so much anger that it almost knocked me off my feet.

“Dani—”

“I’ve spent the last hour looking for you,” she said matter-of-factly, her voice cold, her eyes even worse. “And to find out that this is where you’ve been hiding.”

“Danika, it’s not like that. You know why I’m doing this.”

“I don’t know shit,” she answered, focused on the girl behind me. “All I know is that you and Judah have some weird little pact, and that he’s bringing you girls to turn, just how you were supposed to turn me. And I know,” she bit out. “That look on your face.”

“What look?”

“The look of obsession, Lazarus. The look you had for me not too long ago in that maze. The look that said you wanted to devour me. The look that you just had when you were looking down at her.”