Page 29 of Phobia

A chill worked its way down my spine at the contact. I’d expected the coarse feel of artificial hair, but they were soft.

Soft like human hair.

I rolled the knife still in my hand between my fingers. Fisting the shaft, I brought the tip of the blade to its chin, bringing myself nose to nose with him.

With little force, the blade sank into the first layer of wax, flaying away easily.

Too easily.

Withdrawing the knife, I reached out to touch the dust gathered at his chin, rubbing it between my fingers. It melted in the warmth of my fingers, leaving a greasy slip. I’d fucked around with enough lit candles and hot wax to know that wasn’t supposed to happen with cured old wax.

This shit was fresh.Returning my focus to where my blade jutted, I applied more force. My tongue stabbed the inside of my cheek when the slow beading of blood spread under the layers of wax until I heard it.

The faintest suppressed cry, a panicked gurgle really in the back of a throat.

I stilled. What was the expression? It was the quiet ones you had to worry about?

“You crazy motherfucker,” I announced under my breath.

I jerked the knife back, spots peppering my vision. Giving my head a shake, I closed my eyes, taking in a series of deep and controlled breaths.

What the fuck was going on here?

Opening my eyes, Increase’s unmoving blue peepers tracked my motions. Another plea wrapped in a sob wrenched itself from deep in the back of his throat.

My pulse quickened in response. I ran the tip of the knife along the curtain of pale lashes, the glow from the sconce lighting glinting against the blade. Settling the knife under his lower lid, I brought my face closer to his, the tip of the blade scraping away at the thin wax, layer by layer, until I met human flesh.

“Blink or I’ll gouge it out,” I gritted out, my blood pressure surging. “Pick.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” a familiar hoarse voice rasped behind me.

The man of the fucking hour. Tapering my eyes, I twisted on the ball of my Converse, taking him in. My shoulder blades tensed, and the laugh shot through my nose.

Rhys stood at the mouth of the gallery, shirtless. Rivulets of blood rolled down the slab of his pale chest, gliding down the long slope of his torso, settling in the grooves of his abdomen and the dusting of hair. For an artist, he had a body under those clothes, maybe from all the repetition of his motions when he was working. I’d give him that. Crimson speckled his face and arms, along with something else that looked a lot like bone shrapnel and chunks of sinew.

The slate of his expression remained impassive, his stony eyes bored while he wiped his face with the shirt bunched in his hand. All he did was smear the blood around like a monochromatic streak of paint.

“It would get messy fast,” he tacked on, staring beyond me to Increase. Had he looked at himself in a mirror yet?

Clearly, he’d been busy. He looked like he’d gone to hell and won.

I directed the knife at the figure. “You put a person in there?”

Rhys was quiet for a beat of a moment, contemplating my question like it wasn’t a straight yes or no answer. “The cruelest death is eternity.”

He ran the back of his knuckles under his left cheekbone, staring down at his soiled hands. Sighing with displeasure, he tossed the shirt to the floor, pitching his hands on his waist.

“Who is that?”And were there others? I looked to Roberts, wondering if there was someone else in there, too.

He offered me an unreadable smile, licking at his stained lips. Rhys ambled closer, unhurried and content, coming to a stop near me. I kept my guard up, my grip flexing around the knife as I appraised him.

He had a good five inches over me, and he stretched his arms over his head, the knots in his back and shoulders clicking with the gesture. “They hurt her,” he justified around a yawn, refusing to give me a straight answer. “It had to be done.”

They hurt who?

But then it struck me with the force of a Category Five hurricane, knocking the air from my lungs. I glanced behind me, taking in those glacial blue eyes again.

I knew whose stare that was.