Page 80 of Satanic Shadow

“Stay. You can’t leave me here.”

He stares at me. “I’ll try to explain later. You’re safe here. It’s important for you to rest. My shadows will watch over you while I’m gone.”

“Wait.” I study the blood and gashes on him. “Why haven’t you healed yourself?”

“That’s none of your concern,” he says. “Sleep, mortal. Only then will you be strong enough to go back to your dormitory.”

Dane opens the drawer of his dresser and places a pile of clean clothes on the chair at the far end of the room. “Your clothes were covered in blood, so you need to wear mine.”

I look down at my body, at the long white shirt already on me, not seeing any wounds.

“It wasn’t your blood.”

I feel my expression dropping. “Whose blood then?”

He vanishes from the room without answering me, and I lie here in annoyance for the next three hours. The sun is due to come up, my skin itches from the cuffs, and his shirt has ridden up my thighs. My head lolls as I fall asleep, but I jump as the door swings open—then slams shut with an abrupt bang.

Dane stands there, breathing heavily, leaning his back against the wood and dropping his head back as his eyes close. “Fuck,” he mutters, green eyes looking at me as he opens them again. “Can you be any more of a fucking headache?”

“What have I apparently done now?”

“Doesn’t matter.” The cuffs around my wrists vanish, and the clean clothes appear in my lap. “Go bathe, mortal. I need to take you back to your dormitory before you get caught.”

“Why would I get caught?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Because by the time the sun appears on the horizon, I’ll be apprehended for murder, and I don’t want you anywhere near me when I do.”

My eyes widen, but something close to excitement shoots through me when it shouldn’t. “You killed someone?”

Dane narrows his eyes. Either he felt what I did, or he’s annoyed by the question. “Would that really surprise you?” he asks, walking into the middle of the room and removing his suit jacket and tie, then unfastening the buttons of the blood-stained shirt. “I am a monster to you after all.”

Monster.

A monster.

Why does that word make me shiver?

“Should I be worried about my own safety?” I ask him, hugging myself.

Dane takes a deep breath and stops undressing, staring at the painting on his wall before he lowers his head and drags his finger back and forth on the dresser, exactly where I had traced earlier. “No.”

I hiss as a burning sensation rips at my skin then, and the tendrils start to join together, like they’re stitching up my wrists. I stare at them with wide eyes.

Dane appears in front of me, taking both my hands. “This will hurt.”

“What will?”

I scream as pain ripples from my elbows to my fingertips, my eyes pinging open wide to stare at Dane, then down at my hands, where the black stains and tendrils slowly crawl onto him, sinking into his skin like they belong there. He closes his eyes, and his entire body tenses, his teeth clenched.

He’s taking the pain from me. Releasing my hands, he falls back, trying to catch his breath as tendrils stitch together at his face, the veins in his neck injected with black. He closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths until they bleed into his body, vanishing into nothing.

I stare at him. “What did you do?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” he says. “How do you feel?”

“Fine. I feel fine.” I lower to his level, kneeling as I cup his face. “Did you just take that from me?”

“No, I can only take small amounts, or it will kill us both.” He sighs, not pulling my hand away. “As I said, you’re a headache, little mortal.”