Chapter 11

Imoved slowly, without any unnecessary sudden movements. That’s how one is supposed to act when they encounter a feral animal.

“Elijah?” I asked softly as I let the pillow unfurl from around my face. I looked up into his eyes as I slowly sat up and folded my hands in my lap. “Is everything okay?”

“I love you, Mais,” he replied in an agonized tone.

“I know. I love you too.”

He held up a finger as his eyes quickly scanned the room, then he gasped as he spun on his foot and almost lost his balance.

“I’m not going to let them hurt you,” he whispered.

And I finally understood what was happening.

No matter how vigilant I thought I had been in making sure he took his medication, he had found a way to not to.

I began to wring my hands nervously.

Nothing was going to make him come out of this until he went after whatever he thought was in the cabin with us.

I would just have to figure out where to hide until it was all over, or stay out of his way.

He wouldn’t be able to handle the burden of hurting me and I wouldn’t want him to have to.

At least, not yet.

“Stay here. Get under the bed. Don’t go near the windows. I’ll be back, Mais.”

His words tumbled out of his mouth in an incoherent rush and my heart broke for Elijah, but I was angry too.

He deceived me.

He didn’t want to get better. That much had become obvious to me now.

I got to my feet and walked toward Elijah, wrapped my arms around him from behind, and gently pressed my cheek against his back.

His body was trembling, his breathing was erratic, and I wish I knew how to get the monsters in his head to rest for a while.

I had resigned myself to the fact that they’d never go away, but they tormented my beautiful devil far too often.

He was an expert at hiding it, and always did his best to not let me know when he was being plagued, however, there were moments like this when he couldn’t control them and had to fight all of the dreadful things that only he could see.

Not this time, I thought bravely as I slid a hand gently down his arm and eased the axe out of his hand.

“You stay here,” I told him softly when he turned slightly and glanced down at me with madness dancing in his eyes. “I’ll get rid of them.”

Leaning up on the tips of my toes, I kissed Elijah softly on his lips, before I eased by him and left him behind in the bedroom.

Hoping, wishing, that maybe if I returned to him looking like I’ve waged a war on Hell itself, perhaps he would finally believe that his demons were dead once and for all.

___

I stalked through the woods as silently as I could. If there were any animals around, I knew I would have to be able to catch one.

If not only to maybe eat something a little different tomorrow, but to prove to Elijah that I had slain his demons.

I followed a small deer, careful to hide whenever it would stop to nibble on some grass. I wasn’t sure how far away I had moved from the cabin, however, I knew that I would walk another hundred miles if I needed to in order to ease his troubled mind.

Crouching down, I watched the doe quietly from behind a bush. In my mind, this had already been too easy, and I wished I had more time to make it a game.

Focus, Maisie.

I slowly began to rise from my hiding spot, axe firmly gripped in hand and ready to strike the damned thing down when I suddenly heard something that caught my attention.