Chapter 5

ChapterFive

Ophelia

Super Villain - Stiletto & Silent Child

How could I choose a life to end? What gave me the right to play judge and jury?

But I couldn’t deny that there was a deep-rooted longing inside of me that wanted to play the executioner. To rid the world of one more evil. One more sick and perverted person who stained this earth.

I looked back at Blake and knew there would be no way out of this. No way to escape the man that was attached to me and if I wanted to live to see Halloween, I’d need to play ball. What officer could save me from a dead man? And honestly, did I really want to be saved? There was something cold inside of me, deep beneath the sea of humanity and I couldn’t lie and say that I had never thought about it.

Ending a life.

Seeing the lights go out in a repulsive man’s beady little eyes.

I blinked then looked down at the phone on the passenger seat.

I didn’t even need to pick it up in order to know where I wanted to go.

Who I wanted to kill.

He gripped my jaw, his vise brutal as he fought back his temper at my endless attempt to rid myself of him.

I huffed in resignation and nodded my head. “Fine. I have someone,” I whispered, so quietly I hoped the world would swallow it whole and never use those words against me for the rest of my days.

“Good girl. A real good, good girl,” he praised with approval in his dark pools that swirled like the lure of an onyx abyss. He tightened his hold until my mouth popped open and he placed his thumb inside. I clamped down around him by instinct. His chilling touch warmed around my hot mouth and I quivered, sucking deeply until my mouth had swallowed his thumb whole. The sensuality of such a strange moment had something hot in my chest.

I had no idea what my traitorous body was playing at while I was tempting the devil. Why I felt euphoric at the promise of ecstasy.

He was a drug, one I wanted to chase down the rabbit hole if only to get a bitter taste of the hatter and his fanatical view of the world.

I moaned, my tongue swirling up, down and around his thumb as his other hand fisted my dark hair, using his power as a guide to move me at his will. “Soon, this will be more than my thumb and when it is, you will swallow it all. Am I clear, darling?”

I nodded, helpless and at his mercy. I needed a reprieve, I needed the ache between my thighs to subside just so I could think straight again and remember that all of this was wrong.

So very fucking wrong.

“Now, get out. I’m driving,” he ordered, and I listened. Like a lamb to the slaughter, I walked around to the passenger side of the Jag and cemented my fate when I closed the door behind me.

“Hmm, being my good little blood whore looks great on you, love. Now, tell me who we’re killing on this fine night of All Hallows’ Eve?” He raised a brow and watched me expectantly as I told him the street. He seemed to know it, meaning he was from around here which is not at all surprising considering the articles told me as much.

He was murdered when he was twenty-seven. Taken hostage by a rogue cop. Tortured to death, skin peeled from his flesh. The cop was more demented than the man who sat beside me, I knew that for certain. The only thing just about the cop’s method of punishment was the injustice of it all. He only did what he did because Blake took out his partner.

A sex trafficker.

Good fucking riddance, if you asked me.

The world wasn’t black and white. Sometimes, I envied those brave enough to step into the gray.

I shook my head, wanting to get rid of the parts of me that could understand this. That could accept what was about to happen tonight.

We took a left and pulled onto the street of my choosing, a massive church sat sprawled before us. Towering into the sky like it was in pursuit of the heavens, but even those who worshiped here were not quite pure enough to touch it.

Figures.

“A priest, huh? Good girl gone bad… I like it.” I rolled my eyes and swallowed thickly, my unease growing as the nerves in my core coiled into one hot mess that had me fearing bringing up yesterday’s dinner in revulsion.

“Come on then, love, death waits for now, scaredy cat.”

As I got out of the car, I curled in on myself hoping I could blend with the shadows, in hopes he may forget that I was even here at all. No such luck. A heavy hand fell on my nape and I was directed to the front doors of the church and hesitated, only to have him push me forward until I stumbled through them and fell to my knees.

“Such a good look on you. Maybe you should just stay down there while I show you how it’s done, yes, babe?” The arrogance on the Adonis before me was stifling and I narrowed my eyes to mere slits of fury as I stood back up on my feet.

“Fuck you,” I hissed.

“Fire. Such fire. Hmmm, can you smell it?” He chuckled deeply, darkly and it sent chills feathering down my spine.

“You’re fucking crazy.”

“Duh, come now. Let’s go catch a body.”

I followed him down the aisle slowly, keeping a few feet between us. Like a mouse, creeping on a cat in the wild, I took every step tentatively. When we rounded the front pew, he looked around in search of the priest and I struck like a hound from Hell as I jumped on his back and shoved his head in the bowl of holy water.

I meant… it was not actually a bowl, but I also was not a religious person so fuck knows what it was actually called. All I knew was that it was supposed to send this fucker right back to purgatory.

“Go back to Hell, motherfucker, and come back as a sexy-ass demon like I asked for in the first place,” I hissed like a demented feline having a bitch fit. Wishing for a demon was still probably very idiotic considering I couldn’t even handle a guy that was once human.

But hey.

I wished that I could.

He struggled under my weight, the slosh of water rimmed over the bowl and splattered at our feet. The sound of broken breaths and lungs filled with water echoed around me and I cringed because that sound… it was the sound of death and that was exactly why he brought me here.

With a roar, he threw me from his back and I fell to the ground with a wheeze. He turned slowly, methodically and the shadows seemed to rush to his aid in a cloak of malice so daunting that it took me a moment to replace the fear in my heart with the will to survive his anger. Although it wasn’t anger that glared back at me, it was twisted amusement as he heaved a deep, clean breath, coughing up the water stowed in the back of his throat.

Rivulets of it beaded along his brows and one stray drop tethered on the edge of the tip of his defined nose. His dark hair curled and glistened from the rays of light to the liquid that dampened it. I swallowed thickly as I tried to hide the lust soaring in my veins. The need burning in my core. My nails dug into the long holy rug thing that lined the walkway in an attempt to stay stoic. To not have to show this man the war in my core.

“I’m most definitely your demon, Soul Raiser. But I’ll let you in on a little fun fact. You can’t kill your demons when they know how to swim.” The smirk on his lips was a battle on everything impure inside of me fighting for everything sinister that plagued me like a disease.

The devil on my shoulder was winning and she was winning on her back with her legs spread wide in invitation more than ready for his sweet, depraved invasion.

Fuck.

He launched himself at me, both hands clamped down on my hips in a bruising hold as his fingerprints marred my flesh. He lifted me from the ground like I weighed nothing, high in the air and above his head with some whacked inhuman strength. I kicked and I screamed, batting at his arms before he set me down on my feet, fisted my hair at the crown of my head, and shoved my face into the torrent of water that swirled around me like a tsunami. It burned, it burned so fucking bad as I breathed in the water that wasn’t made to be inhaled like it was laughing gas. I thrashed and I writhed as I fought for purchase. My eyes were wide open and burning as I saw my own reflection at the end of the endless chasms that were trying to kill me.

Consume, and devour me in its watery grave.

I panicked. I soared and I even felt a little euphoric.

This close to death, this close to feeling so fucking alive even as my struggle dwindled and my lungs filled with the end of my life as I knew it, I still couldn’t help but feel free.

It was a mind fuck.

A twisted sense of a well of emotions I could not even begin to navigate.

I didn’t want to die. But I didn’t want to lose this feeling either.

“What’s going on here?” A withered voice asked, and I could hardly hear it through the blockage in my ears.

But clear as day, I heard Blake’s reply, “Oh you know, just trying to kill our sins. Want to try it?”

Then I fell to the ground, panting for every breath as Blake stalked the priest like a vicious reaper risen for All Hallows’ Eve.