Page 4 of Love Her Ruin
Still out there.
A pause, a movement from within, then,Do it.
Two words. The same two words James spoke on Sera's floor.
The decision to continue existing not because life is precious but because there is something left undone. A monster still walking free. A woman he loves still in danger.
I do not hesitate.
More shadows enter him the way water enters stone, finding the cracks, the fissures, the wounds. I seep into the shoulder first, threading through shattered bone, filling gaps with cold that hold the pieces together.
His body convulses on the asphalt. His back arches. His right hand claws at frozen blood. But he doesn't wake.
The lung is the critical work. I slide farther into his chest. My shadow-tendril grips the slug and draws it backward along its entry path.
The bullet exits in a gout of dark blood and lands on the asphalt with a small, wettink. I seal the wound behind it immediately, shadows flooding the channel, displacing blood.
Through it all, I feel his soul.
It’s structured, a library with every book shelved, every drawer labeled, every door locked.
But beneath the order, in the basement of the library, behind a door locked with a lock that has no key—
The dark room.
Where he keeps the rage that has no outlet. The hidden desires. The part that watched Sera smile with blood on her hands and felt not horror buthunger.
I do not open that door, but I brush against it as I pass. The lock shudders, and what lives behind it feels me too.
The pact between us settles into place. The cold seals the last wound. The shadows withdraw to just beneath his skin, invisible but structural. His breathing steadies. His heartbeat finds its rhythm, underlaid now with the echo of my pulse beneath his.
Sera’s dark court is now complete.
His eyes open, clear, sharp, more acute than they were when he was merely human. He blinks at the dead streetlight, at the frozen blood, at the shattered window of his car. At me.
"Vincent." His voice is raw but steady.
One word, spoken like a target.
He shoots up into a sitting position and immediately spots the bullet I just took out of him. He picks it off the asphalt and puts it into his pocket.
Evidence, even now, even after dying and being remade by a devil in a pool of his own blood, the detective collects evidence.
He gets in the car, starts the engine, and drives away, signaling at the intersection.
And I follow, beneath the car, around it, in every shadow the headlights cast. I am the road beneath his tires and the night above his roof and the cold air bleeding through the shattered window.
Vincent Harrow has no idea what is coming for him.
Chapter 3
Eddie
Thesteeringwheelisslick with my own blood, and I'm holding it with both hands.
Bothhands.
The left one works now. Minutes ago, it was dead weight attached to a shoulder that had been reduced to useless, and now I'm gripping the wheel at ten and two, signaling my turns, checking my mirrors, driving the speed limit through streets that don't know a man just died and came back in a parking lot on Birch Street.
