Page 49 of Grave Devil
Fuck. I don’t even want to know what she means by that. I need to mind my own business and respect her space. She’s right. She is a grown woman. “Fair enough. I’m sorry I acted like an overbearing father.” Not even our own father cares as much as I do. While he was busy amassing more wealth than future generations could ever spend, I was the one looking after Felix and Lettie.
Our mother never got over the loss of Sonny, so she became cold and distant toward all of us. The only other saving grace was our abuela. We were as thick as thieves back then.
She gives me a hug. “It’s okay. I know you love me, and you’re just worried. Let’s just focus on Sonny. Are you sure you want to let Mia lure him out? I don’t like the idea of her being bait.”
I pinch my brows together. “It was her idea. Besides, it’s not like she has to lure him. He’s in her head. All she has to do is not drown him out with poison. Then he’ll come to her, face-to-face. She’ll be able to check his leg for the scar.”
The idea makes me sick for many reasons. My little brother is now a grown man, well, half man, half beast. He’s been touching her and making her cum as if he has some kind of fucking right to her. But she’s just as drawn to him. And so we can’t fault her. There’s a connection between them. And we need to use it to figure out if he really is Sonny and what the fuck he actually wants from her.
Lettie squeezes my hand. “Mia loves you. She loves all of you. Don’t doubt that. Even if that means you have to let her go to him.”
I nod. “How did you get so smart about these things?”
Her eyelids flutter, and her throat bobs as if she’s reliving a moment that unnerves her. “Like I said, there’s a lot you don’t know about me. I have my own dance card filling up with demons.”
“Well, maybe some time you can tell me about it. If you want. I’m here for you, and I promise I’ll listen without judgment. That’s the least I can do considering all the unhinged shit you’ve seen me go through.”
She giggles, and she’s my little princessa again, sweet and innocent and pure. “Yeah, you are a lot.” She playfully punches me in the gut. I flinch and pretend it actually hurt. “But like in the best way.”
I watch her go to her car and drive away before pulling my attention away from the horizon. I light up one of those cigarettes that Draven gave me and prop myself up on the back of the baby-blue vintage truck I’ve been restoring for Duff’s son.
He’s gonna give it to him on his sixteenth birthday next year. This sweetheart was on her deathbed when he first towed her to the garage, but I’ve yet to get my hands on a beauty that I couldn’t bring back to life.
I hope that remains true for Sonny too. Because the one thing I keep mulling over and over again in my mind is what I’m willing to do. How many lines will I cross? Because, Skelker or not, he’s still my little brother. If I somehow get him back… I’m not willing to lose him again.
SKELKER/SONNY
“Don’t go into the woods by yourself, mijo.” It’s a distant voice, unfamiliar but pleasant. Familiar yet strange. Sometimes I remember her face. I think she smells like apples. But then the scent of metal and ash and sulfur fills my nose. And I forget what apples even are.
I walk a dark trail. I free-fall, plummeting, sliding over jagged rocks and glass and cold dirt. The darkness is thick, suffocating. Invisible hands wrap around my wrists and tug me forward.
I’m in the woods near the Wishing Tree, and then I’m gone. Everything remains except for me. I vanish. I watch myself fade. And I spend the next twenty years in agony. Excruciatingly barbaric agony.
He carves me in his image. I see my new face in the hall of mirrors. The animal I’ve become. There is carnal pleasure with other dark beings. We find beauty amidst the rot. It’s fleeting, shallow, disingenuous. I detach from feeling anything beyond physical touch.
Sssss. Skelker. Sonny. Skelker.
Stop. Make it stop. It hurts. It’s a black hole. A void. An emptiness. He wants me to forget until he needs me to remember.
And then he showed meher.
Black hair. One blue eye, one brown. Soft supple curves, exuding fragrant jasmine blooms in every sway of her hips. She makes my fucking glands hurt. I want to ruin her for it. To punish her for existing. She’s a reminder that I am broken. Damaged.A monster.
But she is not light or sunbeams either. She, too, is blanketed in darkness. But hers is exquisite, delicate, seductive. It follows her, longing and yearning for her as they all do. As I do too. I hate her for the provocation.For the decimation.
And yet when my fingers are inside her decadent cunt, my heart beats faster than it does when I’m feasting on the devil’s essence. I lick my lips, my pronged tongue quivering as I still can taste the remnants of her on my unholy skin.It stains me.
I will destroy her the way the devil has destroyed me. I will make her a face to match mine. The way I want to make her cum on my cock while I carve my name into her chest… this carnal act of branding her,wrecking her… I’m almost foaming at the mouth imagining it.
And I know it pleases my devil. This is what he’s always wanted. It’s what I was taken for. If he can’t have his sweet Willa, then he will settle for her descendant. And he will use me to claim her. The disfigured Crane and the Harker whore—two damned souls cursed to wander in between the gray and the dark without joy or pleasure except for the divine moments we are inside each other.
But I don’t like sharing her. I won’t. We are fate. Destined. End game. The very fabric of our DNA has been intertwined since the beginning of time. Cranes and Harkers. Harkers and Cranes. Mine. Mine.Mine.
Her drunkenness dizzies me. It disorients me in the dark. Trapped in her shadow, the poison hides the veil. I can make out her figure, her silhouette, but I can’t reach her. Not until she sobers up. And this time, I’ve waited too long. My sickness festers, my craving intensifying. I want to split her open and scream in her face while I shatter her over and over again.
Fuck. Sweat dots the back of my neck. Desperation. Fury. Need. It fuels me and terrorizes me as she works to block me out of her mind. The devil whispers, “Be patient.” But he did not raise me to be.
He taught me from a young age to take what I want when I want it. And now he’s toying with me. Taunting me. This is how he derives pleasure. A walking contradiction. A force that takes. He takes. I take. “You promised me,” I growl.
