Page 50 of Grave Devil
“You are weak, my son. If you want her, take her. Just as I took my sweet Willa against the tree so many moons ago.”Son, he calls me. I am no one’s son anymore. But I don’t dare disagree. His voice is power. And it is also pain. It rattles as much as it soothes.
I’m not lost, not found. They let me go.My own blood. But now, more of the devil’s venom runs through my veins than theirs.
I claw at the edges of her mind, raking my fingers up and down like nails scratching steel.Let me in. I swallow hard, my throat constricting from the lack of saliva. I am free-falling again. Stumbling over dark objects in her mind.Let me in. I scream louder. She’s going to fucking pay for denying me this long.
Break through. Break free.
I am not ready. If I leave, I will not return.But isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?I can’t tell if it’s me or him asking the question.
I remember the river, my brother ignoring me. Maybe I would have looked like him one day. If I hadn’t been turned intothis. The shadow pushed me in. I could barely swim. I thought I was dead. The boy who looked like me jumped in the river and saved me. He yelled at me for not being careful. He didn’t believe me about the shadow.
There was another boy. Another brother. He was a sad boy for no particular reason. I don’t remember much else. The river was cold. My leg was bleeding. Bones.Bones. Him. He stitched me up and told me not to tell Papa.
That was the first time my flesh would be mutilated. If only I’d known then it was just the beginning…
I should’ve listened to the brother called Bones. And to the sad boy who told me not to wander into the woods alone. But the voice I long for, the one that feels like an empty hole in my chest, is the voice that comes from the one who smells like apples.
My heart is heavy. I close my eyes and drift. I wait. That’s all that sleeping is for me now. There are no dreams or nightmares for Skelkers. Only long gaps of quiet and stillness in between the chaos.
I listen for Mia’s breath and heartbeat, but the poison keeps it quiet, almost to a whisper. Though I have trained myself on how to seek it out. And soon, nothing will keep me away. My cock stirs, its boned ridges throbbing in anticipation.
This will be her downfall. She can’t resist me. She wants me to rip her apart. When her brown eye darkens with forbidden desire, her blue one flickers with all the filthy things she wants me to do to her.
Let me in so he will let me out.
I hear a faint whimper, soft and delicate like a kitten purring. I sniff the air. It smells and tastes like her lips. Like cherry pie. It used to be my favorite. Back when he used to let us celebrate ourhuman birthdays, he’d give us a thick warm slice along with fizzy pop soda and French vanilla ice cream.
But when I started crying for my parents, missing them on my special day, the devil said, “No more.” He took it all away. There were no more parties ever again. “Joy was weakness,” he’d say.
I lick my lips, thirsty for her essence. When the poison wears off, she’d better be ready. I’m coming for her. I will take away everything that makes her human and turn her into a monster like me.
MIA
His tail slithers around my leg, encompassing it. The warmth of it comforts me. I sigh in contentment as it constricts into a more protective grip. While I don’t regret coming to Ever Graves, I sometimes miss the nights when it was just me and Nox. Things were uncertain, food was scarce, money was nonexistent, but I always knew what to expect.
I’ve come to hate surprises. They don’t usually bode well for little orphan girls like me. Even with all this wealth I’ve inherited, the feeling of uneasiness remains. Because money can’t buy me protection from the devil. It’s not the currency he accepts.
I roll onto my side to face him. We stare quietly at each other for most of the morning, basking in the rays from the rising sun that shines through the east window. I don’t regret bringing him to our world. Having this extra time with him has deepened our bond even more. I love him so much it hurts sometimes. I just want to consume him. To bottle his dark energy,its musky scent, and mainline it straight into my veins.
He gazes down at me through heavy lids, his pupils dilated and expression hungry. “I miss the old nights with you, my love.I miss… being inside your head.” He caresses my temples. “I’m angry thathegets to be in there now.”
I scoot closer so our chests are touching and let him gather me into his arms. “I know. Believe me, I’m not thrilled about it either.”
“You don’t have to spare my feelings, Mia. Especially if heisBones’s brother. There’s a special connection between the Harkers and the Cranes that goes back centuries. All the way back to your ancestor, Willa, and their ancestor, Enzo.” He leans down and lands a gentle kiss on my cheek. Followed by another. And another until he’s left a trail of soft kisses down my jawline.
My breath quivers under his touch. “I will always protect your feelings, love. But I’d also like to know more about the ancestors if you’re okay with talking about it.” Because Nox is tethered to the nightmare men and the Skelker and to the devil himself, he can tap into a shared consciousness of sorts. He glimpses flashes of the past and fragments of memories that aren’t his.
He kisses my neck all the way down to my shoulder, breathing me in as if my aroma alone will sustain him. “I could never refuse you, my love… Willa Harker rejected the devil, that much you already know. But only after he seduced her. He has a way to make you do whatever he wants, but some say that it works only if you secretly want it too. There’s never been a clear answer about whether she went to him willingly or if he entranced her. I do believe there were others at play as well. The Bishop witches were not her friends despite her believing them to be at the time.”
As the poison wears off, I feel the Skelker tugging at the edges of my mind again. But he stills whenever Nox speaks. Maybe he’s curious too… I nestle into Nox’s chest and release a little sigh of contentment as he threads his fingers through my hair, then massages them into the back of my neck.
“Willa became pregnant with his child,” he continues. “She tried to pass it off as Enzo’s at first but eventually confessed to him as the guilt ate away at her. When the boy was born, Enzo ordered her to send him away or else he would leave her. Single mothers didn’t fare well in the seventeenth century, and a part of her didn’t want to raise the devil’s child either. So she agreed. And the unnamed child was sent to Wickford Hollow Orphanage. No one has any idea what ever came of him.”
I guess I wasn’t the first Harker to live in that orphanage, as I’d thought… I’m suddenly filled with a twinge of sadness for someone I’ve never met, knowing all too well what it feels like to be left and abandoned. “How awful. It wasn’t the boy’s fault. How many more children did she have after?”
Nox cups my breast and lightly circles my nipple with his thumb. “Two more. Her daughter Ophelia was the first to be born cursed. She had the first nightmare man.”
“Shhh. Don’t say it like that.” Hearing him call himself a curse breaks my heart. It was what he was designed to be. But I’ve grown to love him so much that I no longer see him as anything but a part of me that I would die without. It would be like losing a limb or a piece of my soul.
