Page 49 of Decimation

“It’s too late for begging,” he snarls, looking down at her crumpled form with utter disgust. “Far too fucking late.”

My own breath hitches in my throat, trapped by the gag and a terror so profound it feels like my insides are turning to ice. I am frozen, a statue of fear, forced to watch the prelude to my own destruction.

Konstantine turns his stormy gaze from my mother’s quivering body to me.

I want to look away, to close my eyes, to pretend I am anywhere but here, but I can’t. His eyes lock with mine, and I am pinned, like a butterfly under a cruel, scrutinizing lens. Only, the contempt in his face shifts. It doesn’t soften, but it changes. The anger seems to recede, replaced by a dawning, impossible confusion.

He freezes.

Is this it? Is he deciding how to hurt me first?

He takes another step, then another, until he is looming over me. Slowly, almost hesitantly he reaches out. I flinch, expecting a blow, but his hand doesn’t strike. Instead it cups my jaw, his thumb rough against my cheek, forcing my face up to the light. His touch is not gentle, but it is searching.

The rage in his eyes is completely gone, replaced by a look of such profound, unsettling shock that it’s somehow far more terrifying. He stares at me as if he’s seeing a ghost.

“Ines?” he whispers.

The name is a breath, a prayer, a question laden with something else; disbelief, and a terrifying hope.

I know I look like her, I know we have some resemblance. But the way he’s staring, the way he’s acting is like I’m a thing reborn.

His thumb strokes my cheekbone, his gaze tracing every feature of my face; my eyes, my nose, my mouth, with an intensity that feels like a violation all its own.

I have to break this spell. This wrongness is more frightening than his rage. I force my tongue against the vile gag, struggling to form words around the obstruction. “M-my n-name… is Leee-Leandra,” I stammer, the words thick and slurred.

The effect is instantaneous.

His face contorts, and the brief glimpse of whatever haunted memory I’d triggered shatters like glass. The confusion is burned away by a white-hot fury. The spell is broken, and the monster is back, angrier than before.

“Don’t you lie to me.” he roars.

His hand in my hair, what was once almost caressing, becomes a vice. He yanks me to my feet by it so violently I see stars. A scream tears from my throat, muffled by the gag. The pain is excruciating, like literal fire across my scalp.

He drags me close, his free hand fisting in the back of my dress, holding me upright as my legs buckle. He brings his face to the crook of my neck and inhales deeply, a grotesque, animalistic sniffing. Christ, he’s, he’s smelling me?

“No,” he mutters, his voice a ragged thing. “No, it can’t be.”

He pushes me back, his hands rough on my shoulders, my arms, turning me, examining me like a piece of livestock. His fingers dig into my flesh, probing, assessing.

I whimper, trying to twist away, but his grip is iron tight.

He stops, his hands on either side of my face again, forcing me to look at him. A strange, awful light dawns in his eyes.

“You’re like her,” he breathes, and the rage is still there, but it’s now mixed with a demented awe. “So like her. The face, the hair, the scent. A perfect reincarnation.”

Tears stream down my face, soaking into the gag. I shake my head with a frantic, tiny motion. No, no, no. I’m me. I’m Leandra.

He doesn’t see me. He’s looking through me, at a ghost he can’t possess.

His mouth crashes down on mine.

It’s not a kiss. It’s an assault. The gag makes it a brutal, suffocating violation. I can’t breathe. I can’t scream. His tongue forces its way past the fabric, a thick, invasive violation that makes my stomach heave. I taste his anger, his madness, the stale bitterness of coffee and power. He kisses me with a desperate, furious hunger, as if he can consume the memory he sees in me.

When he finally breaks away, gasping, his eyes are wild, unfocused.

“Ines,” he moans, the name both a benediction and a curse.

I’m choking, sobbing, my entire body trembling. I shake my head again, the only denial I can manage. “Leandra,” I try to say, but it’s just a wet, garbled sound. “My name is Leandra.”