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.“It’s her, isn’t it.I don’t want to go back into the wall—please, don’t let her—”“Sissy, listen to me.I need you to calm down.” She had to have something to focus on, something to keep her head together while he figured out how to get back to her.Searching his mind, he tried to pull an image out of his ass, something to ease her.“I need you to listen carefully.”“I can’t go back there!”Fuck, what could he give her to concentrate on? “I have a dog,” he blurted.There was a beat, as if he’d surprised her.“You do?”As the footsteps drew closer, he wanted to curse.“Yeah, I do.”“I like dogs,” she said in a small voice, her eyes locking on his.“He’s gray and blond and he’s shaggy.His fur.” The footsteps grew ever louder and Jim spoke quicker.“His fur is kind of rough—like it’s made up of old-man eyebrows, and he has little paws.He likes to sit in my lap.He has a limp that comes out if he runs too fast and he likes to eat my socks.”Sniffle and a hitch of breath.Like she knew what was approaching and she was going to do her best to hang on to the lifeline he was trying to give her.“What’s his name?”“Dog.I call him Dog.He eats pizza and turkey subs and he sleeps on my chest.” Faster.Faster with his words.“You’re going to meet him, ’kay? You’re going to take him out onto a patch of grass and.You know how you can tuck one sock into another?”“Yes.” Urgent now.Like she wanted as much as he could give her.“A sock ball.”“Sock balls—that’s right.” Fast, fast, fast.“You’ve got a sock ball and you’re going to throw it and he’s going to bring it back to you.Sun is out, Sissy.You can feel it on your face—”“When are you coming back?” she whispered.“Soon as I can.” He was talking at a blur now, the footsteps so close he knew they were stilettos with sharp, pointed heels.“You remember Dog.You hear me? When you feel like you’re losing it, you remember my dog—”“Don’t leave me here—”“I’ll come for you—”Sissy’s face was slick with tears as she reached out for him.“Don’t leave me here!”In an instant, she morphed into the condition she’d been in when he’d seen her over that tub, that sheath disappearing and leaving her naked, her body desecrated, her blond hair tangled and matted with blood.Abruptly, her eyes shot to the far corner and her stained lips trembled.“No!”She put her hands up as if to ward off blows, bowing away—Just like that, she was gone.And Devina, beautiful, evil Devina, walked into the candlelight.Jim fucking lost it.Snapped in half.Broke like a motherfucker.As he screamed bloody murder, it was all about the girl.The innocent girl who had been taken from her family by a demon, and pulled into a shithole, and imprisoned here.and forced to see the aftermath of a grown man defiled.Rage was a nuclear blast that went off inside him—White light poured forth from his eye sockets, exploding in the room, illuminating the glossy black walls that ran upward into infinity.The release consumed his physical form, freeing him from Devina’s constraints, carrying him around the space in a rush-gust of loose molecules that blew out the candles and knocked over their stands.Coalescing, he whirled around.and went gunning for Devina.Now she was the one bracing for impact, her brunette hair stripped back from her scalp under the hurricane blast of him, the skin on her face flapping against the bone structure underneath as she lost her balance and went over onto the stone floor.Just as he reached her, Jim pulled his new form together into a spearing lance and hurled himself right for her chest.He entered her body and blew that bitch away, all of her parts going flying, pieces of her skin and tangles of slippery innards and pounds of dark red meat spackling the walls of her dungeon.What was left was a black hole of equal mass and energy as that which made up him—and he was ready to go at it with her.Except, evidently, she wasn’t up for a head-to-head fight: Her warping shadow shot out of the room and down a hall, making an escape.Fuck.That.Jim rushed forward after her—And slammed into the metaphysical equivalent of a brick house.The shocking impact of the nonvisual barrier sent him backward and he became corporeal once again as he skidded over the stone floor on his raw ass.He had one brief moment of what-the-hell, before his body’s Game Over sign flashed and he fell flat on his back in utter exhaustion.With his anger spent, there was nothing left in him, and a fatal fatigue bled out from his wonky-beating heart and spread through him sure as a weed taking root and thriving.No longer able to hold his head up, he let the thing rest on the stone and just breathed, dimly noting that the air was saturated with both the copper scent of fresh kill and the acrid pinch of still-smoking candlewicks.“Sissy,” he said into the darkness.“I’m right here.”He had no clue whether she could hear him and there was no response.Just an eerie, molten sound.no doubt the souls trying to get free of their prison.He hated the idea that his girl was trapped in there.Hated that she had seen what he’d looked like.At that thought, pain bored into him as surely as if he’d been stabbed with a crowbar.Oh, God.that poor child.A sudden surge of emotion fell upon him in a tidal wave: Naked and broken and filthy, Jim curled onto his side and wept in great heaving gags, his tears hot and salty on the broken skin of his face.He had never cared about any damage to himself.Ever.But his failings.his failings were unsupportable.And now there were two women he had not been able to save, his beloved mother and Sissy.Both times, he had walked into a room too late; both times the damage had been done before he’d arrived.With horrid acuity, he saw his mother on their kitchen floor at the farmhouse, all but slaughtered.and Sissy over the tub [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]