Page 24 of Shadowed Whispers

Swallowing my fear, I grab the towel and begin to soak up the lemonade.

“Stop,” he demands.

Fear surges through me, a living entity. “Sir?” I risk a glance upward—a mistake. He’s leaning forward, his eyes like rings of fire.

“Turn around.”

Tears burn my vision. I know what this is. I never should have gotten out of bed. I can’t run. He’d only outrun me. Grinding my teeth, I turn around to face the front of the house, my heart palpitating.

I can’t catch a breath. My lungs won’t allow it. My stomach is one giant knot, a cage for the butterflies wreaking havoc inside me. Closing my eyes, I lean forward, the towels clenched in my shaking hands.

“Ass in the air,” he whispers.

Tears stream down my face, and my body quivers uncontrollably, frozen in terror.

I hear his footsteps approaching and feel him looming too close behind me.

“So perfect,” he murmurs, lifting my shirt, his fingertips sending shivers of dread down my spine. “Shh, I’ll take good care of you.”

My stomach twists.

Before I can take my next breath, a chill seeps through the room, halting my fear in its tracks. My cheek almost touches the floor when I feel it—an unspoken bond with the shadows at the edges of my vision, whispering of power I’ve barely acknowledged, let alone understood. The air thickens, charged with an energy that seems to pulsate with my heartbeat. He takes my shirt and begins to wrap it around my head, but the darkness stirs, a living entity reacting to my silent plea for help. Not like this, a voice whispers with a feeling that floods my veins with a strength I didn’t know I possessed. I can’t breathe, yet I’m suffused with a rush of clarity and purpose, as if the shadows themselves are rallying to my defense.

My cheek slams against the floor with an audible crack, and pain blossoms across my face. He takes my shirt and wraps it around my head, twisting, twisting, twisting…

I can’t breathe.

“This won’t hurt,” he lies, his touch igniting panic.

Tears soak my shirt as he slowly strangles me. I can’t get down a gulp of air. Whimpers escape me. I can’t control them.

He leans over me. “Shhh, good girls don’t cry.” His actions contradict his words as he tightens his grip on my shirt. “Shhh, or I’ll have to suffocate you, and you don’t want that, now do you?” I bite my tongue until it bleeds. “Didn’t think so.”

I feel him pressing against me.

Fear seizes me as darkness clouds my vision. Spots dance in my eyes as he tightens my shirt around my upper body. It’s so dark.

A sense of calm settles over me, and instead of fighting, I reach for the darkness, craving the safety it might offer. Anything is better than this.

“What the fuck?” He releases me.

I scramble through the lemonade, whimpers escaping me as I tug my shirt down and turn around to put him in my line of sight.

His eyes are wide as he glares at me—no, not me, my legs.

Looking down, I see darkness spilling over me. What is that? I freeze as the shadows whisper words of safety, of home.

I only ever wanted a home.

“You’re fucking one of them,” he says before lunging for me, but I’m too small. My thirteen-year-old body is no match for his older one. My head cracks against the floor as he settles his weight over me.

“I should do the world a favor and just kill you now.” His words send a new spike of fear through me. Something changed. Now, he wants me dead. I don’t know what I did, but I know I need to get out of here, out of this house. I need to run. Escape.

Darkness once again creeps over my vision. This time, though, the shadows whisper to fight.

I kick and scream beneath his muffling palm. His other hand closes around my neck, but I still fight. Blackness creeps in at the edges.

The shadows whisper to fight harder.

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