Page 74 of Midnight Torment

My hair was grabbed and pulled. “You will scream for me,” the female voice shouted in my ear.

My lips tipped up in a smile although I would never open them in a scream. She could torment my body, but she would never reach my soul. “Fuck you.”

She dragged my head forward by the hair. “I will destroy you,” she hissed before releasing me and striding from the room.

I allowed myself a moment to catalogue my injuries. There wasn’t a part of my body that didn’t hurt, my flesh throbbing from the beating I’d taken. My face was swollen, and I could barely open my eyes. Her rage was evident on my skin, fuelled by an anger that belonged to someone else.

Amy re-entered the room, holding up a syringe in victory. “You are strong, I’ll give you that. However, this drug is stronger than you. It will turn your day into night and make your worst fear into your current situation. Physical pain is one thing to be able to endure, but emotional is an entirely different beast.”

I wanted to resist. The instruments she had used on me bruised and damaged, but that drug wormed itself into my soul and created a nightmare world filled with all the memories that I had suppressed until I could bear to deal with them.

The first one that assaulted me was the night Jordan lost control. His face as he loomed over me filled with pain and sadness. I tried to reach out to him, convince him to stay. Every time I did, he was just out of my grasp.

I lived through the memories of my first night without him, followed by the next and the next. I screamed his name, trying to find him in the darkness. Faces from the past flashed in front of me, some of them laughing, others shouting.

Mark reappeared as a spectre from the distant past, screaming that everything was my fault, that I hadn’t loved him enough to make him stay. My wedding dress hung in tatters from the ivory silk hanger, claw marks from the demon who stalked me leaving long gouges.

My body started to overheat, the demon stepping too close and burning me. I struggled, only to find my limbs held in stasis. Sweat poured off me and my body convulsed as he came to claim my soul.

“What the fuck did you give her?” a man demanded somewhere in the distance.

I couldn’t hear the female’s reply because the demon had dragged me into the abyss. I begged them to help me, to make everything better, to save the one soul that was mine alone to protect. Pain pierced through me, and I relived the moment the doctor told me there was nothing more they could do. I wrapped my arms around myself and prayed. I tried one more time to reach Jordan since he was able to fix everything. His strength would protect us.

“Please, no,” I begged. “Don’t take her from me. No!”

That pain burned until my body was unable to take any more. I shook and convulsed, my tongue too big for my mouth. Someone shouted in my ear and coolness drenched me. It was too much, the agony inside ripping me into a million pieces. I saw the life we were supposed to have together, the happiness that would have been possible except for one cruel twist of fate.

I whimpered, struggling to curl myself into a ball. There was no fight left in me, no desire to keep trying. I had firmly put all that anguish in a box and closed the lid. Now it threatened to consume me.

“Someone get the fucking doctor up here!”

It was too late. Blood coated my hands and left me screaming in the darkness. I was drowning in a sea of emotions and there was nothing there to anchor me. I dipped under the water, my breathing restricted, my head swimming.

Faces filled my vision, all overlapping each other, grey eyes stared back at me. I saw the truth that was hidden from me, and it was ripped from my grasp again.

My flesh burned even as something cold and wet washed over me. My tears mingled with the turgid waters of this sea of hostility and degradation. Darkness enveloped me and welcomed me into her arms. A piercing cry sounded in the distance. I stopped fighting and allowed the sea to take me.

***

Chapter Twenty-Six

Jordan

The alert sounded on my phone that I never wanted to hear. It was the one that said Megan’s heart had stopped. We were in Marseille and loading our kit into the boat when it activated and paralysed me.

“Jay.” Flynn shook my arm when I didn’t reply. “What’s going on?”

My gaze slowly came up to meet his. “She’s dead,” I said in a low tone as if the words were blasphemy.

“What the fuck?” He brought his own phone out and logged onto the tracking system. One of the devices in her merely allowed us to track her, there was another one that monitored her vital responses. “There’s an output. It’s weak, but there.”

I grabbed his phone and stared at the pulse bleeping across the screen. What the fuck were they doing with her?

“I’ll fucking kill him,” I said, my own pulse trying to steady itself in my veins. She didn’t deserve this, her only crime was loving someone like me who didn’t deserve her.

“Help me get the rest on the boat. We’ll discuss the rest when we’re in open water.” Flynn was right. It would be harder for anyone to listen in to our conversation if we were far from land.

There were fishing rods and boxes of bait already on the boat to make it appear that we were here to spend some time enjoying deep sea fishing. The practised smile I learnt long ago played on my lips. Anyone watching would never know that a wounded animal lived inside me and clawed at my insides, tearing them until I was bleeding emotional tears.

---