Page 19 of Infernal

I sunk deeper into his probing darkness, unable to speak.

“Show me your truth, Daughter.”

More tears fell from my eyes as he dug deeper through the layers of my life. And I let him, too caught up in my own guilt to pull away. Seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes felt like an eternity before he spoke again.

“Well, well, well,” he whispered, his breath close to my neck. “What do we have here?”

Startled, my eyes popped open.

His own eyes were still sealed shut. Still probing and reading me. “A secret cove hidden in plain sight.”

“A secret cove?” I wasn’t sure what he referring to, but he appeared to be deep in the trenches of it. “What secret cove? What are you talking about?” I asked, half-afraid he’d just found a tumor in my head, because well, that’s the way my life usually went.

He opened his eyes tentatively and met my terrified gaze. “It seems you have a bank of memories that evenIcan’t access,” he added, as though that cleared up anything.

I pushed his hand away from my face. “What does that mean? Speak English.”

“It means you have an infiltrator of the mind, my princess.”

“An infiltrator?” With my body and mind in full panic mode, I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying to save my life. Then again, maybe there was no sense to be made of it. Maybe he was just trying to confuse me, to play with my mind again and twist me into a ring of confusion.

Shit!

Terror overtook me as I realized I’d let the devil get too close to me. I let him bring down my defenses and warp my mind with his crazy-talk. This was wrong on so many levels.

“Just…just stay the hell away from me!” I warned, fear and anger melding together inside of me. I could feel it charging me from the inside out as it searched for an outlet, for a way out.

The lights flickered around us violently, and I jumped again.

“Stop doing that! Stop everything!”

He laughed heartily. “I’m not doing anything.” He lifted his hand and pointed to the light show. “That is all you, Daughter.”

Daughter.

Daughter of Hades.

Princess of Darkness.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” His eyes circled the room in awe. “I could show you how to harness your power. I could teach you how to use it in the most spectacular of ways. All you have to do is say the word,” he said, dropping his chin.

A new level of panic slammed against me, and suddenly, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. There wasn’t enough air in the room anymore. There wasn’t enough air in the entire world now that the devil was walking it.

The lights continued to flicker even faster now, and my breathing shallowed until I wasn’t even sure I was still breathing.

Was I dying?

Washedoing this to me? His darkness…

Unable to stand another second of it, I reached around him and grabbed the door knob. Yanking it open, I hurled myself past him and rushed towards the open air.

And surprisingly, he let me go.

“I’ll be seeing you again very soon, Daughter. You can run from what you are, but you can never hide from me,” I heard him call over my shoulder as his laughter cut into the night, echoing all around me as I ran like an angel out of Hell.

7. RUNNING SCARED

My feet pounded against the earth as I ran through the forest, each step taking me farther and farther away from the devil that had invaded my entire world. The woods were dark and foreign, but somehow, with fear and guilt pummeling me forward, I found my way through the shadows to a main road. It was only when I was absolutely certain that I wasn’t being followed that I allowed myself to slow down and catch my breath.

---