Page 16 of Hellish Witch

“You’re a real bastard,” Zahara sniffed. She stalked past me, shoulder barging me as she left the room with a slam of the already cracked door.

I staggered, expecting pain, but the claw-marks that should have curved around my collarbone had already healed.

I frowned down at my bloodstained dress in the hazy darkness of the room. The evidence was there. It had been real and not another bloodied nightmare or break from reality.

The distinct, sweet floral scent of haze reached me, perfumed with metallic blood.

Peering through the drugging smoke lingering around the room, I sucked in a gasp as I finally got a good look at the enforcer, sprawled in a chair like it was a throne.

Scant moonlight pooled through the window at his back to cast his face in shadows that danced in the candlelight. The straight ends of his rich charcoal hair fell across his face to graze his angular cheekbones. His eyes glowed silver, seeming to pierce right through me.

Angelic wings draped on either side of him, the feathers splayed dramatically, the only light thing about the dark demon.

Red smears stained his purple-grey skin. Deep gashes lacerated his muscular chest, left bare.

Panic strangled me. A glazed look had entered his eyes. Given the stain on his lower lip and the rolled-up stick of haze perched between his knuckles, it could either be the drugs or the damage.

The monster rattled inside me, not done with me yet.

I clenched my jaw, struggling to call on the healing light in my middle and fight back the slithering evil that battled for its freedom.

Killian’s handsome features creased as he watched me. I probably looked constipated, face scrunched up and fists clenching.

I lifted my hands and stepped towards him.

He looked away, voice a dark rasp of smoke. “You shouldn’t touch me.”

I ignored the sting of his words. He never let me heal him. It was only if he passed out from the severity of his injuries that I’d get to save the stubborn idiot’s life.

No warm light lit my hands though.

If anything, a crimson shade seemed to make my fingertips glow. Like I’d dipped my claws in fluorescent blood.

My heartbeat thundered too loud in my ears.

Control slipped through my grasping fingers. The violentthinginside me lashed out, turning my emotional pain into a more physical one.

But not mine.

Killian quirked a brow as the wounds on his chest widened like gaping maws, spewing blood down his skin in thick torrents.

Hollow and clawing, my invisible darkness latched onto the seated demon even as I scrabbled to hold it back.

He pushed to his feet, unhurried, eyes raking me. A small crease formed between his brows, the only outward sign of emotion despite him being torn open, bleeding out on the floorboards.

Something flickered in his depthless eyes. “Eve? Are you okay?”

Only he would be bleeding to death and ask ifIwas okay.

I swayed in my heels, and he reached out his hands as if to steady me, hovering on either side of my shoulders without touching.

“I…” It was all I could garble out as the red misting my vision darkened like lifeblood.

I was vaguely aware of his lips moving in response, but the rushing in my ears drowned everything else out.

Power churned and twisted, making me dizzy with the push and pull through my chest. The world spun with the angry tide. It tunnelled until Killian’s glowing eyes were the only thing I could see.

I collapsed face-first into his waiting arms.

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