Page 58 of House of Darkness
Sorin stood a few feet away in the ring. His hands were in his pockets, and he carried an air of casual arrogance that masked the tension in his shoulders.
A snarl escaped me before I could stop it, but I crawled back from my opponent. He quickly scurried off. He would live, though that might not have been the case if I’d kept going.
“You don’t need to be here.” I stumbled to my feet, grabbing the barbed wire to pull myself up.
“I can see that. You seem to be in complete control,” Sorin mused.
I growled, “How did you even find me?”
He laughed. “Oh please. The moment the little acolyte came to me, sobbing, I knew exactly where you’d gone. It was just a matter of figuring out which...” He glanced around the room, his lip curled in disgust. “Establishment you’d chosen. I figured you’d hit one of your old haunts. Looks like you’ve branched out.”
My gut twisted. “She was crying?”
His eyes narrowed. “In absolute tears. Practically inconsolable when she came to my room…”
I snarled and stepped forward, but his lips curled. “That strike a nerve, pretty boy? Your girl in my room, and me consoling her? What are you going to do about it?”
He was trying to provoke me, I knew it, but it was working regardless. My hands clenched and unclenched, battling the urge topunch him in his smug face. It would only give him what he wanted.
“Is she okay?”
“What do you think? She feels guilty for being the reason you ran off,” Sorin snapped.
I lowered my head. “She shouldn’t feel guilty.”
“I know that. You should feel guilty for running off and getting wasted just because she hurt your feelings. You don’t deserve her sadness.”
His words hit their mark. “Fuck you!”
I barreled toward him and our bodies collided in a clash that echoed through the room. He threw me off, and I stumbled, my shoulder slamming into the barbed wire fencing. I groaned—Sorin fought like a rabid dog, but I had always been stronger. I guess being three pints deep evened the odds.
“That’s right. Prove Catina and your father right. Prove them all fucking right,” he snarled.
My stomach twisted, and I fought the urge to recoil. His words cut deeper than the metal pressing into my rapidly healing skin. A freak with the power of evil, doomed to push everyone away. A scream tore from me, incoherent and violent, and I slammed into him again. This time, I landed a punch to his lower gut and threw him to the sand. I threw myself on top of him.
“Been sober three fucking years,” he sneered, “and I guess now’s as good a time as any to fall off the wagon. I’m sure your mother would be proud.”
My teeth ground together so hard I thought they might crack. I hurled a punch directly at his face, but he evaded it. “Fucking stop!”
“I’ll stop the second you do. Every time you fuck up, I’ll be here to remind you exactly what you’re doing,” he hissed.
Sorin threw me off and scrambled to his feet, his cold gazepiercing through me. My vision swirled and the edges of him blurred. I struggled to my feet, but the sudden movement made the room spin. I doubled over and vomited.
Sorin crossed his arms, a scornful look on his face. “Real fucking impressive. You know what’s really sad? The girl loves you. It’s plain as day. For someone who reads minds, you’re remarkably fucking oblivious.”
I gripped the barbed wire fence to steady myself. My hand tightened on the wire, tearing into my flesh. She couldn’t possibly love me; she would’ve responded… Sorin continued, “But you don’t deserve it. Not if you’re going to keep pulling this shit. No girl deserves a man who gets blackout drunk and runs off whenever there’s a problem—a man that’s weak.”
His words hit home. I was too weak, regardless of how strong my power was. Too weak to stop Leonidas, too weak to save my mother or any of the acolytes hurt because of me. I didn’t deserve any of it—any of her love or light. Not after everything I had done. I had been kidding myself in imagining a future of love and softness. Monsters didn’t get a happily ever after. My power built like a toxin ready to be spewed. Blackness began sloughing off in sheets and Sorin’s eyes widened.
“Don’t you fucking do it,” he warned, glancing around the room.
He wasn’t afraid for his own safety; he was worried I’d reveal my identity to everyone in this bar. Unfortunately for him, I didn’t care. He’d hit on the truth I was trying to drink away, and now we’d both have to deal with the fallout.
My power shot out like a sound wave, hitting Sorin in the chest with enough force to send him flying backward. He crashed into the fence with a deafening noise. The impact wrenched the wooden posts from the floor, tearing them like a whip across the arena. The barbsstruck me before slamming him into the far wall.
“Fucking hell,” Sorin barked. He peeled himself off the barbs, blood trickling from where they had impaled him. I groaned, pinned to the floor by barbed wire and overwhelmed by too much wyne.
A rough hand grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked me out of the debris violently. “You two are done. Don’t come back.”
