Page 86 of The Spirit Key
“I don’t want to hear it.”
He flinched, and I felt like an absolute shit. The fact that I’d committed to this plan didn’t mean it was going to be easy for me. Still, if we were going to have a chance, I had to follow through.
“I’m sorry. I’ll go into the other room and give you some space.”
“Who’s running away now,Timbo?”
He wiped his hands on the towel, then set it on the side of the sink. “What do you want from me? Tell me, and I’ll do it.”
I pushed up and stormed away from the table. “I want you to quit being such a fucking namby-pamby whiner. ‘Oh, poor me. I have a ghost inside, and he’s making me do bad things.’”
“Scott, that’s not—”
“Bullshitit’s not fair. You know, if I had known that you were such a pathetic loser, I would have told your mother I wasn’t coming, because there’s not really much worth saving, is there?”
His face went red, but it wasn’t enough. For what I wanted, he had to be mad enough to kill. And the fact that I would be the target of his ire….
Ugh. Whose shitty idea was this?
His fists clenched at his side. “Don’t talk about my mother.”
“You mean the bitch who let both of us suffer for years? Let me think I was going fucking crazy? You said she loved me like her own son, and seeing how she treated you, I can believe that.”
The muscles in his neck corded, and his lips curled back into a snarl. He moved to leave the kitchen, but I stepped in front of him.
“What’s the matter? Truth hurts?”
“Get out of my way. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Yeah, because you didn’t do that already, right?” I opened my mouth and pointed at the chipped teeth. “Bet you’re not gonna wanna shove your dick in my mouth now, are you? That could be hazardous to you.”
The look on his face ripped my heart out, but he still had control, and I had to shatter that.
“I said I was sorry.”
“Sorry, what? That you didn’t get to finish the job?” I lifted my shirt. “Maybe if I’d have waited, you could have kicked me in the ribs some more. You might have gotten lucky and it would have stabbed me in the heart and killed me.”
“I never wanted that!”
“Oh, but you wanted something? Maybe Gideon was only channeling your hatred of me. Maybe the two of you are more alike than I thought.” When his gaze narrowed, I knew the breaking point was one comment away, and I’d been saving this for last. “Maybe the fact that you didn’t fight back was because youwantedto kill me, Carter, and Samantha. Is that it? You told me Gideon whispered dark things to you, but maybe the reason he came to you was because you already had the darkness inside you.”
When his eyes shifted from brown to blue, I knew he’d snapped. He lashed out, striking me across the face. I stumbled back but didn’t fall.
“You didn’t believe me when I told you he hated you. His rage is a thing of beauty. There’s so much strength in this body, and I’m going to be able to do incredible things with it.”
He swung at my head, but I dodged the blow.
Remember way back when I asked what memory stuck most in your mind? Well, this would be mine now. The day my lover tried to kill me.
“What’s the matter, Scotty? I thought you enjoyed this body?”
“I did, but right now it seems a bit too crowded for me.”
He chuckled, but there was no mirth. “Don’t worry. Thanks to you, soon Tim will be gone. Even now I’m pushing him down, preparing this body to become mine. In the hundreds of years I’ve been moving from person to person, this is the body I find most to my liking. I’d never thought having a lock’s body would be so… intoxicating.”
“Don’t get used to it. You won’t be staying.”
“Once you’re dead, any fight Tim might have had will be snuffed out. The only pity will be that you can’t see him as he loses his fight.”
