Page 62 of Thane's Demon
Fuck, I just didn’t know!
The city blurred into streaks of light and noise, its edges smearing past as my feet hammered across pavement and stone. Every part of me, every instinct, every thread of restraint pushed toward reaching her. The demon surged through me in frantic pulses, claws raking the inside of my ribs as it urged me forward with a desperation that tasted of blood and pure dread. Its voice was a snarl in my head, wild and unrestrained.
‘Faster.
Run.
Our girl needs us.
She is alone.
She is unprotected.
Fucking Move!’
I vaulted over a fence, cut through a narrow alleyway, shoved aside a pair of men who shouted after me, and tore across a road with inhuman speed. Nothing mattered except the thought that I had sent her away. That I had believed I was keeping her safe by letting her walk alone. That I had told her to go home, only for Xue’s men to have been waiting for her. The fear flooded me so viciously that it stole my breath, tightening my chest until it felt like my ribs might splinter beneath the pressure.
Her building came into view at long last, tall and pristine in the fading light, an exterior that did nothing to hide its sudden wrongness. The night concierge looked up as I entered, his eyes widening when they met mine, and he stumbled back instinctively, pressing himself against the desk as if trying to disappear behind it. I did not stop. I did not speak. I took the stairs at a pace no human could match, the metal railings rattling beneath the force of my ascent.
When I reached her floor, the truth struck before I even made it to her door.
She was not here.
The air was wrong. Too still. Too cold. Too untouched. I couldn’t hear the faint shuffle of her steps or the quiet thrum of her heartbeat from behind the door. Sounds I had grown too accustomed to sensing without thought. I moved forward with mechanical precision and knocked once, more out of denial than logic.
Silence answered.
I pressed my ear against the door, straining to hear even the smallest breath, the softest rustle of movement, but all I found was emptiness. Not a soul was home, and my demon lashed out violently at the void, its panic rippling through me with suffocating force.
‘She is gone.
Taken.
Stolen from us.
This is your fault!’
“No,” I muttered through clenched teeth, gripping the doorknob until the metal groaned under the pressure of my hand.
“No, no, no!”
I forced my senses to their sharpest edge, pulling the entire hallway into focus. The scent of the building’s cleaner. The faint perfume of a neighbor. The residual traces of dinner cooked behind closed doors. And there… hers. Soft. Familiar. A trail leading down the hall.
Then another scent cut through the air.
A man’s.
Unfamiliar.
Uninvited.
One of Xue’s.
The scent was strongest near the stairwell. My breath seized as I followed it, the trail growing stronger with each step until it abruptly vanished near the lower floors. A scent soon swallowed by exhaust fumes and tire rubber from the street outside. I gripped the railing, bending the metal under my palm as a single horrific realization settled like poison in my blood.
She had not made it back inside.
Someone must have reached her first. Someone had taken her while she trusted me, and my demon’s voice lowered to something quiet and murderous.
