I finally got my first sight of the one who controlled my nightmares.
The one who haunted me in my dreams.
The one who was now here for me…
The Shadow Master.
26
BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
Fear.
Stone cold hard fear.
That’s what this was. A chill that shook me to the bone and made me tremor on the hook I was hanging from. Because in my dreams I had subconsciously always known that it wasn’t real. That I had the chance to escape him just by waking up.
But this time was different.
This time, he was really here, and this was the kind of nightmare you bled through. This was the one where I actually got to see his face, as he reached up and lowered the hood attached to his long jacket.
He was a demon!
He had to be. Half of his face looked like the grim reaper had taken hold. Black leathery skin stretched over bone… or was that just what his bones looked like when stripped from flesh? Each line of half his skull could be seen. One void of any of the dark features that were etched into his flesh on the other side. His hard expression was one that I could even see from across the room. That strong jawline of his was surely carved from stone… it was unmovable.
The shadows he commanded were swirling like angry serpents under his jacket, as if just begging their master to let them free. To release the chaos they’d just had a taste of outside of this room. Shadows I had come to know well, thanks to them always chasing me in my dreams.
“Don’t fucking move or I kill the bitch!” Avellino said.
I could feel the butt of the gun shaking against my temple, telling me he was just as afraid as I was. But I swore I could see the barest hint of the demon gritting his teeth, a tiny muscle in his jaw jumping. His eyes started to glow a darker silver, the Hellish side of him taking over as darkness seeped across the part of his face that looked human.
“That won’t work for me,”he said, his voice holding such an unnatural depth to it, I would have believed the devil had taken his place. I swallowed hard, knowing one wrong move and I would end up with a bullet in my brain and it would all be over. My last thoughts would be of the brothers I had fallen in love with. Brothers I hadn’t trusted, and now the result was getting myself killed. Because either way, I was dead, even if the gun didn’t go off.
The Shadow master had done what he said he would…
He had come for me.
“And it won’t work for you either,”the threat at the door added, making Avellino bark back,
“I’m the one with the gun, asshole!”
But in keeping his eyes on the enemy, he wasn’t keeping them on the real threat as it made its way toward him. Those shadows hadn’t just been confined to his body after all. No, they were creeping through the broken window, flowing across the wall until they went out of sight behind us.
“Not for long,”the demon said with a jerk of his head, making all the shadows rush forward at once. I screamed but it was nothing compared to the sickening sound of bone crunchingright next to my head. The howl of pain quickly followed at the same time the gun dropped to the floor.
This all happened on fast forward at speeds I couldn’t track. One second, the man was by the doorway and the next, he was right in front of us. Avellino’s neck found itself in the demon’s huge hand before being lifted from the ground and tossed singlehandedly across the room. The crashing sound was followed by moaning, but the shadow man didn’t care. He simply stepped closer to me and even when stretched out like this, he was still so much taller.
He grasped my chin, gripping it in his long fingers before lifting my head up. My eyes went wide as I took in the first up-close details of his face.
“Hello, Little Rabbit,”he said, his voice lowering to a far less scary tone. Almost as if he were happy to see me. Which was when the insane part of me decided to answer.
“Hello,” I squeaked, and this actually made him smile, a dark and terrifying grin that had me swallowing hard when his fangs peeked through.
“Now close those pretty eyes for me and don’t look, or it will give you a new nightmare to fear,” he warned, his fingers now caressing down my jawline as he took his time to map the details on my face. That glow of silver came back momentarily before he heard the groan of pain coming from the side of us, where the wall was a crumbled mess of broken plaster board and splintered wood. His eyes seeped right back into terrifying, where the black consumed their entirety.
This was when he ran his big palm down the front of my face, prompting me to close my eyes. And as for me, I was left shaking like a fish on a hook to the horrifying sounds of death. The sounds of someone being ripped apart and the screams of pure agony as it happened. Until finally, after what felt like a small eternity, silence fell upon the room.
Although, with my eyes still held shut as tightly as I could, I screamed the second I felt his hand touch me.
