"I was never the one
who believed in monsters.
Until I was proven,
by humans,
that they Exist."

~~C.R. Bittar

****************

~~Rory~~

My thoughts were coming in fragments... dreams... or maybe pieces of memories I'd forgotten...

The grass is wet beneath my bare feet as I run...

Branches whip against my naked legs...

Ripping at my shirt...

Gunshots firing rapidly somewhere behind me...

Everything hurt, my brain throbbed in my skull despite the heavy fog wrapped around it. Nausea roiled in my stomach, but darkness dragged me back...

"Fucking run, Rory, and don't stop."

I knew that voice and part of me was aware of the tight clench in my chest as it played in my head, but I felt so far away. Who was that? Why did the barely masked pain beneath their words echo in my body? They were important. I knew it but... who had it been? Why did it hurt? Everything hurt...

"Goddamn it, QP! Run!"

Kas... oh my God, Kas. My best friend...where was he? What had happened?

Cool air on my skin... the shadows of trees cast all around me...

Light rain peppering me from the black clouds overhead...

A shiver rippled through my body, the musty scent of mildew and dampness filled my nose, and the faint drip... drip... drip... of water falling repetitively on concrete sang to me from somewhere nearby. Where was I? How did I get there? I struggled to process thoughts, my mind hazy and dulled as my skull pounded with each rapid beat of my heart. Exhaustion weighed heavily on my body and my energy waned quickly as darkness swallowed me up once more.

Intense blue eyes... searing into my soul...something sinister and dark lurking in their depths...

I should have been afraid of those eyes; instinct told me that I should be... but I wasn't. Instead, I felt safe...

Identical faces staring up at me, small hands clasped in mine as tears paint their cheeks... grief that rivals my own...

There was that clench again in my chest, distant yet so awfully close. Those girls, my girls, my twin baby sisters... they needed me. Where were they? Where was I? Oh, gods... Is it the end? Had the monster in my nightmares... finally come back for me? He promised he would...

My fingers grip the pistol tight as I run...

The air rushing in and out of my lungs burns my throat but I can't stop...

"Fucking run, Rory, and don't stop."

A large hand curls around my bicep as I stumble past a tree... reflexive instinct kicks in and I spin with the hard grip, my hand taking aim as my finger squeezes the trigger... warm droplets spray over my skin, metallic and sticky... I don't stop to watch the body fall...

My body jerked as a metal door slammed shut, echoing through my muddled brain as I attempted to rouse. Footsteps tapped across cement, too heavy to be a woman, but all I knew was darkness. It felt as if cotton had been shoved inside my skull, leaving me fuzzy and detached, barely coherent. I couldn't even tell if I was blind or if my eyes were just closed. Maybe it was simpler than that and I wore a blindfold. What was happening?

"Wake up, little girl," a cool voice drawled, the familiar timbre making my skin itch. I knew that voice. The monster had come for me after all.

Fragments of memories flashed in my mind as I attempted to move, only for my arms and legs to remain in place, held still by restraints I hadn't noticed before. Fuck... I was tired... I couldn't seem to get the pieces to fall into place that would explain what was going on? I just wanted to go back to sleep.

"I said, wake up!" the same voice growled as a hand roughly grabbed my face, fingertips digging into my cheeks. "Open your eyes."

Oh... so, I wasn't blind after all.

With significant effort, I managed to crack my eyelids open to marginal slits, but everything was blurry and dim, wavering at the edges as I fought to stay awake. A man stood before me, and I didn't need to see his face clearly to know who he was. I'd never forget the face of the man that had killed my parents and destroyed what was left of who I used to be. He'd planted a seed of darkness in my soul that night. I had embraced it, nurturing it into something beautifully chaotic that was all mine. Fear slid into my blood stream as I blinked over and over until his face cleared inside my line of vision.

"There's my girl," he said, voice like velvet but washing over me like drops of acid. "I've been waiting for you."

It all came flooding back... Kas hiding me at his safe house outside of Scarlett City, helping me heal and gather strength after my near miss with the lunatic in front of me. Only it hadn't been safe enough and the bastard had found me anyway, but we'd always known that he would. I had just hoped to have been better prepared. However, a near naked sprint through the woods hadn't been what I'd had in mind.

Damn... it was taking a lot of energy to look at him without flinching. Unable to hold his black-eyed gaze any longer, I managed to slide my focus to a spot behind him that was lost somewhere in the shadows. Wrong move it seemed because a second later, my head snapped to the side as blood burst over my tongue and pain exploded in cheek where the back of his hand had connected with my flesh.

"Look at me!"

I spat blood from my mouth, but my head dropped forward to rest my chin on my chest that was heaving slightly, a mix of fear and anger filling the cells within my body. Ace McClain, the man before me, my kidnapper and cognitive stalker, was a psychopath I'd spent six years preparing to take down. Finally, inches away from him and I was tied to a chair. My body trembled with fear as my nightmares threatened to crack the surface. But fury was also right alongside it, making my muscles painfully tense. There was that exhaustion again, fuzzing over my brain as stars danced in my vision, letting me know that it wouldn't be long until I passed out again. Maybe that was for the best anyway.

"I'm not sure what was so difficult to understand," McClain snarled, footsteps padding across the concrete as he paced in front of me. "Stay away from that piece of shit Crowe."

A bark of humorless laughter bubbled up my throat. I turned my head again and spat, blood and spit dribbling down my chin from the lack of effort. The irony in that statement was almost funny... almost. I was drugged and zip-tied to a chair because the psychopath in front of me thought I'd been around someone I hadn't? At least not since that run-in with McClain. My lids drifted closed, and a pair of cerulean orbs framed by thick, dark lashes filled my mind's eye, bringing with it a sense of calm. Even if I didn't survive this, I knew that, in the end, neither would McClain.

The demon that owned Scarlett City would come for him. Maybe not for me, the woman who carved out a piece of the city with her vigilante ideals and then made a deal with the Mafia. And maybe not even for the inhumane activities McClain thrived behind. Whatever his reasons, Benjamin Crowe would come for him, and I could only hope that I'd be alive to see the beauty of it.

"They're gonna rip you apart," I croaked, my throat dry as if I'd swallowed cotton or licked deodorant. I forced my head up enough to look into McClain's black, empty eyes. "Khaos is going to have fun taking you to pieces."

"Khaos? You mean the bleeding sack of meat you left behind out that house." It was a statement not a question, and my blood ran cold at the gleeful malice that flashed across McClain's face. "He won't be doing anything anymore. You killed him. He's dead because of you, little girl."

My eyes burned and I let my head drop back to my chest. Kas couldn't be dead; he just couldn't be. Together, we had survived so much over the last six years, and I couldn't fathom a life without him. He was my best friend, closer to me than even the twins, my eighteen-year-old sisters. My eyes slammed shut as the first tear fell, a sob catching in my throat as I willed myself to not believe his words. But how could I not? The house had been full of armed men when I'd slipped from the window, and it had only been Kas to fend them off. More tears slid down my cheeks as it all began to make sense.

If Kas had lived through the horrors of that night, however long ago that was, he would have come for me. I didn't know how much time had passed since McClain had discovered where I'd been hiding, but I knew Kas. He wouldn't have stopped fighting until the very end. The room around me remained quiet except for the steady drip... drip... drip... from the leaky pipes along the walls and the subtle breaths from the madman in front of me. Kas wasn't there... he hadn't come...

A hand gripped my hair and yanked my head back, forcing me to look up at him. I wanted to hide my tears from his pitch-colored gaze, but I was trapped with my pain on obvious display. McClain leaned down, one hand wrapping around my throat; his whiskey scented breath hot against my cheek as a dark chuckle rumbled from his lips by my ear.

"Scream for me, little girl."

Grief swarmed through me as I thought of Kas and all I had lost, my sisters and the friends I had made over the years. They'd all been loyal and for what? For me to die with a hand around my throat? My lungs burned and my head pounded as McClain tightened his hold around my neck. Just as darkness began to swim at the edges of my vision, he released me with a roar.

"Scream for me!"

I watched, in slow motion as I gasped and coughed, as the room exploded with noise at the same moment that McClain smashed his fist into my cheek. Stars filled my eyes once more, pain blistered through my face and darkness shrouded over my vision. I could almost make out faces swarming into the dimly lit space. Part of my mind recognized them, but I was too far gone to fully comprehend what was happening. The last thing I saw as I fell back into the unconscious world was a pair of blazing blue eyes locked on my face. I hoped I'd be able to look into them again one day.