Page 117 of Every Shade of Shadow

“A murderer?” This slips past my lips without thought, but it doesn’t seem to anger him.

“Oh, I am a murderer, my pet. I’ve taken too many lives to count, but the murderer?” He shakes his head. “No.”

But what’s the murderer going to say? I ask myself. ‘Hey, it’s me! I’m the one!’

Still, there’s nothing to suggest Damien is anything but truthful. In that photo they were hunting for Mortis.

Maybe to join him, I consider for the first time. Maybe they wanted to find him and join his fucked-up, murderous cause.

“No,” he says, “you’re wrong. We wanted to find Mortis, to end it.”

“When are you going to get out of my head?

He walks forward and places a finger to my lips. “But you promised me all of you, my pet, soul and body, remember? A blood pact.”

Blood?

Your virginity, you idiot.

He releases his finger slowly. “But I will end the control spell in good time. As our last session proved, you’re already far more powerful than you believe.”

So he does remember.

I hang my head. “I don’t know what we’re doing here, us, if it’s healthy.”

I hold my breath waiting for his response.

He places a finger under my chin, lifting so his eyes meet mine. “Healthy or not, it is necessary. You’ve seen the dark force at play here, a force I’ve been trying to put an end to for two decades, a force that took two close friends and countless more innocent lives to build its power…that is why we are doing this, because I cannot do this alone, because I need an equal, because I need you, Annabelle.”

“You’re using me.”

He grips my chin, pulling my face to his. “I am obsessed with you, need you, but this is more than transactional. This far transcends such inais frivolity. Now, tell me you are ready for the next trial. Tell me you’re ready to broken.”

Fuck. I know he’s in my head, puppeteering, but I can’t resist him, because I do want to be broken. I need it—his hand, his cock…whatever he has to offer. “I’m ready.”

He lets go of my chin. “To the dungeon then.”

I follow him through the wall, down the stairs…but the room we come into tonight is quite different to the room with the rack. The dimensions even seem different, the roof higher. Even the air is different—cooler again.

But it’s what the room’s filled with that concerns me the most, the angular metal and timber that makes the up the various ‘toys’ at his back. “Are you ready, little lamb?”

The shadows flow through me now the game is on. They wait in anticipation.

“Yes,” I reply, letting my coat fall away, but I am no longer ashamed. Nervous, yes, but ashamed, no.

With every session I grow more confident—in myself, in my abilities, in my body. I’m no longer the scared little girl who walked into Lumina because she had no place to go.

“This way,” the Professor smiles.

I follow him into the corner of the room.

I look up at what appears to be a giant wooden pyramid with a metallic tip. Above it is a cobweb of ropes and pulleys. In the center of it all is a large collar of sorts.

I have no idea of its purpose or intent, though my imagination runs rampant.

“Do you know what it is called, my pet?”

When I provide no answer, Darkwood speaks again. “It is the Judas Cradle.”

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