Page 34 of Monstrous Urges

“HELP!!” I scream as loudly as I can. “SOMEBODY HELP! FIRE! FI?—”

The breath is slammed from my lungs as he whips me violently off his shoulder, hurls me against the wall behind me, and snarls close to my face, his hand around my throat and his eyes full of pure malice.

“Stop. Fucking. Talking, Annika.”

Something short circuits in my brain. Lights flash. A spasm tears through my body and wrenches my spine. More bright lights flicker in my field of vision, turning everything dark.

The sun shines down. The flowers smell like heaven. A man laughs deeply, and a beautiful red-haired woman smiles warmly. A little girl giggles in delight.

“Come play, Annika! Come throw the ball!”

Jerking back out of it is like waking up and realizing you’re drowning. I choke, startling the man as I lurch away from the wall with a manic frenzy and terror clawing at my heart.

He lets go of me, and the speed with which I react almost scares me.

In a flash, I jerk my knee up hard and catch him in the balls. The man grunts, his face twisting in pain as I kick him as hard as I can in the shin.

He drops to one knee, hissing in pain.

And I run.

Annika! Annika! Come play, Annika…

Who the fuck is Annika?

And… Why did he just call me his wife?

7

DRAZEN

There’s a certain irony in being referred to as a ghost, when you don’t yourself believe in them.

That’s what most call me: a ghost. A devil from hell. Something wicked this way comes, as they say.

That’s me.

I am the thing that goes bump in the night. The blackness that even fierce, hardened grown men fear.

Over the years, I’ve been—and been called—many things. A soldier. A freedom-fighter, and defender of my home.

A killer. A terrorist. A war criminal.

A monster. A demon. “The headsman”, or Baba Yaga. The boogeyman. A force of malice, and vengeance.

But here and there along the way I was other things, too.

A brother. A son.

A husband.

My gaze pierces the darkness, stabbing through the bullet-proof windows of my sky-high lair and looking out over the entirety of Manhattan sprawled submissively beneath me.

In the beginning, I had none of this. I had nothing but the charred, scorched remains of an empire I might have one day led in another life and another reality.

Because that empire was taken from me. Taken from my father. Taken from his father. And that made me a king of ash. An emperor of dust and bones.

A demon hell-bent on his revenge.

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