Page 33 of Demons & Damnation

“It’s a knack of mine,” he replied, sitting down opposite her and taking a sip of his drink.

Kyla pulled a face at him. “How can you drink that?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “The same way you drink your coke. It’s refreshing, and I like the taste of it.”

She burst out laughing. “I’ve never heard whiskey described as refreshing when it’s mixed with something, let alone when it’s not.”

“Well,” he said, lifting his glass. “Now you have. You know what they say—first time for everything.”

Watching him take a proper gulp of it, Kyla shivered. “So where did you end up on your travels?”

He flashed her a dazzling smile. “Everywhere.”

“That’s...specific,” she replied, already trying to think of how to escape him. Sam could gladly have this one. “Excellent conversation starter.”

“Sorry,” he said, grinning at her. “A decade of travelling makes it hard to pick out exact details.”

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, Kyla tried to help him along. “Surely you must have had a favourite place? Somewhere that you really loved and didn’t want to leave?”

“Oh yeah, for definite.” A warm smile tugged at his pink lips. “That would be Pompeii.”

Now he had her attention. Kyla couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her. “You went to Pompeii?”

“Yeah. Several times,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as if it were something nonchalant. “Absolutely amazing place. It’s coated in this deathly silence that’s somehow peaceful and beautiful. The way everything has been preserved so perfectly for all these years...words can’t describe it. I’d give anything to go back.”

Kyla couldn’t miss the water glistening over his eyes as emotion clearly overwhelmed him. She began to wonder if it were true when people reported feeling extreme sadness when visiting places steeped in so much tragedy.

“Are you going back?” she asked.

The corners of his mouth tweaked up with a twinge of sadness. “No, not again. That’s all in the past now.”

Kyla wanted to dig a bit deeper into his cryptic words. What was all in the past? His travelling? Or visiting Pompeii? Seeing his eyes glaze over, something she knew all too well herself, she tried to distract him with something else. “Was there anywhere you really hated?”

Blinking the water from his eyes, he looked back at her and chuckled, before taking a large swig of his whiskey. “Plenty. There was this one particular place I couldn’t stand but Adam loved it. Had to drag him away from it.” Shaking his head, he finished the rest of his drink in one gulp, slamming the empty glass down on the table. “He’d go back there right now if he could.”

“Where was it?”

For just a second, he hesitated. “Down under.”

“Down under? As in Aus—”

A shot glass banged down on the table, making Kyla jump. “Couldn’t take the heat, could you, little bro?”

The sarcasm dripping from Adam’s words couldn’t be missed. Adam sat down next to Kyla, sprawling his arms across the back of the seats. He glared at Ben with such hatred, Kyla squirmed in her seat, feeling like she really needed to move and let them work out whatever issue they seemed to be having but she couldn’t go anywhere, trapped between a wooden board and the bulky body of Adam Worthington.

“Oh, it wasn’t the heat,” Ben replied, smiling back at his brother. “It was more the people.”

Leaning forwards, Adam grinned. “Never did quite fit in, did you? Couldn’t quite make your own way in life so you thought it’d be best to just take someone else’s, hmmm?”

Kyla picked up her drink and sipped at it as she widened her eyes in shock at the two brothers jabbing at each other with words. The atmosphere between them started to charge, the air becoming almost electrified, as if taking on its own physical form.

Becoming acutely aware that things were escalating, Kyla shrunk into her corner, pressing herself up against the wooden partition as much as possible, wishing she could sidle her way out of this now.

“Well,” Ben replied, his skin seeming to turn a shade of onyx. “Whose life would be better to take than that of someone who makes everyone around him miserable because he’s such a selfish bastard.”

As the dancing lights continued to spin around the room, casting moving shadows over everything and everyone, Kyla couldn’t quite work out if the darkening of Ben’s skin was from the lights or not. Narrowing her eyes to try and zoom in on him, Kyla couldn’t quite register what her eyes were reporting back to her. It looked as if all of Ben’s veins were popping from his skin, creating ridges in his blackening skin tone.

As quickly as the illusion had appeared, it disappeared, leaving Kyla wondering if Ben had snuck some alcohol in her coke after all.

---