Page 127 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Underworld

“Dude. What are you talking about?”

“I put in the hours.” Dylan doesn’t look at Jonas as he shoves him away and pushes me back down when I try to get up and get away. “Do you think I like any of that bullshit?”

He snatches the chain from where it lies in the yellow dirt and yanks Jonas off his feet again, dragging him toward the closest tree.

By the time I’m back on my feet, he’s gotten that chain over one of the branches and hauled Jonas into the air.

Jonas swings from the branch like a befuddled pinata, swiping for the chain, but Dylan has tied him off and when I go to try to help him get back down, Dylan shoves me hard enough I hit the porch steps.

“You are an asshole,” Jonas says, arms flailing as he tries to reach the hook to pull himself down.

“Yeah, I’m an asshole and she’s a bitch.” He glares down at me and a smile creeps slowly to his lips. “You owe me.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

Julia’s face elongates as her chest moves in deep breaths. Dylan doesn’t seem to even know she’s there anymore.

“What the fuck, dude.” Jonas struggles, trying to get himself free.

“Go inside,” Julia says. Her voice is thin, almost as transparent as her body.

Dylan doesn’t hear her, or he doesn’t pay any attention to her, at the very least.

“I don’t know what you want,” I say as I lift myself up and back onto the steps, creeping up them backwards.

“Yes you do.”

I get to the next step and he sighs.

“Fine.” Dylan says. “I’ll take what I want.”

“Excuse me?”

He doesn’t answer, he just looks at me like I’m a child, too stupid to understand him.

“Go ahead and scream.” He takes a step forward. “It’ll be hotter if you struggle.”

“What the fuck? Is this who you were the whole time? Just acting like my friend because you wanted to fuck me?”

“Why else would I put up with your woo woo bullshit?”

I don’t want to abandon Jonas, but I don’t actually know what Dylan can do to me here. And he’s already tried to rip Jonas’s head off…

I scramble to my feet and run inside. The chains worked on Jonas… maybe I can die Dylan up with a sheet, or a curtain chord or…

I race up the stairs and Dylan follows me. He doesn’t run. I wonder if he thinks I don’t have anywhere to go.

Tie him up, or shove him through to the living world and deal with him out there where I can use my magic. Those are my only options right now.

“Taking yourself to a bed for me?” He asks, voice low, as he stalks me. “What a good girl.”

My skin crawls and before I reach it, the bedroom door slams shut. There’s nowhere else to go and I back up against it, cursing under my breath.

There’s nowhere else for me to go between him and me, there’s only a cupboard to the right and the bannister to the left.

“What are you doing, Julia?” I ask under my breath.

She doesn’t answer.

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