Page 41 of Haunted Prey

The church is supposed to be a place one's sins can be cleansed, like blood from one’s hands. But I didn’t think mine would wash away. It was like ink now.

The heavy silence hung. Shadows moved at the corner of my eye. Andrea had lit the candles. Five exactly. She was the only one who prayed for us devils to be purified. Hallowed.

I stared at the red light streaming down from the stained-glass window above. I came here more often than not. To sit and think of everything and nothing. Nina seemed afraid of this place, but I heard her giggles every so often in the distance. And sometimes her cries.

But I ignored her all the same. There was only one. One who stood bright and burning in my mind like the sun. I saw her more than ever—it was her that my attention was now focused like the point of a gun.

In the beginning, I hadn’t uttered a word in this place, not one prayer.

Now I prayed every night.

I never had a god. But now, I had a goddess. So I prayed to her.

I saw her in the shadows, and I talked to her, begged her to stay, and whispered endless promises in the dark. Like a starving man, I reached for her. I spent hours here seeing nothing but Eve and our heaven.

If I was losing my mind in some other way, I didn’t notice. If my obsession was growing, I didn’t care. Maybe it was pathetic, too, like Nina said. Fuck if I cared about that either.

I needed her here with me. She was out there and I was so close to having her again, so fucking close.

It had taken a lot of convincing from the others to get me to stay put. To hide when all I wanted was to unleash hell, a fiery path toward that crooked shithole of a facility where they had her. Severfalls. The only thing that kept me in place was the promise she’d be in my hands. That if I wanted to make that path, I had to be healed, had to be at my full strength. Because if I got caught, I’d never see her again.

For the others, moving too quickly would destroy our chances for revenge. So I was forced to wait.

That changed when my girl escaped.

Dammit, Eve, I love you so fucking much. It aches.

Good thing I didn’t have to worry about where she was. I had Dom to thank for that.

I threatened that mute son of a bitch several times to go out and keep an eye on her. Eventually he did, but only because the golden boy, Micheal, said it might be a good idea. Because she had information. She knew more of the inner workings of Severfalls. And because they were convinced she had something to do with it all. They still thought she was like her family, that she had been involved with the experiments.

I knew my baby better now. I believed in her innocence—wished I had sooner, instead of letting my demons convince me otherwise. I had let my rage blind me. Now I needed to protect her more than ever. But I couldn’t do that with my ass in a pewin some abandoned church. Prayers didn’t do shit when all I did was sit there.

No, I was done waiting. Especially after that last footage Dom showed me. Thinking of it still burned me up inside. Made me want to do bad things again.

Dom was good at following without detection, though, I suspected Eve caught sight of his Mustang a few times. This time, he was more than cautious, parking somewhere unseen outside the park.

It had only been a few hours since I’d seen the footage, watching from Dom’s battle station, and the sight was seared into me. Even by her fuzzy image, I could see how pale she was, how tired. So tense. My baby wasn’t getting any sleep. I knew how that felt.

At first, I’d just been relieved to see her face again. I didn’t even consider why she was at some park, why she risked being in the open.

Then I saw who she was meeting.

I knew the chances of killing him with just one throw was slim, but I sure as fuck was disappointed now I hadn’t. I needed to work on my aim.

Having to stand there and watch him by her side, getting to speak to her made the jealousy curl in my stomach. When he went in for the hug and pressed his lips to her hair, I felt despair before I even felt pissed off. It made her so uncomfortable, and I wanted to leap through the screen and break his neck.

Then Nina came to whisper what I feared to even think.

She’s turning on you.

“She thinks I’m dead,”I’d countered.

She also thinks you’re a murderous piece of shit. Face the reality, Em. She’s moving on. You don’t deserve her.

I took one of the pills Andrea gave me in defiance, ready to silence her for good, proud when I was able to keep it down even if it made me dry heave after.

I watched the footage numerous times just so I could look at Eve, studying every bit of her like a man obsessed. Seeing her turn away from the man who’d shot me made me relax. But after having to watch all that, I knew the hiding time was over.

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