Page 359 of Evil Hearts

“I was.”

Stroking a claw down the side of her next, I inhaled deeply. Her perfume of lust and dread intoxicated me like the foulest of demonic drugs, none of which I needed or could truly compare.

Gripping her fists tighter, Aki swallowed hard. “Show yourself.”

She shivered against me, but her voice remained steady. There was no proper way to prepare her for what she would see, and simply letting it happen seemed the greater mercy at this moment. Not that I would be a fair judge of what was merciful.

I lowered my mouth to her ear. “Scream if you must, flower. But know that I possess many ways to silence you, some more pleasant than others.”

Pulling the shadows back into my body, I slowly brightened the room as more of the flickering torches shed their dying light. I stepped back from Akirako as inch after inch was illuminated, giving her the space to take in my form as she turned around.

Shadow slid across the floor like smoke, and her eyes tracked it as it suffused into my feet, then my legs, and then my torso and arms. She tracked them all the way up my body until they filled in the features of my face, my ghastly appearance wholly revealed.

I watched as Akirako’s eyes went wide, subtle tears brimming at the edges. Her mouth fell open, and she stumbled back as she struggled to form coherent words.

“Holy… fuck.”

Chapter Four

Akirako

Reality was collapsingaround me. I was going insane, having a mental breakdown. Because what I was seeing just couldn’t be real. The shadows surrounding me coalesced into a shape, a form—muscular arms and legs attached to a slightly too-long torso. I could make out subtle horns on either side of where I assumed the head was, and a wide, toothy grin split the black to reveal sharp fangs that stretched too far across the face.

“It’s not…you can’t be…”

Red glowing eyes topped the scoops of this shit sundae, and my stomach had dropped completely into my feet. I knew those eyes. I’d seen them when I left the restaurant, then in the mirror, and so many other places if I was being honest with myself.

They’d haunted me since I was a teenager.

Wisps of smoke continued to dance around the thing before me, masculine if I was going off what I’d felt pressed to my ass just a moment ago. As I stood in shock, him still looking at me like I was some piece of meat, two more sets of eyes appeared in the blackness of his face, which was still a strange sort of indecipherable.

It was like he was made of black, with no skin, and all light absorbed or nullified by whatever he consisted of. How I was seeing his eyes and teeth was beyond me. I knew how illumination worked and this was not it. If he was shadowed out, all of him should be that way.

“How can I…What…areyou?”

Like a dog or snake, the fangs at the front of his mouth, both top and bottom, were much longer than the rest, and when he spoke, they swept against each other.

“Lots of names for something that’s been nameless my entire life. I just…am. I always have been.”

I shook my head, my pulse too loud in my ears, and my stomach twisted up into knots. “That doesn’t—You have to be something. Are you…a…a monster?”

“I’ve been called that before.” He smirked, the corner of his elongated grin lifting. “I suppose it fits…sometimes.”

Dozens more pairs of red eyes, stretched slits with no pupil, opened, speckling his shadow body with dots of crimson. He tilted his head to the side, studying me, and that grin of his pulled wider, his fangs dripping with saliva.

I pitched backward, flinching and tripping over my own damned feet as I stared up at him, my eyes leakings at the terror pumping through my veins.

“Are…are you going to hurt me?” My voice was tiny, and I wasn’t sure why I bothered fucking asking. Of course, he was.

Taking a step closer, more of the light near me was choked out as thisbeingclosed in. I yelped, which bled into a whimper. As he crouched in front of me, the slight details I could make out of his body were stark musculature and absolutely no boxers to be seen. My brain reeled as it processed the thick, veiny cock that hung from his hips—a banded ring of flesh at the base.

“Would you like me to?”

His voice was so calm and deep, not a hint of emotion and something otherworldly about it. And hell, that made sense. Whatever he was, this man—of sorts—was not human, and that was fucking nuts.

“I only hurt those who want it—whether that be for pleasure or punishment. A guilty soul appreciates a good flogging as much as a lustful one.”

“What are you?” I shook my head again, the tears spilling over even as my curiosity peaked. “What…do you want?”

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