Page 366 of Evil Hearts

I shook my head, a sarcastic grin on my face. “No one calls me that except me.”

“I could call you ‘pet’ like Keika or ‘flower’ like Rune?” He grinned, those sharp cat fangs gleaming in the actual fuckingcandlelight of all things. “Or perhaps you would like ‘human’ like Baltz uses.”

A snort left me on instinct. I had to admit that Kenta was funny—and disarmingly charming. I should be having a full-blown meltdown right about now, but that purring and the way that I felt like I knew them all was keeping me teetering over the edge.

“Not ‘human,’ please. And it’s…fine. It’s just…weird. I don’t know you.” I squinted at him, focusing on the smooth, especially short, black fur that covered Kenta’s body. “I think.”

All he did was grin harder.

“You will in just a moment. We are only waiting for Keika and Baltz to meet us. Then Rune will take down their walls in your mind.”

I glanced over at the living shadow that I was sitting next to; that calm was the only thing that was keeping me from bolting again. Rune was terrifying, if intriguing, and my skin tingled everywhere their eyes found me, which had gone back to being just the one pair.

“Their? So you use they/them?” I raised my brows, and Rune actually faltered for a moment before that too-wide smile stretched across their face.

“I do, flower. When you’re made of darkness,” they gestured down to themselves, “tying yourself to a gender seems…irrational.”

I nodded since there was little else to do at that moment. “And you, Kenta? Him?”

He purred, nuzzling his nose into my neck like he and Keika had been doing so much. “Yes, Aki. And Keika is a she, and Baltz is a dick.”

Laughing, I relaxed a hair until the floorboards at the threshold to this living room-like space creaked. Snapping my attention in that direction, I found said dick and Keika walking over.

“And a ‘he,’ for all that it matters.”

Baltz’s expression was stoic and as unreadable as it had been this entire time, but his eyes twinkled with something akin to humor. He approached, Keika right on his heels, her tails swishing around playfully.

“Good, we can begin,” Rude said, and I swiveled back toward them, my heart in my throat.

Nervousness rushed through my veins as I neared a panic attack. As if sensing my distress, Kenta and Keika were running their fingers up and down my arms in seconds.

“I…I’m really not just dreaming or going insane?” I held Rune’s eyes.

“No, flower. You’re waking up.”

With no other preamble, Rune put their icy cold fingers on my temples. I couldfeelthem push into my head, and suddenly, my mind wasn’t my own, like having a nightmare you couldn’t wake up from.

Image after image, memory after memory, funneled into my conscious mind. The door had truly opened up, and all these pictures and beliefs of past events that I’d had for years just melted away.

I could see the times I’d been in danger, either with my mother or someone else. I could see the rescues or redirects. I could see the monsters—the real ones. Not the furry or scaled types or the one who was made of shadow and hunger. I could see the humans who’d used and abused, taken and tormented.

They had been there each time to get me through the worst of it.

And then there was the most recent. I could see the subway station and the contents of my purse that had spilled over the ground. There were the sounds of voices, so many and all around me. They were young, male, and they demanded. They were going to…

“Oh god…”

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I saw Runethok—this demon of shadow—rip them all to shreds for touching me. I could see them getting me back home, their desire too wild to be tamed now.

And then I saw Baltzeheir from when I was a child. I could see the strange horse covered in scales, its tail interspersed with tentacles. It had a horn on its head, and its black eyes stood out amid its seafoam green hair.

He was sluicing through the water toward me. I’d fallen in. I was…drowning.

The odd pulling sensation of Rune’s fingers leaving my mind brought me back to the present, and I struggled to catch my breath. I did recognize them all. Ididknow them. I had nearly died a handful of times, and they had all been there to keep me firmly on this side of the veil, as it were.

“You…” I looked around the circle of monsters around me, landing on Baltz. “...saved me.”

He nodded once, and then the yokai nuzzled into my neck on either side again. “You are ours,” said Kenta. We had to,” Keika added.

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