Page 5 of Your Devoted Monster
The same kind of place where Gabriel had tried to kill him three years ago. Full circle.
By the time Ezra reached the warehouse, he was shivering hard enough that his teeth chattered. He looked like a victim already—barely dressed, bruises on his throat, walking toward danger instead of away from it. The kind of person who you’d expect to end up in crime scene photos with a chalk outline.
The warehouse looked exactly like what it was—abandoned, dangerous, wrong. Broken windows, rusted metal siding, weeds growing through cracks in the loading dock. The side door hung slightly open, darkness visible beyond.
This was the place.
Inside, Ezra's eyes adjusted slowly. Concrete floors stained with things he didn't want to identify. Industrial shelving creating a maze of shadows. Chains hanging from ceiling beams. The air smelled like rust and bleach and something underneath that made his primitive brain scream run.
This was the kind of place Gabriel had used before—before Ezra. Five bodies, the news had said. Five men posed like Renaissance paintings, arranged with artistic precision before being violated and discarded. Each one found days later, positioned in careful tableaus that the press had called "disturbing" and "blasphemous." Gabriel had been building to something with each one, perfecting his craft.
Then Ezra had stabbed him and run, leaving Gabriel's masterwork unfinished.
Now in one corner, a single window let in a pool of light. And there, illuminated like a fallen saint, stood Gabriel.
Three years of nightmares and fantasies, but he'd never seen Gabriel's face. His dreams had been all sensation—hands on his throat, that voice in his ear, the weight pinning him down, the hunger in those amber-ringed eyes through mask holes. Those eyes Ezra knew, had memorized. But the face...
Gabriel was somehow exactly what Ezra had always known he’d be.
The face was sharp. Pale. Dark hair pushed back except for one piece that fell forward. High cheekbones, a mouth that didn't smile. Handsome in a way that felt wrong.
There was something fundamentally wrong in that face. Not ugly—worse. It was the wrongness of perfection with nothing behind it, like those AI-generated photos where the features are flawless but the longer you look, the more you realize something essential is missing. Gabriel's face had all the right pieces arranged in all the right ways, but underneath was an emptiness that should have been terrifying.
It was. And Ezra was hard enough to cut diamonds.
He hadn't even been touched yet. Hadn't been threatened. Gabriel had just stood there looking empty and perfect and wrong, and Ezra's fucked-up brain wentyeah, that's the one. That's what we've been looking for.
"No mask this time, huh”? Ezra said, voice barely a whisper. His feet moved forward one step without his permission.
Thirty feet between them. Twenty-nine now.
Gabriel smiled, touching his own face as if remembering. "Halloween was three years ago. Though I kept it. Would you like to see?"
Another step. Ezra's feet silent on the concrete. His brain screamed at him to stop, run, do anything but walk toward the man who'd tried to strangle him, turn his body into some fucked-up art.
Twenty-seven feet.
Like revealing a gift he'd been saving, Gabriel reached behind him and produced it—a simple black mask, the kind you couldbuy at any costume shop. Innocent-looking. Ezra's knees went weak at the sight of it.
Gabriel held it up to the light. "This little thing gave me such an advantage. The anonymity. The theater of it. But tonight..." He tossed it aside, letting it disappear into the shadows. "Tonight I want you to see exactly who's touching you. Who's ruining you. Who you're choosing."
Ezra's cock jumped at the words, and he was too far gone to be ashamed of it. His mouth went dry as he imagined the scar on Gabriel's ribs now, the one he'd made, hidden beneath that perfectly pressed shirt.
He needed to see it more than he’d ever needed anything in his life.
“Disappointed?" Gabriel asked, tracking Ezra's approach but not moving, letting him come like a moth to flame.
"No," Ezra breathed, still walking. Fifteen feet. "You look exactly like you should."
"And how's that?"
Ten feet. Close enough to see the pulse in Gabriel's throat, steady where Ezra's was racing. "Like you.”
Gabriel's eyes darkened. "I've been wondering if you'd recognize me. Without the mask. Without the context. If I'd passed you on the street?—"
"I'd have known," Ezra interrupted, close enough to smell him over the warehouse rust—something clean and expensive that didn't belong here.
Three feet. Ezra stopped, finally, trembling with the effort of not closing that last gap. This was insane. This was suicide. But three years ago, Gabriel had wanted him—wanted to possess him, consume him, make art of him. Nobody had wanted Ezra that much before or since. Not even Ezra himself.
