Page 17 of Run Like the Devil

“I doubt that.” Hubis said that with a level of menace that made me gulp.

Suddenly I didn’t think I was ready, either, especially when everything around me went black.

Hale

Loch collapsed, slumping over in her chair and nearly falling from it. All the times we had discussed acting like we didn’t give a fuck about one another went out the window at that sight.

I’d never been great at holding my temper or following a plan, but even my meager attempt was fucked the moment I saw Loch unconscious. I was at her side in a blink, catching her before she slipped entirely from the chair and hit the floor.

She still breathed, which let me do so, too. Still, the only time her passing out was okay in my book was if it happened after I gave her a particularly spectacular orgasm. That certainly wasn’t the case here.

I pulled Loch into my arms, her head lolling against my chest in a lax way that drove my temper up. Fuck, I wanted to do something, which in my life meant to draw blood from whoever was at fault.

But, given the person at fault was the fucker seated in the seat there, I didn’t have much I could do.

“What the fuck is wrong with her?” I asked, not bothering to tone down my accusation at all.

Hubis blinked slowly, as though coming to. That didn’t bode well for whatever was happening. “She is learning her lesson.”

“Which means fuck all to me,” I snapped.

If Loch hadn’t been unconscious, she would have kicked me for responding that way. Of course, that only served to remind me that she wasn’t conscious and that it was all that fucker’s fault.

Talk about a vicious cycle of blame there.

Hubis rose from his seat as if nothing had happened. He peered at Loch, and something deep in the recesses of his eyes that made me want to shield her from his view. “She will wake in a few hours.” He didn’t wait for a response before he turned and walked toward the arch, passing through the light there without another word. His feathery minion went with him, leaving Loch in my arms.

Loch flinched in her sleep, and a broken sound left her throat. It was one of fear, of pain, and it tore at me. I wanted to crawl inside her skull and destroy whatever would make her loose a sound like that, but I couldn’t.

Tyrus approached, setting his hand on her forehead. Normally I’d have bared my teeth at that, but I was too shaken up to react. Tyrus brushed her hair from her face just as she made another sound, worse than the first.

I turned my gaze toward Yazmor—if anyone knew what to do, it was him. I wasn’t above begging, it seemed, at least not for Loch. “What do we do?”

Yazmor pressed his lips together, his expression showing I wouldn’t like his answer. “There’s nothing to do. Until Hubis releases her mind, she’s trapped wherever she is. All we can do is keep her body safe until it’s over.”

“Where the fuck is she trapped? What is happening to her?” I knew my words came out desperate, but I had no idea what else to do.

No one answered, but no one needed to. I recalled Hubis’ eyes before he’d left, when he’d stared at her. I’d seen the anger, the hatred, those things were expected. They weren’t what froze me, what made me clutch Loch tighter.

Instead, it was the flash of pity. If whatever Hubis was doing to her was bad enough for him to pity her…

I held her tighter, since it was the only thing I could do.

Chapter Five

Loch

I blinked, trying to gather my bearings. It felt like I’d had a few too many edibles, where the world sloshed around me and I struggled to make head or tail of anything.

Of course, this was a lot better than I thought it would be. Instead of torture or any horror my brain could have come up with, spending some in this blackness wasn’t so bad.

My feet pressed against some sort of ground as I turned, and when I took a step, waves of black shimmered as if I walked on the surface of water. The darkness stretched out forever in each direction, with no horizon or break between land and sky.

There didn’t seem to be a breeze, nothing to indicate air—well, other than the fact that I wasn’t gasping or choking. It was neither hot nor cold, as if the place had no temperature at all.

All of it added up to make me suspect I wasn’t actually in a place at all. Instead, I felt removed from existence, like some tiny pocket.

“This place is in my mind.”

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