Page 73 of Lovely Wicked Things

“Did you miss the part about the ego?” Her smile stretches. “You cited the master sorcerer of the dark arts himself. You’re so good at dropping hints, like little riddles. Tell me I’m wrong, that I’m still unworthy.”

Some understanding passes between them, and her gaze narrows on Kallum with disdain before she turns my way. “The sacrifice of a human was never intended to sever humanity, Halen. You got that wrong. Not only is a blood sacrifice the most powerful, it’s the only way to keep the mind intact. You can thank your boyfriend for that insight.”

Kallum cradles the back of my head, his fingers speared into my hair possessively. “While I sympathize with Emmons’ lovesick heart, only one of us gets the girl,” he says, firm resolve in his deep baritone.

Devyn raises her chin, her antlers casting a tall shadow behind her. “Love makes us all sick, professor.”

The flames cast Kallum’s features in striking relief, his gaze on me just as feverish. If given the choice, he would sacrifice himself for me in this moment. I see the truth in those clashing eyes that smolder hotter than the burning coals.

This close to Kallum, his bare skin humming with an electric current, our eyes fused on each other despite the watchful gazes all around, we’re always connected. The only two people in existence as the rest of the world falls away.

I raise my hand to his face and trace the arresting contours, the chalk smudged beneath the press of my fingertips. How lost has Kallum gotten in his own obsession?

“Don’t do anything reckless for me,” I tell him again, stressing my desire to keep him safe.

He lowers his mouth to my ear. “I will bathe this ground in blood, sweetness,” he whispers, eliciting a shiver over my skin. “Every star in my universe burns in the silvery pools of your eyes. An infinity of wishes cast there, and I only desire one thing,lunam deam.” He presses his forehead to mine, his voice a coarse plea as he says, “Stay with me.”

I seal my eyes closed, feeling only the heat of his body against mine despite the raging flames, hearing only his shallow breaths as the drum fades into the background, just like the night of his ritual when he implored me to remember, to face the fear pressing at me from the shadows.

In analytical psychology, Jung states there is nothing more terrifyingly frightening than the mind. Repression of the id’s desires is where our shadow is fashioned. When an internal struggle is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. The world is forced to act out the conflict, and thus we’re torn into opposing halves.

Our shadow side is born.

Once only the dark, destructive grief remained, my shadow was a raging monster. The night I set off after a killer, it took mass.

And like in the cautionary tale, when Jekyll realizes he’s losing the battle to his monster, he makes the choice to end his own life in order to stop the fiend from taking over. Not only did I crave that escape, I pursued it. I wasn’t supposed to survive that night. I leapt into the void and never planned to resurface.

It’s never been the question of whether or not I killed—it’s whether I can stop.

Can I know without fail that I will never take another life? I can’t—because I felt it in my blood when Kallum kissed me during the ritual. I felt it when I fought Landry, and when Alister attacked me.

I feel it now as I pull back and stare into Kallum’s captivating eyes, the pain I want to unleash, the punishment I want to deliver as I caress his chest with my wounded palm, gently touching his battered skin.

Vengeance.

My shadow archetype craves retribution.

The pit of the fire burns hotter, and I have the compulsion to reach into the coals, to feel the soot. It’s a part of me.

Pushing up onto my toes, I capture Kallum’s full lips in a tender kiss, sealing the promise I made months ago before a crackling fire to stay with him.

He brushes his thumb along the nape of my neck, then his form tenses, and I sense the threat behind me like a resinous sludge traveling through the veins of the marsh.

Emmons splashes the blackened, boiling organs with a clear substance, and a noxious gas releases into the air. A crazed gleam flashes in his eyes as he looks at Devyn. “Lead them,” he commands her.

I tighten my hold on Kallum as Devyn sways toward us, her hips rolling in sync to the rhythm, her hands sweeping through the air as if she’s weaving a pattern through the atmosphere. The antler spine in my pocket digs into my hip in reminder. This time, I can’t hesitate.

As she comes to a halt near our locked bodies, Devyn reaches up and unfastens one of the slender antlers from the implant on her scalp, then she removes the other.

“Sex is the most potent energy source,” she declares, raising her arms, the antlers casting trembling shadows against the ground. “The bestial craving for blood and sex is our primal desire, and it must be fed.”

Dread floods my bloodstream as I tip my head back to search Kallum’s fierce gaze, those intense flames burning with a truth he can’t hide.

“Oh, god.” The words fall from my mouth as I latch on to his forearms resting along my shoulders. He remains silent, his features a hardened mask.

Devyn pitches the antlers into the fire. “Ekstasiscommands us, rules us,” she cries. “We submit to the divine pleasure.”

My heart thrashes the cage of my chest as realization dawns. Before we’re to become one with the elements in a madman’s alchemy dish, we’re first required to reachekstasis, the height of ecstasy.

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