shock of it knocked the breath out of her and she stumbled back against the wall, her head falling forward until her chin rested against her chest.
If she looked at him, he’d see the hatred she felt for him. If she looked at him, he’d see how much she wanted to kill him. So she didn’t dare look at him. Keeping her head low, hair shielding her face, she stood there, shuddering. Shaking.
It wasn’t the first time he’d hit her.
It wouldn’t be the last.
Tears blinded her and she had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming as he came closer. Not in terror . . . but in rage.
When he reached out to cup her chin, she closed her hands into fists, made herself blank her features. She wanted to beat him bloody. She wanted to spit in his face.
Instead, she stared at him as he critically turned her face this way, then that. “You need to stop pushing me, Ella. We’ve discussed this. You’re a good girl, a good match for me, but sometimes, it’s like you enjoy testing me. Like you enjoy pushing me.”
While the blood roared in her ears, a strange, swimming sensation came over her—voices rising up to clamor in her brain.
“I could kill you. As easy as that and not a soul would say a word . . .”
Water . . . cold and black . . . closing around her—
Not now, she thought desperately. She couldn’t do this around him. Shoring up her shields, she swallowed back the bile, swallowed back all the angry, furious words that rose to her lips, begging to be free.
Go fuck yourself—
That was what she wanted to tell him. What she wanted to say to him. So badly.
One thing silenced her, and it wasn’t her fear of him. It was the death that followed him like a shroud and the knowledge that it wouldn’t stop until he was stopped.
“I’m sorry, Patrick. I’ll be more aware of things in the future.”
It wasn’t a lie. She’d be far more aware of things.
NINE
THE adjustment period sucked. Usually, though, by the end of the first twenty-four hours, he could cope. Thirty-six max.
Joss was moving on seventy-two hours now, and he still felt like he was in a tailspin.
Somewhere near late dawn the third day, though, he finally reached the point he’d been shooting for—that point of control, where he could walk around and not feel like the voices were going to crush him. Where the ghosts weren’t going to drive him mad.
Of course, he’d gone nearly twenty hours without sleep. It was weird how sometimes that genius hit right when one was about ready to die or drop. Then, right when he was certain he couldn’t fumble and shift those two brain-frying gifts around inside his skull anymore, he found a way to make them fit.
It wasn’t comfortable, damn it, but they fit.
Finally able to sleep without hearing the wailing of the dead or the whispers of the living, he collapsed on his bed in the hotel room and slept.
As though they’d been waiting for him to collapse, the dreams attacked. Sucking him under and grabbing on tight, they pulled him down and he was trapped. Locked in a maze of horror where the screams were an endless melody in his mind and the blood colored the air and hung in the back of his mouth, choking him.
He heard their cries. He smelled the blood. He tasted their horror. They were trapped, someplace dark and stinking with their own waste. Hopelessness, helplessness flooded their very souls, and Joss had to fight to keep himself separated from it.
If he didn’t, it would overwhelm him and he needed answers.
Dark. Windowless. He ticked off the measurements as best as he could, thinking he was in a room about twenty by twenty. A basement, maybe? He didn’t know if houses typically had them around here—something for Jones to check out—
Focus, he told himself as the dream tried to splinter, shattering his train of thought and making him nothing but a creature of fear and pain, drawing him back into that web of terror.
No. He wasn’t getting trapped in there.
Mildew. Mold. The place smelled old, and the stink of human excrement was everywhere. Dark, a black void that made him search for windows, doors . . . he saw nothing.
Saw nothing. But he felt them, heard them. They surrounded him. As a girl sobbed, he knelt down, tried to touch her, but his hand passed right through.