No one is coming to rescue you. No one would dare.”
Fighting to keep my breathing even, my attention flicks to the view beyond the bars. My gaze latches onto a bare foot visible in another cubicle. The feminine toenails are short and painted a pretty pink, but it’s the pale milky color of the skin and the utter stillness that has my mouth going dry and heart rate accelerating. Venturing upward, I encounter a frilly lime-colored dress. Reaching her face, long auburn hair has been styled in a side ponytail. Wide emerald lifeless eyes hold a hint of sadness. I know a corpse when I see one.
Ghosts. I can sense them churning around and around in this place. Lost. Angry. Seeking justice.
Cupid shifts, following my line of sight to what claims my attention with such sick dread.
“You’re the Doll Maker,” I accuse, unable to keep the tremor from my tone and betraying just how scared shitless I am. “The serial killer we’ve been trying to catch.”
“Me?” He chuckles ominously. “I may be sick and twisted, but even I don’t have the stomach for what he can do, but he is here. He very much wants to meet you. Not yet though. Not until I’ve finished with you.”
Fingertips idly trail down the length of my bare spine, making me flinch. Reaching the swell of the bottom, he dips it between my cleft.
“Don’t do that,” I beg as the flat of his thumb rubs circles over my arse hole.
Ignoring my plea, he presses the tip past the ring of muscles, causing me to yelp. “What a tight little rosebud.”
About halfway in, he fucks me with stabbing strokes. Clawing the mattress, I screw my eyes shut, the sensation of his knuckle worming its way inside me making me sob. A second finger follows, spreading me wider.
“That’s it, surrender that little hole to me,” he rasps, the heat emanating off him, scalding, as he looms over me. A few more thrusts and they withdraw.
Panting, shaking with shock, the sound of clothes being removed reaches my ears. The bed rocks as another weight joins my own. Eyes still closed, my frozen mind frantically keeps telling me this cannot be happening.
A muscled body slides on top of mine, crushing me into the mattress. My cheeks are pried open. Whimpering in realization, I’m not prepared when he rams his cock into my arse breaching it with ruthless determination. My scream is ignored as he forges onward, opening me up inch by agonizing inch, stretching me to the limit. I try to resist, muscles tightening at the unwanted invasion, but it only makes it worse.
“I’m going to do more than break your heart,” he grunts in my ear. “I’m going to pulverize it and leave it for Morpheus to find.”
Squirming there’s no escape as he pins me beneath his thrusting assault. Impaled on his cock, I control nothing. Beneath me, the springs of the cot squeak with every painful movement. The shriek of helplessness that works its way up from my throat is primal. A raw intensity to it holding my desperation and agony at his violation. Fury explodes through me. A molten emotion I’ve always kept in check. White hot and burning to harm.
The pressure in the air drops sharply as a sound like a train barreling along an echoing corridor deafens my ears. Raising my eyelashes, I’m in time to see the creature that emerges from the wall. Luminous, glowing green and skeletal, its clothes in rags dangling from its emaciated frame. Mouth gaping open, it shows of an array of fangs.
“What the fuck?” Cupid pulls out of me causing me to cry out in pain.
Howling with whatever lungs it possesses, the enraged creature swipes a bony clawed hand. Scrambling away, my captor retreats naked out through the door swinging it closed with a clank after him.
Shuddering, trying to catch his breath, he glares at me through the bars. “So, the human has a few tricks up her sleeve. Hmmm curiouser and curiouser. Maybe you’ll prove useful in other ways after all.”
Above me the wraith floats from side to side.
It’s hungry.
I can feel its ravenous hunger.
The desire to rip the soul from Cupid’s body and suck it dry not sated from the other lives it’s taken in the past. Memories threaten to asphyxiate me. The screams of my classmates, their terror as they’d fled, but there had been no escape after I’d unleashed it.
20
Morpheus
“Why have I been summoned at ‘this is too goddamn early in the