Circus of Death - Candace Wondrak Page 0,45

shook her head, taking a step closer to me, holding my stare even though I was fairly certain my lack of expression told her I was done with this conversation. “Nigel, I spent my whole life trying to be someone I’m not, trying to impress people who didn’t care one way or the other. Why does it matter to you who I’m with?” Her voice broke as she spoke her next question: “Why won’t you give me a chance to live?”

I stared at her. “But you are dead.”

“Yes,” Thana agreed with a short nod of her head, “I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a person—a person with her own wants and desires, a person who wants to choose things for herself, for the first time ever.” She breathed hard, looking as if she both wanted to scream and dig my eyes out, attack me in a rage while also breaking down and crying. “What kind of demon are you to deny me that? For surely, you’re no man. No man would ever be that cruel.”

It was then, staring at her, hearing her say those words and watching the emotions at war on her face, that I knew, without a doubt, what the truth was, so I told her. I told her the longstanding truth I’d forgotten as time had gone on, something I knew in my bones to be true.

“I am no man,” I growled out the words, my eyes becoming black, colorless things, nothing but orbs of darkness resting in my face. As the rest of me changed, I reached for her neck, sweeping her off her feet.

The world around us faded away. Suddenly, we stood in a field, nothing but rows of corn around us and the hot yellow sun above us, a stark contrast to the world of night we’d been in. This place was not real; we were in her head. I was forcing her to see this field, to feel the sun and its heat. I could’ve dropped us anywhere on earth, and yet I chose this place—the middle of nowhere, somewhere she should be more than used to by now.

Her bare feet dangled in the air, but she didn’t fight, didn’t struggle. Thana was too engrossed in my transformation, in what she’d seen.

“I am so much worse than a demon,” I spoke, using a voice that did not belong to Nigel. Nigel’s face might be the human skin I wore, but I was not him. I had taken him a long time ago, years upon years, back when the world wasn’t so fascinated by tiny pocket screens and sugary foods. Back when things were so much simpler for beings like me.

My skin turned black, my spine growing as I stood taller, ripping out of my clothes as two buds sprouted on my back. Black, spiky wings, towering over us. Horns grew on my head, smoke coming from my mouth as I smirked at her horror.

Oh, Thana was finally scared now.

Claws lined my fingertips, and I dug them into her throat before dropping her on the ground before me. With a gust of my wings, I blew over every cornstalk in the near vicinity, flattening them to the ground with my sheer power. My chest was thicker now, thicker and much, much stronger.

I terrified her. I terrified her so much, all she could do was stare up at me with her mouth agape and her body trembling.

This was what I was. Not who. I was never a who, though I had tried desperately to become the man whose face I wore. I was not Nigel. I was nameless in origin, something most humans could never comprehend.

“You…” Thana spoke, a single tear streaming down her cheek as she lay there, unable to move. “Are you the devil?”

I let out a smirk as I sank to her level, kneeling over her and bringing my impressive frame down. Her neck bled from where I’d dug my claws in, and the scent of it in the air caused my hunger to twist. I wanted to devour every part of her. “You silly, silly girl,” I whispered, my voice worlds deeper than it was when I was Nigel. I flexed my wings behind me once more, blocking out the sun from her pathetic, cowering frame.

Thana’s eyes rolled in the back of her head, and she said not another word as she collapsed back, falling unconscious.

In the blink of an eye, we were back in my tent. I was