will be peace. Peace through your sacrifice. So when you come to die, Miss Raelynn, know that you were meant for it.”
The gun was lowered, the hammer relaxed, and without another word, Leon snatched me up and rushed me out the door.
We found a back way out, a glass door that led to a deck. Leon carefully lowered me over the side of before jumping down himself. Then into the trees that nestled close around the house, he dragged me breathless through the dark, my chest aching with panic and the cold air, until finally I had to beg him to stop.
“We have to move quickly,” he insisted, pacing as I doubled over, kneeling on the ground, unsure if I was about to vomit or pass out or both. “You need to get out of Abelaum, Raelynn. Somewhere he won’t look, somewhere they can’t find you.” Still pacing, fists clenching and unclenching, teeth clipping together furiously, he muttered, “He thinks he can take you from me. I’ll rip off his hands before I ever let him —”
“Leon…” I swayed to my feet, panic still clenched so tightly around my heart that it hurt. “Don’t leave me again...please...please don’t...I...I can’t…”
“I’m not fucking leaving.” He grabbed me, half gentle, half vicious — as if he could force what he was saying to be believed, the tighter he gripped my arms. The whites of his eyes were darkening, the gold in them like fire in the night sky, and even the veins on his forearms were running black now. “Nothing is going to take you from me. Nothing.”
“But-but my soul, you said…you said —”
He pressed his hand over my mouth. “Shh, shh, stop. Stop.” His hand was shaking. His claws were pressing into my cheek, little pinpricks of pain. “Don’t you fucking doubt that I’ll have your soul. I’m not letting you get away. I’m not letting anything” — he grasped me so hard, so tight, that I could hardly breathe, his heat rushing over me in waves — “anything take you from me. I’ll rip Heaven and Hell and this goddamn Earth apart before I let them steal you from me.”
He’d claimed I was his before but always with the caveat that my soul was a requirement. Now? It was as if the very idea that I might be taken was repulsive, insulting. Maybe that should have scared me too, but the ache in my chest calmed, even with my heart still pounding. For a few seconds, the only sound between us was our breathing: hard, heavy.
No oxygen in the world was enough when this fear, this longing, this inevitable desire wanted to steal every breath from my lungs.
Slowly, Leon uncovered my mouth, but he still gripped my cheeks between his fingers. He held his head high, his jaw locked. “Not a goddamn thing is taking you from me, baby girl. No man, and no God. I’ll kill them all.”
Snap.
I nearly got whiplash from how quickly he wrenched me back, his body between me and whatever had just taken a step in the darkness. For the first time, I noticed how silent the woods were. How oppressively empty they seemed. No crickets, no rustling of the little creatures moving through the underbrush. Even the wind was still.
But there was a smell. Like a damp cellar. Like mold.
A figure — tall, lean, pale as bone, stood about a hundred yards away among the trees. I might have thought it was the trunk of a broken aspen at first glance. But another second meant seeing the white antlers on its head, tendrils of seaweed clinging to their prongs — the long, knobby limbs — the hooves on its too-long bent-backward legs.
The eyes.
Large milky white eyes, staring.
“Leon.” My voice shook. My hands were knotted into fists against his shirt. Slowly, careful not to make any sudden moves, he pulled the mask from his face and dropped it to the ground.
When the mask dropped, the creature jolted; it moved — rapidly like still frames of a photo, jerking, unnatural — every motion accompanied by a click as if its bones were popping.
In the blink of an eye, it was fifty yards closer.
“What the fuck is it?” I whispered, panic tightening my throat.
“A Gollum,” he said. His hand was frozen, outstretched where he’d dropped the mask, as if he didn’t dare move it again. “A creature of rotten earth. They serve the God. Its will is their will, they’re an extension of Its influence. Listen to me.