his back. The minute the weapon was in his hand, he felt something within him stir to life, a beast awakening from a forced hibernation. A feeling that was becoming addictive to him, a feeling laced with delicious darkness that he craved more and more each day.
It was a little voice that whispered in his ear nightly, telling him to destroy those who hurt him and the girl. It was an invisible hand that guided him toward weaponry, guided him to practice in secret in the woods behind his house. Taught him how to wield knives and chains and guns to destroy people, how to strike a human target clear and true.
How to kill.
Right now, whatever it was that lived inside him encouraged him to lean into those dark thoughts; it wrapped around him in an obsidian embrace. “Let her go,” he said again, stepping even closer to the man, the knife’s handle held tightly behind his back.
The fear in the girl’s eyes was all the kindling the boy needed, but the sardonic laugh from the man he hated most of all, paired with his releasing of the safety on the gun at the girl’s head, was the spark.
In a split second, the boy launched forward and drove the long blade straight into the man’s throat. The sound of flesh splitting apart was a symphony to his ears. He met the man’s eyes and smiled, making sure to stare directly at the prick as his mouth dropped open in shock. The man began to gurgle on the blood clawing up his throat. But the boy didn’t relent. He pulled out the knife, then struck again and again, following the directives of the voice in his head that told him to take more, take more and more and more …
Diel gasped, eyes opening as he bolted upright in his bed. His skin was drenched in sweat, and his heart was an exploding grenade in his chest. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe. The girl’s face was there, before him, like she was real. He reached out into thin air, tried to hold on to the image. He searched his brain to discover who she might be, but the nightmare quickly began to fade and so did the girl’s face, until her features disappeared from memory and Diel was left with only an X-ray of what she looked like, questioning if he even saw her in his nightmare at all.
But something in his gut told him he did, told him that the repeated nightmares were important somehow. They were growing more and more frequent over the eight weeks since Noa had removed his collar, and with every single one he grew more and more frustrated as they disappeared into vapor just minutes after he awoke.
Something inside him told him he had to delve deeper. What did they mean? Who were the people in them? And why did Diel keep dreaming of them? Of death? It was fucking with his head. It was a hundred daggers plunged into his brain at once, the sharp steel telling him to think, to make sense of it all. But he couldn’t. His thoughts were scrambled; they were mush.
He couldn’t make sense of anything lately.
A hand on his back shocked him from the dark and endless pit he kept falling into. But the warmth of the soft touch made him breathe deeper. The hand moved up and down in a soothing, hypnotic rhythm.
“You’re okay, baby.” Noa’s sleep-ridden voice hit his ears, and his frantic heart calmed. She shifted to her knees and moved in front of him, cupping his cheeks with her hands. “Do you remember anything this time?”
Frustration hit Diel hard and strong, blanket bombs dropping on his frantic thoughts. He shook his head, and Noa nodded in understanding. He lifted his hand to his hair and pulled. Pain from his scalp splintered down his spine.
He wanted to hiss in relief. Pain made things better. Pain always made things better.
Before Noa could stop him, he threw back the sheets, stood from the bed and paced before the hearth. “What the fuck is wrong with me?” he spat. His muscles were tense, and he could feel the darkness within him begin to spread its ink along his veins. He was fucked in the head. So motherfucking messed up in his head.
He always had been. But this time … this time … he couldn’t get a fucking handle on it. He couldn’t think or calm himself