Nightfall (Devil's Night #4) - Penelope Douglas Page 0,140

her, my mouth going dry. She didn’t look familiar, but I wasn’t really close enough to tell. At first glance, she looked my age, but the way the skin fit around certain parts of her body told me she wasn’t. Maybe twenties or thirties.

I looked around, hoping the caretaker might be making the rounds or kids would be coming back to party some more, but we were completely alone out here now.

He dug for another minute and then stopped, his shoulders slumped as he stared down at the body, almost in a daze.

And all of a sudden, I was him. In his shoes, standing where he was. I’d just killed someone, and I was getting rid of the evidence.

Raising his black boot, he slowly lowered it to her neck and pressed down, watching her and baring his teeth.

Anger.

He was angry.

And despite everything in my head telling me this was a horror, I couldn’t run. I couldn’t stop watching.

He could be a serial killer. A rapist keeping her quiet forever. A predator of innocents.

She might not even be dead yet. I could run, get help, and save her life. At the very least, put him behind bars.

But then he started sobbing, shaking and gasping, and I was him. I would be him if I let Martin push me enough.

Someday, at some point, it was coming. I’d lose my mind and just fight. Fight until either he or I stopped breathing.

A breeze swept through the trees, his hood blew off his head, and I blinked, seeing Damon Torrance standing there with the shovel in his hand and the body of a dead woman at his feet.

I sucked in a breath and his eyes shot up, his whole body freezing as our eyes locked.

Shit.

My blood drained, and I couldn’t inhale.

He dropped the shovel and headed toward me, charging hard and steady down the small hill as I stumbled backward, too scared to take my eyes off him.

Something caught my eye, and I looked behind him, seeing the woman’s hand flop over and her head move.

“She’s moving,” I choked out, hitting the back of a crypt.

He stopped about two feet from me, holding my eyes for a moment.

Slowly, he turned, looking over his shoulder at her. Her finger twitched, and I noticed the tears still hanging at the corner of his eyes.

The wind continued to glide over the headstones, the scent of his cigarettes wafting around me, and at this moment, I thought I would’ve liked to be him.

He was going to get away with this. What would we all do if we could get away with it?

Maybe I was lucky to never have to find out. Maybe he was because he could escape his pain.

“Who is it?” I asked softly.

I took in their hair. Hers and his. The same jet black, so dark it almost shimmered blue in the moonlight. The same skin, pale and translucent like they were made of marble.

I looked at her costume. “Your mother?” I whispered.

I’d heard she was a ballerina back in the day.

He turned back around, guarded but trembling a little.

I tried to catch my breath. “Did Will have any part of that, Damon?”

He shook his head.

He stepped toward me, and I held my breath, closing my eyes and waiting for it.

But he didn’t touch me.

He just closed the distance and hovered, and I couldn’t move if I tried. My head swam.

“Not going to fight me again?” he murmured.

It took a moment, but I raised my eyes, meeting his. “It’s easier to pretend that we’re in control of everything that happens to us.” I repeated his words. “It’s almost peaceful. To just let it be.”

He stared at me and then… nodded. He touched my face, and I jerked away, but then he brought up his hand, showing me the blood he’d wiped off.

I touched my face, too, patting the scratch. Was that from Martin or the escape?

“Does Will know?” he asked, rubbing my blood between his fingers.

“No.”

He lifted his gaze to mine. “Because he’s the one pure, beautiful thing untainted by ugliness,” he repeated his same words from the shower. “And we love him for it.”

I remained still despite everything shattering inside and the ache in my throat from the cry I held back.

Turned out that maybe the Horsemen weren’t what I’d thought, and while money may pay off the consequences, it still didn’t prevent some kinds of pain.

He turned his head, looking at the body again. “She started fucking me when I was twelve,” he whispered.