I will always be with you. Always. No matter where you go or how far you run, you will never escape me.”
“No.” Paper-white, her eyes blank with a maddening terror so deep it was like an open wound inside her soul, Ella held up shaking hands to ward off what had to be her cruelest nightmare. “No, no, no!”
A rumble of a city bus entered Nate’s consciousness a split second before he realized the danger. Uncaring that it would no doubt be the death of him, Nate turned his back on the demon to get a hold of her, but it was too late. Already she was backpedalling into the road, a keening wail of tormented fear ripping from her stress-corded throat.
“Ella!”
Deaf to everything around her, she turned and ran straight into the path of the bus.
Chapter Ten
Ella surfaced slowly.
Tumbled thoughts and fragmented memory tangled into one hellish ball of white noise. Instinct had her cringing away from full wakefulness, but it was a losing battle. Sweat broke out along her skin and a maddened scream echoed deep inside her mind, the scream she wanted to let out when she’d seen...when she’d seen...
Charles Rainier.
Her eyes slammed open and nausea churned up hard and fast. Blindly she rocketed from an unfamiliar bed and into a bathroom that her brain had somehow registered was close by. Without turning the lights on, she fell to her knees just in time and emptied her stomach, straining with all her might to remove the poison that was Charles Rainier from her system. If she could just get him forever out of her existence she would be okay, but no matter how hard she tried he was still there. Still alive. Smiling. Torturing. Killing...
She was sick for what seemed like hours, her body’s agony mirroring the state of her fractured mind. Dimly she picked out the sounds of movement in the next room, and behind her closed lids the darkness shifted as a light was turned on in the other room. Shaking, every cell of her body inflamed with misery and wishing she could go numb and never feel anything again, she wiped her mouth with some toilet paper, flushing the mess away as she wedged herself between the commode and tub. If she could have pushed herself into the tiled floor and disappeared forever, she would have done it without hesitation.
“Ella.”
Again the need to scream quivered in her chest.
“Ella, can you hear me? You’re safe now. You’re safe.”
Safe? That was an illusion, fate’s sick little joke for poor slobs like her who fell for it. No one was safe in a world that regurgitated evil like Charles Rainier. He had come back from the grave she’d put him in so he could finish her off. There was no place in the world that was safe for her.
Strangled gasps, like voiceless screams, hit her ears. Eventually she realized they were coming from her. She clapped her hands over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, terrified he would hear her. If he heard her, he would find her and carve into her like before, make her into his latest masterpiece, like Lana before her—
“Ella, please listen to me. Listen to my voice. It’s Nate. Try and remember who I am. I swear I’ll protect you, but you’ve got to help me, babe. You’ve got to hear me and understand me, please.”
Nate. She knew that name. He’d come looking for her when she’d been taken. He’d come to rescue her, when she’d thought she had to rescue herself. Sensation hit her all at once, punching through the wall of agony and madness crashing down on her. Nate. Big. Solid. Safe.
I’ve got you. You’re safe now...
Hands still clamped over her mouth, she took the last of her courage and peeled her eyes open, blinking tears she didn’t even know she was crying out of her vision. On the corner of the bed in the next room and framed by the open doorway of the bathroom, Nate rested his elbows on his knees with his hands clasped as if in prayer between them. But he wasn’t praying. He was looking at her through the shadows with an expression that could only be described as anguished.
“I’m sorry,” he gritted out, the ragged words pushed through the barrier of his teeth. He bent his dark head and rubbed a hand over his face. It was the weariest gesture she’d ever seen. “It’s my fault you’re being dragged through this hell. If