Page 52 of Decimation

She is so fragile beneath me, like a little bird with broken wings, and some distant part of my mind registers this, registers the wrongness of it but it is drowned out by the roaring in my blood. The need that cannot go unanswered.

She cries out, her voice weak but desperate, a thread of sound that pierces the darkness. I silence her with my mouth, claiming her lips with a hunger I can’t contain, a starvation that has lived in me for years without a name. Her struggles are feeble, her body is too weak to fight back, too broken to resist the tempest I have become.

Mine, the word beats in my blood like a drum, like a heart, like the only truth I have ever known.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

I growl it against her skin, though it comes out more sob than sound, a sound of breaking. My hands tear at what little clothes cover her, desperate to feel flesh, to feel warmth, to feel the proof that she is real, she is alive, she is not another ghost come to haunt me in my brother’s house.

My body presses into hers, and I feel that heat, that warmth, that miracle of a living heart beating beneath the cage of her ribs.

She moans, a sound that sends a jolt of electricity through me, and I convince myself, God help me, I need to believe that she wants this. That she feels it too, this cosmic recognition, this terrible and beautiful gravity that has pulled us together in the dark.

She wants me. She must. The alternative is unthinkable.

Her body is soft, yielding, a landscape I will spend the rest of my life mapping and I devour her like the devil I am. My hands and mouth are everywhere, claiming every inch of her with a fervour that borders on violence, that crosses the border and keeps going.

She trembles beneath me, her breath coming in shallow gasps, and I am a monster. I am a sinner, I am a man who has found his religion between the thighs of a stranger.

“You’re mine,” I whisper against her throat, my voice low, possessive, unhinged. “You belong to me.” The words are not a statement but a covenant, a law I am writing into the universe with my body. “God made you for me. He made you for me.”

She moans again, her body arching into mine and I take it as confirmation, as absolution, as the only permission I will ever need.

She wants this. She wants me.

I pour myself into the belief like a man pouring water onto parched earth.

I’m a monster, I know that. The knowledge sits beside the hunger, two truths that cannot be reconciled, but I don’t care. I can’t care. The capacity for caring has been burned out of me, replaced by this single, searing imperative. She is mine, and I will never let her go. Not to Konstantine, not to death. Not to God Himself.

When it’s over I hold her close, my chest heaving, my mind a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. She lies there, trembling, her eyes wide with terror still, but I see only the future. Only salvation. I stare at her, my breathing ragged and a cruel satisfaction settles over me, heavy as a coronation mantle.

This is what I’ve been searching for.

Every dark corridor, every bloody room, every sleepless night of scheming and hating, it has all led to this moment; to this woman, to this revelation.

Finally, everything makes sense. Every awful experience, every horrific moment I have endured, it is all worth it. It was all a pilgrimage to her.

She is my prize.

She is my gift from God himself, proof that he has not abandoned me, that his favour has merely been delayed, building in pressure like a storm. And I understand now, with a clarity that cuts through every moral objection, that Konstantine cannot have her. Will not. I will kill him not just for the power, not just for the legacy, but for her. For the way he would look at her and see a ghost. For the way he would cage her as he has caged everything beautiful in his life.

And I will never let her go.

Never.

Never.

Never.

My head hurts. It’s a dull, splintering ache that pulses behind my eyes, a fog that makes the world tilt even though I’m lying still. It feels fuzzy too, like cotton packed into my skull. Like I have something in my system, something keeping me docile, keeping me compliant. The thought is distant, muffled, as if it belongs to someone else.

I roll over, and the grit beneath me scrapes my bare skin. Dirt. Cold, packed dirt that smells of damp and old rot. The realisation comes slowly, a sickening crawl up my spine. I am still here. In this dirt. Where he fucked me last night. The memory crashes back; his weight, his breath, the purples and blues of his aura swirling like a bruise, and my stomach heaves. I press my forehead into the ground, feel the grit bite and let a shiver of revulsion run through me, let myself feel that disgust before I fold that particular feeling away. Shame is a luxury I can’t afford. I am not going to give into it, I am not. I am stronger than that, stronger than them. All these men think they can break me, think they can mould me, fuck me and use me, and I am not going to let them. They look at me and see weakness, they look at me and see something they can use.

Well, I won’t be that. I won’t fucking be that.

The words are a chant inside my head but they feel thin, like a sheet of ice over a black, bottomless lake but I cling to them anyway because right now, they’re all I have.

The door opens. The sound is a knife through the quiet, and despite myself, despite every promise I just made, I flinch. My body betrays me, curling inward, making itself small. He steps inside with all the arrogance, all the air of someone used to doing whatever they please. The air changes, thickens, and I can feel him even before I lift my head.