Page 63 of Hellbound

His dark command hit like a sonic boom, wrapping her in his compulsion. But his power failed to move her like it moved the hostess.

All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and lick her wounds. The shock had worn off, and now, everything hurt—not just the weeping gash in her arm. She hoped she had bandages somewhere in her apartment. She should have swiped some of Lloyd’s before it devolved into chaos. Marian walked faster, but didn’t get far.

Strong fingers grabbed her by her injured shoulder and turned the throbbing ache into a five-alarm fire that would have brought her to her knees had Mr. Vale not caught her.

She cried out—a broken, ugly sound. The world swayed sideways as bright orange blotches bloomed in front of her eye. Mr. Vale’s arm curled around her waist and pulled her against his chest as she struggled to find her balance.

She tried to squirm out of his hold, but the effort was excruciating. Marian slammed her head back into him with a feral growl as he reached around to unzip her jacket. He peeled the fabric back, baring angry, tacky red flesh to the brisk night breeze.

“You’re bleeding.”

She writhed in his grasp when he touched her bare skin, his gentle fingers perilously close to her wound. “Let me go.”

“This needs to be treated.”

Marian’s vision swam as she shook her head. “I don’t have health insurance.”

“Shocking,” Mr. Vale drawled.

Even if she did have insurance, she swore she’d never set foot in a hospital again. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t—

The medication isn’t working; she feels every excruciating tug as a nurse drags pieces of her windshield out of her body. The pain distracts her from the screams—Daniel’s, not hers. He’s out there, shouting at someone to bring back his wife. Marian knows she is gone; she watched them draw the sheet up over her mother’s head. The sky has fallen, the earth has ceased its rotation, and Marian watched it all happen as the peaks on her mother’s monitor leveled into a flat line.

All that remains is a tremendous weight that stems not from the death of this woman, but from the emptiness hollowing out Marian’s heart. The loss of what her mother could have been to her, but never was—and now, never will be.

A growl dragged her out of the past.

“Don’t you ever tire of these battles?”

“No.” Marian clawed at the arm caging her to him. Her next words came out on a sob. “I kept my mouth shut, and you got your creepy deal, so why won’t you leave me alone?”

“I said I’d protect you,” Vale rumbled behind her. “And that includes protecting you from your own gross negligence. Now, relax and let me help you.” His shadows swarmed her, smothering her resistance with darkness. This time, his compulsion was too much; the scream building in her chest shattered into another sob. It all hurt so much, and he was too close, his overbearing presence quelling the fight in her.

Submit, it said with a shadowy caress.

Perhaps, just this once, she should. She was so tired of fighting him—fighting everyone. If giving in meant an end to this pain, then it’d be worth it. Panting, she stopped clawing at the hand he’d pressed to her belly and sagged in his arms. She looked up to find him peering down at her, his eyes glowing ghostly blue in the dark.

“There’s a good girl,” came his pleased murmur.

The words sent shivers down her spine that numbed her thoughts while gentle shadows soothed the overheated skin on the back of her neck. It took her a moment to realize the awful racket in the background was her own ragged breathing. The demon zipped her jacket up, taking great care not to aggravate the wound as he put her back together.

“Now let’s get you home.”

At one point, Marian had been staring out the passenger side window of Mr. Vale’s Audi, wondering if she was having an out-of-body experience. She’d forfeited her address and agreed to let him keep her wound from turning into an expensive emergency, though that meant letting him drive her back to her apartment. He’d offered his own home first, but she’d emphatically refused.

At one point, she accused him of kidnapping, to which he replied, “Driving you to your own home with your permission is not kidnapping.” He kept dodging her questions about how he’d found her tonight, so they argued about the definitions of consent and coercion instead.

Now the demon was in her apartment. Neither one of them seemed inclined to talk about what had happened in Stellan’s dungeon yet.

She’d been delirious with exhaustion and pain when she told him on the landing that she’d changed her mind about letting him patch her up—she still didn’t understand why she’d agreed to it in the first place—but Mr. Vale told her to stop talking and open the door.

She’d been about to tell him to leave again when he plucked the keys out of her hand and let himself inside. And now he was here, in the last place Marian ever wanted him to be: her veritable gallery of rot. To her astonishment, the first thing out of his mouth was not admonishment over the state of her apartment as he looked around, but a command to change into something sleeveless.

So, Marian sat on the edge of the kitchen counter in a wrinkled maroon tank top that had been murder to put on—she damn near bit the demon’s head off when he threatened to help her undress when her grunts of pain drifted through the thin barrier of her partition. She kept her eyes on the popcorn ceiling and inventoried all the yellowing patches as she tried not to fixate on what was about to happen.

Mr. Vale had loosened his tie and draped his suit jacket over the back of her futon before rolling up his sleeves to wash his hands with dish soap in her kitchen sink.

His features were schooled in careful concentration as he withdrew supplies from the large leather bag he’d produced from the trunk of his Audi when they first arrived. He pulled out a packet of sterile sutures and needles, purified water, and a syringe that made Marian flinch.