Devilish - A Demon Stepbrother Romance (2 page)

In the end, I felt broken and shattered.

              In a moment of reprieve from their violence and touch, I heard them talking amongst themselves in low voices.

              “And the son? What about him?” one of the men asked.

             
Liam….

              A quick fleeting image of my handsome and loving older stepbrother flitted through my mind. A hot tear slipped through my lashes, burning my eyes as it mixed with the dried blood.

             
Oh god Liam….They killed them. They killed mom and dad. And now…and now, I think they’re going to kill me.

              “Don’t worry. He’s been taken care of,” another man replied. “The whole family’s dead now.” He grunted. “Well, almost all of them.” I could almost see the leer in his eyes through his voice. Although I could hardly feel my body, I was sure I was completely naked by now.

              But none of that mattered now.

              Although I could barely keep my thoughts straight, I heard the man’s words echo through my brain.

             
He’s been taken care of.

              Liam was all the way in California though. He wasn’t even the recognized Madewell heir.
I
was! He was no threat. Please, god. They wouldn’t….They couldn’t….!

             
Oh god, Liam! Please tell me you’re not gone as well! Please god!

              The hot tears had finally released my glued lashes. I slowly blinked, squinting through my swollen eyes.

              I saw the men grinning down at me, their masks pulled up over their lips. They had wanted to taste and bite me without the hindrance of their masks.

              “I’d say it’s time you joined your family, don’t you?” the tallest man said. “You want to be with mommy and daddy and big brother, don’t you?”

              I no longer felt my body. I was detached, hollow, broken, empty. I had no fight left in me. It had been beaten and raped out of me.

              I saw the man raise his arm, the gun held firmly in his hand as he aimed for me.

              I closed my eyes. Yes, I
was
ready. I didn’t want to be here any longer.

             
Fuck you. Whoever sent you, fuck you.

Chapter Two

              My skin felt as if it was burning slowly. Agony raged across my body and I wanted to scream but couldn’t seem to breathe in any air. There was no oxygen. There was no air. Only fire.

              And pain.

              Oh god, so much pain.

              I didn’t know if I was dead or alive. I didn’t know if I was standing or sitting. I didn’t know if I was human or not.

              Where was I?

              “Such anger….” a voice hissed around me.

              My eyes flew open but all I saw was darkness. Darkness with tears of glowing red flames, like embers burning all around me. I couldn’t feel my body as I stood…floated…in the space.

              “Such pain….” the voice hissed again. The words echoed around me in this fathomless space.

              “Who are you?” I asked. I nearly choked at the sound of my voice. It didn’t seem to come from my mouth. I seemed to be speaking with my entire body somehow, the words verbalized from my very thoughts.

              The pain of my body was still there but detached, as if I was observing the pain from a distance. I tried to move my arms but could only feel the vague sensation of something distant moving.

              “Where am I?” I asked, again feeling the words form without the use of my voice.

              “It is rare to see such anger in one so young,” the voice said. It was a deep voice that rolled through me like an earthquake. It was raspy with ancient darkness that I recognized even without being familiar with it.

              “Where
am
I?” I asked with greater emphasis. This was no place on Earth, that was for sure. From the detachment of my body, the airless space, the burning embers that surrounded me like distant galaxies, I knew I was in some kind of limbo state.

              I closed my eyes. Or I felt like I had closed my eyes.

              What was the point of asking where I was anyway? I was dead. I was clearly dead. The attackers, whoever they were, had won.

              I remembered seeing dad hunched over his desk at his home office, looking over proposals for a beautification project Madewell Ltd would be sponsoring. I asked him if it was a little contradictory to be so interested in beautification when he was the head of a mining company.

              “People will always need raw minerals,” dad had said, sitting down with a bit of a grimace, having stood on his bad leg for too long. He smiled at me once seated. “That’s a necessary evil in this world right now. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try to minimize the damage I do by rebuilding what I can.”

              He picked up another thick proposal package, determined to find the right one.

              I remembered mom standing in the kitchen, stirring a pot of soup while on the phone with Liam. Liam was already twenty when my mom married dad. He was grown and wasn’t really in need of a mother figure. But mom was not to be deterred. She had opened her arms and heart to him and had loved him. I thought about the love that had flown in that house between all of us.

Dad had never treated me differently as a stepdaughter. I had never been less than to him. And although Liam had already left the house by the time I had moved in, he had always been the cool older brother who took care of me and made my sorority sisters green with envy when they saw him at my college graduation.

              But now they were all gone.

              Mom.

              Dad.

              Liam.

              All brutally murdered.

              “But what if you could avenge them?” the voice suddenly said, its deepness penetrating through my bones.

              “Avenge?” I asked, feeling so lost and confused. “Where am I?”

              “You are en route,” the voice finally answered.

              “En route?” I asked, confused. “To where.”

              There was a low, rumbling chuckle. “Ah, well. There a lot of names but I suppose you’d be most familiar with
heaven
.”

              I thought about the burning embers that glowed in this dark airless space. I thought about the suffocation I was feeling even though I wasn’t breathing. “
This
is heaven?” I asked skeptically.

              “No, not
this
,” the voice corrected. “You are on hold right now. You have a choice.”

              “A choice?”

              A warmth seemed to drape over my body. “I can give you a chance at something that nobody ever gets,” the voice said slowly. “The chance to fulfill your heart’s desire after death.”

              “My heart’s desire?” I thought about my parents. Liam. To see them again? To save them?

              The voice snorted. “Don’t lie to yourself in this space. You are a step away from eternal separation of your body and soul. This is the place for truth only. And I would never stop a soul en route because of such sentimental drivel as wanting to see their mother again.”

              Angry, I demanded, “Then what? What do you think is my heart’s desire?”

              “Revenge,” the voice rasped immediately. “I can give you a chance at revenge, child.”

              My heart thumped. Revenge. How sweet that word sounded.

              “How?” I asked.

              “I could bring you back, back into the world of the living. You’ll have your chance at finding the men who killed you and your family. You can make them pay.”

              “Will…Will my family be back as well?” My heart ached with need at the thought.

              “No.”

              “Why not?” I demand almost petulantly.

              “Because I don’t want them,” the voice said evenly, anger simmering below his words. “Do you understand the rare opportunity you are being given? A chance to come back to life to exact your heart’s desire? And the only reason why you are being given it is the absolute rage you died with in your heart. It’s delicious. It called to me.”

              “But I can’t do it alone,” I said simply, suddenly feeling very exhausted. “I’ll need help.”

              “Yes, you will,” the voice concurred. “I will give you the help.” The voice made a rumbling noise of anticipation. “Do you wish it? Do you wish to fulfill your heart’s desire?”

              I stared dreamily at the black space surrounding me, the glowing embers burning steadily in streaks.

              “What’s the price?” I asked. This couldn’t be free.

              The voice chuckled. “Clever child,” he murmured. “The price is high.”

              “How high? What is it?”

              “The price is the cost of your soul.”

              I was confused. I had never been very religious growing up. I never thought about having a soul and before I died, I wouldn’t have even thought such things were real.

              “My soul?” I echoed. “Why would you want my soul?”

              “Souls are what I feast on,” the voice answered. “But it is a rare soul that can make me salivate like yours has. Your death must have been quite terrible. The anger, the pain, the hatred in your soul. It’s beautiful. And I want it.”

              “What will happen to me then? After you eat my soul?”

              “That’s it. You will be gone. You will never be en route again. You will never make it to heaven
or
hell. You will disappear for all eternity, having been consumed by me.”

              “That doesn’t sound too—”

              “You will never see your family again.”

              I nearly choke on his words. “See my family?”

              “They could very well be en route to heaven. Who knows? Souls could reunite there. But not yours. Not if you accept my bargain. You will never be with them again.”

              I closed my eyes. I was so very tired. I wanted nothing more than to feel my mother’s touch or to hear my father’s laugh. I only wanted to see….

              No. That was a lie. I
did
want something more than my mother’s touch or my father’s laugh. I remembered mom screaming as she was raped over and over again. I remembered the crack of bones as the men beat her mercilessly. I remember my dad coughing up more blood as he tried to fight against the men, before he was shot in the head, neatly ending his life.

              And god only knew how much Liam had suffered.

              No, she wanted something more than the warm, resigned cuddles of her family.

              She wanted revenge. And she wanted it bad.

              “Fine,” she said. “I accept.”

              “You accept my terms—revenge for the price of your soul?”

              “You will give me help?”

              “I will do everything to help you achieve your revenge. Your soul will not be eaten without revenge being exacted.”

              I paused. “Are you the devil?”

              Another small chuckle. “No. But I certainly am closer to him than to the man above.” A moment of silence. “Do you accept?”

              Last images of mom, dad, and Liam passed through my mind. This was it. Never would I see them again. I was giving that all up for a chance at avenging what had been done to us. Was it worth it? Was it worth the price?

I swallowed. My heart had no doubts. “I accept.”

              Heat exploded around me. The space got blacker, if that was possible. The embers grew brighter, burned with more intensity. Slowly, I turned my head to the left.

              A dark figure, barely distinguishable from the darkness of the space, began to walk forward. A pair of emerald green eyes glowed through the blackness. An echoing laugh surrounded my body.

              “So be it.” And everything went black.