Page 139 of Lured By Shadows

This was it. The thought arrived fully formed and merciless. I was about to be raped.

My body refused me completely. I tried to push up, to curl away, to find some last scrap of leverage, but my limbs dragged like they were moving through wet cement. My skin crawled as his hands slid along me, slow and possessive, touching me like he already owned what he was taking. I bit down hard on my lip until I tasted blood, desperate for anything sharp enough to cut through the fog.

I needed Culver.

I should’ve asked about the woman before reacting. Maybe there really had been an answer, and I hadn’t hesitated to fling myself toward Carter without thinking about the consequences. And now I was paying for it.

His body pressed closer, heat and weight trapping me against the bed. My chest heaved as I sobbed, the sound torn and ugly, stripped of pride or composure. “No,” I cried, my voice breaking apart. “No, I don’t want this. If—if you don’t stop, you’ll die. He’ll kill you.”

The words spilled out of me, frantic and raw. “Culver will kill you,” I sobbed. “He’ll kill you and won’t leave a piece left!”

It was a lie, but I wanted it to be the truth.

The boy above me laughed, a low, guttural sound that made my stomach flip. “No one’s coming, slut,” he muttered, his breath hot and foul against my neck. Something hard nudged against my thigh, and my entire body recoiled.

I broke completely then, curling inward as much as my body would allow, even as rough hands forced me flat again. “Please,” I begged, my voice splintering beneath the weight of it all. “Please don’t. Please—Culver. Culver, help me.”

His name left my mouth like a prayer, torn from the deepest part of me, instinctive and desperate.

“Dumb bitch,” the blonde snarled.

His hand closed around my throat.

The pressure was sudden and absolute. My breath cut off in a sharp, terrifying snap. I gasped reflexively, but nothing came. My lungs burned, screaming for air as black crept in at the edges of my vision. I clawed weakly at the hands pinning me down, nails scraping uselessly against skin and fabric, my body thrashing on instinct alone.

I couldn’t scream, and I couldn’t speak. Thought itself fractured, splintering into flashes of fear and pain and his name echoing too softly to hear.

The room faded, sound warping and stretching as darkness rolled in like a tide I couldn’t fight.

My last conscious thought, clung to like a lifeline even as everything slipped away, was his name.

Culver.

34

Standing in the doorway, I surveyed the scene in silence. Three mortal males. Completely unremarkable in every way that mattered, save for the atrocity they stood on the brink of committing. I catalogued them with clinical precision, engraving their faces into the endless vault of my memory where nothing ever faded. I would remember them exactly as they were in the moment, down to the tremor hidden beneath their bravado, down to the way their fear had not yet learned how to breathe.

The one nearest to Ira spoke first. He had the audacity to open his mouth. The insolence to command me. “The hell, blud? Get the fuck out.”

My gaze never shifted toward him. I allowed the words to linger uselessly in the air between us, small and mortal and doomed. Then, slowly, silently, I closed the door behind me. The soft click of the latch rang through the room like the final note of a requiem. Whatever protest they had been preparing dissolved instantly, swallowed whole by the weight of my presence, by the cold certainty that death itself had entered the room and would not be leaving alone.

And then I saw her.

Ira lay sprawled between them like something discarded, her body arranged carelessly, stripped of dignity by unworthy hands. To them, she was an object. A thing to consume. To me, she was everything. A fragile miracle suspended in filth. The sight of her nearly ruptured something inside me. Her limbs hung limp, her breathing too slow, too even, the rhythm unnaturally measured in a way that made violence rise behind my ribs. Not unconscious. Drugged. I could hear it clearly in her pulse, in the sluggish way her blood crawled through her veins with forced compliance. One of the males still had his hand hovering near her throat, as though the memory of touching her lingered against his skin. My own hand tightened violently at my side, the strain of restraint biting so deeply into me my bones threatened to crack beneath it.

They had touched her. For that alone, there would be no mercy.

The first creature barely had time to register confusion before I flung him across the room with a negligent flick of my wrist. His body struck the far wall with explosive force, drywall rupturing outward as bone gave way beneath the impact. The wet crunch echoed beautifully through the room before he collapsed in a broken heap, unconscious and twitching, reduced to nothing more than ruined flesh and shame.

The second attempted to speak. Perhaps to plead. Perhaps to curse me. The distinction was meaningless. He never finished. I lifted my hand again, and the invisible force of my will hurled him upward. His body collided violently with the ceiling fan, blades snapping apart with a grotesque metallic shriek as the mechanism ground to a halt beneath his weight. He hung there tangled and convulsing, suspended like some grotesque parody of life. A faint click of my tongue escaped me, more amused than enraged. There was something almost comically pathetic about it, like a forgotten puppet dangling from the remnants of a cheap joke.

The amusement vanished instantly because Ira—my Ira—was still lying there. Unmoving.

The one who had pressed his repugnant, pathetic anatomy against her. That one would die. Not quickly. Not cleanly. No, he deserved pain that unfolded slowly and methodically, carved into every corner of his consciousness until the very idea of mercy became incomprehensible. I would dismantle him piece by piece. It would be ritualistic.

But fury stalled me where I stood.

I remained motionless for one terrible second, suspended beneath the crushing gravity of what they had tried to do to her. My breath turned heavy with loathing, each inhale scraping against the monster clawing beneath my skin. Disgust curdled through me, not only for them but for myself. Because I had allowed this. My caution. My distance. My precious restraint. All of it had handed them an opportunity.