“Go away,” I said firmly. “You’re not gonna win this one.”
“Get away from this monster!” my ‘father’ demanded, a cloud of anger storming across his face. His face twisted and darkened, and his eyes disappeared as he bent disgustingly into a dark shadowy creature. It was the magic. It was the curse. “I’ve healed your wounds so you can run, not so you could stand here staring like a fool! Now go away and leave him to suffer on his own!”
It was greedy, this curse. It wanted to strip away all light from Abram’s life, as though it fed on the darkness, as though it needed it to survive.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” I asked, turning to Abram and connecting the puzzle pieces. All the strange things Satina said, the way she looked at me … and now the way this room was attacking my devotion to Abram. It all made sense now. “I can break the curse, can’t I?”
“Don’t ask me that,” Abram said, unable to see what had just transpired in front of me.
“You have to tell me the truth.” I took his unshaven face in my hands. “You have to trust me, too, you know.”
He stared at me, parting his lips and then closing them again.
“Abram! I mean it!”
“You can, in a sense …” he said, closing his eyes. “When Satina placed the curse on me, she did so because she realized I didn’t love her. She said I wasn’t capable of love. She said if I could love someone, really love someone, and have that love returned, then the curse would be broken.”
“Oh, God,” I murmured, stroking his face. “I do,” I said, shaking my head. My eyes welled up with tears. “I do love you.” And it was the truth. I knew it as clearly as I knew Betsy Johnson’s Spring 2002 Collection. “I love you, Abram.”
But then a sickening realization came to me. I did love him. I had loved him for a long time now. But he was still this monster, still this beast. And that could only mean one thing.
“You don’t love me …” I muttered.
It wasn’t a question. My heart sank so hard and fast I felt it slam into my toes. I stepped back, almost stumbling. It couldn’t be. The rules of the curse only left room for one answer.
“Charisse …” He stared at me apologetically. “I can’t—”
But I didn’t want an apology. What good would it do? What he’d said leveled more pain than all the punches Dalton had thrown at me.
“Charisse, you don’t under—”
“Don’t bother,” the shadow magic said. Judging from Abram’s reaction, the way he stiffened and clenched, he could now see it, too. “I’ve tired of you, and I’ve tired of this.” The magic raised something that looked like a misshapen hand. “And this is what I’m doing about it.”
Chapter 29
Within moments, we found out exactly what the shadow magic intended to do. The light in the room burst in a thousand little echoes of darkness, and the cool of the room was replaced with immediate intense heat.
We were no longer untouchable. The fire was coming for us, and so was the mob. I could hear it in the screams and bangs that were now evident outside the club’s entrance.
The door to the room that had once been a force now lay in shambles on the floor, a victim of the curse’s fickle temperament.
“Get behind me,” Abram growled, but before I could move, he thrust me against his back. His skin was warm and, even pressed against the wrong end, I could feel his heart racing like a jackhammer.
The stomping and banging and chanting of the mob grew louder. Could I even blame them at this point? They thought they were putting an end to the danger that had been tormenting their town for months now. They were out to a kill a murderer, a monster.
“We need to run,” I murmured.
Abram nodded, but he didn’t move. His gaze swept down the hall, and I knew he could see the same thing I could. We needed to run, yes. But there was no place to run to. We were cornered. And the club’s front door was splintering inward. It wouldn’t be long before—
The door caved, and the first of the mob poured in. Five, ten, twenty. It seemed the entire town was after us, all rushing in toward this small, sacred, and (until now) secret room. Everyone but Dalton. He was mysteriously absent in the midst of the fervor he had been so busy whipping up.
Abram held one arm out in front of him while the other circled my bicep. He stepped back, leading me into the doorless room, then turned to me and held his finger to his lips. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, shaking my head and holding back a whimper. What good was this? It wouldn’t be long before they found us. All he was doing was buying time.