Knowing it was the only way he’d listen, I took whatever strength I had left and turned cold, rigid. “Right now . . . I need you to leave.”
“Angel, I’m begging you. Don’t do this. Do you realize what you’re doing? This is number three. There’s no coming back from this.”
Bug out strike three. I’d reached my quota with him.
When I didn’t answer, he continued, “You’re really gonna turn your back on me? Throw me away like I meant nothing to you?”
The hurt in his eyes stung deep in my heart, but I was done. Done pretending I was something I wasn’t. Done trying to be something I couldn’t. I stood up straighter. “I already have. Go away, Blake. I have nothing left to give you.”
Something in him changed then, and I watched Blake’s own gates come down, shielding him from me. From my demons. He tucked the necklace into his pocket and put his hands in the air, backing away one step at a time, his eyes never straying from mine. There was a small glimmer of hope showing through those gates, but mine held none.
A few yards away, he dropped his hands. His eyes emptied when he realized I wasn’t going to stop him. He shook his head before letting a disapproving, clipped laugh escape those beautiful lips. “Fine, Angel. Whatever you need.”
He turned and never looked back.
Reaching up and around my neck, the demons came to demand their right to me then, groping every inch of my being.
Claiming me.
Consuming me.
Tormented and grunting they pawed at my flesh, dragging me into the deepest, darkest depths of my soul. To join them as a fallen angel.
And I didn’t fight them. Couldn’t. It was where I was meant to be all along, Blake’s name for me a sarcastic irony.
Every pore in my body opened, each nerve ending flailing in a fit of fire. Pieces of me crumbled as each cell shut down, breaking apart as if they were riddled with a virus. Whether or not it would result in death was irrelevant—I was dying. My heart gone. There was no more gray area. No more bubble. Only blackness.
My knees hit the dirt, and the world turned into a veil of darkness.
And everywhere that Mary went that lamb was sure to go . . .
The End . . .