Quintessentially Q (Monsters in the Dark #2)(81)

“He’s there to finish you off. You disobeyed. He’s here to hurt you.” White Man laughed.

Never again would I go without a fight. Panic made me crazy and I bit Q square on the shoulder.

“Let me go. I just want to go back to the tower!”

He sucked in a breath, but didn’t push me away or strike. Instead, he looked at the doctor with such tragic weariness in his eyes. “Just give her something to ride out the worst of it. I can’t stand seeing her like this.”

The man nodded, and I tried to scramble out of Q’s arms. Not even the pain in my ribs or neck or finger could stop me from fighting. I couldn’t go through more. I couldn’t. My mind was already dead—I’d never find my way back.

I moaned as clammy sweat sprouted on my skin, chilling me. Bright lights erupted behind my eyes as the craving intensified.

The mouth-watering, teeth-clenching need for something. Something thick and syrupy and foggy. Something that I didn’t have a name for, but f*ck, my body wanted it.

“Please. I’ll do whatever you want. Give it to me.”

“What’s happening to her?” Q asked but his voice was far, far away.

“She’s hit the second level of withdrawal. They must’ve kept her on a high dose for it to be this bad so fast.”

A tidal wave of insects consumed me, all chittering and chattering as they scurried around in my brain. “Give me it. I’ll f*ck you. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything!”

Arms let me go and I collapsed against the mattress. I yelped against the pain, but it could no longer compete with the craving. “You have to give her something. I’m going out of my f*cking mind listening to this.”

“All right. I think it’s for the best that she sleeps through the worst of it.”

Sleep. Yes. I could do with sleep. Vacant, never-waking sleep.

Something icy trickled into my veins, moving stealthily through my body. Instead of the horrible smog, this was clear and fresh, and it granted me wings to fly away from the putrid memories and leave it all behind.

I found the tower and returned, locking myself deep inside.

I was safe inside. Protected.

I would never leave my sanctuary again.

*****

After that first morning, my life became a patchwork of fragments.

Waking up with the consuming need.

Going back to sleep.

Waking up coughing my lungs out.

Going back to sleep.

Waking up in the dead of night to find Q sprawled out exhausted beside me.

Going back to sleep.

Each time I woke, the insects were fewer in number, and I no longer wanted to rape someone to get my hands on whatever I needed.

One afternoon I awoke to soulful, tortured music playing through the house.



You told me you were strong enough. You told me you were brave.

Yet now you lie next to me and all I can do is save.

I’m here for you. I’m there for you. I’ll help you with every fight.

But no matter what I do for you, I see no end in sight.



The lyrics tugged at some numb part of my heart, but no emotion cut through my tower. Ever since that first day, where I almost died from the mental onslaught, I made sure to never leave. The tower was the only thing keeping me alive.

Was it shock or weakness that caused me to retreat deep inside? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know because regardless of how I came to live behind my heavily fortified wall, I was never leaving.

I knew what awaited me if I ever did and I wouldn’t survive it.

Q stayed beside me, never ending his vigil. Whenever I woke, he was there to fetch me a glass of water, or massage my temples if I had a headache from the medicine.

He tended to me with all the gentleness in the world.

I smiled and thanked him. I let him know I appreciated his tenderness, but I wished he would leave. Q wasn’t a healer or nursemaid. To the old me he was a beast, a strong-willed man who would never let me ruin him this way.

Every time I saw him, he changed. His pale eyes lost the ferocious glow—they muted, faded, turned inward and unreadable. His body language morphed from itching to touch me, to withdrawn and self-conscious.

If I had locked myself in a tower, he had chained his monster up and forgot who he was. We both existed in another dimension—one that would never have a happy ending and one I wanted to leave as soon as possible.

I knew Q was pulling away from me, but I didn’t care. I wanted to care. But I wanted to stay in my unfeeling tower more. And so I let him care for me, to nurse my body from broken to whole, all the while saying a silent goodbye.

I let him drift away from me.

Hours turned into days and my lungs gradually drained from sickness. Q hardly ever left my side, but we never talked. He sensed I’d left him. When he looked at me, he stopped searching my eyes, stopped bossing me around to snap out of it.

He didn’t talk about his business, or what he went through to find me. We existed as strangers—our roles reversed from lovers to patient and nursemaid.

Thankfully, the bugs had transformed from gnarly insects into annoying moths and butterflies. The craving was still there, aching in my teeth, but I could ignore.

Even my dreams were vacant of emotion and thought. In fact, sleep was one thing that hadn’t returned. I managed to nap, to catch rest here and there, but at night when Q lay twitching with nightmares beside me, I stared at the ceiling.