Their Vicious Darling (Vicious Lost Boys #3)(41)

“Vane, please,” I beg even though he hasn’t said a word.

Through the foyer, he goes to the front door and whips it open. It bangs against the wall.

The others watch from the winding staircase. None of them stop Vane. None of them care.

Maybe they never did.

It makes me feel worthless.

Before Vane can get me over the threshold, I trip, caught up in my own panic and I slam down to my butt.

I’m facing the stairwell now, my hair twisted around in Vane’s grip and I lock eyes with Winnie at the top of the stairs. There’s no hint of what she’s thinking, no hint of the shadow holding her hostage.

But I know they all know.

There’s no talking my way out of this one.

“I didn’t mean to,” I say, my voice cracking as Vane drags me across the wide threshold and then down the steps, each straight edge banging against my hip. I hold on to his wrist trying to take some of the pressure off my hair.

When I hit the ground, dirt puffs up around us and grits between my teeth.

The gravel crunches beneath his boots as it scrapes my skin raw.

I try to get my feet beneath me, but it’s no use. He’s impatient and far too strong to fight.

A dull ache thuds in my head as several chunks of hair tear loose.

When he reaches the fork in the pathway, he drops me, steps back and points his head toward the twilight sky, eyes closed. He takes a deep breath.

Blood is starting to well in the scrapes along my calves, but the pain is distant now as the fear takes over and adrenaline pumps through my veins.

I scramble to my feet. Tears blur my vision, turning Vane into a dark smudge against the night. “You have to believe me. I didn’t know what would happen.”

I’m not lying, exactly.

I didn’t know the shadow would take hold in Winnie. I thought it would kill her. Which is so much worse.

And I think he knows exactly what I intended.

And I think I’ve never seen him as angry as he is now.

My stomach churns and all of the butterflies are gone.

With a grit of his teeth, Vane pulls out a cigarette, puts the dark filter between his lips. His lighter flashes beneath the moonlight a second later and the lid clicks open.

The flame paints him in sharp gold as he brings the end to the cigarette and inhales.

He closes the lighter with a definitive snap.

He’s angry with me and I want him to love me and I don’t know how to undo this.

Stupid Winnie.

Why did she have to…well…be so damn likable?

Even now, I don’t want to hate her. I wanted her to be my friend. I wanted to belong. I wanted…

My chin wobbles with the threat of tears.

I wanted Vane to love me more than anything in the world.

Winnie has him and I don’t.

In the woods, the wolves are yipping and the crickets are chirping and here at the fork in the path, my body is trembling.

Vane pulls the cigarette away and exhales a breath of smoke.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, but my voice is barely above a whisper.

“I know you are, Cherry."

My heart breaks hearing the regret in his voice.

“I didn’t…I mean…”

He takes another hit from the cigarette and watches me with his mismatched eyes.

“Tell me what to do. I’ll do it. Just please—” I reach out for him and he pivots away.

“You want to know what to do?” The cigarette hangs at his side, clipped between his fingers, glowing in the dark. The night smells of honeysuckle and burning tobacco and Vane.

Tell me what to do.

I’m desperate for his forgiveness and I’ll do fucking anything.

“Start running,” he says.

I gulp down a breath and stagger back as his violet eye goes black and his hair turns white.

“Start running, Cherry. Because I’m going to fucking kill you.”





24





CHERRY


I start running.

There’s nothing else to do but run.

But I’m not built to run faster than the Dark One and I sure as hell can’t fight him.

I follow the path away from the house, my heart hammering so hard in my ears, my ear drums are ringing.

I can hear his footsteps behind me.

His terror, the Death Shadow’s terror, washes through me like poison. It makes me feel sick and desperate and so fucking alone.

I can’t outrun him.

Will it hurt when he kills me?

I reach the main road and turn toward James’s territory, toward the only place I can call home.

And just as I round the corner where the path forks, a shadow comes racing toward me.

My brain isn’t working—it’s too full of adrenaline to make out what it is.

But the voice that yells at me is one I know.

“Duck!” Smee shouts.

She veers sharply to the side of the road, her pace at full speed, and jumps at a large boulder, propelling herself into the air.

I skid on the gravel and slam to the ground as she sails over top of me, her dagger drawn, clutched in hand, the blade glinting in the moonlight.

Rolling to my knees, I turn at the last second and watch as she drives the blade through Vane’s chest.

The sickening crack of a bone breaking rents through the night.