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The darkness rippled out from the doorway, swallowing up the monstrous sound of violence. Brandon spat a curse. “Did you think you could just take her from me, you psycho? I tracked her to this town, the people at the police station told me about a girl named Starla and her husband!” His hands were around Malakar’s throat now, squeezing, thumbs pressing so deep they sank into flesh.

Malakar’s boots scrambled for traction. His hands clawed at Brandon’s arms, strong but not strong enough. His dark eyes bulged, frantic, red at the rims. I could see the fight in him, but Brandon was fueled by something deeper than hate. Ownership.

I should have stayed quiet. I should have let them kill each other. But, suddenly, I was screaming. “Stop! Brandon, stop it! Stop, you’ll fucking kill him!”

The sound of my own voice shocked me. My words splintered, thin and ugly, nothing like a person. Why was I rooting for Malakar? Why did I care if he drew breath? What was wrong with me? I was fucking sick in the head.

Brandon’s eyes found me. The look on his face was pure rage. Spit flew from his mouth. I could see blood on his knuckles.

“You little cunt,” he screamed. “You wouldn’t listen, you wouldn’t come home, now look what you made me do!”

Malakar managed to get a hand under Brandon’s chin, shoving up, desperate. Brandon slammed his fist down, catching Malakar in the nose. There was a crack. Blood spattered the floor, bright as fresh paint. Malakar stopped moving for a second.

I tried again. I reached out, fingers trembling, the need to stop it bigger than logic, bigger than terror. “Please, Brandon, you don’t have to do this, let him go!”

He ignored me. He leaned down, all his weight on Malakar’s ribs, and wrapped both hands around Malakar’s throat. Malakar kicked, convulsed. I saw him reach for something under the side table—a shard of wood.

He drove it into Brandon’s shoulder.

The sound Brandon made wasn’t human. He screamed, recoiled, but didn’t let go. He just smashed his fist against Malakar’s temple. Malakar’s head rammed against the floor. I watched his face, I waited for the rage, the deadly stare, but his eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving.

Brandon looked at Malakar then at me. He got up off the floor and stalked towards me. A deep-rooted terror made its way through my bones.

He grabbed a hold of me. I tried to fight, but he slapped me across the face. Hard enough to make my head snap to the side, hard enough to feel as if I just got punched by a rock.

Brandon yanked me towards the door. My feet stumbled on the floor. I couldn’t stop looking back at Malakar. He was still there with blood on his face, body too still. The monster who locked me away was suddenly defenseless, unable to pull me back into his arms.

I should have felt relief. The fact that I was being dragged out of here before Malakar could bury me any deeper. But relief didn’t come. I wanted Malakar to get back up and break Brandon’s bones. I wanted him to pull me back in.

This wasn’t rescue. This was a new ownership. A scarier one. Brandon didn’t need to kill women to be scary.

The monster on the floor was broken. Not pure evil, only warped by darkness and trauma. The monster dragging me away was empty, wicked and abusive. He didn’t need a tragic backstory. I don’t think there was ever any light in Brandon, he just knew how to put on a mask to make me believe he had light inside of him.

Malakar had light, he did. It was just buried deep beneath his own pain, anger and confusion. But I saw glimpses of genuine light.

Wake up, Malakar. Save me from this monster. Take me back, please.

Brandon scared me more than Malakar, and that realization chilled me to the bone.

Chapter 27

Descent Into Madness

Malakar

She was gone, but not gone in a way that made sense. Not gone like dead, not gone like all the others when the dark finally swallowed them, but gone with another man’s hands on her, another man’s breath near her skin, another man thinking he had any right to touch what belonged to me.

My mother was crying somewhere behind me, telling me to stop, telling me I could still do the right thing, but she didn’t understand. Nobody ever understood. Starla wasn’t supposed to leave.

My bluebird had looked at me with those frightened green eyes and begged for me, begged for the monster, and that meant there was still something inside her that knew where she belonged.

Brandon took her body out of my house, but he didn’t take her from me. He couldn’t. She was in my skin now, under my ribs, inside the black part of my head where nothing good ever survived, and I could still feel her there, fluttering, scared, mine.

The dark kept slipping over my eyes, and every time I blinked I saw her. My chest hurt with it. Rage, love, sickness, I didn’t know anymore. It all felt the same when it came to her. I wanted to drag her back to the farmhouse and lock every door.

I wanted to punish her for leaving, then hold her while she cried because she only left because bad things always pulled good things away from me.

It took a a couple of days, but I found her. Through the house window, I saw my bluebird with the man that took her from me.