Starkeeper of the Fractured Crown

She jerked down my pants. My underwear.

What was she doing?

I gasped for air.

She spit on the pan handle, wrapped her hand around it and stroked it up and down before finding my eyes again. “Let’s fill you up before I finally rid the world of your pathetic existence.”

My eyes widened, the fear washing over me in waves. “Mom,” I tried as she shoved a leg to the side. “Mom!” I choked.

“Stay still,” she grunted.

I couldn’t hold it in. I screamed, grabbing her wrists, tears streaming down my face. “Please,” I begged, but the words were garbled. “Don’t!Please,mom!”

She pinned my thigh under her knee and slammed the pan into my hand, breaking my wrist. “Stay. Still.”

I sobbed, trying to spit out the last hope I had, but I could no longer form words, the blood choking me.“Trick,”I tried, my vision going from black to white to color.“Please.”

The tip of the handle touched my entrance just as a chuckle filled the room, the house, the world. “Oh, you pathetic little human,” that voice of sex and death purred through me. Familiar, god-like, proud.

Mom stopped, her head whipping towards the door.

My head rolled to the side, finding black shadows and smoke flooding across the floor or maybe across my vision. Maybe it was blood dripping over my eyes. I couldn’t be sure.

“Who is that?” Mom demanded as she dropped the pan and shoved herself to a stand. “Show yourself!”

“I’m the last God,” he said, his voice sliding through me like a snake.

The shadows swirled over me, cooling my skin instantly. Not my vision, not blood. The shadows had come.

Mom hesitantly stepped into the hall, my blood dripping from her hand, and I watched as every ounce of color drained from her face. “Wh-what are you?”

That chuckle that fell through my soul touched some deep, unknown part of me I never thought existed. “I have many names, but you may call me theGod of Nightmares,” the male said, his voice changing to many.

A form of shadows ran up to her, four long talons sliding through her stomach, bursting out the other side. “I’m going to enjoy this,” he said before the shadows consumed her.

I turned back to the ceiling, struggling to breathe. There was no inhaling, no exhaling, there was only copper.

It’s okay though. It would be okay. Mark would find the cottage, Cole would take him to Penny. Everything would be fine.

A struggled grunt echoed through the room, and I wasn’t sure who it belonged to. Mom, me, or the thing in the hall, it could have been any of us, I supposed.

The shadows converged above me, a pair of flaming green eyes emerging from their depths.

Trick formed a moment later, as if made of shadows himself. There was something dark and unreadable in his expression, sweat pasting his beautiful hair to his deathly pale skin, exhaustion in his eyes. It almost seemed like he was scared of that thing too. I couldn’t imagine him being scared of anything.

“Angel.”

I convulsed, my coughs filled with blood. “Mark,” I tried.

“Cole will find him,” he said, his shadows blanketing me.

Tears welled, spilling into my hairline, a sob suffocating me.“You came.”

He slid his hand over my cheek, his skin damp. “Every time, baby.” It sounded more like a threat then is didanything else.

~~~

Cole