Free Destroyer of Worlds by Jordan L. Hawk

you. And I agreed, because the drakul…shit. I wasn’t sure if
Forsyth was right, okay? I had my doubts. It hadn’t hurt you yet,
and Caleb seemed like a nice guy, and I thought maybe everything
would work out. Then Will came back into town.”
    “ Will?” What the hell did John’s ex
have to do with this?
    “ Yeah. He wanted to get back with you.
And it seemed less and less likely we’d be able to exorcise Caleb.
I had a talk with Caleb, to convince him to get out of the way and
let Will have a shot.”
    “ You asshole.” Hot anger formed in
John’s chest, and he clung to it because it was small and
understandable, and gave him something to concentrate on besides
the abyss yawning under his feet.
    “ You don’t understand.” Sean sat back,
looking tired. “I confronted Caleb, asked him how he could justify
putting you in danger when the thing in his head might go out of
control at any minute. And you know what he said? He said, quote,
‘we would never’ hurt you. We.” Sean shook his head. “It had fixated on you, John. And I knew
right then I had to do something, anything, to keep you safe. Even
if you didn’t want me to.”
    John slipped further toward the abyss,
its sucking maw dragging him in, like a black hole whose gravity
was grief. “Ours,” Gray had
said, after an incubus nearly tricked John to his doom at the
lighthouse.
    Gray felt something for him. He’d never know
what, but…something.
    “ Goddess,” he whispered, bowing his
head to hide a fresh round of tears.
    “ That’s why you’re here now,” Sean
said. “To keep you safe. And I’m sorry about Caleb, I truly am, but
there weren’t any other options left after he broke out of RD last
night. The drakul is weaker in a dead body than a living one. I had
no other choice than to force it into a habitable
corpse.”
    Sean’s eyes lost their focus for a moment,
staring into nothing, and he swallowed hard. “No choice,” he
repeated then blinked back to the here-and-now. “But the drakul
might still be drawn to you, which is why we’re taking you to RD
for a little while. If it comes shambling up, it will be a lot
easier to trap now, when it can’t heal the body it’s in. And in the
meantime, you’ll get what you need. Therapy. A chance to rest.”
    Therapy or brainwashing? Did it even matter
any more? John felt hollowed out, as if his emotions were too huge
to experience, leaving behind only numbness. Gray was still in
danger, and John would be the bait in the trap for him.
    Please let Sean be wrong. Please let
the “we” and the “ours” have meant something else. Let Gray not
give a damn one way or another about John, let the drakul hate him if it would just keep Gray
safe.
    Sean leaned forward again, resting his
fingers lightly on John’s shoulder. “It…it’ll be okay. I know it
doesn’t seem like that now, but it will. The docs will help you get
your shit together, get over this death wish of yours.”
    John swallowed against the roughness of his
throat, and forced his gaze up, to meet Sean’s eyes. “You’d better
hope they don’t,” he said quietly, as something congealed into
hardness deep inside. “You’d better hope you’re right, and I get
myself killed somehow. Because otherwise, I’m coming for you, and
there is nowhere on this earth you’ll be able to hide.”
    * * *
    Caleb floated.
    He became aware of his own existence
gradually, like a dreamer waking from sleep. Or perhaps a sleeper
moving into dream, from nothingness into something not quite
reality.
    He hung suspended in warmth, a chick curled
in a shell. Safe. Held.
    Loved.
    Whatever wrapped protectively around him knew
him completely. Every virtue and flaw, every moment of triumph and
second of shame, every impulse of generosity and every selfish
act.
    It knew him. And it loved him, without
reservation or condition. He didn’t have to do anything to earn its
affection, or even to keep it. It loved him, always had, always
would, and such