Protect Her: Part 11 Read Online Free PDF Page B

could I prove to him that it was me and not some other demon set on a mission to harm him?
    “I wanted to be an actress,” I said as the tears welled in the corners of my eyes. The mark on my hand had started to expand across my skin. “I had my first starring role when I was twelve. It was Annie Get Your Gun.” I desperately needed him to see that it was me. The only thing I could dredge out were the memories of what I had showed him in my past life. Things he had seen when he had been with me inside my mind.
    “Paige Matthews was tracked and hunted by demon officials for years,” he said. “Don’t you think they knew more about her than she probably knew about herself? A minor detail in her life, and an odd one to choose. But that could easily have been discovered with a little digging.”
    The pain was growing more intense by the moment. Now the entire length of my arm was covered in angry, red splotches. I thought about the stories I had heard about the necromancer’s skills at torture. It was a creative choice. But I couldn’t be deterred.
    “My parents died when I was fourteen,” I said. It was starting to get harder to form words in my mind and speak them out loud. “Pollball demons took them. That’s what you told me.”
    “Easy enough to discover. Again,” Riley said. His eyes narrowed. “Who do you work for? Who wants to get close to me so badly that they were willing to send you to me?”
    My teeth started to chatter because behind the pain was a cold chill that traveled up and down the length of my arm. I wondered if I was about to die. The irony that Riley would be the one who had saved me so many times, only to be the one who killed me in the end, wasn’t lost on me.
    What could I tell him that only he and I would know? Something that was so intimate and personal that it was something that could destroy me as surely as it would save me. My mind ran over all the possibilities even as I slipped to my knees.
    Riley joined me on the ground staring at me with an intense look. He seemed fascinated by my pain. “Why do you stay here, demon? Leave my presence, and the wound will be gone.”
    “I’m not going to leave you,” I managed to sputter. “I love you.”
    He scoffed. “Love. What is that emotion anyway? One that is fleeting and fickle and causes the one in love nothing but agony and pain. When you love, you are weak.”
    I shook my head. “No. When you love, you are strong. That’s why I won’t leave you. Kill me if you want, but you will watch a piece of yourself die.”
    Riley’s eyes had that faraway look in them again. “Whatever part of me was capable of such an emotion is gone. I’ve snuffed it out, and it will never return. I will never be weak again.”
    The sensations crossing my chest were alternating between hot flashes of pain and the tingles of icy electric pulses that seemed to converge over me. I choked as I felt the grip of them around my heart. “Don’t do this Riley. It’s me. I swear.”
    His face loomed above me, but his features blurred. “If you are who you say you are, which you aren’t, then answer me a question.”
    A shot of hope rose inside of me. “Anything.”
    “If you are Paige, then you’ll know the name of the one who betrayed you. The one who made sure that you would become the vessel of Eva. The one who set you on the path to becoming the woman you are today. Who was it that did this despicable thing to you? Who was your betrayer?”
    I felt my heart breaking.
    “It was you, Riley. It was you.” Unconsciousness overtook me.

CHAPTER FIVE – RILEY
     
    I watched the unconscious woman crumple to the floor. Why I was affected by her words, I had no idea. Despite their truth, if a demon was trying to ingratiate itself into my favor, why would it say something to anger me? Why would it risk my wrath?
    As her body began to convulse, I felt a tendril of something inside of me that I couldn’t recall feeling since I had been reborn. Uncertainty.