Worth Dying for (A Dying for a Living Novel Book 5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

liked it. What a fool I was. What had he said?
    “You’re beautiful enough to be an actress. Come with me. I want to show you something.”
    God, I’d lapped it up. I followed him back to the run-down white house. As soon as I saw it, my insides screamed. Run away. Get away from this place . On the pavement outside, I turned to Chaplain, ready to make my excuses, but he trailed a soft hand down my arm. His smile made me go hot all over.
    “You’ll understand why I’m renting such a shithole, when you see the set up,” Chaplain said, his voice amused. It was enough to coax me inside. Why? Because I was raised to be polite. To be a good, accommodating girl. And look where the hell it got me. See if I’m ever polite again.
    The moment the front door closed behind us, the second my eyes focused on the bed in the spotlight, he jabbed a needle in my arm. He dosed me with enough heroin to sink a moose.
    My legs gave instantly.
    “My beautiful girl. Mi perra . You’re going to make me so much money.” His breath was moist on my ear. My body sagged in his arms as he ripped away my clothes and the cold air licked my skin.
    Blind terror. Panic pulsed from my heart. Do you know what it means to be a prisoner in your own body? My arms and legs were made of wet sand. I couldn’t push him away. I couldn’t get my tongue to form articulate words. Fighting wasn’t an option. I had only one choice: go inside myself. Endure this. Or be broken by it.
    And no one is going to break me. Not Chaplain. Not Caldwell.
    “Are you all right?” Gideon asks. There’s an edge to his words. I know that tone from Brinkley. Are you still here with me? Are you in control of yourself? Are you about to completely lose your fucking mind? This tone is always my cue to pretend.
    But a lump of coal is stuck in my throat and it’s burning.
    “Maybe we should head back to the hotel.” Gideon turns, surveying the street around us.
    “Caldwell has to die,” I say.
    “Oh, he will.” Gideon slips his hands into his pockets. “Either you or Jesse—”
    “ I’ll kill him,” I say and hear the tremor of mania in my voice. I release a slow exhale. “It’s what Brinkley wanted.”
    Back in the St. Louis asylum, Brinkley told me what he wanted. Protect Jessup. Do what Jessup can’t. Kill the monster. And I will because the fact remains that Jessup can’t kill him. She doesn’t have it in her. I have it in me. Chaplain saw to that.
    Gideon takes my gloved hand in his and pulls me down the stairs leading into the underbelly of the city. I can hear the subway squealing somewhere down the tracks.
    This place is filthy. Soda cans and wrappers cluster in the corners of steps, kicked by rushing feet. The air is sour. The steps are smeared with mud from countless shoes.
    “It smells like a dumpster down here.”
    Gideon shrugs. “Welcome to New York.”
    I use the scarf to hide the vehement emotions puppeteering my face.
    You are so beautiful. You could be an actress.
    I am an actress. Every day. The more I think of Chaplain as somehow alive, the more the urge to plunge my thumbs into Caldwell’s eye sockets intensifies.
    How will it feel? Wet? Resistant until the eyeballs pop? Then perhaps warm as I slide in deeper. I imagine if I close my eyes at that very moment, I could pretend it’s Chaplain I’m murdering. And when his power transfers from his body to mine, will I feel Chaplain? That last piece of him absorbed by my body, becoming a slave to my will as I was once a slave to his.
    I would own the last piece of him. That’s exactly how I want it.
    Put Chaplain from your mind for now, my angel Uriel commands. He’s little more than a dim shape in the corner of my eye, but his presence is unmistakable. The flare of heat. The weight of him. You are frightening your companion.
    Gideon is tense beside me. I push through the turnstile, our tickets disappearing in the machines only to reappear on the other side. The lace brushes my thighs as I jog to