Born, Darkly (Darkly, Madly Duet Book 1)

LONDON

Panic flares the moment consciousness snatches me back to the world.

I don’t open my eyes. I keep them sealed as I plead for that peaceful oblivion to return—that blissful nothingness. But just as he stole the world away, he forces me back, waving smelling salts under my nose.

I turn my head away, groggy. “Why can’t I move?”

My voice is hoarse, my throat raw and neck tender. A wave of nausea rolls through my stomach. I can’t move my head without pain shooting across my shoulders. “You choked me. Why didn’t you just kill me?”

I hear a scraping sound, then as I dare to open my eyes, Grayson is seated beside me.

As my vision clears, so do the rest of my senses. We’re under a veranda, the evening crisp with the taste of fresh mountain air. The glow of draped lights fills the space, keeping the darkness beyond my gaze. The scent of food hits me, making my mouth water and stomach pang with hunger. Then I notice the lack of feeling in my limbs, and fright startles me coherent.

“The string wasn’t a part of the original design,” Grayson says, reaching for a tumbler of water. “But I couldn’t resist the symbolism.”

I look down. I’m tied in thick black string. It crosses my body, cuts into my skin. I’m also wearing that damn dress.

“Restrained by your own devices,” he continues. “Your own self-induced limitations. How will you escape the binding restrictions you’ve imposed on your flesh?”

I blink at him, unimpressed.

He shrugs, then brings the glass to my lips. “Tough crowd. I thought the metaphor was fitting. That little string always wound so tightly around your fingers, cutting off blood flow, the way you cut yourself off from living. Then you enter the maze, following the cries, to find the final test.”

Maze? I hear it then—the sound that’s been in the background until he mentions it, bringing it forward. Screams carry from the dark, reaching my ears.

“Who is that? What have you done, Grayson?”

He makes me drink the water, and I struggle to force it past my constricted throat. But something else is…off.

I turn my head away in refusal, and notice my damp hair as it drags over my bare shoulders. “You drugged me,” I accuse.

“I didn’t want to, if that makes a difference.”

“It doesn’t. What did you use?” My head is fuzzy. I need to know if I’ll suffer any side effects. I need to think. To prepare.

“Chloroform.” He states it so casually, nonchalant. “You needed a bath, and as appealing as it sounds, wrestling you in the tub would’ve eaten away too much time.” Then he grasps my hand. “You’re scared.”

“I’m not scared of you.”

He encloses my hand in both of his. “You are frightened, London. Hands get cold when blood flows from the extremities. It’s a telling psychological response.” He releases me. “Let’s eat.”

He slides a plate closer, then cuts a piece of steak from a fillet. I try to crane my head toward the screams, but it’s painful, and the night masks the scenery past the veranda.

“I never asked, but I presumed you weren’t a vegetarian.”

Too starved to care, I lean forward and bite the meat off the fork.

He slices another piece free. “How much of your memory did you regain?” he asks, offering me the steak.

I take the food, chewing slowly. I don’t want to go back there. I’ve allowed my mind to slip once…I can’t afford to lose control again. “I remembered enough.”

“Do you remember how old you were when you were taken?” Grayson selects a steamed carrot this time. “I remember well. I was seven. Too old for that selective memory thing, where the mind represses bad things to protect itself.” He feeds me the carrot. “You must have been younger.”

“I don’t know,” I admit. I don’t even know if what I experienced in the cage was real or some drug-induced trip. “Why don’t you tell me? You seem to know everything about me already.”

“If I knew everything, we wouldn’t be here. And if we both knew all the answers, then we’d be far past this courting bullshit.”

I laugh. I can’t help it; I’ve gone completely mad. “Courting. I suppose this would be considered dating to a psychopath. A romantic dinner after a little strangulation foreplay.”

The screaming tapers off, barely audible now. He wipes a cloth napkin beneath my lips. “So you prefer something more mundane, like dinner and a movie. Where I bore you with my career achievements. And you force yourself to flatter me, stroke my ego, all the while I’m hoping you get liquored up enough for a quick, sloppy fuck by the end of the night.”

I glare at him.

His lips curve into a smile. “You do like your torture, don’t you.”

“You know what I like more? People who keep their word. You said once I confessed to the mistreatment and misconduct of my patients, then you’d release me.” I lift my chin. “I’m sure you have a recording of that stashed somewhere…so, the damage is done. My career is surely to be ruined. My files confiscated. Experts called in to reevaluate my patients and treatments. You’ve won, Grayson. Another successful punishment dealt and suffered.”

He pushes the plate away, and I mourn the loss of food. “I do have your recorded confessions, but they won’t do any good. You were half delirious, clearly under duress amid your abduction at the hands of a madman.” He stands and looks down at me. “That’s not why you had to endure and pass the test.”

Anxiety coils around my chest like a snake as he pushes the table back, creating a space for him to kneel in front of me. I glimpse the bloodstain on his shirt. Where I stabbed him. I eye the knife on the table.

I attempt to push away, but my legs are restrained just as tightly as my arms. My bare toes scrape the concrete.

He lays his hands on my thighs, stirring a visceral reaction. The contrast of the cool satin and his body heat ignites my skin. I want to flee and be closer to him all at once.

“Do you know who the girl was?” he asks. The feel of his touch steals the air from my lungs as his hands inch up, the silky dress whispering over my flesh. “The girl in the cage with you. Who was she?”

I breathe through the mounting pressure. “I can’t be sure,” I say. Her dirty face flashes before my eyes, unbidden. “But I think…I think I loved her.”

Honesty is all we have left. Whatever Grayson has planned for me, my only recourse is the truth. He sees through my guise, the façade I display for the world, and he doesn’t judge me the way it does. If anything, admitting the darkest, most disturbing facets of my psyche may buy me time.

And if I’m being completely honest with myself, I want to tell him. He was stolen—he has this whole experience and life as an abducted child, raised by the people who took him…and that’s fascinating. But it’s also sacred to who he is and the answers he harbors with that knowledge.

He glides his palms over my legs. I can feel the abrasive threat of his coarse touch beneath the flimsy material. I want it—and I loathe myself for wanting it. “Love,” he repeats, like he’s sounding it out, tasting it, the same way I am in my head.

“She felt familiar,” I say. “Like family. Like a…”

“Sister.” He looks up at me.

As soon as I hear the word, recognition jars a memory. “Mia.” Little details, quick glimpses of our life, trickle into my mind. Her dirty blond hair tickling my face. Her smile. Her tears. Her laugh.

Then—

He took her from me. The current builds, a stream of memories flooding me. She was ripped through the bars, out of the basement, and away from me. I don’t need to recover all my memories to know the truth.

She’s buried with the others.

“London, breathe.” Grayson’s voice coaxes me away from the dark corner, and I gulp down a fiery breath.

“I don’t want to remember,” I confess. And I don’t. If he tortured her in front of me, if he killed her…my mind has protected me, sheltering me from an evil no child could process. Even now, the pain constricting my chest is so foreign, I’m unable to bear the crush. I don’t want to feel. “She can’t be my sister,” I whisper.

“There’s only one way to be sure.”

At that, my gaze lands on Grayson, trapped in his declaration. “Dig them up,” I say. Only this time when it leaves my mouth, the meaning is different, clear. DNA testing would prove if I had a sister. It would prove so much…

“You’ll never get answers from him,” Grayson says. “But if you pass your ultimate test, you will no longer need them.”

He buries his head in my lap, and the reflex to touch him strikes like a match. The yearning flares flinty and black between us. I steel my willpower, straining to hold on to some semblance of myself.

Think. The only question I would demand that my father answer is why.

But then, I know that, too, don’t I? I’ve studied and analyzed his disorder over the years. The girl, my sister, Mia—she was much older than me. She was as old as the girls buried in our backyard. She was his target age, and me? I simply got in the way.

So the question then becomes: why did he keep me?

“He didn’t love me,” I reason aloud. “Not in the way a parent loves their child. He was grooming me. I was a project. And when I failed him, I was just another disobedient teen girl who needed punishment.”

Grayson grips my legs, grounding me. And I let him. “He was going to kill me,” I say, knowing it to be absolutely true now. My father—the only father I’ve known—was waiting for me to come of age.

“If you hadn’t killed him first.” He finds my gaze as he eases the dress above my knees. “The feeling, the emotion we call love is only a chemical in the brain. A chemical we never had access to, but does that mean we’re fiends?” He nuzzles my thighs, his lips dragging my dress higher. Heat singes my flesh. “Do we love each other, or are we merely crazy for each other? I know I’m crazy—maddeningly crazy for you. Obsession is a far more evocative emotion than love.”

The fervor of his touch rises, engulfing me in flames. The sensual feel of his palms on my thighs, skin to skin, stirs a carnal want within me that may just be akin to love. I want Grayson, in spite of—or maybe because of—the things he does to me that nobody else would dare.

“I wasn’t born this way.” I turn my head away, my fingers seeking desperately for the string.

“We weren’t born the day we took our first breath. We were born the moment we stole it.”

I close my eyes, feeling the raw and painful truth of his words. “We’re monsters.” I look at him then, breathless and torn. “And our love is this monstrous thing that will devour us.”

“It might, or it can take all the uncertainty and pain away,” he says. “This is right, London. We were born without remorse or guilt, because we’re designed to take life. The shame you feel, the guilt…it’s not real. You’ve trained yourself to feel emotions that don’t exist. Your mind has detached from certain areas of reality to shelter you from what you truly are.”

“A killer,” I whisper. An ache throbs at the base of my skull and I shut my eyes. “No. You’re sick. I’m sick. We need help.”

His deep laugh vibrates against my legs. “I am sick. I’m lovesick. But all love is a sickness. People do things to each other…couples employing deceptive tactics to try to change one another. Make them into a better version of themselves in the name of love. We’re just more honest about it. We don’t have to sugarcoat the process.”

I shake my head. “I was fine before you happened to me.”

He places a kiss on my thigh, then stands, looming over me. “You weren’t fine, London. You were drowning.”

I watch him walk to the end of the table, and I try again to free myself from the thick thread. I can’t lose my grip on reality. I have to stay mentally strong, but I’m not sure of anything anymore—I’m not sure of myself.

Grayson returns with a folder. He drops it on the table, the contents spilling over the white tablecloth. “I couldn’t access patient files. Not without giving us away. That’s too dangerous.” He tweaks a page from the pile. “But I was able to pull this off the Internet. I hope it will suffice.”

He lays the page on my lap, the headline too bold to mistake.

“Convicted serial killer of three hangs himself in mental institution,” he reads out loud. Another page is laid on top. “Arsonist murderer found dead in cell.” Then another. “Suicide takes life of convicted rapist.”

The pages continue to stack, each headline a weight, every name a face. It builds until the pain in my head screams, and I shout, “Enough—”

Knelt before me, Grayson reaches up and touches my hair. “I love it when you wear it down.” He drapes the strands over my bare shoulders, situating the beaded shawl, his touch calming, gentle. I focus on grounding myself as a wave of nausea washes through me.

“I didn’t kill them,” I say, so low I can barely distinguish my own voice.

“No,” he says, removing the printed pages from my lap. “You didn’t kill them. You just gave them the means to kill themselves.”

The world tilts.

“Just like your most recent patient, or victim, Dale Riley.”

I blink hard, begging the world to right itself. “No. Riley transferred out of the program.”

A slanted smile steals across his face. “Is that what you call it? Transferring out. I like it. You’re exceptional, London. The way you’re able to not just lead a professional life, but thrive in it. Everyone around you, the whole world, invested in your lie. The truth is, Riley put a bullet through his head. Stole an officer’s gun and right here—” he angles two fingers under his chin “—pow.”

I turn my head, unable to look into his glacier eyes any longer.

“You see, London. Now that you’ve been shown the truth, you’ll never see the lie again. You’re liberated.”

“Liberated,” I repeat, trying to understand the meaning. The word sounds bizarre.

“No one understands you better than me. There’s no one who knows you more intimately, who will love you more passionately.” He strokes my face, then lays his hand over mine, caressing the tattooed scar along my palm. “We even mark ourselves the same. Our kills carved and inked on our flesh.”

I swallow. “I’ve only taken one life.”

His eyebrows hike. “You’ve taken six lives. Not with your own hands, you break their minds, plant a dark seed and help it grow, until your victims only have one choice.” He reaches for the knife. “We’re the same.”

My eyelids are too heavy to keep open. I let them drop as a swaying motion lulls me to some higher plane of consciousness. If I let him kill me, just end my life, I don’t have to face this truth again tomorrow. It can end here.

A sudden movement jars me back. I hear a loud tear, and my arm is freed as the thread is stripped off. I open my eyes as Grayson then uses the knife to cut my other wrist free. He places the knife in my hand.

“You’ve been denying yourself the honesty of who you are,” he says. “And I’ve been weak. I have as much to answer for as you. My victims didn’t deserve the mercy I showed them, by even giving them a choice to redeem themselves. We were put here for a reason, designed for one purpose. Now that we’ve found each other, we don’t have to yield to their laws anymore.”

I stare up at him, a beautiful, dark god towering over his own insane creations. “You’re absolutely mad.”

His smile is shattering. “I can’t wait for you to join me.”

I grip the knife, adrenaline surging.

“But, I’m giving you a choice. After this, there are no more choices. This is the finality of us.”

I glance at the darkness, then at him. My chest tingles with anticipation. “What are my options?”

“A year ago, I was stalking a man before I was taken into custody. He was going to be my next victim. Now he’s yours. My gift to you.”

The screams have stopped, but with a shock of frightening awareness, I now know why they exist. “No. Grayson, please. You can’t do this to me.”

“I’ve done nothing to you but reveal the truth. But I am forcing you to finally choose, to stop the lies, London. I can’t tell you how badly I want you to do just that.”

“I won’t play this game.” I throw the knife down, emphasizing my point.

“So you’re going to go back to your world and…what? Confess your misconduct? Lose your license and possibly even serve prison time?”

No. I refuse to suffer the way the filth beneath me does. I shake the thought away.

“I didn’t think so.” He picks up the knife and places it in my grasp once again. “So choose. After everything we’ve uncovered, everything you now know. Do you think you’re above taking a life?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s find out.”

He turns toward the darkness. “You have until morning to decide. Free yourself of the string, run the maze, and make your choice. You can either set our victim free through rehabilitation, or you can end his life.”

Oh, God.

“Begin.”