The Stone of the Eklektos Read online

  Phoebe ran to him and fell to her knees before him. “Oh, no! What has he done to you?!” she cried, lifting her trembling hand and placing it on his face.

  Kallias opened his eyes. “Phoebe,” he croaked, his voice barely audible.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks as she nodded. “Yes, I’m here, baby.”

  “Get away,” he growled, pausing to gasp for breath, “from me.”

  Phoebe froze. “What?” she sputtered, thinking she’d heard him wrong.

  “I don’t want,” Kallias sucked in a ragged breath, “to look at you.”

  Her eyes stung with tears. She had never known Kallias to be cruel. He had always been so kind to her, so trusting. “I never meant for this to happen.”

  “I trusted you,” he rasped, his tired, brown eyes accusing her.

  “I know you did,” she whispered. She stared at the floor, grimacing as she noticed the pool of his blood just inches from her knees. “He told you?”

  “He didn’t have to tell me. I’m not an idiot, Phoebe,” Kallias scoffed, his voice growing stronger as he spoke. “Or maybe I am. I should have realized before now. I should have known you weren’t worshipping every single night.”

  She didn’t dare meet his shaming gaze. “I couldn’t tell you the truth.”

  “The worst part of it is that I defended you. People told me not to trust you. They said you were sleeping around, called you a whore,” he snarled, still gasping for air every few words, “and I fought with them over it. I trusted you.”

  “I didn’t choose this,” she whispered. “It just happened.”

  “It just happened,” he repeated, laughing in disbelief.

  Phoebe forced herself to meet his gaze. Gone was the amusement and humor that usually lightened his brown eyes. His eyes looked lifeless now, the eyes of someone who had endured too much. She could almost see the pain, anger, and despair in those cold eyes. “Listen to me, Kallias. What I did had nothing to do with you. I promise. You were always more than enough for me.”

  “Right,” he scoffed with the same disbelieving tone.

  Phoebe hung her head in her hands and cried, her loose, black hair falling around her face like a curtain. Her entire body shook with her sobs.

  Kallias turned his head and closed his eyes, unable to watch her cry. It didn’t matter what she’d done. He still couldn’t watch her cry without wanting to pull her into his arms and soothe her. “What do you want? Forgiveness?”

  Phoebe immediately stopped crying and looked up at him, wiping the wetness from her cheeks. She nodded eagerly. “Yes, that would be…”

  “No,” Kallias interrupted.

  Phoebe frowned. “What?” she sputtered, stunned by his response.

  “The answer is no,” Kallias said again. “So, if you only came in here to get my forgiveness, then you should leave. Because I won’t forgive you.”

  “How can you be so cruel?” she snapped, frustrated by his sudden change in personality. “Kallias, you have always been kind, and now, it’s like…”

  “It’s like I’ve changed?” he asked, finishing her sentence.

  She frowned at him. “Well, yeah.”

  “I have changed,” he said, letting his head fall back against the wall, too tired to hold it up. “You have no idea what that monster has done to me. You have no idea the kind of pain he’s inflicted on me. Hell, you don’t even seem to understand the kind of pain you caused me. I am tired. I am wounded. And I am dying. And it’s your fault. And then, you come in here, expecting forgiveness.”

  “Maybe this was a bad time for me to come,” Phoebe sighed.

  “You think?” Kallias snarled. “He’s starving me to death, Phoebe. He is torturing me, cutting and burning me every night. I can’t tell one day from another. It just never ends. Gods, I don’t even know if I’m sane anymore.”

  “It’s been seven nights,” she whispered sadly.

  “Did you know?” he asked. “Did you know what he was doing to me?”

  “Y-yeah,” she stammered. “But Kallias, I couldn’t stop him. I tried!”

  He laughed bitterly. “Right. Well, perhaps a better time to ask for forgiveness would’ve been before I was nearly dead from starvation and infection, before I endured endless torture that has probably already driven me mad, or better yet, before I tried to save that girl. Perhaps, Phoebe, you should have tried back when I was still ignorantly telling people that you were not a whore!”

  Before she even realized what she was doing, Phoebe slapped him for that last comment. The slap reopened a gash on his face that had already scabbed over, and fresh blood poured down the side of his face. Phoebe covered her mouth in horror. “Oh, no, Kallias! I am so sorry!” she cried as she watched the blood stream down his cheek. “I didn’t mean to do it. I just…”

  Kallias cut her off. “Forget it. I barely feel it. It’s nothing compared to the rest of the pain I’m feeling,” he sighed. Before she could feel relieved that he was not angry, he added hurtfully, “Besides, your boyfriend would be proud.”

  Phoebe winced at that biting insult. “Kallias, I…”

  “Damn it, Phoebe, I’m dying. Just, please, let me die in peace,” Kallias pleaded. “I’d rather not spend my last hours trying to make you feel better.”

  Phoebe swallowed against the guilt welling in her throat. “It’s not what you think. I met him before I married you. He bit me when I was fourteen, and I’ve been in love with him since. I never went looking for him. He came to me.”

  “If you loved him, why did you marry me?” Kallias asked.

  She smiled down at her hands as she fiddled with the Aphrodite emblem on her bracelet. “Because you’re the kind of man I always wanted to marry. You’re kind, strong, protective, intelligent, funny, sexy, great in bed…”

  “Stop with the flattery,” Kallias snapped. “It won’t change anything.”

  “Fine,” she muttered, sighing at his bitterness. “I couldn’t exactly tell my father that I was in love with some kind of creature of darkness, could I?” She shrugged sadly. “But I wasn’t lying. You really are all of those things.”

  “You could have saved us both a lot of pain if you had run away with him and never married me,” he said quietly. “I wish that you had done that.”

  “You’re being cruel,” Phoebe said. “This isn’t you. You’re not like this.”

  “Pain changes people,” Kallias muttered. “There’s nothing left of me.”

  “I begged him to stop doing this to you. Every night,” she whispered.

  He looked at her. “How can you love that monster?”

  Phoebe cringed at the term monster. “He’s not that much different from us. I mean, he drinks blood and only comes out at night, but in some ways…”

  “Yes, because I, too, often chain people to the wall and torture them for days for my own sadistic pleasure,” Kallias snarled sarcastically.

  Phoebe stared at him, unsure of how to respond to this acidic sarcasm. “Fine! You’re right! He is a monster. He tortures people. He kills them. I know all of that, but you know what? I still love him, more than I ever loved you!”

  She froze as she realized how hurtful that statement had been. She’d intended to hurt him when she said it, but as she watched him tense and close his eyes, she realized that she hadn’t anticipated how badly it would hurt him.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice weak and depressed.

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “It’s so euphoric when he bites me, and…”

  “Never mind,” Kallias interrupted, grimacing in disgust.

  She pursed her lips. “I feel so much happiness because of it.”

  He frowned at her. “Love brings happiness, Phoebe, but the two are not one in the same. Drinking too much wine might bring you a few moments of happiness, but that doesn’t make it love. That makes it an addiction.”

  She considered that for a moment. “I never thought about it like that. Maybe you’re right. All I know is that I love the way it
feels.”

  He sighed, “Phoebe, please, just leave.”

  “I can’t,” Phoebe pleaded. “I need to know that you don’t hate me.”

  He looked at her. “I don’t hate you. I want to hate you, but I can’t.”

  Phoebe smiled and rose onto her knees to kiss him, but before she could, he turned his head away from her, grimacing in pain as he moved.

  She froze. “Kallias?”

  “I said I don’t hate you. That doesn’t mean I want to kiss you,” he said.

  “But…why not?” she asked, confused.

  Kallias glared at her. “Why would I want to kiss you when I know you’ve been kissing that monster every night? You disgust me, Phoebe.”

  Phoebe stared at him, unable to believe that the loving person she’d married had become so cruel. Her eyes flooding with tears, she jumped to her feet and fled toward the door. Unfortunately, before she could leave, the door flung open and Theron snatched her up by her arm, jerking her against him.

  “Did you really think you could just sneak in here without me knowing? Sensitive hearing, remember?” Theron growled, pointing to his ears. He threw her against the wall with enough force to cause her to cry out in pain. “Since you wanted to be in here so badly, I don’t see any reason to let you leave.”

  Too terrified to defy him, Phoebe just sobbed, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  Theron rolled his eyes at her. “I really don’t care.”

  “Stop treating her like that,” Kallias heard himself say.

  Theron laughed, “Would you prefer I treat her how I’ve treated you?”

  He paled in horror. “No.”

  Phoebe stopped sobbing, her eyes wide with surprise as she glanced over at him. Kallias frowned. He knew that he’d said some awful things to her, but he couldn’t believe that she actually thought he might wish torture on her.

  “She did this to you, and you still care about her?” Theron asked.

  Kallias stared tiredly at the floor. “You did this to me,” he said quietly.

  “You’re right. I did,” Theron said, “and I’m quite proud of my work.”

  Kallias stoically watched Theron approach. His emotionless expression mirrored the weakness and hopelessness that he felt. His throat burned. He could barely breathe. His entire body ached, burned, and stung. His stomach clenched in the most agonizing hunger he’d ever felt. There were no words or emotions that could express his misery, so his body seemed to choose stoicism.

  “I have to say,” Theron said, “I have never seen a human last this long. Most are either insane or dead, by this point. But here you are, still alive.”

  “Why won’t you just kill me?” Kallias asked impatiently.

  “Most humans plead for their lives, not their deaths,” Theron laughed.

  “Most humans are not tortured,” Kallias countered, wheezing afterward.

  Theron smiled at him. “Perhaps you should try begging.”

  Kallias forced himself to make eye contact with the monster. His eyes full of hatred, Kallias assured Theron, “I will never beg you for anything.”

  Theron’s smug smile did not falter. He walked over to the fire that burned at the edge of the room and removed the dagger that rested over the fire. Realizing what was going to happen, Kallias tensed and closed his eyes.

  Theron returned and knelt before him. With a bored yet fascinated expression that only a psychopath would have at such a time, Theron sliced slowly through the skin of Kallias’s chest, reopening other festering wounds.

  The only indication of the pain it caused him was the way every muscle of his body tightened. Kallias rarely showed his pain. He refused to give Theron the satisfaction of knowing just how much damage he was causing.

  Phoebe gasped in horror and ran to her husband’s side. “Stop!”

  Theron ignored her. He stepped back to admire the damage he’d done. Kallias drew in a ragged breath and did his best to suppress the pain. He couldn’t imagine any pain worse than what he’d felt for the past week. At this point, Kallias needed death. He simply couldn’t endure the torment any longer.

  Theron wore the kind of sick, sadistic smile that might have turned Kallias’s stomach, even if he were not already so sick. His own blood was splattered across Theron’s white chiton in such amounts that Kallias wondered how he hadn’t bled to death already. But perhaps that was just wishful thinking.

  Kallias used what little strength he had left to lift his head and meet Theron’s gaze with all the hatred inside him, determined not to show weakness.

  Theron only smiled, amused that Kallias had not lost his nerve yet. He knelt in front of Kallias again. “You hate me, don’t you, human?”

  “What do you think?” Kallias muttered dryly.

  Theron’s smile widened. “But why do you hate me?”

  “Do you mean aside from the fact,” he gasped, clenching his jaw as the pain tormented him in waves, “that you are torturing me?”

  Theron nodded. “Yes, besides that.”

  “What you are is wrong. You are,” he gasped, drawing in another labored breath before continuing, “a murderer and a monster. You are evil.”

  “Should that offend me?” Theron asked with a taunting smile.

  “Killing humans is wrong, and so is,” he paused, as he grew breathless again, “drinking their blood. I would rather die than become like you.”

  Theron shrugged. “What else?”

  Kallias mentally rolled his eyes, too weak to do so physically. “That’s my answer. If you are trying to make a point, just make it,” he said impatiently.

  Before Kallias could prepare himself, Theron slid the dagger down Kallias’s side, slicing through the skin quickly and roughly. Since he wasn’t prepared, Kallias didn’t have time to clamp his jaw shut before the cry of pain escaped his mouth. Blood poured down his side and splattered on the floor.

  “Do not tell me what to do, human,” Theron growled.

  Phoebe gasped as she saw blood pouring from the new wound. “Stop!”

  Again, Theron ignored her. He grasped Kallias’s chin roughly in his hand and forced him to meet his gaze. “I think you hate me because your wife was with me every night, instead of you.” He smiled and sneered, “Tell me, human. How does it feel to know that you were never good enough for her?”

  Tasting the copper-tasting liquid that filled his mouth, Kallias spit a mouthful of blood into Theron’s face. Shocked that Kallias still had the audacity to do something like that, Theron growled and plunged the dagger into Kallias’s abdomen. Despite his attempt to clamp his mouth shut, Kallias yelled out as the blade ripped through his insides. Theron twisted the dagger, worsening the wound. He left the dagger buried deep in Kallias’s abdomen as he stepped back.

  Phoebe held her hands over her ears as she cried for Theron to stop.

  Kallias choked on his own blood, struggling to spit it out as it flooded into his mouth. All he could taste was metal, and all he could feel was intense pain. His vision blurred, and his heart pounded angrily in his ears. As his vision came back into focus slightly, Kallias smiled weakly and began to mock Theron.

  “You must,” he said breathlessly, gasping for air, “really hate me.”

  Theron turned to stare incredulously at him. He couldn’t believe that a human would have the nerve to mock him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “To torture me like this,” Kallias elaborated.

  Theron waved his hand dismissively. “It’s a hobby.” He walked back over to Kallias and knelt in front of him. “Besides, you attacked me.”

  “I was only trying to,” Kallias inhaled shakily, barely able to speak, “save that woman. You knew that I couldn’t hurt you.” He gasped again. It felt as if he were trying to pull air through a solid wall. “It certainly…didn’t merit this.”

  Theron shrugged. “What is your point?”

  “You seem so concerned about why I hate you,” Kallias said hoarsely, “and yet, you hated me first, before I even kne
w that you existed.”

  As Phoebe realized what he was doing, she began to shake her head at him, watching Theron warily. “Kallias, please stop. You will make it worse.”

  But Kallias wouldn’t stop because he needed death to come quickly, and now, he knew how to manipulate Theron into giving him what he wanted.

  Theron glared at him, frustrated by Kallias’s game. “What exactly are you suggesting, human? What other reason would I have to hate you?”

  “You weren’t good enough for her either,” Kallias said.

  Theron’s eyes narrowed. “You know nothing, human,” he snarled. “Women beg me to sleep with them. They beg me to drain the life out of them. I’m that good. I am more than enough for your insignificant human wife.”

  “And yet, she married me,” Kallias said with a tired smile.

  His taunting succeeded in causing Theron to lose his temper, which, of course, had been Kallias’s aim. He had realized that Theron was easy to predict and manipulate when angry and that Theron tended to deliver fatal injuries when he lost his temper, the kind of injuries that would end Kallias’s suffering.

  Theron’s dark eyes flashed with rage as he pulled the dagger from Kallias’s stomach and plunged it into him again, just inches from the other gaping wound, and just as he’d done before, he twisted the dagger.

  Kallias yelled out in agony as the blade ripped through his stomach yet again. He felt the warmth of the blood spilling over his skin, and he welcomed the waves of dizziness that cascaded over him as he lost more and more blood.

  Despite the severity of the pain, Kallias was grateful for it because it meant that it would all be over soon. He’d rather feel this agony now than continue to endure the endless torture that he’d been enduring for the last week.

  Phoebe screamed out in horror, but he couldn’t hear her. The ringing in his ears drowned out the sound of her screams. His head spun violently, so violently that he thought—or hoped, really—that he might pass out soon.