Read Legion of Despair: Book Three in The Borrowed World Series for Free Online Page A

time, in the dark, just…staring.
    “Turn it off!” she pleaded. “Please turn it off.”
    “You yelled for me,” he said, his voice reverberating off the stone walls of the old basement.
    “You’re hurting me,” she said, twisting her body, trying to get her face out of the beam of the powerful light.
    “You don’t know what hurt is,” he said. “Yet.”
    He turned the light off and the pain in her head disappeared as quickly as it had come. She was breathing erratically, her heart pounding. “Thank you,” she gasped. “Thank you.”
    He said nothing for a moment and she lost track of him in the darkness. She felt him, though. Knew that he was there now, knew that he was within reach.
    “What do you want?” he asked. His voice was different now. It was a voice she’d never heard from him before. Before he’d almost been playful, though still clearly crazy. He’d displayed a sense of humor.
    This person here in the darkness with her now sounded demonic. She felt that he was right on the razor’s edge between continuing this game with her and slaughtering her as he had Rebecca. This was the man she’d seen choking Rebecca in the luggage compartment of that bus, and no doubt the man that killed her as well. It was the shadowy, evil man that lived inside the other. She had to pull the other back somehow. She had to make the monster retreat back into the cave and leave the other man, the man that she might have just the slightest chance of outwitting.
    “I need to go to the bathroom,” she whispered. She tried to make her voice as non-threatening as possible, adding a note of embarrassment, of desperation. She wanted to make sure he knew he was in the position of power in this interaction. It was the only way he would possibly go for it.
    “Then go,” he said. She could tell from his voice that there was some of the old Boyd in there. This was the voice of the sarcastic smartass, not the killer. Still, there was an underlying rage and hostility that scared her.
    “I don’t want to go on myself,” she said. “I smell bad enough and I don’t have any other clothes. Can’t I just use the toilet?”
    “They don’t work anymore,” he said. “There’s no running water.”
    “Then where are you going?”
    “The yard,” he said, as if it were the dumbest question he’d been asked all day.
    “Can’t I use the yard too?”
    He was silent. She could hear him breathing. She could feel him thinking, the rusty, encumbered wheels grinding.
    His flashlight clicked on and she shut her eyes tightly. She heard Boyd stand and move about the room. Items were moved, a plastic bag rustled. Suddenly hands grabbed her and rolled her over onto her face. She heard the rattling of a chain, then felt something around her neck. She heard the plastic ratcheting sound of another zip tie and felt one bite into her neck. She gasped in panic, thinking he was going to tighten one around her neck and kill her. Though he stopped short of that, she could not push the thought of dying that way from her head.
    She heard a metallic click, then a pulling at her wrists as that zip tie was cut. Soon, her feet were free too. She sagged onto the floor, limbs outstretched, feeling the blood restored to her aching extremities.
    “I thought you had to pee,” he said. “Get up.”
    She stood awkwardly, staggering. She was dizzy and her feet were still numb. She felt a tugging at her neck. It wasn’t hard, but it was enough to stop her in her tracks. Then Boyd tugged harder and he was at her back, whispering over her shoulder, his mouth inches from her ear.
    “I have you on a leash,” he said. “I ran the zip tie through a link of this chain so you cannot get loose. Don’t even try. You can do what you need to do in the backyard, but I’m not letting go of this leash. If you try anything at all, I will tighten it and watch you die.”
    She thought this over for a moment. “I’m not sure I can pee with you standing right