Again, there are a few content warnings at the end of this chapter for folks who want to check in with them. 

Today (Night)

Colby took him to another hotel. That was all Theo's life seemed to amount to—a long string of hotel rooms. Ones that Ken told him to go to. Ones everyone else took him to. Ones he stayed in with Abel. At least Abel had been across the street, safe in the bar. Theo could not even imagine a reality where the demon killed him.

That might have been the reality where he was able to finally kill himself. Lord knows he was not able to kill the demon; he had already tried. He was beginning to believe that perhaps he himself was the demon. There might never be an end to this unless he finally did it.

A peace washed over him. This was how he could make things right. This was how he could be a person, the strong person that Abel thought he was, instead of an escaped zoo animal. There were too many holes in him. Abel thought that maybe he deserved another chance before being returned to the shelter and put down, but Theo was tired of biting people. And he did not want Abel to have to care for him. As much as he loved his doting, it was not fair to him. He could not be restuffed, and it was unfair for Abel to waste his time trying. Theo failed the last time he tried to kill the demon, but he would not this time.

From his hunched-over position in the back seat, he could see that the hotel was actually a one-story motel. Colby parked in front of the office at the end of a long, squat building with aged sun-bleached paint peeling off the brick walls and a woefully unmaintained roof, and went into get a room. A few cars were spaced between the doors, but not many. The vacant sign poured blood-red light through the windows.

"All right," Colby said with a huff as he fell back into the driver's seat, keys to the room in hand. "Let's go."

Theo could not go anywhere. He had to remain in the back seat as they moved to a space in front of the room, then wait for Colby to open the door and let him out. "Remember what I fucking did to your hand," he growled before unlocking the cuffs. "Try anything, and I'll do that to one of your eyes."

Blood welled from the thin but deep wound in the back of his hand, dripping down his palm. In between his fingers, it had begun to grow sticky. But he no longer felt the pain. He glared but did not resist when Colby undid one of his wrists to pull the cuffs from around the seat, then re-clasped it to bind him as he walked him to the door.

It was musty inside, and the carpets and wallpaper were as outdated as the roof shingles. Theo sat on the bed as he had done hundreds of times before. Colby closed the door behind him and flicked on the dim overhead light. The globe over the bulb looked like it might have decades' worth of dirt and bug bodies caked to it. Theo frowned in disgust.

"You seem pretty calm," Colby observed, setting down the box he had been carrying under his arm. Theo recognized it with a jolt as the one his aunt had given him. The one that was supposed to re-start his life. Colby did not seem to notice his eyes lingering on the box, and smirked at him, thumbing the button of his fly open. "Did you finally remember your place?"

Theo had. But he needed to get this guy to trust him enough to uncuff him, reveal where he kept his knife or both. It would be even better if he went to sleep. And there was really only one good way to get any of those things. Theo laid back, rolled onto his belly, and presented his ass.

Colby laughed at him.

Twenty minutes later, Theo still had the cuffs on, but he knew where the knife was because Colby had used it to cut every inch of clothing off of him. Now, it lay on the table beside the box. Colby scooted toward the edge of the bed to lob his used condom toward the waste basket. Theo tried to sit up, but sharp pain lanced through him, and he dropped onto his back with a whimper.

"That's right, bitch," Colby patted his thigh. "Bet Ken never fucked you until you couldn't walk."

He certainly had, although not often. It would never have been very business-minded of him to damage Theo too badly, so the times he left blood trailing down his thighs had been few and far between. Theo took a deep breath, held it, and pushed into a seated position.

Colby had gotten up to fill one of the little plastic cups provided by the sink with some water and gulp it back. He narrowed his eyes at Theo and walked over to the table between him and the knife. As he passed, he casually flipped open the box and peered at its contents.

"What is this stuff?" he asked, then kept talking without waiting for an answer. "I thought it was stuff you stole from Ken."

"What the fuck would I want to steal from him?" Theo rasped.

Colby shrugged, pulled out the folder with his birth certificate and such, and opened it. "He had a lot of expensive, flashy shit. Dunno."

"So, you were hoping to get one of his old watches as well as his old whore?" Theo scoffed. "Cheap knockoff."

Colby shot him a look. "Careful."

But Theo hoped could goad him into grabbing the knife and returning to the bed. He hurt too much and was too tired to lunge for it. The adrenaline from the car had worn off, replaced with an age-old ache in his chest that came from being plowed into creaky, uncomfortable motel mattresses. Colby just looked back down at the folder instead. He sniffed and set it aside, pawing around through the photo albums.

The little ink imprints of Theo's hours-old feet looked delicate and terribly wrong in the gruff hands that had just pawed at his hips. Colby tucked it back away and flipped through the pictures while Theo sat unmoving and unsure of what to do.

"These your parents and shit?" Colby turned the photo album toward Theo. He almost shut his eyes. They did not belong in this hotel. And on top of that, he had not looked at a picture of them in years. This really was not the place to do it. It would be better if he never looked at them again. It would have been better if he never visited their grave. Instead, he brought the demon back to their town when it could have remained in the city amongst the rest of the shadows.

But he looked.

It was a picture of his mom holding him on one hip. He was probably around four or five, clinging to her neck and throwing a cheesy smile at the camera. His dad stood to the side with an arm thrown around her, his hand resting on little Theo's shoulder. At first, his eyes locked onto his mom's face, and he felt a deep pang of longing. Then they slid to his father, and he felt the bed drop away beneath him.

Eighteen years ago

Theo always slept with his back to the wall, so when a creak woke him and his eyes flew open, they immediately landed on the figure looming in his doorway. He hugged his blankets to his chest as the figure moved closer, gliding silently through the shadows. The door shut behind him with a soft snick.

"Daddy?"

"I'm here to check your closet for monsters, kiddo."

"Okay."

The shadow, barely discernible in the dim light, moved toward the closet. Another creak filled the room as he pushed the door open, his eyes glinting in the faint moonlight as he peered inside. Then, another creak as it closed the door again. His gaze shifted toward Theo. Then he moved closer.

"You know they won't be as scary if you go to sleep," he said in a low voice, settling on the edge of the bed. "It's better if you don't think about them at all because that's how you feed them."

Theo clutched his blankets to his chest and nodded furiously, his throat tight with fear, as it always was when they spoke of monsters. He was not supposed to talk about or think about them, but he could always feel them. It was harder to keep his thoughts from straying to the shadows in his room when he was alone, which was why he was so grateful when his dad came in to check the closet and stay with him for a little while.

"Why are you still awake?" his dad asked.

"You woke me up when you came in," Theo whispered honestly.

A pair of gleaming white teeth joined with glinting eyes peering down at him. "Would you like some help going back to sleep?"

"Okay, Daddy." Theo looked timidly between his father's eyes and the closet door, then released the covers from his small grasp as they were tugged away. His shark was pulled from where it was tucked in his elbow and set aside, replaced by his dad's touch, which was firm and made him feel good, unlike the scary monsters hiding under his bed waiting to grab him. And it always left him fuzzy and sleepy, with no thoughts of monsters. So, he squeezed his eyes shut as his pajamas were tugged away, too.

Today (Night)

Theo scrambled back on the bed away from the photo album. Colby's look of confusion barely registering over the flood of memories. His back hit the wall with a thud, soft motel pillows churning under his desperate hands as he pushed himself against it. He was a little kid again, back against the wall and eyes darting around the room, unsure who to trust.

It had been his dad who originally told him about the monsters, despite being so angry at him for years that he was afraid of the dark and of being alone. He had been angry because Theo was never supposed to talk about the monsters, or what his dad did to make them go away in the middle of the night. Because then the monsters would grow stronger and grab him and do terrible, scary things.

But it was his dad who first ever touched him in ways that Theo had grown numb to over the past five years, in places that should have been private, but he had been taught were not his own to control.

It seemed that he had been taught that his body and his thoughts were not just his own, even when he was alone, much earlier than he thought—before all the teachers, other kids, and therapists thought he was crazy. His dad claimed to keep the monsters away, when he was, in fact, the original demon peering out of the shadows. His eyes gleamed the same as Ken's had the first night he passed Theo around. Possessed.

Then he left him. He stopped coming into his room at night. He told Theo that he was too old to get scared of monsters anymore, so he had to man up and stop relying on Daddy to scare them away. Never think of them. Never speak of them.

And he'd certainly forgotten his demon, Theo realized with dawning horror. You are just irresistible, kiddo. You are monster bait. Better that I take care of you and help you go to sleep, or else you'll keep thinking about them, and they'll come out of the shadows and tear you apart. All he knew was that there were monsters in the shadows, and he shouldn't talk about them. Nobody would ever believe him anyway—his own thought, an echo of his father's long-forgotten warning.

And he'd never heeded his father's warning. When he stopped visiting him in the middle of the night to protect him, Theo obediently forgot about the demon that had possessed him, but he fixated on the monsters in the shadows. He made them powerful. In a fit of clarity, he realized exactly why his father had been so angry about him trying to sleep in his parent's bed, never wanting to be left alone, and making them take him to a string of psychiatrists.

He had been afraid that Theo would tell them about how he had protected him from the monsters. The violation churned in his stomach, but it was really his father's actions after that made his scalp numb and fingers tremble. His father had known about the monsters in the shadows all along, yet he never said a word and always scoffed at Theo's fear. He put the monsters in the shadows in the first place to manipulate him and then acted like he was crazy for being afraid of them as soon as they became a threat instead of a convenience.

And Theo had become so fixated on them and on his inability to be alone with himself that he took them with him all the way to college, where he met his demon once again. Except, this time, in the form of Ken, it did not try to protect him but handed him out to the monsters. At least Ken was honest instead of feeding Theo sweet lies and then leaving him terrified and alone.

"You didn't like your parents so much?" Colby asked absently, looking from the photo album to where Theo was cowering against the wall. "Makes sense, I guess. Nobody who loves their mother does this," he gestured to Theo's entire figure, "to their child."

Theo whimpered. He loved his mother dearly. She tried her best, taking him to therapy despite his dad's protests. She sang him lullabies to go to sleep. She gave him his shark.

The shark that this man had killed. And wasn't it this man who was doing this to Theo? Wasn't it Ken who had done this to him? Wasn't it his father? His father said he was irresistible, but Abel had resisted. Just because I'm hard, that doesn't make you a slut.

Whether or not Theo was irresistible no longer mattered to him. He was angry that they had hurt him. He was angry that he had forgotten. A puzzle piece had been stolen from him for so goddamn long and he'd always felt the ache but never known what to do about it.

Colby laughed and tossed the photo album aside to paw some more in the box. Theo looked between him, the knife, and the door. The deadbolt and the chain lock were locked. A calm settled over him once again, fingertips tingling numb and head rushing. He could no longer feel any of his pain as he slipped off the bed.

"It's just been a long time since I've seen a picture of them," he murmured, walking around the edge of the bed. "Can I see the album again?"

Colby still stood on the side of the box that placed him between Theo and the knife. But as he shrugged and leaned over the box to reach for the photo album, Theo lunged under his torso and grabbed the blade's handle. Colby hollered at the sudden movement, but he did not have enough time to react before Theo shoved the knife into his belly.

The night before yesterday

Theo had grown tired. That was the dangerous thing about suddenly feeling after having been so numb for so long. He was afraid again. He was disturbed again. He felt exhaustion deep in his bones instead of pleasant apathy.

So, he did not appreciate his sleep being interrupted. He woke to the smell of hard liquor fumigating the bed as Ken panted and pawed at the sheets around Theo's waist. His hands were overly warm and damp, and the smell of his breath made Theo's stomach turn.

"Stop it," he mumbled, trying to pull the sheets back up around his shoulders.

Ken growled and grabbed the sheets to yank them back down, this time tossing them nearly clean off the bed. Theo sat up, but a hand on the back of his head slammed his face back into the pillows. Ken's voice washed over his ear, sticky and alcohol slurred. "Who are you to tell me to stop it? Spread your legs."

A harsh slap hit the back of one of his thighs. The pain hardly registered over the bone-deep exhaustion and disgust. Maybe if he had still been seeped in apathy, he might have just given in and spread his legs. But he was tired.

He jerked his body to the side so that his shoulder collided with Ken's chest. A sound punched out of Ken as he was knocked back and fell off the edge of the bed. Theo lay still in the ringing silence after the thud of his body hitting the floor. Horror at what he'd just done settled over him.

"What the fuck?" Ken's voice was deadly. As he rose back above the edge of the bed, his eyes were furious. He looked like a demon crawling straight out of hell. Theo gasped and scattered back across the bed as he crawled across it toward him.

"Did you just hit me? What the fuck has gotten into you?" Ken rubbed his chest and laughed. It was a mean laugh, one that spelled pain and anguish. Theo tumbled off the edge of the bed and sprawled across the ground on his back, still backing away as Ken advanced. Then Ken stopped and cocked his head to the side.

"Come here," he ordered.

Theo shook his head and crawled backward until he hit the wall.

"Theo, come here." Ken barked.

Theo curled up and shook.

Ken curled his lip and turned away, stretching across the bed to paw through his bedside drawer. He could have been looking for any number of things, most of which would not have surprised Theo. Not even the handgun that he pulled out did. What was a surprise was the full clip that Ken showed Theo before shoving it into the handgun with the heel of his palm. Then he racked the slide with an awful, echoing snap, and Theo's heart stopped.

"Don't make me say it a third time."

Theo crawled forward. Ken cared little for others' opinions and thoughts, Theo's least of all. He wanted nothing more than for his men to fall in line and his pet to be obedient. In the past, when he pulled the gun out during sex—unloaded, of course, always unloaded—he was not trying to make Theo afraid. He wanted him to make love to the barrel, to take it down his throat like he would a cock and moan in appreciation.

Now, though, he wanted Theo to be afraid. Because his pet had not been obedient. And as soon as Theo stepped a toe out of line and no longer acted as the obedient pet, Ken gave up his façade as the doting master. His eyes shone as he held the gun lazily in one hand, finger-ready across the trigger guard.

"Stay on the ground."

Theo retracted his hands from the bed where he'd been climbing back up and knelt at the edge.

"Kiss it."

The gun was shoved in front of his face. There was a bullet in the chamber at the end of the long, dark barrel. He pressed his lips to the unyielding cold metal at the end of the barrel, then worked his way up with little kisses until he reached Ken's fingers, to which he also pressed a kiss. Ken snorted.

"Finger yourself," he snapped. "Get yourself desperate for me. None of this pushing me away nonsense. You should fucking sleep lubed up and plugged because you should always be fucking ready for me."

Theo spit on his trembling fingers, then shoved them into his sleep shorts and pushed the saliva into himself. Theo tapped his cheek with the gun, and he returned to showering the barrel with kisses, chest tight with terror.

"Where is this disobedience coming from?" Ken's eyes glinted. He prodded at Theo's lips until they parted, and then he pushed the barrel between his teeth. It slid smooth and cool along his tongue. And Theo could taste the gunpowder and the hollow barrel, at the end of which the bullet sat snug as a bug. "Is it because of your little boyfriend?"

Theo's fingers stilled, and his eyes cut to Ken's smirking face.

"Oh?" Ken laughed. "You thought I didn't know?"

His cheeks were flushed like they always were when he was drinking. His eyes were brighter. The gun slipped from Theo's mouth, taking a string of saliva with it. At first, Theo thought he was giving him a chance to say something, but then there was a moment when Ken's eyes grew brighter, sharper, and amused. A second later, Theo's entire world lit up with pain.

He spilled out on his side, clutching his head where the handgun had smacked into it. Bright spots danced in his vision, and pain exploded through his skull. Distantly, as though his body were no longer his own, he felt a foot nudge his hip. He flopped onto his back, and Ken knelt over his belly. He was a shadow looming above, eyes glinting.

"I should kill him," he mused, running the gun along Theo's jaw, then jamming it beneath, just over his thundering pulse. Theo could barely hear him over the blood and pain rushing through his head, but that got his attention. His eyes widened, and he lifted his hands from his pulsing head to grasp Ken's shirt.

"Don't," he begged.

"Oh?" Ken's eyebrow rose. "That's twice in one night that you've told me no. Maybe if I kill him, it will teach you a lesson."

Theo's fists tightened, and he dragged Ken closer to snarl in his face, the press of the gun to his jugular be damned. "Don't."

Ken bared his teeth back and mocked, "Don't." Then, his eyes, which had been clouded by alcohol yet also sharpened by rage, glazed over. "I can't kill him, can I? It'll just make him a martyr, won't it? It won't teach you any lesson other than to hate me."

His sour, liquor-tainted breath filled the air between their faces, and Theo gagged. Then Ken pressed his lips to his temple, close to where the pain in his forehead radiated from. Theo wanted to shrivel away from the touch and die.

"No, no. The one I need to kill is you."

Everything froze. Theo's heart froze in his chest. His legs, which had been squirming and kicking, stilled. The Earth stopped on its axis. Ken pressed the gun a little harder into the softness beneath Theo's chin. His heart thudded.

"That way, you will always be mine," Ken kept speaking. Theo shook his head, tears springing to his eyes, afraid and confused. Ken was always lending him out to people, selling his body in motels and high-end arms deals, and giving him as favors to his men. His body was of little consequence. It was his mind that Ken coveted.

He wanted Theo to be gentle and meek, gagging for his gun and his cock. His perfect version of Theo would be begging for anything that Ken did to him—for the bullet. Ken was a demon after his soul. And Theo had thought for a long time that he had already given it up, only for Abel to surprise him by coaxing it out of the box deep inside of himself where Theo had unwittingly locked it away in an effort to protect it.

He couldn't let the demon have it now. He saw a woman's brains scattered across the floor for her disobedience, eyes forever locked in fear and disgust. Pure anguish.

Theo screamed.

How he managed to turn the gun around was a blur. He could not remember or would not let himself remember, except he managed to knock Ken's wrist to the side and jerk his head away to give himself enough space to push the gun up so that it was beneath Ken's chin instead. Then, it was Ken's blood and brains spraying across the room.

His body landed heavily on Theo, dead weight, jaw hanging at an odd angle, still smelling of liquor, but now also the blood and cerebral fluid and brain matter sliding into an increasing puddle around them. Theo screamed again, this time in horror. He scrambled out from Ken's body, trailing blood that saturated his clothes and dripped down his skin.

For a long time, he stared at the body. Then he went to the bedside table to pick up the phone and call 911. Except his fingers were bloody and slid across the touchscreen, so he could not call. He stumbled into the bathroom and wiped the blood from them, avoiding his reflection. When the operator answered, he told her there was a dead body and hung up.

Then he sat on the bed and stared at the blank eyes that used to house the demon. At least then, he'd known where it was and what it wanted. Now, it had been released. He half expected to see the body rise up, for the demon to hold its shattered jaw and skull in place as it came crawling for Theo again. He scrambled back to the head of the bed and pressed his back to the wall, never taking his eyes away. His hand landed on his shark, and he picked it up, careful to hold it away from the blood on his clothes.

The shadows edged out of the corners, licking at the edges of the bed. His ears roared. The body did not move. It lay in the pool of its own blood, and Theo began to shake as he realized it was just Ken. And Theo had killed him.

He was the demon, an incubus so powerful that he drove men mad. If Ken wanted to kill him to keep him by his side for all eternity, Theo should have just let him. That way, he would not drive anyone else mad, and Abel would be safe.

The gun glinted below Ken's shoulder. On the street below, he could hear sirens.

A/N:  Theo's thoughts about things are still a bit jumbled, but I hope that everything is coming across clearly. There is one final chapter and an epilogue to go!

Content warnings: offscreen rape, suicidal thoughts, violence & blood, statutory rape