Bad Company (Seven Deadly Sins #1) ✅ Completed

Chapter Forty-One: Mind over Matter

Mind over Matter   

Asher stood over my prone body examining me. I couldn’t really see him as my eyelids were closed and I was entirely too focused on watching the crazy dots swimming behind them. Still, I could feel his slimy perusal like a nauseating caress over every inch of me. To make matters worse, it wasn’t confined to my physical body. It was like his special brand of taint sought my very essence, his digusting touch sliding through the deepest part of me. It was invasive and horrible and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop him.

Dante and I had been so wrong.

Aunt Celeste was just your average friendly, cookie-baking, Sunday school teaching neighborhood granny compared to this awful creature. How could we ever think we stood a chance against him? I’d barely survived my aunt, and she wasn’t anywhere near this level of nightmare-worthy terror. Now here I was facing this demon alone, fear, doubt, and pain overwhelming me on all levels.

“I am Asher, the soul collector,” he said as if I there’d been any doubt. “And it seems that you and I have some business to discuss, Eliza Rain Taylor.”  

His words assaulted my already fractured mind. I gritted my teeth against the pain and brain numbing fear. I tried to get a coherent thought together, but it was no use. I was trapped in whatever mental hold he had over me. It was like trying to think through the stricken immobility of a full-blown panic attack.

My dad used to say everything was mind over matter: If you don’t mind, it don’t matter. It took me a long time to realize he was ultimately wrong. Sometimes, no matter how much you tried not to mind anything or anybody, they came back and mattered quite a bit. I was a living example. Had I not cared about Chase or minded what Aunt Celeste was doing to people, I wouldn’t be in this utter freaking agony right now.

“Well do I know the fury and complete debasement of being at another’s mercy, or lack thereof as it were. It burns the soul, dear Eliza. That is what you are experiencing right now…that pain? It is not in your mind, it is in your soul.” He laughed then, and I felt the horrible sound echo inside my head until nothing else existed. When he spoke again I barely even knew my own name anymore. “I see that you have cost me the use of one of my long standing mortal employees. Normally I would consider this turn of events highly unacceptable. Celeste and I had a contract, and your actions have conveniently nullified our standing arrangement. Now you shall inherit her obligations, as well as the terms of our prior arrangement.”  He glided around me as he spoke, the smoke and smell of him swirling around me in a noxious cloud.

I made some kind of sound in the back of my throat. Asher seemed to stop and tried to make sense of my nonsensical sound effects. “What was that, mortal?”

I felt the grip on everything I was slacken the slightest bit so I could breathe and speak. Or at least grunt out something more akin to English. It wasn’t much, but at least it was an improvement.

“She. Was. A. Tool,” I managed to squeeze out.

The insult totally flew over Asher’s head as he agreed with me. “Yes, a most invaluable tool. She’d lasted longer than the others.” He mused and I got the impression he wasn’t really that sorry to see her go. "She almost believed she would get the better end of our arrangement. It seems she did, but no thanks to her own actions, but rather because of yours.”

I felt myself being lifted off the ground until I was hanging in midair in front of Asher. I felt my eyes widen as whatever force was holding me up locked me in place so that I couldn’t even twitch. Whatever had me was so dark it froze the blood in my very veins, and for the first time in my life I knew abject terror. It was nothing like Chase's attack, which I’d managed to get through with only a few scratches and a couple of bruises. Sure, Chase had been scary and violent, but I knew he was still inside himself somewhere. Inside that violent, almost crazed mental case, there was his normal, totally sane self being held hostage by whatever thing my aunt and Asher had unleashed. That, along with Dante's help, had helped me pull myself together after his brutal attack. But this, this was nothing even remotely close to that - this was pure horror. This was a darkness so total, I felt something inside me crack just by its very proximity. It was every childhood nightmare, terrifying fear, and scary movie scene all rolled into one.