"Because it has to stop. It has to. If you just break..." Sam's voice almost rattled. "I don't want to torture you. I don't want to rape you. Everything I do is just one more step down the path of my own undoing. But this? There were times, this last year, when I realized that I'd forgotten my own name. I was just the puppy."

He licked his lips, shoulders tensing. "I know what happens at the end of this path, Eliot. I forget who I am, what I used to stand for, what I used to fight for, forget my family and my brother, and I become just like all of them. I become a demon."

And there was the bombshell that Eliot probably didn't expect, having believed all this time that that was just what Sam was. Maybe he thought it was hyperbole now, too, but Sam said it with such stress, and aching pain.