by Ace Gray
My whole life had been like this. An unending assault, bruises and blood. Until Filly. And as I sat crumpled over, her sea glass green eyes and sunshine hair erased the pain. Well, erased wasn’t exactly right, but she helped me surge past it.
Lightning shot through me as I turned and grabbed his ankle and wrenched. The snap of sinew answered me just before a howl and a thump.
“They’re going to keep coming, Brye. Until they bury you. Bury you and unearth that Ryan girl.”
I snarled, but then it stilled in my throat. He’d said girl, not family. Emmett had said he was coming for all of them, but he hadn’t mentioned it. He’d said unearth as if he didn’t know…
What the fuck?
Subtlety wasn’t my father’s thing.
“I’m going to fuck her Brye. In a puddle of your disobedient blood.” He laughed as I swore at him. “I’m going to write my name across her thighs and hang her back in the basement.”
The fury inside me snapped, but it didn’t send me into a rage. It silenced the questions about Emmett and the Ryan family. It zeroed the world to one brilliant, crimson pinpoint. I took a deep breath and the silence of a killing calm stilled the room and my nerves.
I pictured the head of the table and where he always sat opposite me. I could see the slight curve of his shoulders. I visualized what was between us—mahogany, chandelier, candelabras—and the line I needed to take. With one steady, deep breath, I lifted the gun, closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.
True to form, my father started laughing, but this time it was garbled and had the hint of wind against shutters in the background. He choked on something and wheezed a moment later and it was my turn to smile. I knew that sound, the sound of a death rattle.
“You won’t touch her,” I said with conviction as I shoved myself to standing. “You won’t touch any of them.”
“No.” He wheezed. “It seems…” each breath was harder and harder on him. “…I’ll have to leave that to Emmett.”
There was one last breath and the soft rumple of fabric then…nothing. Death was swift and easy. Killing nothing more than a crook of my finger. There was no production, no long drawn out words, there was just the absence. I’d grown used to it—I was even grateful not to hear some deathbed confession—but the weight still hung on me.
I sucked in a deep breath and shoved my shoulders back. I took the three long steps to the wall and flipped on the light. My father was a heap of skin and suit at the head of the table and his thugs framed him, all frozen.
But it was Emmett that drew my attention. Emmett who sat in a chair at the side of the table, facing me. He had his ankle crossed on his knee, casually bouncing as he watched me. His gun rested on his lap adding to his unruffled and casual air.
“You were never here to help, were you?” I asked.
I wasn’t the least surprised when he laughed something wicked like my dad. For the first time, I saw him for what he was and all the things he was not.
“Nope.” He popped the P in his word. “I honestly thought it would be a little more eventful.”
“Hoped is more like it.” He shrugged.
And that was the difference. Hope. What it meant to each of us, what bits of our insides fed on it.
“I mean I went to all that trouble to find Deirdre, fuck her up, find Filly, and take you from her, and I didn’t even get a hail of bullets. I didn’t get second-guessing or savagery. You stuck to your word and killed your father. Bor-ing.”
He rolled his eyes and waved his gun as if the whole thing was a waste of his time.
“He was my father.” I lunged at him.
“Yes, and what a good one he was.” Emmett leveled his pistol at my chest. My chest that Filly had been kissing an hour ago. The one that housed the heart I promised to return to her.
“I’ll kill you!”
“You won’t,” he laughed as he stood. “You won’t because she made you feel. She made you weak.” He stepped toe to toe with me and snugged the barrel of his gun beneath my chin. “Your father was right. These heathens need a king and you are not it. But me? There is nothing I enjoy more than playing an unholy God.”
“So you’re going to kill me?” I asked as I thought about all the times he’d nursed my injuries, all the times he’d been the voice of reason.
“Yes,” he answered as he leaned his forehead to mine and let a curled smile overtake his face. “And then I’m going to kill the Ryans. And anyone else with a claim to the throne.”
“I will come back from the grave—”
“What? To watch me fuck her the way your father suggested.” He laughed. “Please, be my guest.”
I screamed at him, the full weight of my fury a roar thrust at his face. We were so close my spit splattered at his face. I thought about tearing into him with my teeth. But then a soft touch whispered at the small of my back where I’d stuck that last gun. I wished there was some way to grab it—it or any of the random weapons I’d brought but not used.
Then I felt it again.
And after all the talk of ghosts, I wondered if one was really moving it when the gun slid out of my waistband. Soft, delicate fingers traced my abs then splayed across the flat expanse of my stomach and held me tight. I knew that exploratory touch. Her other hand grazed my opposite hip.
“I will ruin you, Emmett,” I promised, my voice low and serious.
“No, no. This time you won’t.” He shoved the barrel of his gun harder into the soft cleft beneath my jaw, his eyes never shifting from mine.
“You’re right, Emmett.” It was Filly’s beautiful voice as it had been in bed with me—possessive, strong and certain. “It’ll be me.”
He roared with laughter. For a split second, I was sure I was going to get shot while she was saying her piece, knowing she wasn’t the brutal beast that we were and she’d need to exercise these demons. But then she tensed. A heartbeat later the shot of the gun was muffled as it was absorbed by flesh. The steel at my throat slid and his eyes went wide with panic, but otherwise he was Emmett, solid in his wicked convictions until the end.
When he crumpled beneath me, I kicked his corpse to make sure that he was dead. I smiled when his body stayed limp and gummy.
My smile spread even farther when I turned to find the woman that I loved.
I walked into Hell, not some Chicago mansion. My father and Horse had gone first, and they had leveled man after man. Bodies and blood littered a foyer that held more expensive antiques than some of the museums I’d been to. But I only focused on them for a moment.
The lights flicked on and all I could see was the dark ink of Brye’s angel wings beneath his shirt where he stood, seething near the spot where I’d first acquainted myself with the darkest part of his soul. I saw the man he was, the man he could be shuddering against some unseen cold.
Until Emmett stepped toward him. Emmett was the version from Deirdre’s story, wicked and it was so blatantly obvious. Horns seemed to grow from the corners of his forehead. But Brye’s wings responded, floating up from his skin to flap behind him in all their dark glory. I was sure I was hallucinating but then Emmett pressed the gun to Brye’s throat and I knew they were an omen.
I crept toward him, using his broad body to shield me, and noticed the gun tucked into his pants. Dad and Horse and I had always shot cactus in the desert and old beer cans on camping trips. It was fun and childish at the time, survival skills in hindsight. A gift today no matter which they intended.
Because today, right now, I was going to kill for Brye.
I tiptoed behind him, taking advantage of his size and Emmett’s solitary focus. I was scared that Brye wouldn’t know the feel of my fingertips, that he’d fight the unseen person behind him. Or worse, that he’d think he was alone.
But his body reacted to mine, the sag of his shoulders said he knew. I snuggled to him, feeling the solid and sturdy of his body as I pulled the gun out and pointed it toward Emmett’s torso. Outside of his black heart, I wasn’t sure
what would kill him, but I figured something angled up toward his lungs was close enough.
They’d been speaking about me, I could tell by the fire spreading across Brye’s skin and the unearthly growl. Emmett’s shove on Brye’s chin tensed his neck and lengthened his spine. I pressed closer to the curve of his body and splayed my hand across his stomach, melding his body to mine.
“I will ruin you, Emmett.” There was something serious and solid in Brye’s voice.
“No, no. This time you won’t.” Wicked hung on Emmett’s words, and somehow it made my decision easier.
“You’re right, Emmett.” I took a deep breath and felt the truth of my convictions in my bones. “It’ll be me.”
I pulled the trigger, a soft squeeze and a barely there click before the bone-shaking boom. Emmett crumpled to the floor in front of me, but the blood and bone wasn’t what made me shake. It was that he was gone. Forever. All his good, all his bad, his possible retribution, and assured evil had vanished as if it were nothing more than smoke. I had been the one to take it.
And I didn’t mind in the least.
That utter lack of regret was what made me shake. It made me a monster, just like the rest of them. It made me want to sharpen my claws.
“A chuisle mo chroí,” Brye murmured as he his hands came to cup my cheeks. I didn’t know the Irish words but the tenderness with which he said them was its own soothing stroke down my rigid spine. “You came for me.”
I let the gun drop from my hand as I slid into the fold of his hug. He pulled me so tight, held me so close that I felt his heartbeat shake my skin.
“I couldn’t let you face this alone.” I breathed in deep as I buried myself in his chest. “I couldn’t lose you.”
“Mo chuisle,” he purred again as he bent and found my lips.
And there in the midst of violence and hate, the way he kissed me was a bloom pushing through concrete.
I tried to get my hands free, I wanted to roam across him, to learn the contours of the body that was mine in every way. The soul that I’d claimed in front of God and Satan and anyone else who happened to be watching. But he held me too tight.
When the crunch of footsteps behind us broke through the blissful haze, his grip became almost painful as he shoved me behind him.
“Just us.” My dad held up his hands in surrender.
He looked worse for the wear; each cut and bruise a signal that he’d fought for us. My uncle’s heavy breaths next to him spoke of the same hard-won silence we stood in.
“You okay, Bean?” Horse asked as he looked at us then the body behind us and back again. I knew he was asking about the deeper layers of my soul.
I nodded where I peeked out from beside Brye. He managed a smile as he clapped my dad on his shoulder.
“Thank you,” Brye managed pure sincerity when he spoke to my dad and Horse.
They seemed to be heavy in the muck of the house, shaking off the blood but they both gave him a curt nod.
“You know you choose. And right now,” my dad said in his rumbling voice.
I tried to dig my fingers into Brye’s skin, but he pulled away. And completely. His gaze swept across the floor and his face fell into sharp and confused lines. I let mine follow.
Acid burned my throat. The blood of his father and his best friend blanketed his childhood home. He’d know the men that littered the living room. I had too… It wasn’t the death and destruction that made me heave but that Brye’s reality was shattered. It was leaking on the floor.
“Son,” my dad warned sharp.
“Don’t Dad—” I started.
“I’m not your son,” Brye snarled. “I’m no one’s.” He picked up a vase and slammed it against the wall.
I watched the cascade of ceramic in various sizes as it sprinkled into the blood and dimpled the thick of it. I knew it was foreshadowing of what was to come a simple heartbeat or two before the crash confirmed it.
Brye fell to his knees with an echo in the starkly silent room, but it was far louder in my heart. Just like everything else in that room, he was broken, and that alone broke me. My dad was about to speak, but I shot him the most withering look I could manage then folded down around Brye. My knees splashed in the blood and I felt the same slosh inside my stomach, but then the world slowed, and my body stilled as I sagged into him.
“You’re mine,” I murmured. “My kushlay, my kree, or whatever you said earlier.” I twisted to kiss the cap of his shoulder with all the ardor I could manage as I butchered his words.
He laughed a single and shaky laugh, but there was tenderness there. Fear and scorn too. “You don’t even know what that means.”
“Tell me.”
“The pulse of my heart,” he answered simply.
And there in the blood of our enemies, in the evidence that I’d become a monster savage and rude and wild, I repeated myself, low and solemn, letting each beat of my heart bleed into my words.
“Brye, you are the pulse of my heart.”
My life was in shambles. Literally. Everything I had ever known had fallen at my feet.
I’d wanted it. I’d wanted every drop of this blood, but I hadn’t expected to feel the loss. The pain. Maybe I’d expected my blood to join theirs on the floor. That I was here, that her hands were on me, seemed unreal. And when she claimed me, the world dissolved.
How could she say that here, sitting in blood, when she’d seen me kill? She claimed I was what beat inside her heart… I looked over at the beautiful girl who had sullied her soul for me and watched her chest rise and fall in perfect rhythm with mine.
“What if this doesn’t end? What if it’s always like this?”
She shrugged and let a small smile pull at her lips. “Life doesn’t look like I expected, Brye, sometimes it’s quite ugly. But that doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful.”
“So if I stayed?”
“I’d recommend refinishing the floors and the dining room table has to go,” she said with a shiver, but then she recovered her warmth.
“And if I choose to leave this all behind…?”
The fear when Cole had told me to choose had been a shock to my system. I’d never had a choice. I’d never wanted to choose. Honestly, I didn’t know who I was outside of death and mayhem. I’d never minded that part.
Here my world had been the shades of gray, and crimson too with the deepest shade of night. With Filly, with there was color. Infinite color. And not because she’d ask me, but because that’s what I would give her. I wouldn’t drag her into the dark any more than I already had.
But could I actually follow through?
“I will too,” she said simply.
Her dad sucked in a deep breath and I prepared for the buffet of his hot air, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Horse grab his shoulder and pull him back. Then shake his finger in front of his face.
“Say those Irish words to me again and I’ll follow you anywhere.” She reached over and threaded her fingers into mine.
“A chuisle mo chroí.” The words turned into a snarl as she leaned into the kush and hard eee of the phrase.
I wanted to slam her down to the floor and feel the way my body matched with her. I wanted the hot stick of everything wicked about us to soak in as I fucked her into oblivion. I wanted it because when it was over, when she could feel her fingertips again, she’d smile at me. At everything about me.
My hand fisted into her hair running on lust alone and drug her to me. Her fingers dug into my hand then into my thigh. I reached for her waist and pulled her over my knee. I growled into her mouth when her knees made that soft splash against the blood and hardwood again.
“Get your hands off my daughter.” Cole spoke in the same wild roars as me. The bastard in me enjoyed it way too much.
I yanked her to my body, and while her kisses hesitated, her hands clutched at my chest.
“Cole…” Horse warned.
“I’ll kill him. Even here, even now.”
I couldn’
t stop. Wouldn’t. As fucked up as it was, I wanted them to see me with her. I wanted them to know she wasn’t their little girl. She was mine. Both the brush that painted my canvas and the masterpiece I yearned to create.
Filly rose up on, grinding her hips on mine in blissful friction. I almost moaned into her open mouth, but then my lips were left aching, empty in the open air. I sucked in a deep breath before she kissed my forehead.
“If my dad kills you, I don’t think I’ll fair too well a kushlay mo kree.” She butchered my endearment again with a wide smile.
She rose and reached her hand out for me. I was going to take it—I didn’t think I could live without that delicate touch anymore—and I was going to follow through on every promise every man had ever made a woman since the beginning of time. I was going to be a good guy for Filly.
“Call the cleaners, don’t tell them why,” Horse broke through my thoughts, reading them almost perfectly. “Pack a bag then we’re leaving town.”
“I’m not going with you.” I shot him a look as I steadied myself against their onslaught.
“Shamrock, you’re going to come with us because for at least two thousand miles, you’ll be watching your backs. You need all the eyes you can get.” He added a bit softer, “She needs them.”
I wanted to roar, but it stuck in my throat as I thought it through. Putting Filly first wasn’t hard in theory—I would tear the world apart stone by stone for her—but doing what was right by her was a little harder. It was like a belt that didn’t have the right notches, either too tight or too lose. My teeth screeched against each other as I ground my jaw. I kissed the back of her hand even as the muscles of my neck feathered.
There was a weight on my chest as I left her downstairs in the muck and the mire and walked into my room to pack that bag. It didn’t feel quite like mine anymore. My life didn’t feel like mine anymore. Nothing before Filly had been particularly good, but I understood it. I took the beatings, the berating, and handed out my own. It was familiar.
A life with Filly would be… There weren’t really weren’t words. Amazing. Terrifying. Everything. Nothing I knew. I’d never known real fear until her and the very real fear of failing her on unfamiliar ground had me reeling.