by Logan Fox
Silently, Cass stretches out his arm, turning the knife and holding it out handle-first to Apollo.
“Cass—” I start.
“It’s the price we pay for serenity,” Zachary says. He’s leaning in Cass’s place beside the fireplace where flames sputter and shoot sparks as they chew through the dirty wood we found stacked in one corner of the cabin. “It must be him.”
“I’ll do it,” Trinity murmurs, but before she can take more than a step forward, Cass puts out an arm to stop her. “This is his cross to bear.”
I don’t know what the fuck comes over me, but before I can stop it, a bark of laughter escapes me. Everyone turns to look at me. I shrug. “Most religious thing I’ve ever heard coming out of your mouth,” I tell Cass.
He quirks an eyebrow. “Then you obviously haven’t been paying attention. I say holy shit all the time.”
Before he finishes speaking, Apollo snatches the blade from his hand and slashes out with it, a grisly sneer stretching his mouth.
A ragged line of red appears on Adam’s throat an instant before his head falls back. Bright blood fountains into the air. Trinity claps her hands over her eyes, but Cass, Zachary, Apollo, and I merely watch as the Ghost’s life force pumps out of his severed flesh.
The gurgles begin immediately, but either he doesn’t want to hang around any longer in this world, or he just didn’t have that much fight in him, because a second later his head sags forward, a permanent slump in his now lifeless body.
A clatter draws my eyes. The knife lays by Apollo’s grimy sneakers, his hand dangling limply at his side. His eyes are glazed, his lips parted. He looks like he’s high, but he hasn’t touched a joint in weeks.
We’ve had other things on our minds.
“That’s it,” he says, his voice thick and unusually grim. “It’s over.”
Zach grunts. “There’ll always be more of these sick—”
“It’s. Over.”
I know I’m not the only one who gets goosebumps at the steel underlying Apollo’s declaration.
Cass glances back at me, his mouth working for a second, but he’s at a loss for words.
Trinity’s eyes are glowing, and when she blinks a crystal tear races down her cheek. She steps forward and lays a hand on Apollo’s shoulder. When he doesn’t react, when he just keeps staring at the bruised, beaten, bloodied body a foot away from him, she runs her hand down his arm and laces her fingers through his bloody hand.
Some of the man’s life juice must have splashed on him when he slashed his throat, but Apollo doesn’t even seem to notice.
Usually, he’d be on his back, practically comatose. I’ve never seen him stare down this much blood and not be in a parallel dimension.
But it’s as if he’s shed a skin that’s been constricting him his entire life. Finally free, his phobias no longer plague him. He’s walked away from the scared, pathetic boy he used to be…and grown-up to this. To a man who can tell it’s over with the kind of authority that makes us believe him.
“It’s over,” I say, starting to nod.
Apollo looks up at me through his sandy lashes, flicking his head to send a chunk of the same color hair from his eyes. His lips close, and the tiniest crease forms alongside his mouth. It’s not a smile, but it’s getting there.
“About fucking time it’s over,” Cass mutters, dusting down his clothes. “I want to travel before it’s too late.” He cuts his gaze to Trinity, but she only has eyes for Apollo right now. Squeezing his hand, beaming up at him with dare I say almost motherly pride. I can’t blame her—my breath is starting to seize up with how my chest constricts.
Zachary pushes away from the wall and rushes out of the cabin, slamming the door open so hard that Trinity yelps in surprise when it crashes against the wall.
“Zach!” she calls out, and for fuck’s sake she’s about to go after him before Cass grabs hold of her wrist and keeps her back.
I go instead, my jaw already creaking with how my jaw locks.
Of course he’s pissed. Zachary could saw off the dick of every molester in the United States and still feel like he hasn’t done enough. It’s become his obsession, his undying vow, to single-handedly wipe out the surge of pedophiles in this country.
I follow the sound of his boots crunching through the snow. Thank God, he’s not heading into the forest—he’s heading for the car. Which makes me speed up, because he has the keys to the junker. I’m not sure if he’d leave us stranded, but I wouldn’t gamble anything when his mind is in such a wild state.
All of us need a day or two—sometimes longer—to process a killing. And we all do it in our own way. But Zach? There’s a brief moment of raging victory, and then he’s back to himself. Like a switch flips for a few minutes, and then it’s back to business as usual.
It’s not healthy. It’s not close to normal. But it’s Zach…and honestly, I have no idea what normal has ever looked like for him.
I grab hold of the driver’s side door of the battered mini-van a second before Zach tries to slam it closed. When I wrench it open, he releases the handle with a warning growl, but I just wedge my body in the gap instead.
He opens his mouth, his face a twisted mask of anger, but I don’t let him speak. I grab the front of his throat and shove him back into the seat so hard that it creaks in a warning.
His army green eyes go to slits, his nostrils flaring like an animal hunting out a prey’s scent.
But I’m not prey.
Not anymore.
“It’s over,” I tell him.
His lips seal into a thin line, like he’ll never allow himself to utter those words. But he doesn’t grab my wrists, he doesn’t do anything to lessen the pressure around his throat. I’m squeezing hard enough that his face is starting to go red, but he just sits there as if he’d accept his fate if I decided to end him.
“You could go on doing this for the rest of your life, Mason, but then you wouldn’t have a life. And wasn’t that the fucking point? To get our goddamn lives back?”
His lips pop open, and a small cough comes out. He starts to speak, but I know the kind of bullshit he’ll spout, so I squeeze even harder.
I’m dimly aware that someone’s approaching but I can’t break eye contact. This isn’t the first time Zachary and I have been on opposite ends of an argument. I know how quickly he can get the upper hand, especially if I’m distracted.
“It’s not just you anymore. It hasn’t been for years. You’d be a selfish fucking prick if you didn’t accept that Adam was the last.”
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch….crunch.
Judging from the footsteps, it’s Cass. He knows to stay back. Knows to let this duel play out.
“So you’re going to say it. Agree that it’s over. Close the door to that basement in your mind, and fucking lock it, and swallow the key.”
Zach’s eyes flare, his lips quirking into a snarl. There’s a vein throbbing on his temple, his skin even redder than before. I can hear his breath wheezing through his constricted trachea.
“And if you don’t, then I’ll just keep squeezing.”
He glares at me for a long second, and then croaks out, “Fuck you.”
If Cass hadn’t jumped onto my back, I’d have killed Zach. I’d have fucking crushed his throat and been done.
But Cass’s weight, negligible as it is, breaks my concentration. Zach slams a fist into my solar plexus, winding me and causing a bolt of pain to slice through me.
I stumble back, wrestling Cass off my back and throwing him to the ground so I can get back to Zach. But Zach’s out of the van, another fist already flying for my face.
My head snaps to the side when he makes contact, the click ricocheting through my skull like a gunshot. But when he comes at me again, I duck and tackle him to the dirty snow with a roar.
We roll once, twice, slam into the base of a nearby tree. I’m on top, sitting up and straddling Zach’s waist as I punch him. He grunts when my knuckles make contact with his c
heek, and starts bucking in a futile attempt to get me off him.
He doesn’t stand a chance. I have over twenty pounds on him, and a biblical fucking amount of rage boiling through me.
“After everything, you can’t even give us this?” I roar, punctuating the sentence with a fist to the other side of his face.
He laughs at me with blood-stained teeth, and then hacks up a mouthful of pink spittle and sprays it on my face. “If you four want to live your perfect fucking lives without me, then do it!” he yells. “I’d never ask you to stop! Never!”
“Because you can’t!” Our voices echo around us, wild, but we’re miles from civilization.
Miles from anything.
“Exactly!” Zach stops moving, his chest heaving like he ran a marathon. Then he shoves at my chest. “You think I want this? You think I need this shit in my life?”
“Guys!” It’s Apollo. He sounds out of breath. But I can’t spare him any mind right now. My concentration is on Zach.
Lying, full of shit, bastard Zach.
I punch his jaw. The other side—his cheek.
“It’s Trinity!” Apollo yells.
A cold shock blasts through me. I spin around, pressing a hand to Zach’s chest as I stare over my shoulder at Apollo. If Zach hadn’t turned on the van’s headlamps, I wouldn’t have seen Apollo…or Trinity.
She’s bare naked.
My breath hitches. I’m already scrambling up, but Cass is halfway to her already. Apollo is at her side, but she shoves him when he tries to throw a coat over her shoulders.
She’s covered in blood.
That’s probably why I lose my fucking mind and race at her like a bull with a personal grudge for the matador. Zach leaps in front of me like a goddamn rodeo clown, but I don’t fall for it. I snatch the coat out of Apollo’s hands and toss it over Trinity’s shoulders.
But she pulls some kind of magic trick, and a second later she’s naked again, the coat at her feet.
“Stop,” she says through a tight jaw, holding up her hands when I duck to pick up the coat. Slamming her foot on the thick fabric, she stares me down like I’m a fool peasant kneeling for my Queen.
One I’ve just pissed off royally.
She turns, scowls at Zach. “Stop fighting. Stop killing. Stop all of it.”
I’m grimacing at her, because all I can think about is how tiny she is, and how fucking cold it is out here, and why the fuck is she covered in all that goddamn blood? I’m searching her pale skin for any sign of damage, a cut or a bruise or anything, but I can’t explain it.
“She’s lost it,” Apollo blurts out. “Just stripped, and then rubbed her hands all over him and then, and she, she’s pissed you guys.”
“Trinity, put on the fucking coat,” Zach growls somewhere beside me.
She pins him with a molten glare. “How dare you?” she whispers furiously. “How fucking dare you?”
I swear I can hear him grating his fucking teeth. “Trinity, you can’t stand out here in the cold. Let’s go inside, there’s a fire, we can—”
Her pointing finger cuts me off midsentence. “You can shut the fuck up,” she says, showing me her teeth.
They’re chattering.
Oh my god, she’s freezing.
I rush to my feet, but that finger has a kind of power I still don’t understand or even fully accept. Every atom of my being is screaming at me to scoop her up, to run back inside that hovel and snuggle her in every layer of clothing I can find while I cuddle her beside the fire.
But I can’t move.
“All of this ends tonight,” she says.
Apollo and Cass are nodding furiously, sending me and Zach big-eyed glances meant to impress on us that we should be doing the same.
My jaw clenches, but I manage a nod. Reluctant, grudging as all hell, but I do it.
Zach just glares at her.
“Tonight.”
Zach steps forward, his hands fisting at his sides. It takes everything I have not to tackle him to the ground again, just at the thought that he might hurt her for trying to impose her will on him…but she’s still pointing at me. Still holding me in place with nothing but deep respect.
I can’t explain how it happened, or even when. I suppose it was gradual. As the years wore on, as we grew a tighter-knit family, as the body count climbed…Trinity became the epitome of my hope and my salvation.
We’re all still broken. Shards that used to form whole, beautiful children before those wicked men crushed our souls.
But she bound those pieces together. Formed crude structures that somehow resembled who we used to be.
We’re happy, now.
Satisfied.
After tonight, fulfilled.
All but one.
The boy who’d been broken so many times, he never could find all the pieces again. But she tried. Over and over again.
“Put the fucking coat on!” Zach’s voice is shaking with anger, with frustration.
And Trinity’s face is cracking. Her blazing anger dissolving, fear replacing it. Dread. I suppose fearing that Zach is, in fact, a lost cause.
We tried to tell her.
She never did listen.
But I can’t hold that against her…because we’ve all said that about ourselves so many times that if she had listened we’d all still be broken and ruined.
There’s a crunch as Zach falls to his knees.
My gaze rips away from Trinity’s crestfallen face. I watch, comatose, as Zachary puts his hands on the snow and inches them toward the coat Trinity is trampling with her bare, blue-tinged feet.
He makes a sound that could have been a sob or a curse or anything in-between, and then drops his head, letting it hang.
“Please, Trinity. Just…let me go.”
Trinity sniffs.
My gaze climbs up her shapely legs, to the shaved V between her legs, to her little belly and plump breasts, to her bobbing throat. “No,” she whispers, voice rough and trembling. “You’re not leaving us. You’re not leaving me.”
She bends down and puts her finger under Zach’s chin, lifting his head and forcing him to look at her.
“You’re not leaving him.”
Zachary’s head sags when she takes her finger away and straightens, and then Trinity slides her hands over her stomach, cupping the tiny baby bump rounding out her pale, blood-streaked skin.
“Because if you do, you’re dead to us, Mason. Dead to Apollo. Dead to Rueben. Dead to Cass. Dead to me, and dead to your son.”
Zach slides as if he lost strength in his arms, but then he’s grabbing the coat and trying to tug it out from under Trinity’s feet without tipping her over.
“Please,” he murmurs. “Please, just put on the fucking coat. Put it on, and I’ll leave. I’ll never—”
“Feel love again.” Trinity’s voice is as cold as the air around us. A violent shiver races through her, then she kicks away Zach’s hand. “You need us,” she says. “And we need you. That’s how it’s always been. That’s how it will be, from now until the end of time.”
When we found out Trinity was pregnant, our family rejoiced. Even Zachary lit up like a house on fire. Trinity didn’t want to do a paternity test—she told us straight up the child was ours. Each of ours. Boy or girl, she would have four fathers, and even if she had Cass’s blue eyes, or Apollo’s blond hair, or my build, or Zachary’s dimple…she was ours.
But we voted. We wanted to know.
Because we were determined to each have a child with her. Yes, they’d all be ours, but that’s what we wanted.
Even Zachary.
And he has the devil’s own luck, because the firstborn son is his.
Little Malachi is this family’s first child, and Zachary is putting his life in danger because the fucking prick won’t agree to stop killing people.
Typical Mason.
Trinity shivers again, her teeth clattering. Apollo surges forward, but she sticks out a finger at him, and he stops with a grimace that
looks as painful as the stab of concern that shoots through me.
Zachary sits back on his heels, his head falling back. Eyes closed, mouth a line, he looks tormented, like Satan himself is inside that twisted mind of his, handling the reins like he has so many of us.
“Okay,” Zachary bursts out. He clambers to his feet, making to grab Trinity’s shoulders. She steps back deftly, shaking her head. “Okay, you win! It’s over.” Zach rakes fingers through his hair, his eyes falling to her belly. “You win.”
“This isn’t a competition,” Trinity says.
Zach shares a quick look with Cass and Apollo. Then he cuts his eyes to me, and relief floods my body.
We’ve learned to speak volumes in utter silence, and tonight is no different.
As soon as Zachary steps forward and cups Trinity’s face in his hands, Apollo and Cass duck and drag the coat up to her shoulders. She’s still squealing with displeasure when I surge forward and scoop her off the ground, already bundling her against my chest as I make a run for the cabin.
Three sets of feet race after me. Cass sprints ahead, throwing open the cabin door and flattening himself as I shoulder past him and drop to the bare floor in front of the crackling fire.
The door closes quietly behind me. There’s the briefest scuffle of feet as if they tried to keep Zachary out, but I guess he forces his way in because the next moment he’s beside me, reaching for Trinity’s face.
I growl at him, and he stops.
I’m not looking at him—my eyes are locked on the fire. I’m willing it to blaze hotter, to warm the chilled flesh in my hands. But I can see when Zach in my peripheries as he strips off his coat and wraps it around Trinity’s legs. Two more coats appear, covering her from head to toe until only her blue nose is sticking out. She grumbles, but when I squeeze her she goes silent.
We sit like that for half an hour, silent but for the crackle and pop of the fire.
Eventually Trinity starts wriggling in my arms, muttering about sweating and that she can’t breathe. If the others didn’t peel my arms off her, I wouldn’t have let go.
She keeps her coat on, sitting in my lap and staring at the fire as we wait.
I guess we all changed tonight.