A Portrait of Pain

by Jane Washington

  “Need to have a shower,” I quickly interjected. “Can we talk after? Everything’s fine.”

  I was already moving toward the bathroom, and I slammed the door on his answer, just in case it was a no. I needed a little more time to figure this out. To figure out a plan. And it needed to be slightly different to all of my previous plans, because there was only so much that those guys were going to forgive me for. I was well aware that if I left them again … I wouldn’t be forgiven as easily as I had been the last time.

  I turned on the shower, pulling off my clothes and stepping in under the spray, still keeping a very tight leash on my emotions. There were a few things that I was certain about. One of them was the fact that at some point in the future, the whole world was going to find out about me. Not just about ‘me’ in general, but seemingly about every single aspect of my entire life, from my birth to now. They were going to find out more about me than I even knew about myself.

  What I didn’t know, was when. This might happen tomorrow, or it might happen next year. That was the main drawback of my forecastings.

  I needed to be ready for it to happen, but I also needed to keep it under wraps, because I couldn’t have any of the others overreacting. If there was anyone left inside of Le Chateau that might betray us, they couldn’t ever find out that I knew about Danny’s plan—since it was clearly Danny’s plan. It was his big move. The finale that he always saved for last. Saved for maximum impact, after playing with me for months and months. If he somehow found out that I knew about everything, it would kick a snowball into effect, forcing his hand, and then forcing our own hand in response.

  I had to be ready.

  I finished up my shower and dried myself off, dressing in the bathroom before stepping back into Cabe’s bedroom.

  “Jayden’s waiting out the front,” he told me, without pre-emption.

  “Great.” I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back.

  He knew that I was keeping something from him. I should have known that it would be impossible. I made my way over to him, reaching up and winding my arms around his neck, pulling him into a hug. He made a quiet scoffing sound, but his hands still dropped to my sides, holding onto me loosely.

  “Pack a bag,” I whispered into his ear. “Only the essentials. Keep quiet about it. I’ll tell the others. I don’t know when, but … soon … it’ll have to be just the five of us.”

  He had completely stilled, his hands flexing, drawing me closer, but then I felt him nod against the side of my head.

  “Do I need to be any more worried than I already am?” he asked quietly.

  “Not yet.”

  I pulled away and he followed me out, staying silent as we made our way down to the parking gallery. Jayden was there, already behind the wheel of his slate-grey Mercedes. Noah was leaning against the outside of the car, staring down at his phone with a frown on his face. He slid it away when he noticed us, opening the back door of the car for me while Cabe walked around to the other side, claiming the front passenger seat. I slid across to the window and Noah sat, closing the door and looking at me. It only took a second for him to pick up that something was different. I saw the realisation pass over his features, forcing his eyes to narrow. He moved, his pale skin standing out against the dark black of my tights as he reached all the way over my lap, grabbing a hold of my thigh from the outside and using the grip to slide me over the middle seat until I was tucked up against him. Cabe glanced back for a moment, but then re-fixed his eyes to the front windshield. Jayden pulled out of the gallery and I turned to Noah as we started to wind down past the houses. I twisted a hand in his shirt, pulling his face down to mine, and then further, so that I could whisper in his ear.

  “Pack a bag. Don’t tell anyone. We’re going to need to leave soon; the five of us.”

  He turned his head slightly, fixing me with one serious blue eye, and he mouthed a single word: Miro.

  He was right. What the hell were we going to do about Miro? He was the Voda. The leader. He couldn’t just disappear.

  Noah’s hand found my chin, his strong fingers tracing the line of my jaw and turning my head to the side. He shifted his other arm to drape over my shoulder, and I heard his low voice.

  “We’ll need to leave one line of communication open.”

  I nodded, and he pulled away, just in time for Jayden to shoot us a look in the rear-view mirror. Cabe made small-talk with Jayden for the rest of the drive, allowing me to examine my thoughts. It was almost a surprise to me when the car stopped moving, and I had to physically extract myself from the mess of half-formed plans that were now scattered to all corners of my brain. We got out, staring up at the building ahead of us. It really looked just like any other building, and I had no idea why that surprised me so much. It was almost as though I had been expecting something derelict, or frightening. I hadn’t been expecting a plain brick rectangle, complete with a parking lot and a tiny, gated courtyard.

  We made our way into the waiting room, standing off to the side while Jayden spoke to the nurse on duty, signing us in and collecting our visitor tags. I was in the process of pulling mine over my head when the screams started, and for a moment, I really couldn’t tell if they were in my head, or if they were real.

  The alarm that shot through the bond at me from two different angles was enough to convince me that it was actually happening, and then I took off. I was running toward the sound, pushing people out of my way to get there faster, the alarm beating against my back as the others followed me. I had to get there. I couldn’t let this happen again. It didn’t even occur to me that this could be a coincidence; a random, unrelated incident with another patient.

  It didn’t occur to me, because I always expected the worst now.

  I expected the dead to come back to life. I expected the world to crumble. I expected Eva to scream the minute I exited the car.

  “Seraph!” The shout was coming from behind me, so I ignored it. It must have been Jayden.

  I almost slipped as I flew down a staircase, my breath roaring in my ears, my heartbeat flopping in that sickening way. I skidded along the tiles to a glass door, pushing it wide open and stopping in the doorway. The screaming wasn’t Eva’s; it was another patient—a woman I didn’t recognise from my dreams or my memories or my forecastings. Just a plain, human woman, staring with horrified eyes at the swimming pool taking up most of the tiled room. Staring at the body floating in the water, curls trailing like wet reeds, the sunlight from the windows streaming through to highlight her from above.

  She was familiar, but I wasn’t sure how, since her face was turned down, her lifeless limbs spread-eagled.

  “Eva!” Jayden roared, pushing past all of us and diving into the water.

  I watched him turn her over, and the familiarity sifted away, pushed out of my chest by the grief that flooded back in, making itself at home inside the blackened mess of my heart. I stumbled toward the edge of the pool, my hands reaching out. My pair caught me, one hand solidly in each of mine.

  “I have to find him,” Jayden was saying, as he dragged the body to the edge of the pool. “I’m going to find him, and I’m going to kill him. I don’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter anymore. None of this matters anymore …”

  I pulled away from my pair as a group of nurses flooded into the room, and all the images hit me a little too forcefully, making me stumble. I was blinking, trying to stay in the present, but I kept getting tugged back to another water-logged room. To another group of nurses. To Danny.

  Why hadn’t I seen this?

  I stumbled again, one step further, the truth slamming into me. The girl. The girl underwater. I had drawn her again and again, desperate to grasp the meaning of it all. So long ago? How the hell was I supposed to have known that it was her? How the hell was I supposed to have saved her from something so far into the future? I was terrified, then. Terrified at the uncertainty of it all, and furious at the reality of it all. The nurses were trying to lift Eva from th
e water, but Jayden wasn’t letting them. He pulled her out himself, laying her on the tiles beside the pool. I stumbled yet another step forward and he flung out an arm, grabbing suddenly onto me. He forced me to the ground next to him, taking my hand and planting it over her heart. She was cold, the warmth seeping further out of her even as I watched.

  She had been killed very recently, and there wasn’t a single mark on her body. This meant two things to me: Danny had been the one to kill her; and he couldn’t have gone far since. Not that it mattered; he had done exactly what he had come to do, and he wouldn’t have killed her so close to us without having a sure escape plan. There was no point in running after him, we’d most likely run straight into a trap.

  “Fix her!” Jayden spat at me, his eyes desperate, tears tracking down his cheeks and dripping from the plane of his jaw. “Fix her! You have to!”

  I closed my eyes, but I already knew that it wouldn’t happen. There was no heartbeat beneath my hand. She was too cold. Too stiff. Jayden grabbed my shoulder, shaking me roughly, and then he was suddenly jerked away from me.

  “Stop,” I muttered, my voice breaking. I still hadn’t opened my eyes, but I knew that Noah had grabbed him.

  “Calm down.” Noah’s voice confirmed what I thought. He sounded upset and angry, his voice gravelly. “I’m sorry, Jayden, but you need to calm down.”

  I could hear the sound of a scuffle, but I tuned it out, about to call on the valcrick. Even if it was too late …

  “Don’t.” Cabe was behind me, crouching, protecting my back, his hand reaching around me to pull my arm away from Eva. “You’ll electrocute everyone,” he whispered. “Too much water.”

  I pulled away, and as soon as I did, the nurses rushed forward. They pushed us back toward the door of the room, where Noah had dragged Jayden. I grabbed Jayden’s arm and Noah released him immediately. I pulled him into the nearest room, slamming the door and locking it just before my pair could follow me inside. Noah swore roughly, but I could see Cabe’s outline through the half-window in the top of the door. He had turned, leaning his back against the door.

  “If you lay a hand on her—” Noah started to growl through the door, but Cabe managed to cut him off.

  “This is your fault,” Jayden said quietly. He wasn’t paying any attention to those outside the room. He was staring at me, his eyes red, his fists clenched.

  “I know. I’m so sorry. I hate myself. I wish I could trade places with her. With all of them.”

  We’re dealing with a serial killer.

  “When is it going to be enough?” he asked, moving until he was hovering right before me, vibrating with so much grief and anger that I had to wonder how he hadn’t exploded with the immensity of it all. “How many people need to die because of you?”

  “No more,” I promised, the tears now clouding my vision of him. I was trying so hard to keep it together. Trying, and failing. “I promise.”

  “You better keep your promise, Seraph. I’m not so much a good guy, you know. I’ve done some pretty bad things; and I did them all for her.” He jabbed his finger at the door. “And now she’s gone. Because of you. Because he knew that you were coming here. Because he’s always playing a stupid, sick, fucking game with you.” His breaths were shuddering and my own fear was starting to stir, but it couldn’t seem to gain any traction.

  “What are you saying?” I just wanted him to admit it.

  “I’m going to kill you,” he promised. “I swear to god, if one more person dies, I’m going to kill you myself. It’s the only way to end all of this.”

  “And maybe I deserve it.” I sucked in a heavy breath, feeling it catch in my throat. I still couldn’t see him properly through the haze of tears, but I could feel that he had moved even closer. “No, I do. I deserve it, but my pairs don’t. I’ll let a thousand more people die if it means keeping them alive. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I can’t help it. They’re more than just life to me. They deserve it. They’re the strongest, bravest, and most loyal people in this entire, stupid world, and they’re the only people I can ever save, because they’re the only people close enough to save. So maybe I deserve to die, but they deserve to live, and that’s a far better motivation for me than self-loathing. So, you can try to kill me, or you can walk out of here, make Danny your priority, and I swear, I swear, I’m taking myself out of this game—this won’t ever happen again.”

  He stared at me as the tears dried on both of our faces, and I witnessed the hard look that fell over him. It was the kind of hard look that I had seen on people before; a permanent hardness born to reflect the damaging scar tissue that spread beneath the surface of their skin. It was the first time I had ever witnessed the beginning of a face like that.

  It tore me right down the middle, and left me reeling.

  Jayden pushed past me, unlocking the door and flinging it open. Two bodies pushed inside, slamming the door behind them again, and hands pulled me up from the floor. I landed against a hard chest, wide enough to be Noah’s, and I wound my arms around him, biting back the returning rush of tears. He relinquished me after a moment and Cabe tossed an arm around me, pulling me to him and tucking me beneath his chin, a hand passing down my spine. They were fulfilling a bond-driven need to touch me, to reassure themselves that I wasn’t actually injured, despite the pain that they could feel thrumming through our connection.

  “We should get out of this hospital,” Noah said, pulling open the door again. “Silas called just after you dragged Jayden in here. I told them what was happening but they haven’t stopped calling since.”

  I nodded, allowing Cabe to pull me out of the room and though the mass of people. There was already a news van outside, and Jayden’s car was gone. Noah pulled out his phone to call a cab, but I caught his arm, shaking my head.

  “They’ll be here soon, if they’re not here already.”

  He smiled, but it was also part-grimace. “Right.”

  We only had to wait another three minutes before Silas’s car pulled up to the curb, the manoeuvre much jerkier than his usual driving. Miro was out of the passenger door before the car had even stopped moving.

  “Is everyone okay?” he asked, stalking over to us. “Seph?”

  “We’re fine,” I said quickly, taking him in. He looked rough. His hair was messy, his shirt untucked, with dark circles underneath his eyes.

  His hands pulled into fists as he flicked his eyes over all of us, before checking me over again. I knew that he was fighting the urge to touch me the same way the others had, so I stepped away from them and delivered myself into his arms. He pulled my feet straight from the ground as I wrapped my arms around his neck and I was somehow calmed by the way he crushed me against him, hugging me with surprising strength for someone who looked like they were seconds away from passing out.

  “Eva’s dead,” I muttered into his neck.

  He stiffened, and that was when the hand landed on my arm, ripping me away. I caught only a glimpse of the dark, hard look in Silas’s eye before I was being hauled into his arms. He walked back to the car, sat me in the passenger seat, drew the belt over my chest and then grabbed my chin.

  “Don’t …” he seemed to be struggling to speak, and I held my breath, waiting. “Move,” he finished, pinching my chin tightly before releasing me. He slammed the door, barked something at the others, and then got behind the wheel. The other three crammed themselves into the back, and then the car was speeding away from the curb.

  The room which had become the Klovoda’s main meeting place was now crammed with people. The Klovoda, their most trusted agents, and the rest of us who were residing at Le Chateau. Samantha Trick was there again, plastered to Miro’s side. It was making Seraph uncomfortable, but there was nothing to be done about that with so many people in the room. Miro was barely paying attention to Sam. Most of the questions were being shot at him, even though he hadn’t been there for Eva’s death. He was the Voda now, and people trusted him. People needed him.<
br />
  Seraph had one of her hands wrapped in mine, her other hand gripping Noah. I don’t even think she realised that she was clinging to us. Her mismatched eyes were travelling around the room, examining faces. I knew her well enough, now, to know how she felt about each of the people simply by her subtle reactions to looking at them. When her eyes fell on Jack, she leaned forward a little, always eager to hear what he would say, though her shoulders remained pulled back, guarded. She hoped that he would be a good leader for the Klovoda, but she wasn’t allowing herself the full luxury of hope without evidence. When she looked at Sophia, some of the guardedness melted away, and the relaxed posture remained when she switched her eyes to Sophie. With the others, it was different. She hoped less. Trusted less. Her hackles rose, her eyes shuddered.

  When she looked at Samantha Trick, her fingers flexed in mine.

  She also kept glancing over her shoulder, waiting for Silas to walk into the room. He wasn’t going to. He knew that she was safe with us, so he was going to disappear and comb the security footage from the institution to try and catch a hint of Danny’s involvement.

  “When I see him again …” Clarin was standing right behind us, his words sharp, but trailing off when Seraph glanced at him.

  “What?” she asked, confused.

  He seemed to hesitate, before spitting it out. “When I see Danny again, I’m going to end him, just so that he can bring himself back to life, and I can have the pleasure of ending him all over again.”

  Seraph’s expression didn’t alter, but I felt her fingers clench again. Her eyebrows twitched together, the movement so brief I almost missed it. She was confused. Of course, Clarin hadn’t known Eva, but that wasn’t why he was so upset. He knew what it was like to be collateral damage in a war that had nothing to do with him. Because of Weston, he was adrift without a proper family, left only with the people who had taken him in. In a way, he wasn’t so different to Eva or Jayden. Eva and Jayden … who had been Danny’s own family, for all intents and purposes. Clarin would have killed to have his family back, but Danny only wanted Seraph, and he was willing to kill the rest of their family simply to punish her.