by Ace Gray
I grabbed the handles and yanked each out, only to plunge them back in. More of his black blood spewed out, and with it, my stomach rolled. I swallowed vomit back as I shoved the blade into The Butcher’s stomach. Flesh gave way in that sickly doughy way it had and more of his slime oozed out onto my hand where it was shoved against his gut. I twisted the blade then stepped back and with a precise swipe, drew the other across his throat.
His skin spliced open easily underneath the blade and his blood spilled from a wound that gaped open the same way his mouth flopped. I watched in satisfaction as his hands scrambled to scoop his life back into his body. Then he crumbled to his knees and with the toe of my shoe, I helped him to his bloodied heap on the floor.
With the thick blade still in my hand, I turned to finally slay the dragon and rescue the damsel. But my soul bottomed out instead. During the tussle, Mickey had taken full advantage.
Both Heaven and Hell had disappeared out the back door.
I stumbled but whether it was under the weight of my missing love or the loss of blood and profuse vomiting I wasn’t sure. I tried to right myself and couldn’t. Tears started to stream down my cheeks as I plummeted to my knees. The blood pooled beneath my suit was still warm as it soaked into the fine fabric of my pants. That made my stomach boil again. I doubled over, my hands splashing in the same puddle.
My body was losing all sensation and I couldn’t tell if it began or ended with my heart. Whether it was going to shatter or shrivel. I was covered in Elle, in her very lifeblood, in everything I swore to fight for. I puked again, bile oily and yellow, into the too dark puddle before me.
Elle. Ladylove. Elle.
I repeated her name in time with each violent reaction my body had until it was all I could hear. She was all I could see. Sunshine. No, sunrise, beautiful pinks and striking gold. And a white cotton dress. Perfect and pure.
But then I crumbled face first, my cheek laying in what might have been Elle’s last breaths, and the night sky shone behind my eyelids until one by one, the stars winked out and the world went cold.
27.
Elle
The thump of tires and the nip of frost against my bare skin was what woke me. Soft sobs and whimpers filtered into my senses just before my eyelids flickered open. My vision was cloudy, the edges of everything but the few pieces of straw closest to my face were blurred and haloed by bright white light.
I pulled my hands down to rub the haze from my eyes. Thick, grating rope dug into my skin and kept me from clarity. But the blood was visible all the same. I twisted my hands this way and that, studying the cracked flakes of red blanketing my skin.
Pain should have been searing through my wrists but it wasn’t. I chanced a look down, only to find more dried blood, and I vaguely remembered the nightmare I’d been having. Satan, horns and all, had poked and prodded at me. He’d run gnarled, red, demonic fingers across my body and let his thick, cracked and cat-like nails dig into my flesh. His pointed tail had wrapped around me violated my body and soul.
There had been an angel, too. His wings were breathtaking where they filled the room and beat against the fire of Hades. Each bright white feather had been edged carefully in black, giving a luminous hombre to the weapons of light.
The angel had fought against Satan and his minion. He’d been graceful and savage, beautiful and vicious, the awesome power of dawn wrapped in something that made my broken heart beat. Even when they’d poked holes in his wings, he hadn’t stopped.
But he hadn’t been able to steal me from the thick, splintered clutches of the Lord of Darkness.
The soft wailing around me sang the lament of my soul. The song I couldn’t sing, or even cry out anymore. Darkness had consumed me, robbed me of my ability to cry, to feel sorrow, or even desperation and pain.
Only cool kissed my skin and I looked at my bloody arms again, wondering why it was ice and not searing heat radiating through my limbs.
That’s when I saw it. Or the remnants of it. L A D Y L O V E. The disfigured letters seemed like ancient angelic ruins for a moment but then something deep inside me sounded out the word.
Lay. Dee. Loh. Veh.
Ladylove.
It clicked and as if a key unlocked the door I was desperate to keep hidden, the nightmare cleared, replaced by memory.
Satan was, in fact, Satan, wearing the weathered skin and despicable filth that was Mickey Maloney. His knife, not his nails, had cut into me. His fingers, not his tail, had explored me intimately. He’d broken me. After stealing me, he’d hit me too many times to count, my ribs should still ache from it, while he told me how he’d use me, how he’d violate me. I’d stayed silent, that I could endure, but the real blow had been dealt when he tried to kill Cole.
How many times would I see his blood puddle on the floor for me? How many times would I bring him within an inch of his life? Did he even still breathe those precious breaths? Mickey had fractured my being, tying me up and taking everything from me.
The desperation welled up like a wave and crashed inside of me. I’d caused this. I’d wanted to be the hero when I could have simply walked away. I could have chosen Cole, but when he’d told me we could run with the ledger, I’d stayed fast. I’d brought this on myself and worse, him. I deserved Mickey’s hands on me. It was the smallest punishment for the offenses I’d laid against Cole.
Cole would have dismantled the world boulder by boulder to save me. And I…? I was covered in dirt and blood and filth. I was dirt and blood and filth.
I rolled over, finding female flesh tied and lumped in piles throughout the back of the large moving truck. As I closed my eyes, letting exhaustion and the heavy weight of Heaven and Hell press into my chest, I prayed Cole wouldn’t come after me. I’d told him to fight but here in the icy cold, I hoped he’d simply let me die.
28.
Cole
Crushed velvet flowers tickled my cheek as I came to. The mustard, burnt orange and puke brown of the seventies was soft but utterly foreign beneath me. I scanned what else I could see of the room, slowly sweeping my gaze without flinching. Something was vaguely familiar about the room but, as hard as I reached, my surroundings slid like sand through my clenched fist.
Before I even tried to move, I took inventory of my body. It ached in places I didn’t think possible and in a violent way that had nothing to do with the hooks that had sunk into me earlier.
She’s gone.
I swallowed them down as soon as the words bubbled up.
I couldn’t think about that. Not now. Not ever. I could only deal in ways to get her back. The stars had disappeared as I sat pooled in blood, I would go to the ends of the earth to light the sky with a new sunrise.
My inventory began again. Bandages covered the gashes on my neck and pulled the slightest bit on my skin. None of the weapons I’d had on me pressed against my skin any longer. But then again, I didn’t really remember what I’d had on me when I’d fallen. The glass ashtray on the coffee table in front of me would just have to do.
I reached as slyly as possible for the thick, heavy piece of glass in front of me.
“Mr. Ryan?” A thick Italian voice carried from the room behind me. The room I could now picture precisely. It was the Formica filled, equally dated kitchen belonging to the Giancomos. “Are you awake, ragazzo?”
“Why am I here?” I asked gruffly, still pulling the ashtray across the wood and into my lap.
“Because it’s our fault,” Vinny answered as he slunk into view.
I shot off the couch, surprisingly agile for someone who’d been wounded, and swung the ashtray so that it smashed into Vinny’s face. I hit him twice more in quick succession, seeing the fury more vivid than the stains on my slacks. His hands shoved up, trying to shield his face from me, but I kept bludgeoning him with the glass in my hand.
Until a firm grip around my wrist stilled me and held my hand inches from Vinny. Rage radiated off my wild assault all the same.
“You will not shed
blood in my house.” Nonno held my wrist with a surprisingly firm grip.
“They took her!” I roared, letting my breath buffet him as hard as my weapon had.
Vinny held his face but didn’t retaliate. “We asked The Butcher to get the ledger. That’s all,” he spat the words and a little bit of blood at the shag carpet floor.
“She knew where Giovanna was. She was going to tell you.” I still wrestled against Nonno’s grip.
“We wanted the book!” He stepped toward me, blood from his lips spattering against my face.
“You didn’t need the whole damn book. No one did.” I shoved my face the last few inches to meet Vinny. I was taller and it was all too easy to look down at him with death in my eyes.
“We were going to make Mickey pay.” Vinny was trying to be forceful but it wasn’t as full, he wasn’t as puffed up as before.
“She was going to get them back! But now she’s one of them.” My temper bubbled over and I slammed my knee up into his groin.
“Cole Ryan,” Nonno warned.
“She was pure, she was perfect, and I watched them spill her blood.”
Nonno pulled the ashtray from my hand and angled in between Vinny and I. In a swift and brutal movement Vinny’s grandfather struck, letting the glass smash into his cheek the same way I had. He threw the ashtray and it clattered on the table before he reached for Vinny’s ear and used it to bring him to his knees.
“Nonno, I hired him to kill Cole. Slowly. I swear.” His voice was begging and laced thick with penance.
“The Butcher deals in chaos, in death. It was all too tempting to sell us down the River Styx for a little fun.” I wanted to resurrect the bastard, just to rip him limb from limb and watch his black ink of blood slime across the floor again. My only regret about tonight was that I killed him too quickly.
And that I lost her.
The weight of that shoved me back down to the couch, unconcerned with what was happening in front of me. They’d admitted to wanting to kill me, and if they operated anything like me, they’d asked The Butcher to do it in front of Elle. My only savior would be her spilling her guts. But that wasn’t what hit me, what hurt.
She was gone.
“Was it worth it?” I asked, both my question and icy tone unable to stay down, hidden.
“Che cosa, ragazzo?” Nonno still held the ashtray over Vinny’s head poised to strike again.
“Whatever reason you wanted the full ledger, was it worth it? Worth her life? Worth taking my very existence from me?” I snarled but still couldn’t push off the couch. To fight them or to storm out. Maybe just fall completely to my knees.
“I was going to bring Mickey to his knees.” Vinny had the decency to hang his head.
“Then all you had to do was slice the shit out of his hamstrings.” I shoved off the couch and split between them, heading for the front door. “Kill me if you want. Do it slowly if that fills the dark hole swallowing your heart. But until then…” I shot them a look over my shoulder. “I’m going to go find what fills my heart, what is my soul.”
The slam of the house door still reverberated in my bones. It threatened to level me because out here, out on the street, I was alone. I couldn’t call Horse, hell I couldn’t even find him.
And my Ladylove…
The desperation coursing through my veins was what propelled me forward and weighed my feet to the pavement at the same time. I don’t know how far I trudged on my death march, and I didn’t know where I was going, but her voice kept me from tumbling.
Fight, Cole.
Her command echoed in time with each footfall. I had wronged her too many times. I had sat idly by while she suffered, while she died a little. She’d wept and it had been my fault. Again.
I stopped, my feet as sore as my barely closed wounds and ripped wide open heart, and looked up. The train rattled and wailed in front of me, mimicking the way my heart managed in my empty chest. The train that would slowly rattle its way downtown. Elle and the ghost of her slight hand lingered on my skin and shoved me forward. All it took was a nudge from fate and I took off running.
The train doors were about to shut as I bolted on, stopping short with a squeal of my shoes before I barreled into the people jostling for space. Their eyes barely flicked up from various phone or book screens before they returned to their lives encapsulated by white earbuds.
None of them knew Elle was missing. None of them cared. They couldn’t even see my insides slipping out and being smashed where they hit the floor. The silent suffering threatened to choke me, emotion would be what finally took me down, not blow after blow of a pointed blade. The world swam again, the edges darkened, and I had to lean against the small space of exposed train wall beside me to stay standing.
The crackly voice of the operator came on over the speaker and he might as well have said fight, Cole rather than announcing the stop.
I started running, shoving anyone in my way to the side, completely unconcerned at my wound reopening. This time they seemed to notice me. The gasps and swear words when they saw the blood plastered to my clothes were enough to send them scattering before me. And when I broke free of the train, air shot into my lungs and let me run all the faster for the skyscraper.
It was the only place that felt like her. The only place that made her seem like she was still here, still mine. I could lay back and feel her lying next to me.
Pulling on the doors of the freight elevator yanked on my fresh wounds. I didn’t give a fuck as I rode it up, tapping my foot. The vision of Elle ate at my heart, I needed artwork to soothe it.
I jimmied the door open and all but ran across the roof. The night sky was beautiful—I could see her in the North Star—but it was wrong. She wasn’t one single light amongst the dark, she wasn’t guiding me. She’d lit up the whole damn sky and blinded me.
The paints were where I expected, tucked behind the AC unit, and luckily heat hadn’t scorched them. It was the smallest of miracles, the most minute little detail, but that was how hope grew. Something small burned bright white until it lit something larger and engulfed it with gold and orange furious flames.
Fight for me, Cole. Fight for the light. Don’t relish the dark.
Sunrise was much the same. A gradual and barely noticeable change in the hue of dark. Gray replacing the purest black. But then the gray wasn’t gray at all but complex shades of blue somehow dancing with the barely perceptible pink. Slowly and ever so slightly the colors change to become something besides color entirely. Sunrise sets the world ablaze.
Fight for the sunrise.
Before I made a plan or visualized the piece, I started painting. Color flowed from me in easy waves and swirls. The black of the deepest night didn’t disappear, but rather set the stage for ever-lightening colors. Just like me. The black would always coat my soul but Elle pressed gold leaf to the darkest pieces making it shine. She made me new.
First blue that barely differed from the black, the colored I’d turned the day I traded my life for hers. Then brighter like her eyes when that priceless video flashed onto my phone.
Eye. Heart. You.
And pink like her lips when she found her way back to me and kissed me as if I was the very breath that filled her lungs.
The stars flickered then winked out. The paint was thick in certain spots, even dripping into gummy stalactites. The texture was as alive as the colors themselves and I couldn’t help but reach out for them, dragging my fingers here and there, first just to touch in wonder, then to shape and mold.
When I pulled away, I studied my fingers one by one, paint coloring them in haphazard whirls. Like the day I’d shown her this place and finger painted across her pale, perfect skin. The day I’d been given the most precious gift—forgiveness. The forgiveness of pure and perfect love. That was when I added gold. Like her long flowing hair that made a veil around me when we made love. Because even when I slammed my hardest into her or held her by the throat, it was making love. The manifestation of ligh
t loving dark, of light seizing darkness and wrapping it around dainty shoulders like a blanket, only to turn both colors new.
I stepped back and smiled.
This was what Elle had brought into my life. This is what I’d fight for. This is what I’d trudge through the very bowels of hell to win back.
29.
Elle
“Wake up,” the hissing voice whispered in my ear, slithering like a snake poised to bite. “Wake up, my pet.”
I clenched my eyes all the harder. Nothing good had come from opening them over the past few days. Or was it weeks? Perhaps an eternity in hell?
Fingers clamped down on my nipple and pulled. Hard. My eyes shot open and pathetic mewling slipped out of my mouth, only to find Mickey’s cold dead eyes devouring me and his lips mimicking the desperate flop of mine.
“Stand up, Elle,” he commanded, still with an inky tone and a smirk thick in his voice.
I let the weight of my eyelids win and they slid shut. He could pull on my breast again. Honestly, it was one of the least horrific things I could imagine considering. But he didn’t go for my chest a second time, he went for the oozing wound on my forearm and pulled. Pain, red and sharp and hot like a poker shot through my body as I was dragged through straw toward a blinding light.
Let me die. Let me die. Please God.
Tears spilled from my eyes again, maybe in physical pain, maybe just because water needed to purge from my body. That’s all I’d done on the truck ride, let my body purge and feed the filth around me. I was the filth around me. So why would tears be anything else than bodily fluid leaking out? My heart certainly didn’t feel anymore.