Twisted Death (A Twisted Fairy Tale Book 2)

by Ace Gray

  “You two have already lost,” Mickey snarled, his voice raspy from the hole in his chest and the blood in his throat. “You won’t get out of the front door. And even if you did, the way she loathes you, the way your touch makes her skin burn, is a different kind of death. It’s all the more beautiful to watch.”

  I wasn’t giving up. I wasn’t giving up on Elle or getting out. I couldn’t. Not yet. Not with her in my arms, Horse unharmed beside me and Mickey’s blood pooling on the floor around us.

  “Ángel oscuro.” A soft voice called to us from the open courtyard at the end of the table. “Bring them both.”

  Horse nodded, ready to follow her without question this time. He grabbed Mickey by the ankle and started to drag him to the courtyard. When he started to kick against Horse, he turned, coiled and cold-cocked him, leaving a limp body to trail behind my hulking best friend. Elle struggled against my chest but I scooped her up, letting her go wild as I followed.

  “Shhhhh, Ladylove. Shhhhhh.” I tried to nuzzle against her as I walked. It didn’t quite work. “I see the darkness, Elle.” I let my fingers wander on her naked body. “It doesn’t scare me.”

  I breathed in the smell of her and it was different, the sun mixed with sautéed peppers and the wretch of mud at the bottom of a stagnant pond. I blamed myself for the loss of sweetness, the fade of cherries.

  “What scares me is leaving you here. Leaving you to linger in something suffocating, something black.” I leaned in and kissed her temple. She screeched but it morphed into a wail then finally tears. “What scares me is leaving you alone. I’ll make my home in the deepest night, the darkest black, as long as I make it with you.”

  She went limp in my arms, tears started in rivers down her cheeks. My blood boiled beneath my skin as I looked over the barely clinging on body to the one with far too much life as it bumped over the gravel of the path. I was about to lunge at him when Elle started scrambling in my arms again. Only this time it seemed like she was trying to get away from something behind me not from whatever she saw in me.

  I twisted to find a bedroom, nothing seedy or glaringly wrong, but handcuffs hung from each corner of the bed. The reality of what she’d lived with sunk like a boulder in my gut. Not even her clinging to me in a desperate effort to get away could ease the hole that her past few weeks dug in me.

  The grandmother pointed toward a small open door, some sort of oddity in the corner of the building that swung open on command. She patted Horse on the shoulder and spat curses at Mickey as they snuck out.

  She reached for me, her taloned hand digging into my arm. “Ángel, slay el dragón and come back for them.”

  “I will,” I said, letting sincerity color my voice.

  “I know.” She smiled and pulled the shawl from her shoulders to cover the tiny bird in my arms. “Make him pay.” I nodded as I folded the crochet around Elle.

  The moment we hit the cobbled street the door slammed shut behind us and night swallowed the street. Quiet crept up and a cool breeze blew against our skin. For a brief and fleeting moment, Horse and I could breathe.

  “What do we do now?” he asked, his caveman grip still firm on Mickey’s passed out ankle.

  “We get out of here. We get her somewhere safe. Then we set them all free.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Elle. She’d gone both lifeless and feral in my arms, my touch had burned her and revived her too. The sheer amount of anger at what had been done to her, to my unshakable little bird, colored my vision crimson.

  “And with Mickey?” He arched an eyebrow.

  My smile curled my lips, my dimple hollowed out, and my fingers flexed against Elle’s paper-thin flesh. “We take that fucking bastard out into the desert and make him pay.”

  39.

  Elle

  Dark black, swirling ink had burned away with the roaring arrival of the sun. The man shone so bright it hurt to look at him, his voice was so strong and stable I felt life in my veins. I revolted against both. If there was light left, if there was strength inside me, if Cole was here, then I couldn’t just fade away.

  I couldn’t be the darkness, I couldn’t even be nothing.

  And when he touched me, his warmth, his tender gentleness, his love seared my skin. Seared was too light a word, sent jagged bolts of lightning to race across my skin was far closer to what I really felt.

  A small and walled-off part of me reveled in the way he set me free. I hated that little weak being. She should know she deserved to be tied up and left to rot on the table. He should know. Instead, he picked up my broken, soulless body and held me.

  The contours of his chest were home.

  You don’t belong here anymore.

  Black still blanketed my mind and I listened to its whispered voices. I shoved against Cole’s chest, desperate to plunge back into the black. The void.

  I see the darkness, Elle. His words were rays of sunshine slicing up my insides. It doesn’t scare me.

  I wanted to tell him that it terrified me. That his light was going to burn me and that was too swift a death for me.

  I’ll make my home in the deepest night, the darkest black, as long as I make it with you.

  My body melted. Not just into him but completely. Those words unmade me. Mostly because they threatened to build me up. Cole was going to build a house, a world, and live in it for both of us if he had to. He was going to fight, he was going to rail, and he was going to love me.

  I didn’t deserve any of it.

  The room where they’d kept me materialized behind me, a vortex of darkness. I shot the only direction I could—into his chest—desperate to get away. But then his arms wrapped around me and for a moment I felt again.

  He carried me down the street and we slid into the backseat of a familiar Charger. Cole held me tight to his chest as the trunk jostled behind us. Horse slid into the driver’s seat and twisted to check on us. I tried to meet his gaze but the warmth there was enough to incinerate me. I hid into muscle behind me.

  Cole’s lips pressed against my forehead as he nodded to Horse. The purr of the engine rumbled beneath us but it just chattered my bones. He tried to soothe them, or piece them back together, but there was just no hope. There was nothing but the desert black sky.

  “Do you think she’s going to be okay?” Horse’s voice was just outside, his deep tone trickling in through the open window along with the heat.

  Sun had come to the desert and basked the two of them in even brighter light than I’d seen them in before. Somehow, I’d slept. And mercifully I hadn’t dreamt.

  “I don’t know,” Cole wavered, “but it won’t happen overnight, and it won’t happen with us wondering right outside her window.” He twisted and bent down, flexing each of his perfectly sculpted muscles as he came to rest his chin on the car door. “Hey there, Ladylove.”

  My hand flew to the ruined mark on my left arm. The searing pain of Mickey cutting into it ripped through me all over again. Cole seemed to fall away like a discarded shadow. Tears trembled on my lips before I even realized they were falling.

  “No, no, no.” His words were soft as he yanked open the door and shoved the driver’s seat forward. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. The tattoo doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter what he did to you. It doesn’t matter if you’re dark.” He scooped me up and pulled me to his chest. “You’re mine. Every piece, every color. Everything.”

  He held me as I barely clung to life in the backseat.

  A ragged scream from outside the car almost pulled Cole from me but Horse simply turned and leaned up against the side of the car.

  “It’s just the crows,” he said simply. “When do you want to kill him?”

  “Now that Elle’s up, it’s partially her decision.” Cole’s arms had a way of collecting up my pieces and he hugged them together.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “What do you mean, Ladylove? You don’t want Mickey to die?” Cole pushed my hair out of my eyes and drank in my scent li
ke it was sweet wine.

  “Not unless he takes me with him.” I tried to weasel out of his grip, determined to pile on the floor.

  “Never,” he snarled but he slid out of the backseat, letting me surround myself with a blanket of black.

  “Cole, I’m not sure she’s gonna make it…” Horse’s hesitant voice was almost drowned out.

  “I am. As sure as the sun will rise.” He blew out a deep breath. “I have to be.”

  40.

  Cole

  I jerked my chin toward the wide open desert and Horse followed me without question. Our feet crunched on the bone dry and cracked earth as we passed the gray and shriveled wood scattered about. When we were far enough away from the car that my heart hurt a little, I shot Horse a look.

  “Why the fuck would you question her? Question saving her?” I kept my fists balled at my sides rather than swinging at his face. “You loved her too once.” I couldn’t keep the acid out of my voice.

  “She’s dirty. She’s a monster just like me.” Mickey’s cracked and haggard voice hung above us, just like his barely clothed and cut up body where it hung from barbed wire on a cross.

  “She’s nothing like you,” I roared as I shoved on the wood. His whole body shook with it and the barbs cut in deeper to his body, fresh blood pooled at the small prick sites.

  “Cole, you know that’s not what I mean,” Horse said with his eyes fixed on Mickey. “I mean maybe she doesn’t want to be saved and we respect that. Maybe that’s real love.”

  His words sliced through me and unearthed the part of me that had gone frantic when I’d seen her lifeless eyes. If the killing calm hadn’t taken over, I would have suffered my own death right then.

  “I can’t let her go.” My voice broke. “I can’t let her die.”

  “Is that selfish?” he asked quietly, pulling me into a hug.

  Wild, furious tears pricked at eyes, a strangled sob balled in my throat and ripped out of my mouth as I shoved at Horse. I whirled away from him, grabbing the knife in my boot and plunging it into Mickey’s stomach.

  “Whoa, Cole.” Horse tried to calm me, surely seeing the rage ripple off my shoulders.

  I didn’t give a damn as I pulled the knife downward. When Mickey screamed, I twisted, and looked up, watching the blood drip fresh from his taut neck.

  “That’s for the kids Horse and I should’ve been,” I growled and ripped the blade out, slashing across his chest. “And the innocence you ripped from Elle.”

  I grabbed on the wire, dodging barbs as I yanked with all my might. Each spot that dug into his skin was gratifying. His howl at the midday sun, the pain that cracked across the desert like the hot gusts of wind, made my heart race. “This,” I pulled harder, “this is for each one of those girls I couldn’t carry out last night.”

  The wire bit into my hand just before I dropped it. Mickey’s body drooped from the wood and sagged into the wire.

  “This one’s for sending Siobhan after us.” Horse stepped in and landed an evil punch to his right jaw. He’d been holding the hilt of his knife, crashing into bone with the force of steel and solid wood. The blade dragged across his chin, opening a fresh dark wound amidst the stubble.

  “This is for Simoné,” I mimicked Horse with a blow to his left cheek. I flipped the knife in my hand and shoved it into the opposite side of his stomach from his first wound. “And Jimmy.”

  “For me.” Horse’s blade cut into Mickey’s thigh, giving him a fresh wound to match Elle’s scar.

  “And me.” I did the same and stepped back.

  A dirty, dust covered body hung from the barbed wire and rickety wood. Any spot that wasn’t baking in the sun was coated in his oozing blackness. Horse stood shoulder to shoulder with me as we watched Satan wheeze and gasp for air.

  “Do we kill him outright?” Horse asked.

  “I think the crows are bit more fitting.” I shrugged.

  But then small, delicate fingers wrapped around the knife in my hand. Blood from the handle stuck to my hand even as Elle took it from me. She was a fragile little dove tiptoeing toward the cross. The shawl she’d been given was hugged tight to her shoulders. The hand-woven tassels blew in the same breeze as her hair. I could picture how the sun should ring around her, how it should give her this beautiful halo that seemingly came from inside, but it wasn’t there. This Elle sucked in sunlight and muted it.

  I waited to hear her murmur the words. This is for me. If she could claim retribution for herself, I’d have my proof. My proof that she could come back, that it wasn’t selfish to make her.

  No words came. Nothing but a sharp plunge to his heart. Swift. Sharp. And succinct. Mickey went limp on the barbed wire a moment before she turned the blade on herself.

  “No!” I ran for her and got my arms around her just as the tip pressed against her breast. A single bead of blood ran down her body.

  “Please.” She crumbled in my arms. “Please.”

  “No,” I repeated softly, tears choking my words, as I nuzzled into her hair. “You’re my everything.”

  “I’m not anything,” she whispered as she collapsed into my arms.

  I couldn’t let go of her. I wouldn’t. Not in the bigger sense, not even in the physical and of this moment sense. Horse kept looking back over his shoulder as he drove. At first, I thought it was so he could see Mickey’s crow covered corpse as we drove away but after a full day of driving, I knew it was to watch me.

  “Cole, if I find Conrad and he tells me never to come near him again, I’ll do it.” The sun was setting, casting color and shadow spectacularly across his face.

  “You’d fight for him first,” I spat back, collecting her tighter in my arms.

  “Yeah, but he wants me to fight…” His eyes didn’t waver from the road but his brow crinkled deeply.

  “She needs me to,” I said vehemently, brushing the matted hair from her forehead. I studied the planes of her face. Something had drained her light, her life, leaving sallow skin and fatigue in its place. “She can leave me, she can leave the memories I symbolize, but I’m not gonna let her die. She’ll have the strength to walk away even if I don’t.”

  His lips thinned but he nodded and I knew it was the last I’d hear from him. When I looked down, wide and wondering doe eyes watched me, rippled and watery.

  “I said I’d fight for you.” I wiped a lose tear away. “I’m not stopping now, just because it got hard.”

  More tears plunged down her cheeks. I tried to wipe them away but she turned to face away from me. My heart shuddered, but I traced one small circle over and over on her arm to keep it beating.

  “You wanna drive or should we get a place for the night?” Horse broke the silence maybe minutes, maybe hours later.

  “I’m not letting go.”

  He nodded once and only a few miles later pulled into a motel. Elle was asleep and easy to pull into my arms and to the tiny red door of the room we rented. Horse dropped my duffel on the floor but didn’t even pitch his boots before he crashed onto the first bed. I set Elle down on the other one, noticing her dirty feet, the oily fingerprints still on her body and the tear stains thoroughly carved on her cheeks. I walked away only long enough to start warm water in the tub.

  I picked her up off the mattress and carried her into the bathroom, her sleepy eyes opening and focusing on me. I started to set her in the tub but she wheeled on me, scratching at my bare arms and clawing at the walls. She was stronger than I anticipated, but I still managed to get her into the room and set her on the tiny tile ledge by the sink.

  Some of the fight left her when we weren’t headed for the tub but the fear in her eyes was enough to make me stop. I cradled her little face in my hands and I held her firm.

  “It’s just you and me, Elle.” I rubbed my thumbs along her cheekbones. “Just you and me in this room. It’s just you and me forever if you want.” I searched her eyes and something deep inside sparked. “Only if you want.” As quickly as it came, it fizzled out aga
in but her body gave up with it.

  I picked her bird bones up and placed them in the warm water. She curled on her knees and turned her face away from me. But she didn’t shy away from my touch when I soaked a washcloth and let the water wash down her back. Once she was completely wet, I scrubbed her. When I washed her forearm, she jerked away from me. When I went between her legs, she clamped her knees together. I sighed but then smiled my biggest smile as I washed the soap away. I think she noticed that sadness tugged harder on my lips than joy.

  When she was clean, she sat up and tipped her head back. I took the invitation to wash her hair, cupping water and turning her straw-like locks into liquid gold. I wanted nothing more than to straddle her and pull her back into my chest but something told me it would be too close for her comfort. I stuck to small handfuls and scrubbing until her eyes fluttered shut and her lips opened into a small gasp.

  I ached to take those lips, to kiss and nibble and shower them with the affection they’d been missing. But this, this wasn’t about me, so I swallowed my want and finished washing her as tenderly and innocently as I could.

  We both watched the water circle the stainless steel as I drained the tub. I prayed to God that I was watching all her fear and sadness wash away, but the way her heart beat made me sure she was seeing something else entirely. I wrapped the towel around her wishing for something far less scratchy against her skin. The sheets when she slid into them were only slightly softer.

  I lay beside her, one hand resting beneath the crook of her neck and wrapping around her body, desperate to keep her close. Desperate to convince her there was still something worth fighting for. My other hand gently combed the strands of her hair as they fanned out on the pillow. I willed every ounce of love I felt into that touch.

  Hours ago, she’d wanted to kill herself. She’d tried. Even free of Mickey forever—Satan obliterate his soul—she hadn’t wanted to live. He’d touched her before, but had he taken her? Or had he simply broken her? She’d been such a stone pillar, I couldn’t fathom what he’d done. I didn’t want to close my eyes, knowing I’d conjure up all sorts of things. Or that she’d use that time to find a knife, a gun, a way to leave me.