“Shit!” Lily cries from her miss.
I take a moment to remember the surprise that briefly flashed across The Marker's face, his hand going to the part of his missing ear, feeling the blood and missing skin. Pride coats my insides that my woman just did that, one of the few to ever throw him off guard. I wish she would realize how incredibly brave she is.
I use the moment to my advantage, yanking him out and throwing him to the wall, his head cracking back on it, denting into the paint.
I slam the door shut, scan my hand, and enter in the code that locks Lily in until she figures it out on her own. I don't need her thinking she can win this for me.
As I'm entering the last two numbers Dragoni makes his way back to me, ready to fight.
And so it begins.
Chapter 24
4:03pm
We fight with everything that we have, saving any breaking of bones until we become light on fuel and need the extra advantage.
I'm trying to make jabs and strikes that will cause him pain but buy time until we reach Vault's office. My plan won't work unless we're there.
The punch I take to the throat as I scan my hand at the gold elevator has me wheezing and coughing for air.
Holy motherfucker does that shit hurt!
Fighting in an elevator has some fear surfacing from the rocking, shaking, and creaking noises it makes as we ascend. At least if we go down there is no way he'll survive the crash.
The door opens at the moment I have the advantage over him. I pummel through, slamming him into the wall where I begin beating him like a punching bag, for no reason other than it feels really fucking good to hit him like this.
This is the part of myself I can never share with Lily, that I can never share with anyone. The part of me that enjoys these encounters just as much as he does. It's so fucked up and twisted, but a part of me needs this too.
He wraps a leg around mine, using his arms and body as leverage to twist me.
My spine cracks so painfully I grind my teeth together.
He's already beginning the real pain, trying to slow me down.
Interesting, that means I've gotten better.
I use more defense moves than anything else, needing to lead him further towards Vault's office.
I have to stop at the hall door, leaving me vulnerable while I get my hand scanned. This time, I'm the one who gets propelled through the open door, flying so I come crashing down on a coffee table.
Shit, he's gaining advantage.
On impulse, I grab the lamp on the side table to smash over his head. It's a cheap shot that I wouldn't normally play, but my whole plan relies on me getting past another set of doors.
The Marker is momentarily stunned and I push past him to sprint inside Vault's office where the dagger is resting, waiting for me on his desk.
I grab it and race to the wall on the left, to the door closest to the window.
Hand scan. Code. Door opens.
My hand is fucking shaking and my heart is pounding loudly against my chest as I turn around to find Dragoni coming after me.
I smile, an evil one that matches his.
I pull the dagger up to make sure he sees it. All movement comes to a standstill. Dragoni stops his pursuit, identifying the dagger as though it's the only thing left on this earth that matters. I understand his obsession; he was once mine.
I raise it and swivel to face the entrance of Vault's panic room. I pull my hand back, gripping the end of the gold dagger, and fling it through the open door, letting go at the exact moment it needs to safely travel through the room. It plants itself in the back wall exactly where I'd hoped it would land.
I don't wait to see Dragoni's reaction, heading straight inside and sliding from view to the left, hoping and praying to a God I didn't think I believed in that he follows.
The moment he enters the room I punch in the numbers Vault gave me to seal the door shut, locking the two of us inside.
Whatever happens next, I will rest in peace knowing Lily is safe; that the man who murdered my mother and killed my father is no longer roaming the earth and can't do the same to her.
The Marker whips around. Normally I rely on a person's eyes to know what they are feeling and their reaction, but his are covered with black spectacles. Besides, I don't really give a damn. No matter what happens next, whether I live or die, so will he.
It ends tonight no matter what.
Fuck me, this is it.
This is the moment I've wanted since I was six years old. I don't feel the sense of peace or excitement I thought I would. Instead, I feel more tired than ever before.
I can't do this, I don't have it in me. I'm so fucking tired. I want to curl up in a bed wrapped around Lily and sleep away the next few years. I slouch against the wall and slide down, cradling my head in my hands, forgetting my purpose for being here, only wishing it was time to sleep. I feel like an eighty year old man and I'm only twenty-fucking-five.
I remember another person's in the room with me when I feel the blade of a dagger drag along my arm, reopening a wound made ten years ago. It's not as deep this time, but enough to catch my attention. I look up to the face I always believed to be my destiny – Kolme Dragoni, known to some as The Marker.
“You ready to finish this?” He drawls out in a faint southern accent.
Devoid of any emotion because I have nothing left in me to give, I answer, “No. I'm done. I won't fight you.”
I've already won.
He retraces his dagger along my scar, making the cut deeper. Normally I would feel this, but I've become numb. The only person left that I care about, that I love, is safe somewhere behind these walls. It doesn't matter what happens next. I don’t have it in me to care anymore. I've tried for almost twenty years to bring this man down and failed.
He will die tonight, and I will too. I'm okay with that, I'm ready. I have a reason to die. I have someone who's life is worth so much more than my own.
Dragoni reaches out his hand, showing off the three gold claws that take up his middle three fingers; the ones that always send a tremble down my spine, “Is that so?”
I look him straight in the eyes, not able to see his but knowing he can see mine, “Yeah. It ends tonight.”
His bare hand clamps around my throat, strangling me, “I'm disappointed, I thought you'd put up more of a fight. You're weaker than I had thought.”
“Maybe I am,” I hoarsely get out. For the first time in my life, having weakness doesn't bother me, “but I've still won.”
He releases enough to allow me to further explain.
“Don't you realize that I've trapped you in here?”
The word trapped catches his attention, his body stiffening, his head moving all around the room.
“This is a panic room. I hold the number to unlock the door and have no intention of unlocking it until you die, even if it means I die first.”
“So be it,” his grip tightens, raising his gold claws, ready to strike.
This is where I have him and need to explain before I evaporate into nothing, “Go ahead and do it, but know I'm the last man you will ever kill.”
“It will end with my favorite,” he declares with a foreboding leer, his lips twitching to form a smile that makes me feel six again, taking in the sight of a man that surpassed any villain I had ever seen. I hold back a shudder, not wanting to give him more than he has already taken from me.
“You don't understand,” I further explain, keeping my expression bleak and unreadable, “I. Will. Be. Your. Last. Kill. There will be no three. This is it. It's just us, and whether I die or not, you most certainly will.” The more I talk, the looser his grip becomes, and I know from this point on every word spoken, every action I make matters, and will determine both our futures. “Vault has designed a panic room that will takes weeks to penetrate. Since there's no food or water in here, that's plenty of time for whoever gets stuck in here to starve to death.”
The Marker's hand drops t
o my collarbone and I know I have him thinking. Nothing falters on his face and I can't see his eyes from the spectacles indented in his sockets, but somehow I know, I just know, he's trying to figure a way out.
He retreats to the other end of the room, curling into a ball and rocking, reciting a mantra I can't understand. On the shoulder facing me is one of the heads from his three-headed dragon tattoo, staring straight at me as though it's been dreaming of this day as well.
I can actually visualize him as a boy taking severe beatings from his father, and for once I feel something for this man. He needs help. He needs salvation that he sadly will never receive. I can't let him ever get past this room. The woman on the other side is what fuels me. I can't let her live this life. She deserves everything that I'm not, but astonishingly I'm all that she wants. I don't deserve her, but I'm eternally grateful I met her. She makes all this bullshit worth it. She makes finally dying worth it. I finally have a purpose in this fucked up world that deals out more shit cards than winning hands. At least I will leave this earth knowing that the man cowering in the corner will never touch her.
“Do it, but know I will be your last. Death may finally give me some peace, and hopefully a good night's rest,” I dare, trying not to think about Lily and how soundlessly I sleep with her next to me.
Thinking about her right now is making my chest throb, but at the same time she is all I want to picture as the Grim Reaper enters the room, ready to take one or two souls, depending on what the twisted man in front of me decides.
I sadly having nothing left in me to fight him.
This is the man I've wanted to kill since I knew of his existence, and I don't have enough strength or energy to kill him. I've wasted my whole damn life for this moment, and I don't give a shit what happens next. Knowing this is the end is good enough for me.
Once again I picture Lily and that smile she has that makes the entire world melt away. I focus on that, wanting it to be the last thing I see before the bleakness of death disintegrates me.
The moment I come to peace with the end of my life is the moment Kolme Dragoni lifts his head and removes his spectacles, letting me see the astonishing pale blue of his iris and the gap where his right eye should be.
He rubs his one eye before placing the dagger between his fingers, weaving the blade up and around each one, “A part of me was hoping that you'd become a better fighter than me. Not once did it cross my mind that you would find a way to beat me without your hands or a weapon.
“You see, I've been watching you over the years, needing to be near you, feeding off of your hatred. I thought I would enjoy watching you think you had a chance at beating me; how you searched and explored, looking for me, loving that you never knew I was never more than a few miles away from you. I loved the sense of power that brought me.”
It's my turn to be surprised. I hadn't a clue how much I meant to him, how he needed me to hate him.
“I watched you with her.” My skin crawls from this confession, not sure if I can bear to hear the rest. “The way you cared for her and made love to her fascinated me. I thought you were just like me. I thought I had created you, but you had something I never had the chance to create.” He stops weaving the dagger to look at me, “A soul. It's still inside you. I wanted to believe I had taken that from you. Oh the thought of it...” he rests his head back and closes his eye. “The thought that I had turned something pure into something dark and sinister is the most pleasure I have ever experienced.
“Then when I saw you with her, I saw that you had only masked who you were. How everything I thought I had taken from you had never left. You were the one that controlled your emotions, not me.” He lifts his head back up and turns it towards me.
I'm not sure I want to hear what he has to say next. The black hole he's trying to suck me into is not a place I care to go, but his one clear blue eye is trying to draw me in, yearning for me to follow.
“Watching the two of you begin to heal one another and become stronger together wasn't what I wanted to see. I needed your cold heart that lived for it's desire for revenge, that craved killing just as much as I did. I loved that the only killing you craved was me. Only me. The obsession I have for you could rival anything in history.
“Jealousy over that girl tempted me to kill her a hundred times. The strongest was when I watched you becoming consumed by her, as though she was the only thing that mattered; that she's what you lived for, who you were created for. I'm supposed to be your only obsession, not her,” he sneers loudly, his frustration causing him to mark some of his skin with the dagger.
My heart literally stops at the hatred he has for Lily, my stomach rolling with how much of us he saw.
Dragoni stops to make sure he has my full attention, poking the dagger at his chest right were his heart is, “The relief I felt when I watched you leave her behind was almost as satisfying as killing my father...” A wicked grin forms, “Almost. It meant that your hatred for me had become so much a part of you that nothing else mattered, not even a girl who had the power to transform you into the man you were born to be–”
“Shut up,” I bite, interrupting whatever the hell he's trying to say. “I left to keep her safe. It had nothing to do with you.”
He pauses to contemplate, cleaning his spectacles with his black undershirt, “You truly believe that's the only reason you moved on?”
It wasn't, but I'm too ashamed to admit it; especially to him.
I wanted Lily in a way I never thought I could possibly need another, but a part of me – no matter how much smaller that part had become – still needed my revenge. I didn't know how to let that part of me go.
Strength comes in more ways than one. Muscle is the weakest form. Inner strength is the strongest, nobody can break you there. Inner is what she has, and what I should have been striving towards.
“I craved your hatred too much. I dreamt of killing her a thousand different ways, each time more painful than the last. Instead, I let my dear sister know where you were, wanting to find out exactly were your true loyalties lie. You disappointed me with your decision.”
All I can do is blink at him. I don't know where to go from here, what he expects me to say to that.
It doesn't seem to matter to him, he carries on anyway, “Your mother knew who I was. The only thing she asked me was if she was the third. I told her yes, and she willingly came to me. Nobody had ever willingly let me kill them. She baffled me at the time; it was the first and only time I thought about not killing my mark.”
The mention of my mother and that horrible day brings back memories so fresh they could be happening as we speak, a storm of events that will always haunt me.
The blame I placed on myself for not saving her, for being weak and not strong enough to push away my fear, stabs me just as strong now as it did then.
This has me thinking of my father, who's death is as much on Dragoni's hands as it is mine.
How many people have died for my need for revenge?
I deserve to die tonight. It seems like a proper punishment. I shouldn't be allowed to carry on when so many others can't because of me.
Dragoni is watching me, observing me while I come to terms with what's about to take place, reliving the deaths of my parents and so many others.
“When I saw you as a little boy watching us, I understood her sacrifice,” he feels the need to pursue, knowing I'm too absorbed in the past to protest. “She was keeping you safe the way a mother should. Protecting you from bad men the way my mother never did for me; the reason I despised her for never doing, never understanding how she could let her husband do the things he did.
“Your mother was my favorite kill because of that. I took away your innocence and unconditional love. I had destroyed what she wanted to protect. The power and thrill that bestowed upon me has remained. That's why I loved our fights more than the rest, knowing I took from you what I never had for myself–”
“You've taken everything from me,” I inj
ect.
“No, Mister Lincoln. You let me take it.”
Fuck. It's true, I did.
Which is why I hate myself as equally as I do this man, some moments even more so.
I point a finger back and forth between us, “I would do this all over again, every second of it, if it meant she was brought into my life. So I guess that's my third win over you. We're even.”
He recoils back, not liking my choice of words.
“I've found something that matters more to me than your death,” I self-righteously declare. “I've had the unconditional love of three people. How many have you had?”
“No one,” he states, with almost a sadness to it.
Kolme Dragoni holds the dagger out, appearing as though he's ready to throw it straight at me.
I don't budge, accepting my fate, thankful that for a brief moment in my life I had the opportunity to discover what life was all about: the ability to love; the courage and strength it takes to love a person, no matter how different they are. Forgiving that they have flaws and appreciating their imperfections. Knowing those are the things that define them, forming them into something that cannot be defined and shelved into a category. Understanding that's what makes them so remarkable.
Lily taught me that. She taught me many things, but that is what I want to remember the most.
I watch the man who has overtaken my youth and forsaken me a childhood, the man I thought had turned my heart as black as his, take his family dagger and slit his own throat, but not before saying, “You haven't won, but I haven't lost either.”
I try wrapping my mind around what just happened. That the man I had wanted vengeance on and to destroy for almost my entire existence had willingly taken his life in front of me.
His last parting words will remain with me forever, knowing we are the only two who will ever understand their meaning and how true they are.
I stay there, staring at the dead body of Kolme Dragoni, his blood pouring out of him and flowing across the floor, creating a river that seems desperate to find me.
When his blood finally reaches me, I place two fingers into the murky, reddish-brown fluid, rubbing the blood between my fingers and thumb, never taking my eyes from the man who still has his one eye locked with mine, but now it's vacant in a way only death can cause.
Marked. Part II: Becoming Noah Baxter Page 15