by Amy Braun
Someone screamed in utter agony. The air heated over me, and I cringed in fear. The light that appeared above me was so bright I could see it through my closed eyes. I was in too much pain to even think about what was going on. A minute later, someone dropped to their knees beside me and started crying.
More voices surrounded me. I didn’t know who they were, but they were either going to watch me die or kill me out of sympathy. I hoped it was the latter.
“Damn it, Connie,” a girl who sounded like Dro sobbed. “Sephiel! Help me!”
“We have to get her out of here,” a strained, deep voice said. It might have been Warrick.
“She must be healed first,” Sephiel said. Or I think it was Sephiel. My ears were filled with crispy, flaking skin and filling my brain with a low, cracking sound. “She will not survive otherwise.”
“I’m ready when you guys are, but sooner would be better,” Max’s voice urged.
They didn’t hesitate. Knife-like pain erupted along my body, and I arched my back. A raspy wheeze tore from my charred throat. I was too damaged to scream normally anymore. My body was on fire again, as if every nerve was exploding. I couldn’t take the pain of Dro and Seph healing me anymore than I could take Lucifer burning me. At least I told myself that was what was happening. If this was some new torture of Lucifer’s, I was going to lie to myself. It was something I was good at.
It went on forever, the spikes of healing magic stabbing into my raw flesh. Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes. I winced as they slipped into the cracks on my burned face. The salt from them sent sharp bites of pain over my exposed wounds. But if my tear ducts were being fixed, then the rest of me was being fixed, right?
Wrong. You’re an idiot, but you’re not stupid, Constance. You know you can’t survive this.
The agonizing stabs of magic stopped, and my body slumped against the road. My head felt like lead, and I nearly passed out. Arms scooped me up as gently as possible. I still moaned. It was a sad, pathetic sound, but the only one I could make to react to the pain. I was held against a body that smelled like pine. More bodies pressed around me.
“Shit!” someone yelled. It sounded like Max.
Someone else yelled, a war cry of pure rage. Heat smothered the air beside us. I peeled my eyes open to see what was happening.
A wall of hellfire stood menacingly between Lucifer and us. It cut a line through the road, standing nearly as tall as the King of Hell. He narrowed his eyes at the fire. The wall began to decrease in size. Dro shouted again and pushed out her hands. More blinding flames tore from her hands and fuelled the wall.
“Impressive,” Lucifer called over the hellfire wall. “It takes incredible strength to create a hellfire barrier capable of resisting me. But you placed too much power in the first wall. Then you exerted an excessive amount to heal that human.” His eyes flashed dangerously. “This wall is weaker, my child.”
To prove his point, Lucifer stepped forward. Dro threw out her hand again, but this time the flames weren’t blazing white. They were the sharp, merciless gold of heavenfire. The burning wall shuddered with intensity, though it remained solid and strong.
Lucifer stood in place, a frown creasing his lips.
“You cannot run from me, Andromeda,” promised Lucifer in a blistering tone. I shivered, and the person carrying me held me closer. “I made you, and you are mine.”
“I will never be yours, Devil,” replied my sister in a tone that could have poisoned the world. “But I will make you pay for this. I’m going to turn these powers on you, and erase you from the earth.”
That was the last thing I heard before a crack of thunder and blinding light smothered me. My body condensed before we started flying. Air rushed around me, filling my head with dizziness. We were moving too fast for me to feel any more pain. Then just like that, it was over. We landed on the ground. I didn’t open my eyes to see where I was. I thought I heard some people shouting, but I didn’t know who they were. I wasn’t able to find out either. My head spun one more time, and I passed out.
Chapter 8
I knew the dream was a memory, but it felt as though I was reliving it...
I had beaten the shit out of the guy. Blood pooled under him, painting his remaining teeth. He hadn’t expected a seventeen year old girl to slip out of the shadows and knock him out, but he knew where he was when he woke up and saw us. He knew who we were as soon as I showed him the rose tattooed behind my ear and Mateo showed the matching one over his heart.
Mateo moved out from the shadows, stood close to me, and folded his arms over his muscled chest. I spun the lead pipe in my hand, red drops spiraling off it.
“What do you say, Raymond? Are you going to say you’re sorry, or is she going to have to hit you some more?”
“Please,” Raymond blubbered. “Please, I didn’t mean to steal it–”
Mateo laughed. “Right. You didn’t mean to steal a bag of cocaine worth five grand. No addict ever means to do that.” He turned his head to look in my eyes. “What do you think, baby? Did he mean to do it?”
I shrugged. “I think he hasn’t apologized yet.”
I took a step forward, raised the pipe, and swung it into Raymond’s kneecap. Two more strikes were needed before I heard a sickening crack and he screamed in pain. I swallowed my disgust, grateful my back was to Mateo. I raised the pipe again and used it to shatter his other kneecap. His tortured howls echoed off the warehouse walls.
Remember why you’re doing this. You chose to be stronger. To be stronger, you have to be colder.
I stepped back, my face devoid of emotion as Raymond cried his apologies. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please, I don’t want to die!”
Mateo looked at me. I shrugged yet again. I was in charge of beating the apology out of Raymond, but killing him was Mateo’s job. He was the leader here, ever the boss’s son. He had to keep Espanis de Sangre’s ruthless reputation up to par. It was all going to be his one day.
My boyfriend hammered punches onto Raymond’s stomach and ribs, then slammed his fist into his jaw. I stood back and watched it all.
I was used to the sight of blood. I had been an enforcer for a couple years now, but that didn’t make this easier. It didn’t mean I wanted to see more people hurt. I damn sure didn’t enjoy hurting them.
But I chose this. I wanted to be an enforcer, trained under Mateo himself. The bruises and hard lessons had made me stronger. I was dangerous, making a name for myself. All of that came with the price of blood. I could hold onto the guilt, remember Raymond’s face, and have nightmares about it later. Right now, I had to look utterly ruthless. Inhuman. These days, it was getting way too easy.
Mateo finally finished pulping Raymond. He was breathing heavily, his energy spent on the man who was now barely alive. The only indicator was the slight whistle coming from his mouth. One of his lungs must have collapsed. Mateo took his machete off his hip.
“Apology accepted,” Mateo said.
He swung his machete with both hands, slicing into Raymond’s neck. Blood shot out as arteries split in half. His head lolled grotesquely to the side. The next cut clashed with the bones in his neck, scraping across them. Blood painted Raymond’s neck and chest. One more strike, and then it was done.
The head landed on the ground with a thump about a foot away from me. Mateo slowly evened his breathing. We were out in the middle of nowhere, so he had time to calm down. I tried not to look at the head very much. It was a bit ironic. The first decapitation I’d ever seen horrified me beyond all belief. Now I was standing there and watching them happen. The sight wasn’t scaring me anymore. I’d stopped feeling ill. It was wrong of me, awfully wrong, but I couldn’t focus on the act.
So I tried to think about his family and friends, the faceless people who would miss Raymond. I forced myself to remember that he was a person, maybe not even a bad guy, and that someone had loved him. It would make it easier for the nightmares to come.
There was another bit of iro
ny: I wanted to have nightmares about the people I watched die so I could keep my humanity.
Once his adrenaline slowed, Mateo turned and looked at me. From the neutral, even expression on his face, it was almost impossible to tell that he had just decapitated a human being.
“Can you help me with him, babe?”
I did, not thinking about how I was helping my boyfriend chop up another corpse. How we were going to connect the parts with strings and thorny rose stems, or how we were going to leave a message in blood that said: Pay the whole, or be in pieces.
After we left the warehouse, Mateo was still riding on the edges of adrenaline. He loved getting a rush of any kind as often as possible, and he was hungry for his next one. His hand skimmed my thigh the entire drive back, inching higher up my leg as we got closer to the hacienda. He gave me a squeeze and I held my breath.
I wanted to tell him I wasn’t in the mood, but then I looked over and I saw the naughty smile on his face. He looked at me as if I was the center of his world. I matched his smile and reached over to twine my fingers in his.
Mateo quickly got his own idea. He drove the car off to the side of the road, shut off the engine, then pulled me into his lap and kissed me. Mateo’s lips crushed against mine roughly, his hands snaring my waist and bringing me closer into him. I breathed in his woodsy cologne, completely lost when his tongue snaked through my lips. Mateo’s hands slid under my shirt and lightly trailed up my back. I shivered, and had to back away to take a breath.
“We don’t have enough time,” I sighed, struggling to control my beating heart. “Emilio wants the report.”
“Relax, babe,” he purred, his lips placing gentle kisses on my neck and taking me deeper under his spell. “Dad trusts us.” His hand slid further up my spine, resting at the clasp of my bra. “He’ll give us time.”
My heart thumped against my ribcage. I loved the feel of his hands on my skin, and it wasn’t the first time Mateo made it clear he wanted to move onto the next stage of our relationship. A stage that involved a lot less clothes.
I held my breath and reached behind my back. I clasped his wrists and drew them away from my bra clasp. My shirt collapsed in tandem with Mateo’s smile.
“I’m not in the mood, Mateo,” I told him sternly.
His expression darkened. I couldn’t think of anything to say to lighten it. I was tired and felt a knot in my chest. I didn’t know if I was ready for sex yet, and even if I was, I couldn’t do it after a murder. Not when I kept hearing Raymond’s screams in my head and seeing his blood on my clothes.
Mateo shifted abruptly. He didn’t throw me off his lap, but he made it clear that he didn’t want me close to him anymore. A stinging pain snapped in my chest as he started driving again. I watched his face, saw the tension in his jaw. I reached between us and pried one of his hands from the wheel, carefully so he wouldn’t swerve off the road. I wound my fingers through his.
The attraction between us had been there the day we started training together. When we started dating, it became lust. I had been with Mateo for almost two years now. It had become love.
Mateo sighed and squeezed my hand gently. The gesture was warm and comforting. His eyes weren’t.
Two hours later, we were back at the hacienda, about to split off from each other. I told Mateo I was too exhausted to talk to Emilio, which made him smile. He kissed me and said that he would give the report to his father and find an excuse for me. I didn’t say that the real reason I wanted to get away was so I could see my sister. I told him I loved him, and that was enough.
Dro was brushing her hair in our room when I opened the door and walked in. She was fourteen now, looking less like the small, quiet girl I grew up with and more like a beautiful teenager. She twisted in her chair at the vanity table to look at me, her eyes going wide when she saw the blood on me. I was grateful that Dro never got used to it.
“It’s okay, little sister,” I assured her, closing the door and kicking off my boots. “None of it’s mine.”
She frowned at me. “That better not be an attempt to comfort me.”
I shrugged out of my black jacket and tossed it on the chair. I unstrapped my knives and hatchet from my body.
“Well, it’s true.”
I could feel her eyes on my back as I washed the blood from my hands in the bathroom sink. When I was done, I walked back out into the main bedroom and dropped onto my back on the bed. I slid my hatchet under my pillow and put a knife on the nightstand. Dro’s eyes were still on me, waiting for me to open up and talk. I wasn’t in the mood.
Dro left the vanity table and lay down on her stomach on her bed next to me. She propped her chin in her hand and waited. I glanced over at my little sister. She looked just as gentle and as comforting as always. She knew me too well.
I sighed and looked at the ceiling. “It was awful.” My voice was as tight as my chest.
“Did you kill him?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Not this one. Mateo did. I had to help with the body again.”
“Not the most romantic thing you guys could have done on your anniversary.”
I laughed bitterly. “Boss’s orders. Not mine.”
Dro was silent at that. I glanced over to see her clasping her elbows with a troubled look on her face. “Are you sure you can’t go back to how it was before?” she asked hesitantly. “Be a falcon again instead of an enforcer?”
“Emilio doesn’t demote anyone. They disappoint him, and he kills them. Or he tortures them if he still kind of likes them.”
Dro was biting her lip. I rolled onto my side to face her. “We talked about this, Dro. This is the only way the Thorns will let me train. I have to get stronger to keep away the monsters.”
Her head lifted, a flicker of fear going through them. “Did you see one?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone. I want to be ready when they come back.”
Dro exhaled heavily and held the sides of her head. “I don’t want you to keep doing it, Connie. It’s not you.”
“You think I like it?”
“Of course not,” she told me sharply, “I know you don’t. But we could run. We could leave it behind, like Dad did.”
My heart ached when I thought about my father, his blood spraying out from his throat onto his killer’s hand. Dro was probably thinking the same thing. I swallowed the pain before I spoke again.
“This is still our safest option, little sister.”
She started shaking her head.
“We haven’t seen any monsters in years–”
“I can’t do it, Constance!” she suddenly cried.
I froze, my eyebrows rising up my forehead. Dro didn’t yell. Ever. She was the politest, most decent person I had ever met. For her to freak out like this was a clear sign something was very wrong. I stayed silent until she settled down and collected herself.
“I can’t do it. You don’t see what I see. This place, everyone in it, they’ve got darkness in them. Even the maids and the cooks.” She hesitated, then added, “Even you.”
Dro pushed herself up and rested her back against the wooden headboard. She wrapped her arms around her knees, looking small.
“It’s everywhere here. The monsters don’t need to find us. We’re living with them.”
I was still struggling for something to say. Dro saw things I couldn’t understand or comprehend, no matter how hard I tried. I didn’t know what she was, if it was possible to take away the things she saw. I could handle myself waking up screaming from nightmares created by my memories. It was just a reminder of my black little truth. But I couldn’t take it when I heard them from Dro. I sat up.
“Do you think I’m a monster?” I asked, very serious. Afraid of the answer.
Dro looked at me with heavy eyes. She shook her head. “No, of course not, Connie. You’re my sister, and I love you. But you deserve a better life. You’re better than these people, and...” Tears formed in her eyes. “And I’m scared of what th
ey’re going to turn you into.”
I thought back to the endless faces of people I had beaten. The ones I had stabbed. The two that I drowned. The one I had shot. All the times I stood back and let Mateo or another Blood Thorn torture and murder someone. I enforced my rules– no kids, pets, pregnant women, or innocents– but not every member of the Espanis de Sangre shared my morale code. Not even Mateo did.
I tried to remember Raymond’s face. The way his head lolled to the side, gushing thick blood onto the walls. But it was a blur in my head, a fading photograph of something that seemed like it happened five years ago instead of five hours.
Dro was right. The longer I stayed with the Thorns, the less I would care. The fewer nightmares I would have. I would become a monster, one that even Dro would see.
But... “It isn’t that simple, Dro.”
She looked up at me, scowling a little. “Because of Mateo?”
I tried to say he had nothing to do with this, but that would make me a liar. Despite the terrible things he did, he had a soul. He did all these terrible things because he had to, not because he wanted to. He must have a heart, because he loved me. He was sweet to Dro. He was a good son. He promised to protect us. Mateo wasn’t any different from me.
Right?
“He’s a bad person, Connie,” my sister said. “I know you love him, but he’s not right for you. There’s an evil in him. Something you can’t fix.”
I must have given her a sharp look and not realized it, because she shrank back to the wooden headboard of her bed. Any annoyance disappeared. She was my little sister, the most important person in the world to me. I didn’t want to upset her.
I shuffled off my bed and crawled onto hers, shifting so I could sit beside her and drape my arm over her shoulder. Dro rested her head against me, instantly relaxed. I put my cheek on her head. No matter where I was, Dro always smelled like home.