by Keri Lake
Shaking my head summons the visuals of Six and Papa, and I clamp my eyes over the tears. I can’t tell him.
“You’ve been shivering since I returned. Lea said you refused supper. And now the nightmare. What’s troubling you?”
I don’t want to say anything to him, but Ivan’s presence has rattled me, and I suspect the longer he’s here, the worse it will get. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
I’m not ready for this yet. I’m not ready to tell him about Ivan and the baby, but not telling him feels too much like a lie. I’ve held these secrets for too long, and perhaps it’s time for me to face them head on. Maybe Ivan’s presence is more than just a simple act of fate. Maybe it’s my penance for ignoring the little girl who screams out for me sometimes, begging for me to take her out of the nightmares that surround her. To take her somewhere safe. Even if safety’s an illusion.
“Ivan ...” I continue, knowing there’s no going back now. I’ve spoken his name. Confessed that I know him. “I know him from my time in Calico.”
Beneath me, Rhys’s chest rises and falls a bit faster than before.
“He …” My mind scrambles for the words. The ones that make me feel less dirty, less worthless, less ruined than I feel now.
“He hurt you,” Rhys finishes my thought.
My fingers curl into a tight fist, and I nod, feeling his chest still beneath me with a held breath.
“How?” The tight clip of his tone tells me his teeth are clenched.
“It was always the basement. He’d have me meet him down there, where it was dark and terrifying, in some dingy room crawling with bugs and rats. I’d hear sounds down there that weren’t natural. He forced himself on me.” I’m surprised the words tumble from my mouth so quickly, or perhaps my mind hasn’t caught up to them yet. “Other times, he’d use objects. He liked to cut me. Beat me. Told me that, if I said a word, he’d have me sent to the experimental labs.” Everything inside of me tells me not to look up at Rhys, but when I do, it’s clear he’s angry.
No. Angry isn’t the word.
If I were the reason for the expression on his face right now, I’d think I was staring into the eyes of death himself.
Hot breath expels from his nose like a mad bull seeing red. His jaw tics with the grinding of his teeth. Fingers dig into my arm as he stares off, silently absorbing what I’ve said.
“I eventually became pregnant. Ivan tried to have me killed, and I lost the baby.”
He jolts to a sitting position and turns away from me.
Tears fill my eyes as I stare at his scarred back, completely lost as to what could possibly be going through his head right now, so I say the first thing that comes to mine. “I’ll understand if you don’t want me now.”
His head kicks to the side, brows pinched to a frown. “Is that what you think? I don’t want you now?”
Tears blur his form, until they spill onto my cheek and his face sharpens once more. “It’s because of me the baby’s dead. I killed it.” I wipe the tears from my cheeks, unable to look at him with my confession. “I’m ruined.”
“We’re all ruined, Wren. We’ve all got scars. Only difference between mine and yours is what you can see on the skin.” He reaches out for me, grabbing hold of my arm, and drags me across the bed. Once close enough, he lifts me onto his lap, and I wrap my arms around his neck. Fingers tangled within my hair, he crushes me to his lips, and I can’t breathe as he kisses me like he’s trying to suck the pain from my lungs and free me from this suffocating guilt. This hell I’ve been trapped inside for so long. He rests his forehead to mine, his fingers rubbing against my crown. “You’re mine, little bird. Nothing, and no one, will ever change that.”
I love him. I can’t bring myself to say those words aloud yet, for fear the pain will hear me, but I do.
I truly and irrevocably love him.
Chapter 38
A chill skates across my spine, and I shiver awake. The void inside my head is neither a dream, nor a nightmare. Eyes open, I pat the empty bed beside me and breathe in the heady scent of sex still clinging to the sheets. My mind tells me it’s morning, but the exhaustion lingering in my bones says I’ve only slept an hour, maybe two.
Yet, Rhys is gone.
Pushing up from the bed, I scan the room for him, shivering at the cool air that brushes across my bare breasts. Folding my arms to cover them, I slide from the bed and gather my shirt and jeans I’d discarded earlier, slipping them on as I make my way toward the door.
The hallway is dark and quiet. The main cavern is equally still, save for the embers that glow in the dying bonfire. Everyone is sleeping in mounds of blankets scattered across the floor.
A faint sound reaches my ear. One I know all too well, and not even the distance of it can hide its familiarity. Human suffering.
Ratchet lies slumped over himself beside the dark hallway that calls to me with its agonized moans. I tiptoe past him, letting the black tunnel draw me into its depths, as I make my way toward the end of it. Gravel cracks beneath my bare feet, and I flinch at the needling pain across my heel.
The further I go, the louder the screams. I continue on until they’re at their sharpest peak, and I pat the wall, kneeling down to the small beam of light that slices through the darkness.
Through the keyhole, I see a man lying on the floor, his arms and legs bound so tightly behind his back, its almost painful to look at him. The skin across his knuckles has been peeled away, leaving a glistening layer of flesh and the white of bone peeking through. Only the blond of his hair gives away his identity. Ivan.
From the right, a figure comes into view, and my eyes trail upward, to where Rhys stands over Ivan.
The look on his face is vacant, the way he appears sometimes when he wakes from nightmares with his pupils dilated. There’s no discernible expression, just a blankness, as though he’s sleep walking.
“I told … you everything.” Ivan’s voice carries a nasally rasp, like his nose is filled with fluids.
Silently, Rhys reaches down, gripping Ivan by his neck, and I’m struck at how small the soldier looks beside him. He always seemed so much bigger in my nightmares. The terror in Ivan’s eyes is unfitting for the ruthless creature I’ve made him out to be inside my head.
“I … order … you to stop!” A wet barking cough shoots a spray of blood up into Rhys’s face, but fails to interrupt him, as he straightens Ivan’s body. Once he seems satisfied with his position, Rhys draws back his fist.
This is when I should open the door. I should scream at what he’s about to do, to make him stop. I should run back down the hall and alert the others. I’m certain if I told him to stop, he would, but I’m paralyzed.
Mute.
I open my mouth and watch in horror, as Rhys punches Ivan in the chest, and the crack that echoes is a sound I’ve never heard before. Of brutal destruction. Only he doesn’t draw back again.
A cry more animal than human reverberates off the walls, and as I slap my hand to my mouth to trap the scream pushing at the back of my throat, unbidden flashes of memory pass through my mind in rapid succession.
Rattling chains. A dark room. Ivan’s laughter. The tickle of bugs scampering across my skin. Agonizing pain, tearing me open from the inside out. Screams. My screams. Loud and terrible screams ripping through my chest.
I squeeze my eyes so tight, bursts of jagged light drift behind my eyelids with the grinding of my teeth, and as I open them, Ivan’s cries die to a gurgle.
When Rhys finally lifts his hand, a bloody mass sits in his palm, still pulsing with the last beats of Ivan’s life. Rhys tips his head and leans toward where Ivan’s eyes bulge like two saucers, his muscles trembling with the shock.
My body mirrors his, as if it’s my heart sitting in Rhys’s palm. Every muscle beneath my skin quivers like a rubber band about to snap.
It’s neither fear, nor disbelief, that’s claimed my voice and commandeered my body, though. I’ve seen torture and its gruesome aftermath, and have
felt the genuine ache of sympathy for those victims—innocents who didn’t deserve to die in such cruel and meaningless ways. The strange hum beneath my skin, as I peer through the keyhole, isn’t my body’s plea for compassion, or mercy, but a deep level of satisfaction. Atonement.
Vindication.
A wicked excitement that spurs nausea in my stomach.
I focus on Rhys, still kneeling beside Ivan, chin to his chest, which rises and falls with easy breaths, while he examines the flesh in his hand. As if taking life is no more exerting than wiping the blood from his blade.
He is vengeance incarnate. The devil. My dark messenger of pain and retribution.
I should fear him, but I don’t.
And I know why.
Reality’s cold whisper springs goosebumps across my skin, as the truth settles inside my head. I enjoyed watching Ivan’s pain. His suffering. A confession so chilling I can scarcely acknowledge it in my head, let alone say it aloud. The sounds of agony that once bled from my own chest now crash inside my head with sadistic pleasure. And from the darkest depths of my soul, I yearn for more of it.
Not just for me, but for every life he’s taken. Every child he’s murdered.
He doesn’t deserve his heart. It never served him, anyway.
A second scream echoes the first, and Rhys snaps his head to the right, where I’m guessing Damian sits out of view. He tosses Ivan’s heart toward the voice, and the scream heightens to terror. Returning his attention back to Ivan, Rhys pulls the long grisly blade from his holster and sets the edge of it to Ivan’s throat.
My thoughts drift to the words in Papa’s journal, stories I’m certain he left behind as a cautionary tale of hate and its unfulfilling destruction. Yet, here I sit, reveling in another man’s brutal torture.
Shame gnaws at my conscience. I can’t watch.
Falling backward onto the ground, I peel my gaze from the horror of what comes next. Just like in my dream. Another skull to add to Rhys’s morbid collection.
Perhaps I did make him this way. Maybe I’m the monster, and he’s just the capable henchman.
I crawl across the gravel, stumbling to push to my feet, and run blindly through the tunnel, back toward the light.
Away from the darkness.
I’m still awake, when the door opens then clicks shut. With my back to Rhys, I lie with a million thoughts running through my head—namely, why I’m still lying in his bed. Surrounded by the skulls of victims who probably died as horrifically. Ones I just assume were equally bad people.
It’s not having watched Ivan die a brutal death that I find troubling, though. He’s committed more sickening crimes to others, and by all accounts, probably deserved a worse fate than that.
I want to say that it was the look on Rhys’s face. No emotion. No hesitation. No control.
That’s really what I should be questioning right now, what a normal person would be questioning. After all, I’ve been in the throes of his grip before, waiting for death to steal me away.
For whatever reason, though, he stopped with me. He grappled for a minute over his control, but he stopped.
I wish my confliction had anything to do with the fear that he might possibly do the same to me during one of his blackouts, but they’re not.
I don’t fear Rhys. I never have. Not even now, having watched his brutality first hand.
And that’s what frightens me most. Had I not said anything about Ivan, perhaps he’d have been spared, but a small part of me wouldn’t have accepted such an injustice. I know this. It’s why I told Rhys my darkest secret, one I vowed never to tell anyone. The shadowed side of my head wished for this, and by confessing my pain, I sent Rhys on a mission of revenge.
Because I’m sick. And so is he. We’re the perfect, twisted match, destined for pain like a sad tragedy.
The moth who fell in love with the flame.
He’s the reaper, and I’m his disciple.
Perhaps the old woman was right. Maybe I am a witch. Maybe the evil of Calico that once seeped into my bones has been awakened. That I feel nothing for Ivan is proof my skin has become numb, my heart as cold as the vengeance that runs through my blood.
The same vengeance that guided Rhys’s reaping hands.
The crunching gravel sounds his pacing back and forth. It stops. An expelled breath and a groan. Quiet follows.
The bed dips, and I squeeze my eyes shut, tucking myself into a tight ball away from him.
I inwardly flinch at the touch of his hands along the edge of my body and the short spike of his hair that presses into my spine. He peppers kisses over my skin, his hands trembling against me, so soft, like whispers dancing over the surface.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” His quiet voice is hardly discernible, but I feel his apology riding the heat of his breath across my back.
I close my eyes, allowing the gathered tears to fall against the cotton pillow, as the truth surfaces over the chaos inside my head.
I’ve fallen in love with a monster.
And, perhaps, so has he.
Chapter 39
Red sits in the corner of the cavern, poking a stick into the dirt, and I plop down beside her.
“Ain’t the same without Crank,” she says, tossing the stick away.
I wish his death was the only thing on my mind, but it isn’t. “It’s hard to survive a femoral shot. I knew the moment they laid him down he wouldn’t make it.”
Her brows pinch, and she nods. “I know. No sense in moping around over it. Too much work to be done.”
“Where’d Rhys go?” I ask, keeping my gaze locked on the tunnel across from us, where Ratchet half-heartedly stands guard, carving a stick with his blade.
“A sweep. One of the soldiers got loose last night. Took off. They think Ragers might’ve gotten him.”
“Lea? I’m not stupid. I saw what happened to him.” I turn and see her snap her gaze away from mine. “Where’s Damian? The other guard?”
“Still tied up.”
“Yeah. Do you think one of them would’ve taken off without the other? I’m guessing not.” I push to my feet, and she grabs hold of my arm.
“Where are you going?”
“To make a deal. One that I hope will end all of this.” I wrench my arm away from her and stride toward the entrance of the tunnel.
Abandoning his carving, Ratchet stands to block my passage, and I shoot a glance back at Red. At her nod, he steps aside, and I slip down the dark rabbit hole once again.
Whimpers bleed from the other side of the closed door, and I enter the room that must’ve served as a kitchen back in the hotel’s heyday. Across the room, Damian is tied naked to a large iron structure that looks like an old wood stove. The black Legion uniforms lay in a heap, well out of his reach, along with their guns, walkie-talkies, and masks. Pools of desiccating blood are scattered across the floor, seeping into the thick bed of dirt that covers the stone beneath. Damian’s face is hardly recognizable, bloodied and beaten.
“’The fuck?” He tips his head, as I approach, and when I crouch in front of him, he scrambles backward away from me. “Stay away! D-d-don’t touch me!”
“I’m not going to touch you, Damian. I’m here to talk.”
What little I can make out of his eyes is wary, shifting back and forth. “Just … kill me. Please.”
“No. I’m not killing you, and no one is going to touch you.”
“He will! He’s coming back! He … h-h-he fuckin’ … monster! A demon from hell!”
“Ivan’s done far worse, and you know it.”
Damian stares back with an incredulous look on his face, which turns grim. “He skinned him. In front of me. Please let me go. Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone you’re here. Just let me go.”
“I can’t. I’ll talk to him. He’ll spare you.”
“He fucking skinned him! And he made me eat his heart! Sick fuck!”
It feels as if I’m swallowing a rock, as I tamp down the guilt of having watched
Rhys’s fist punch through Ivan’s chest, and that sickening crack of bone that will forever haunt me. “Damian, listen to me.”
“You’re all a bunch of sick fucks!”
“I’ll talk to him. No one will hurt you, I promise.”
“I hope every one of you bastards burn! I hope Legion finds you all and burns you alive! You twisted fucks!” A barky wet cough spurts a glob of blood onto his lip, and he throws himself forward in a violent, seizing fit that sends a torrent of red colored vomit splashing at my feet.
I rise up from my crouch, backing away from him and the urges calling to me, telling me to do the right thing.
“I hope you all burn! Burn!”
I follow the path to the tinaja, where Rhys sits kneeling at the edge, splashing water onto his face. His hand shoots to his holster as I approach, and when he catches a glimpse of me, he exhales and releases it.
“I saw everything.”
With his back to me, he rolls his shoulders, but doesn’t say a word in response, so I continue.
“I know why you did it. It was my fault. I did that to you. Just like I made you kill all those people whose skulls you sleep with now.”
His head kicks to the side. “He hurt you. So I hurt him.”
“And he deserved it. But that’s not you. That’s not the Six I remember.”
“I already told you I wasn’t the same boy you knew. You don’t let your enemies walk in this world unless you plan to face them twice.”
“I want you to let Damian go.”
“So he can go back to Legion and tell them what I’ve done? Tell them exactly where to find us?” He turns his attention back to the water and scoops a handful in his palm. “You’re crazy,” he says, splashing it onto his face.
“He called you a monster. He thinks you’re some kind of desert demon. They’ll just think he’s delirious. You don’t have to send him off with his walkie-talkie and a care package. Leave him at the mercy of the desert. He’ll never make it, anyway. He’s not a survivor.”
He’s shaking his head, but I can see the contemplation in his eyes, so I continue.