by Monty Jay
“My money is on the girl with the knife.”
Lyra sends the silver edge of the blade into the side of Finn’s neck, sinking into the vein like she’s slicing through a ripened fruit. The blood loss is immediate. It spurts from the open wound when she yanks it from the hole.
Scarlet liquid that reeks of metal cascades across Thatcher’s shoulder, pouring down the front of his shirt like a rushing waterfall. There is a wild look in his eye, one I’ve never seen before as he watches it drip down him, slipping down the collar of his shirt.
Lyra’s hand is steady as she drops the knife to the floor. There is no fear or panic on her face; she looks like she always does—passive and unbothered by what’s going on in the world. Blood coats her tiny pale hand, and instead of looking to the man she’d just killed as he falls to the ground, she simply steps back, letting his body slug to the floor, and stays fixated on Thatcher. Her gaze never moves from him, not even for a second.
“This was a new shirt,” he breathes, his chest heaving as he turns around to look at her, a dead body the only thing between them.
“It was ugly. The blood made it look better,” she says, lifting her sunken eyes up to him. With her bloody hand and the purple bags beneath her eyes from the lack of sleep, she reminds me of a Tim Burton character—frizzy hair, eyes too big for her face, pasty skin.
“Is he dead?” I hear come from the kitchen, and it only takes her voice for me to turn all my attention in her direction.
I never believed in Heaven or Hell.
Fate or destiny.
I never stood outside and wished on falling stars.
No, I never believed in anything like that, but I do believe in her.
“Is my dad dead?” she breathes, her eyes dancing with innocent little demons, and I’d never seen chaos in such a beautiful state.
Such a striking shade of blue, tangled with the fire I love to play with.
Is it fate? Is it destiny?
That as a boy, even before the death of my mother, I would sit for hours staring into open flames, refusing to pull my eyes away from it. Too consumed, too enthralled with the way the smoke sang in swirls and the embers stung my skin.
And those same flames dance in the corners of her eyes. So hot, so fucking blue, and I want to roast alive inside of them.
Maybe I’d always seen her inside the fire.
Or maybe I’d just been born in the blaze.
“Not yet,” Thatcher says. “We need to get this cleaned up, Rook,”
“Get Silas, go with Lyra, and get the fuck out of here. When the police show up, I can’t have you covered in blood,” I say, moving towards Sage.
“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever needs to be done. I just need you out of here before that happens.”
I reach her, my hands caging her face between them, pulling her lips to my own. I drown myself in her touch for a solitary moment between the mayhem. My piece of heaven inside my very own hell.
“Do you trust me?” I whisper against her mouth.
She nods, wrapping her fingers around my wrist. “Always.”
I lead her farther into the kitchen, searching around for the materials I need. I toss a copper pan onto the stove, opening her fridge and grabbing some random piece of frozen meat before grabbing the vegetable oil.
We don’t have time to get rid of two bodies. We don’t have the time to clean up our evidence from being inside this place. There are too many variables involved, and we need to get rid of this mess now.
“What are we going to do?” she asks, watching me as I turn on all the burners on high, placing the pan onto one of the open ones along with the meat.
I drain the entire bottle of oil across the stovetop, the pan, along the kitchen counter. Our best bet out of this is making this fire look like an accident, like the people who died inside weren’t murdered; they’d simply gotten trapped by the flames.
This was it.
The moment we’d all waited so long for.
Rome hadn’t been built in a day, that’s what Alistair kept telling me when I’d get impatient.
But it burned down in one.
“Burn it. All of it. To the fucking ground. And it’s not we,” I say, looking at her, knowing if something were to go wrong right now, I’d do anything to protect her from it.
She had never been the innocent Eve in the garden.
She had always been my Lilith. My equal. My queen. A phoenix.
I reach into my front pocket, pulling my matches out.
“This is your revenge. Your embers to make and your ashes to rise from. You never needed anything but the match.”
Sage
I sit against the wall of the Pierson’s many spare bedrooms. Naively, I thought the inside of this place would look more like a morgue than a home. I fully expected to find a coffin inside of Thatcher’s bedroom. It made sense that he would sleep inside one. It would match the creature people loved comparing him to.
I’d been wrong.
The extravagant house that he called home was everything you would expect from someone with money like his. The first time I’d been here a few weeks ago, I was too distracted to pay attention to how much money the Piersons had.
While we were all well-off, Thatcher was bathing in wealth. His great grandfather’s hard work of pioneering a real estate company had secured his family’s lives well beyond his years. Even if Thatcher, his kids, and their grandchildren never worked another day in their lives, they would never want for anything.
The extremely tall ceilings and Gatsby inspired architecture made my family’s house look like a servants’ quarters. Much like Alistair, Thatcher lived on an estate.
We were staying along the west wing, where we were told most guests stayed. And it felt weird to be staying in such a casually expensive home after what we had just done.
Shutting my eyes, I rest my head against the wall, seeing nothing but smoke and a swirl of orange flames. I had stood frozen on the front lawn of my house, the flashing sirens simply a dull whine in the back of my mind.
My hand was curled through the slits of Rook’s fingers, both of us standing there hand in hand as the blue flashing lights reflected off our faces. My neighbors had come outside to examine the chaos. This would be the talk of the town for a good three months.
Tears were streaming down my face, not because of what I had lost inside, because while that fire was burning, it felt like it was over. For the first time since Rosie’s death, there was this peace that had settled over me, even though everyone around us saw the complete opposite.
My father, Detective Breck, all the painful memories that house had brought me over the course of a lifetime were now turning into nothing but ash and dust. Soot that firemen would wash off their boots in the morning.
Now, sitting here, I still can’t find it in me to regret what I had done.
I know that killing someone is supposed to be this mark on your soul that stays with you forever, something that eats away at the humanity inside you until you finally break and tell the world what you’ve done.
But it doesn’t feel like that.
And maybe that makes me some kind of psychopath or something, but all I feel is relief that he’s gone. That the man who was responsible for the sharpest pain I’d ever felt was no longer breathing, nothing but a pile of charred bones and seared skin. His body was destroyed, and I hoped his soul was headed to some form of internal torture. Where he would spend his years suffering for what he did to his own flesh and blood.
Rook referenced Dante’s Inferno when I asked him if he thought my father was in Hell. He said that those who choose the sin of greed are assigned to the fourth circle of Hell. Those who hoard too much money or choose wealth over anything else. But he believed that was too easy for him.
He said he’d be in the very last Ring, the ninth circle, those who betray their own kin. Where inside my father will spend eternity lodged inside of the frozen lake of ice headfirst.
Contrary to most religious teachings, Dante said that the pit of hell was cold and without love.
Rook had told me this as we waited for the police and firefighters to arrive, and I distinctly remember smiling, recalling the times that my father would turn the thermostat up in our home because he couldn’t stand to be cold.
“Why are you on the floor?”
I open my eyes, seeing Rook wearing nothing but a white towel around his waist. His hair is wet and falling down his forehead, drips of water falling down onto his chest.
My body was tired, mentally exhausted from everything we’d just endured the past few hours. From the fire to the police, to the hospital afterward. But somehow, my legs find the strength to stand up and move towards him.
His skin is blistering red. He’d allowed himself to stand underneath the stream of searing hot water until it turned cold I’m sure. My fingers reach out to run across the top of his shoulder blade, sadness in my eyes.
“Rook—” I mutter,
“Don’t Sage.” He interrupts me, tightening his jaw. “I’m holding onto my promise by a thread here.”
“What happened to Silas tonight was not your fault,” I tell him anyway, even though he doesn’t want to hear it.
Angry at my words, he moves past me, walking towards our bed for the night, and falls to the edge of the mattress. With a sigh, he drops his head between his shoulders, looking at the ground.
I know he isn’t angry with me. Not really. He’s angry at himself because he felt like if anyone could have stopped this, it would have been him.
“Then whose fault was it? Hmm?” He grunts, emotion choking his throat. Rook had been so strong at the hospital. Stood his ground even when Silas’s mother, Zoe, broke down into a mess of tears in his arms.
He held her tightly, his spine stiff and jaw taunt at the hospital waiting room. For the first time since I’d met him, he’d been able to remove all the emotion from himself. The emotion that drives him was gone.
I knew he’d have to break down, eventually. He could only be strong for so long. And when he watched his best friend get wheeled into an ambulance for transportation to a facility, I could see the crack in his eyes.
This had broken him.
“I knew he wasn’t okay.” He presses his fingers into his chest. “I fucking knew it and I did nothing. That’s my best friend, Sage and I almost let him kill himself.”
His fingers turn into hard fists, he slams them into his chest repeatedly. Chasing the relief that comes from hurting himself.
I kneel between his legs, grabbing his wrists, hating to see him like this.
My fire god.
The one that burns so bright and so fierce, was dwindling out by the second.
“Rook, look at me,” I whisper, “Look at me,” I say again until he finally lifts his watery eyes to my own.
There is no hellfire inside them right now. Only a brilliant shade of hazel. There is no devil, no Lucifer. Only a man with a broken soul who does not know how to fix it.
“Schizophrenia.” I say, “That’s whose fault this is. Not yours, not mine, not anyone. Silas is sick and he just needs some help. There was nothing you could have done to prevent him from stopping his medicine.”
I’m trying to rationalize with him. To make him see that this was the sickness that lived inside of Silas. One that he had gotten too tired to fight against. But I should have known that would be impossible, not when the wound was this fresh.
All I could do now was hold pressure and hope he didn’t bleed out before I could stitch him up.
“I need to hurt, TG.” He chokes. “I need the pain. Fuck, I need it so bad right now. Someone needs to make me pay for this. Go get Thatcher. Call Alistair. Anything. Please, baby, I need to make it hurt.”
I felt like I’d been wrapped in barbed wire, which was slowly tightening around me the more he spoke. There was no way out of it without slicing myself to pieces. I couldn’t let him hurt himself. I couldn’t let him walk out of this room into Thatcher’s basement and let him cut.
I was stuck between letting someone else hurt him, letting him hurt himself, or taking this into my own hands. But the thought of causing him physical or mental anguish made my gut churn.
Bringing my hands down, I rest them on his thighs, licking my dry lips as I bring my forehead to his, our noses touching each other. The scent of his after-shave—the mix of smoke and mint fills my head. My eyes roamed his face, tracing the remaining water droplets that were missed by the towel.
He turns towards me, the proximity between our bodies reduced to mere inches, and suddenly the air is scorching. As if inhaling would only flood your lungs with smoke—a heat that would burn you from the inside out.
My hands inch upward, slipping beneath the towel. My fingers dip towards his crotch, and I hear him suck a breath in through his teeth.
“What are you doing?” He groans, and the sound makes a spark sizzle inside my stomach.
“The only thing I know I can do for you right now,” I mutter, “Trust me.”
Those words make me nervous. Asking him to do that, knowing all we’d been through.
I wrap my fingers around his semi-erect cock. The heat of his body heat from the shower warms my hand. My heart jumps to my throat as I feel him harden in my grasp.
“This is the opposite of what I need right now.” He inhales sharply as my thumb swipes across the tip. “Shit.” He hisses in pleasure.
I couldn’t hurt him. Not the way he wanted me to, but I knew he needed something to take the edge off, something to ground him. I just want to be what he needs right now. Maybe it’s my way of making it up to him for all the times I wasn’t there before.
Quickly I flip the towel up, exposing his shaft to the air, readjusting on my knees so I’m more comfortable between his legs. I guide the throbbing member to my lips, only letting my tongue swirl around the silver balls that pierce the top. I trace their pattern, repeatedly, until I know he’s miserable from the teasing.
My toes curl when he buries his hands in the back of my hair, both of them grabbing a chuck of my short locks. I can feel the passion in his grip. It radiates from my skull all the way to my toes.
“Sage…” He says to me in a tone of caution, I can feel him try to press my head lower, I can feel just how badly he is craving my entire throat. Wanting to fill it up and stretch it out until I’m choking.
But that isn’t happening tonight, even though I desperately want it to.
I pull back slightly, removing my tongue. My grip on his cock tightens. I test the waters with just how much he can take before he groans in a twisted mix of discomfort and pleasure.
“You get only what I give you, understand?” I tell him, looking up so he can see my eyes. There is a vortex churning behind those eyes, spinning so fast and so hot, it would swallow me whole if I let it. I knew if we were going to do this, it would be by my rules. I’d be taking his control for the time being.
As much as I loved kneeling at his feet, relinquishing my control for the sake of pleasure, there was something powerful in being in command.
“What—”
I twist my wrist, squeezing roughly, “You want to hurt? Then we do it on my terms.”
He doesn’t have a chance to reply because I take the tip of his cock into my mouth, playing with the balls of his piercing. Teasing for another aching moment, before I drop lower on his shaft, taking more of him into my mouth.
I feel the bulging veins tickling my throat as my hands and tongue work in unison. Working up a quick pace that has the room spinning. The sounds of his moans send waves of need throughout my body.
My jaw expands as I take him fully into my throat, my nose pressed against his pubic bone as I struggle to breathe. Fighting the urge to cough, but enjoying the feeling. Pushing myself to make sure I give him what he wants. What he needs.
There is a hunger in the pit of my stomach. A drive to prove a point. To make him understand. I continue to work up and down, spee
ding up just as my free hand cups his heavy balls, rolling them around my fingers before squeezing.
“Shit,” He curses, “Sage, I’m gonna—”
I knew this would be the hard part. Because as I look up, he looks so goddamn beautiful as he chases his release, the way his head falls back and the veins in his neck bulge from the skin. His taut jaw made my entire soul hum with excitement. I was constantly in awe of just how pretty Rook Van Doren was.
It physically hurts me to do what I need to, but I do it anyway. I suck the tip just a little too hard before I remove my touch altogether. Pulling myself away from his cock with a loud pop.
Spit drips in a thin line from his shaft and my mouth, my tongue rolling across my bottom lip, feeling how swollen it is.
“What the—” He looks down at me with furrowed eyebrows, frustrated by his lost orgasm.
The tip of my finger tugs deliberately at the piercings. Knowing it must feel at least uncomfortable, but with his pain tolerance, it probably barely bothers him.
“This was not your fault. None of this was your fault. There isn’t anything more you could have done, Rook.” I tell him, “Do you hear me?”
“Goddammit, Sage, this is not the conversation I want when my cock is in your hands.” He tries to thrust up towards me, his hips jerking, still needing release.
The air is suddenly scorching. As if inhaling would only flood my lungs with smoke—a heat that would burn me from the inside out. My breath caught, trapped inside my lungs.
I pull at the metal I little harder, “Tell me you understand. Tell me you know it wasn’t your fault and I’ll let you come.”
A surge of power washes over my bones. I would make him see the truth, the truth that had always been right in front of him. That he was punishing himself for things that were not his fault as a way of dealing with the hurt they caused.
Instead of blaming the world like the rest of us, Rook always chose himself.
“Fuck,” he says, head falling down, so he is looking at me.
His chest expands and falls repeatedly. I can see the deep-rooted fragility I had always known he had. The one he so badly tries to stifle and starve out until it dies. Right now, he is a brittle piece of glass. If I were to squeeze him too tight, he might shatter in my grip, splintering me with the jagged edges.