19. Silas

It's startingto get dark as I make my way to the makeshift holding cell that holds Juliet's ex-boyfriend. He ranted and raged for hours before he finally shut up. He's been calm for a while, so it's been deemed safe to let him out.

I volunteered to do it.

I unlock the door, throwing it open to find him sitting on the bed at the far end of the otherwise bare room.

"Evening, mate." I cross my arms over my chest, leaning against the door frame. "How are we tonight?"

"About fucking time," he snarls, scrambling to his feet. "I can't believe you left me in here all day."

"Just wanted to give you a chance to calm down."

He stalks towards me, glaring when I don't move out of his way. "So can I go?"

"I thought you and me could take a little walk, have a chat." I smile at him amicably.

"Why the fuck would I want to talk to you?" He says with a snort.

I look around me, then lean closer conspiratorially. "I know about what happened with Braun."

His eyebrows shoot up. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"It's OK." I give him a wink. "I found the footage, I know what happened. Braun was less than careful, but I covered for you."

His face crinkles, considering what I'm saying for a moment before he relaxes. "So you know everything?"

"I've got a pretty good idea." I step aside from the door, waving him out. "Come on, stretch your legs, you must be feeling like shit after being in here all day."

He ambles out of the room into the evening light and takes a deep breath. "Thanks, man."

"No problem, mate." I start towards the gardens. "Come on, fewer prying ears down here."

He eyes me with distrust, so I give him my most dazzling wanker smile, pull out a cigarette case and offer him one.

"Go on, mate. You deserve it. Dealing with crazy women." I wink, holding the case closer to him. "Just don't tell anyone, ey?"

That does the trick, and with a snort he takes a cigarette and lets me light it for him.

"Crazy women is right," he says, watching me light my own cigarette. He falls into step beside me as we walk down the hill, the sky above us turning orange and purple.

Matt puffs out a cloud of smoke heavily. "You gotta know, I never meant for her to get hurt." He's looking at me, I can see it out of the corner of my eye. "But that feeder, he caught me."

"You were disconnecting the alarms, right?" I turn my head to look at him. "Your file says you have an engineering degree."

He dips his head. "Yeah, I know it's extreme, but the shit that Boston is hiding from you all, you know, it's bad."

"I believe that." I nod, taking a deep drag of my cigarette. "Boston don't give a shit about us."

"Look, I know some of you are on the up-and-up, alright?" He stops, and I do too, turning to face him. "I know not all of you are bad guys, but this." He gestures vaguely around the compound. "This needs to be stopped. There has to be a better way for us to co-exist than us being captives."

"You're right, there has to be." I slide my hands into my pockets, continuing to walk in the direction of one of the garden sheds. "Juliet's really not willing to listen to you on all this, is she?"

Matt sighs heavily. "No. I mean, I get it, she got hurt. It wasn't meant to be that way."

"How was it meant to be?" I kick a stone along the path. "I mean, maybe if you explain it to me, I can talk to her. Put in a good word, you know?"

"Yeah, she seems to like you a lot." His voice takes on a cynical edge, and I smile over at him.

"Girls with trauma always just want a big man to protect them." I hold his gaze, smirking, and after a moment he laughs.

"Yeah, you're right." He shrugs. "So that feeder-"

"Braun?"

"Yeah, Braun, right. He catches me. And I was convinced I was done for, like game over, you know? But he tells me, you know, your girlfriend, she's hot. That's all he wanted, I couldn't believe it."

I blow out a puff of smoke and shake my head. "That's seriously all he wanted?"

Matt holds out a spread hand towards me. "Right? Like, he's willing to give up his whole compound for some ass? It was fucking crazy."

I let out a low whistle. "Is she even that good?"

Matt laughs out loud. "Look, she tries. She's basically a virgin, has no idea how to get a guy off. But hey, she's easy on the eyes, and, well." He leans over and lowers his voice. "Between you and me, she's tight as fuck. Like, I'm talking you have to work to get into her. So that's fun."

"Wow, really selling her there." I clap him on the shoulder. "So you told Braun all this?"

Matt throws his hands up, gazing into the darkening sky. "I agreed to help him get laid. I was meant to get her all warmed up for him, and then he'd have some fun with her. He told me he'd never hurt her, he just wanted his piece of ass, and everyone walks away happy."

I suck on my teeth. "You didn't think that maybe she'd be, I dunno, opposed to this plan?"

"Man, I panicked. And look, I'm a feminist and all that, I know consent is the thing." He rolls his eyes a little as he says it. "But, you know, she said she loved me, she'd rather that than have me dying, right?"

I rub my chin thoughtfully. "I mean, when you put it like that… But then why didn't you just talk to her about it? She strikes me as an easy lay, surely she'd have just done what you said?"

"You know, I think I was so freaked out by that feeder catching me, I just went with whatever." We reach the shed, and Matt turns to lean his back against the wall. "I never wanted her to get hurt. If I could just explain to her that we need to do things, you know, if we want shit to change, we need to make sacrifices."

"Of course, mate. I get that." I lean against the wall beside him. "Shame she's being so difficult, ey?"

He glances over at me. "So you think you can talk some sense into her?"

"You know, I think I can." I nod, taking a long drag on the cigarette, listening to it crackle. "Or I can deal with you myself, right now." I round on Matt, whose eyes widen.

He opens his mouth to scream, but my hand is already around his throat, crushing his windpipe. I heave him through the door of the garden shed, slamming him into the wall and baring my fangs at him.

"You fucking limp-dick fuck." I press the still-burning cigarette into his eye, and his screams are smothered by my hand crushing his neck. He convulses and flails, but it's useless. "You know, ever since I saw that footage, I've been fantasizing about ways to make you suffer. To make you bleed and feel pain unlike any you've ever felt before."

His mouth snaps open and shut, whispered shrieks bursting from his lips. His tongue lolls around uselessly, his one good eye clenched shut as the other one smokes and steams.

"Unfortunately, mate, I don't have the time to make you suffer. But one thing I did want you to know, is that my girl was always thinking about me when you fucked her. The whole five seconds you managed." I laugh cruelly, enjoying this moment way more than I should. "And very soon, it'll be my cock in that tight little cunt, and I will make her scream in ways you could only ever dream of." I overcome my revulsion at touching his pathetic dick, clawing my hands around him and tearing that useless fucking appendage straight from his body.

The scream reverberates through his body, no sound coming from his mouth, his one eye flying open as blood flows down his legs. I shove his dick into his mouth, forcing it down his throat as far as I can manage. He collapses to the ground, legs kicking, hands flailing at his mouth as he tries to breathe. Red foam spills from between his lips, cascading down the sides of his face as the flapping of his hands becomes more frantic and uncoordinated.

I retrieve the molotov cocktail I'd hidden in here earlier, lighting the rag at the end of the bottle.

"Godspeed, mate. Have a great time roasting in hell."

I slam the bottle down next to him, the flames engulfing him quickly. There's hay all over the shed, it's going to burn nicely. I take a cigarette from the case, leaning down to light it in the fire burning Matt's flesh from his bones, then leave him there, shutting the door behind me.

No feeders see me as I walk back to my cabin, and thank fuck because my hands are dripping blood, it's sprayed all over my clothes. I pause on my front porch, taking the last few drags of my cigarette. The fire alarm goes off just as I stamp the butt out under my boot.

I head straight to the bathroom, stripping off my clothes and dumping them on the floor. I'm not going out there. I just listen to the alarm drone as I wash the blood from my skin. By the time they find out someone was in that fire, it'll be impossible to tell how he died. And then I'll reveal what I know about the footage, how it all makes sense now. How he must have been planning another attack, a diversion, to distract us from another wave of Afflicted. Just one of the revolutionaries Sam was talking about. That Boston warned us about.

I wash the blood off my hands, running them over my face. There's a niggling feeling of shame in my chest, about how I talked about my girl. The things I said about her. Even just saying those words to gain that fucker's trust, and then to torture him - yeah, that felt like shit.

No one's ever going to talk about her like that again.

I'll make sure of it.

* * *

As predicted,charred human remains are found inside the shed. Burned beyond recognition. They can only identify him because there's only one human missing.

There's shock when I reveal to my colleagues that Braun was in on it, that he blackmailed this man into letting his girlfriend be raped. Outrage when I tell them I discovered who disarmed the perimeter alarms. And here he was, doing it again. Trying to create a distraction. Fucking bastard.

Matt's remains are thrown into a grave in the cemetery, covered with dirt and forgotten about. I go out one night under the light of the full moon to piss on it.

Petty? Sure.

But it made me feel a whole lot better.

What I didn't expect to see was Juliet fade away.

As the days wear on, she becomes paler and thinner. Her freckles stand out against the pallor of her skin. Her eyes are blank. She stops coming to the gym. She barely gets involved in gardening, which she always loved before. She doesn't sneak off to the stream anymore, which I try to convince myself is just because it's cooler now.

But that's not it.

She screamed when they told her Matt had died. Even amongst his betrayal, she still felt something for him. It wasn't all just erased.

On a stormy afternoon, I head across the yard as thunder rumbles overhead, and I spot Juliet sitting on a bench, knees pulled up to her chin. She's hugging her legs tightly, staring out at the falling rain.

I approach her slowly, making sure she can hear my footsteps.

"Hey," I say once I'm beside her. "What're you doing out here all on your own?"

"Just listening to the rain," she replies, her chin bouncing gently on her knees. "I like the rain."

I sit down on the bench, smiling. "So do I. But being English I suppose I don't have much choice there."

Her face softens into something that's not quite a smile, her eyes not meeting mine. "Do you miss it?"

"Not really. I mean, bits and pieces yeah. But England is just a lot of painful memories now." Shit, this isn't the conversation I should be having to try and cheer her up. "But anyway, that doesn't matter."

"I used to be a swimmer." Her lower lip trembles a little. "I like the water, I like the rain. That's why I go down to the stream. My mom, she…" She trails off, giving a small, sad laugh. "She wanted a water birth, but because she had twins she wasn't allowed to. So she always joked that I was mad I missed out on my water debut. That's why I spent so much of my life in the water." Her eyes are glistening with tears as she looks at me. "My hair was green when I was a kid, sun-bleached and green from chlorine. I was in the water all day."

"I bet you were a great swimmer."

She nods, her eyes drifting back to the falling rain that drums heavily on the tin roof above us. "I had a scholarship to college. A swimming scholarship. They said I'd make the Olympic team. I didn't want to do that though, I just wanted to do it to enjoy it." She smiles wistfully. "I really wanted to be an art teacher. I mean, I think I did. I always loved drawing. I was kind of good at it."

"I was an art major."

Her eyebrows shoot up as she looks at me. "Really?"

"Yep." I nod, looking out at the rain. "Drove my family crazy, my room always stank of oil paint, no tea towel in the house was safe from becoming a paint rag."

She chuckles a little, and I look back quickly to see that face, that face that isn't haunted by sadness. She tucks her hair behind her ear, and hugs her legs a little tighter. "Who's your favorite artist?"

I exhale heavily. "That's hard to say. I think Degas. I loved all those dressing room paintings, especially as a teenage boy. Gave me an excuse to look at tits without getting in trouble."

Juliet bursts out laughing. "I bet."

"And how about you?"

Her lips twitch. "I don't know. I think Jackson Pollock. Everyone says it's all just a mess, but I think it's beautiful. I like art where you can, I don't know, imagine yourself in it, you know? Like, what was that person thinking when they made that painting? What were they feeling? And you look at it and go, oh yeah. I get it. I've seen the world that way too."

My girl isn't just beautiful. She's smart too. I could listen to her talk like this forever. "And what did you like to draw?"

"I did a lot of still life, flowers and stuff. I liked doing roses, all those petals. I liked drawing people too, but I could never get the hands right."

I nod. "Hands aren't easy."

"What did you like to paint?" Her eyes are bright now, full of life and curiosity.

I give her a crooked grin. "I did a lot of life art."

"Oh, you really like tits, huh?"

I chuckle as she smiles from behind her fingers. "I've always liked bodies. Drawing them is fun, just how different we all look. Shapes and colors and all of that. I love it."

"So that's what you were before you were turned? An artist? Because I thought you were a doctor."

I regard her with a laugh. "A doctor? Me?"

"Yeah, you know, you're good with needles. You're the first vamp that hasn't completely destroyed my arm."

My mood plummets, my past coming crashing down on me. I look out at the falling rain, leaning my elbows on my knees. "No, not a doctor, though my dad would have loved that. He was a solicitor, and my mum was a music teacher at a very prestigious music conservatory in London."

"Oh wow." She lowers her knees, wrapping her legs into a pretzel. "That's so cool."

"Yeah it was. I just fell well short of their expectations."

"As an artist you fell short of their expectations?"

I clear my throat. I don't want to tell her the truth. I don't want to tell her what kind of a man I really was before Margot turned me, and saved me. But when I lift my eyes back to hers, and I see all that softness and vulnerability, I find myself talking before I can stop myself.

"I was a heroin addict."

I expect her to be shocked. I expect her to be repulsed. I expect her to jerk away from me.

Instead her brows knit together, and she reaches out to put a hand over mine. "Oh god, I'm sorry."

I'm frozen for a second, completely overwhelmed with disbelief. She isn't judging me. She isn't disgusted. She just wants to sit here and hold my hand. I swallow hard.

"Yeah, it wasn't great. University just introduced me to what my parents called, The Wrong Crowd. I thought the drugs made me a better artist, gave me a clearer vision of the world, or whatever the fuck I told myself. Instead, it just had me breaking into houses and made me a criminal." I rub my hands together. "That's how I got to know my way around alarms and security. Not the most honorable way I suppose."

"Addiction doesn't make you a bad person," she says softly. "Addiction fucks up your priorities. And look at you, you got clean, and now you wear a uniform and scare people with your British accent."

I smile at her. "My accent scares you?"

"No, not me. Just everyone else. I like your voice. It's nice." Her fingers stroke over mine, and the touch sends volts of pleasure down my spine. "Well, if you ever want to draw again, maybe we could draw together. I can show you just how badly I can fuck up a hand."

"Ah, but you can do an amazing rose, right?"

She smiles, nodding. "Well, you draw the hand and I'll draw the rose for it to hold."

I lace my fingers through hers, looking down at our joined hands. "Sounds good to me."

We sit there a while longer, just talking and laughing. Her cheeks flush pink. She looks so beautiful. When I finally leave her, I feel good, like maybe she's withstood the worst.

So when a few hours later the alarm gets raised that one of the humans is missing, I'm gripped with panic. It's Juliet. She didn't show up for dinner.

I run through the driving rain, into the forest. Please no. Please no. Fuck, please no.

She had a moment of clarity. A high. I've seen it before. I saw it in Harriet's face. After those fucking boys at school assaulted her.

Tears bite at my eyes. No. NO.

Harriet had smiled at me widely, assuring me she was fine. What those boys had done was done, she was over it.

My feet thump against the sodden ground, and I hear the crashing of the stream over the falling rain.

Please, no no. Fuck. Please.I don't know who I'm praying to. I sure as fuck don't believe in god. But I plead anyway.

My roar echoes off the trees around me as I see Juliet floating face down in the overflowing stream.