Chapter 19

Alexzander

Ithrew the plate of supper in front of Gunnir without meeting his gaze. He hadn't tried to talk to me since he did what he did. I didn't even help him get rid of Sam's body. He wanted to kill her out of anger, so that was all on him. I also didn't care to see what he sometimes did to them once they were dead.

"A pussy is a pussy, even if they ain't breathing."

Yet another thing that differentiated us. Dead girls did nothing for me. No matter how much I used them when they were alive, I couldn't get hard once they grew cold and the blood hardened in their veins. The Man used a small space heater between their legs before he fucked them like that, but Gunnir didn't bother. He didn't need their warmth because their rapidly dropping temperatures matched his cold heart.

I sat down and tried to pick at my food. I thought about how Ophelia had felt on top of me in the bed. I wanted more of that.

The squelching sound of Gunnir's come broke through the memory and made my jaw tick. It was a low blow, even for Gunnir. He wanted to hurt me in the worst kind of way, and he had. I hadn't touched Ophelia since, leaving her locked in the bedroom like a dog that pissed where it shouldn't have. I felt bad about that because she hadn't done anything wrong. She'd been his victim as much as I had.

I pushed around the peas and gravy on my plate, too pissed off to eat.

"Alex, are you really still mad?" Gunnir asked.

I dropped my fork. "Call me Alexzander, Zander, or nothing at all," I snapped. Rage gripped my gut in a fist and squeezed.

Gunnir patted his belly after cleaning off his plate. "What's your problem?"

"You. You're my problem. You know I don't want you touching Ophelia, yet you not only rubbed your come all over her fucking pussy, you made me chase it. You know how I feel about that!" My anger grew, becoming white hot. I grabbed the knife from beside my plate and aimed it toward Gunnir. "Don't fucking touch her again."

Gunnir pushed my hand away. "So angry, little brother. The Man would be proud of you for gaining a pair of balls."

"Fuck you, Gunnir!" I sank the knife through Gunnir's hand with enough force to lodge it within the table's wooden innards. His head reared back, and he let out a scream. Blood spread around the blade, seeping into the wood beneath his pinned palm.

"You're dead!" Gunnir snarled. He gripped the knife handle and freed the blade from his flesh. I kept my eyes on him as he wrapped his hand with a kitchen towel before heading toward his room.

With trembling limbs, I got to my feet and threw the knife in the sink. I didn't know what Gunnir would do next, but he was pushing me past my limits. I put the plates in the sink and went to the bedroom. Ophelia's eyes ran up my body. She started to tremble, probably because she felt the anger radiating from my skin like heat shimmer rolling off pavement. I wouldn't hurt her, though. She was the last one I wanted to hurt at that moment. I wanted to hurt myself or Gunnir, but not her. Never again.

"Why do you have blood on you?" she asked, her eyes falling to my wrist.

"Because Gunnir needs to learn to keep away from you. You aren't his to touch, and I was making sure he remembers that the next time he thinks about it." I pulled a dirty shirt from a small pile on the floor and wiped away the blood.

That seemed to calm her down, and her shoulders relaxed. "Why haven't you ever corrected me when I called you Alex?"

"What do you mean?"

She played with the hem of the flannel shirt engulfing her small frame. "Gunnir said you don't like to be called Alex, and I heard you tell him to stop calling you that. What do you like to be called?"

I shook my head. "I don't care what you call me, but it pisses me off when Gunnir calls me Alex. That's what my mother called me. It's different when you say my name, though."

She stopped playing with the shirt and let her arms fall to her sides. The curves of her breasts pulled the top of the fabric taut, and my mouth watered. I stepped back and brushed a hand through my hair. I wanted her. God, I fucking wanted her, but I couldn't stop thinking about Gunnir claiming her and me with his come.

"Fuck, O." My voice came out in a husky whisper.

"What?" she asked. She rose to her feet and her eyes stared through my soul.

"I can't get past what he did to you last night."

I wanted to claim her again, but the nagging reminder that I was a Bruggar kept my feet sewn to the floor. I was The Man's son. It wouldn't be enough to sink into her again. I would need to take her. I leaned over my dresser and tried to stop myself from erasing all the progress I'd made.

She stayed silent behind me. When the turmoil in my mind settled to a whisper and my vision became my own again, I turned to face her.

"You can't get past it?" she asked. "What he did...what he made me do..."

In two strides, I met her where she stood and pulled her into me. "No. This has nothing to do with you, and you don't deserve to feel like you've done anything wrong. I'm not upset with you at all. It's more than you can understand."

She pulled back and looked up at me. "So tell me. Help me understand."

"No matter who you want me to be or who you think I am, I can never be what you deserve. Even if it's not my fault, even if this is a disease someone else injected into my veins, I'm still harboring a sick infection."

"The Man," she said. "He did this to you. You have to see that. It's not who you are."

"It's not who I want to be, but it's who I am. Why can't you see that? I kept hurting people, even after—" I stopped myself from going any further. She didn't need to know what I'd done, because she'd only see it as proof of my desire to be good instead of evil.

"Don't close up," she said. "Keep talking. It's not like I can run away once you spill your secrets." She lifted the chain and gave it a wiggle.

"It's not that easy, O. No one knows this, not even Gunnir." I sucked in a deep breath. I didn't want to talk, didn't want to admit the cowardly act that would make me a hero in her eyes, but she silently pleaded for me to give her this vulnerable part of me. And I couldn't deny her. "What I'm about to tell you...I didn't do it for courageous reasons. I need you to understand that. I did it out of fear. I did it because I was a selfish, angry, and terrified person."

She looked up at me and gripped my hands in hers. If I'd seen pity or admiration in that moment, I'd have stopped right there. Instead, I saw acceptance. Understanding. It was enough to spur me on.

"The Man had chained me to the floor and kept me there for almost a week because I refused to follow his come after he brought a new girl home. For seven days, he only offered me water and harsh words. On the seventh day, he brought her into the room and unchained me. He and Gunnir had both had their way with her, and he said my only way out of that room was to do what needed to be done."

Tears glossed Ophelia's eyes. She squeezed my hands, encouraging me to tell it all.

"He left the room, but I couldn't do it. It wasn't just following his come that stopped me. It was the pain on her face. The fear. How could I hurt someone when I knew what it meant to be hurt?"

She opened her mouth, and I stopped her before she said what I knew she'd say.

"Don't. It doesn't mean I'm a saint. I'm just as much a devil as The Man and Gunnir."

Her mouth closed. She'd give me that.

"When she realized I wasn't going to do anything to her, she looked out the window. ‘Do you see those flowers?' she asked. I turned my head and spotted a tall patch of white. ‘That's hemlock,' she said. ‘If you get me a handful of it, I'll pretend you did what he wanted you to do so that you can get out of here.'"

"Did you know?" Ophelia asked.

"That hemlock was poisonous?"

She nodded.

"Yeah, I knew." I swallowed down the memory before allowing it to take shape again. "My mom had asked for it once, but when The Man saw me bringing her a clump of it, he knocked it out of my hands, explained why she wanted it, and beat the shit out of me for taking orders from a whore."

When I closed my mouth and didn't continue, she gave me a gentle nudge. "Keep going."

I pushed my mother from my mind and soldiered on. "She was as good as her word. She kept up her end of the bargain and when I got out of that room, I kept up mine. I didn't just pull enough hemlock for her, though. I took some for myself. I stuffed it in my pockets and planned to make a nice tea with it once I'd paid her for her help. Figured I'd sit in the living room and sip it while we watched the evening news."

Ophelia sucked in a breath.

"I snuck into the basement and handed off her share. Told her to wait until later in the night. The Man was well on his way to being drunk, and I didn't want him to find her until the next day. When I went to make the tea, The Man hollered for me to bring him some food. That's when it hit me. I could get rid of the problem."

"You put the hemlock in his food, didn't you?"

I nodded.

"Didn't he taste it?"

I shrugged and shook my head. "If he tasted it, he never said anything. He was probably too drunk."

As hard as it was, I told the rest of it. How he'd started to sweat and convulse. How Gunnir had rushed into the room and asked what had happened. How I'd said he was choking, and the idiot believed it. How Gunnir had hollered for me to perform the "Hemlock Maneuver" and how I'd fought to hold back a fit of laughter because the irony of his word choice nearly sent me over the edge. How I'd smiled as the man suffocated on his own vomit.

When I finished, Ophelia pulled me into her and rested her head against my chest. "I don't think you were brave for doing that," she said. "If you had been brave, you would have finished off your brother and ended the whole mess. You never would have taken another woman. You never would have taken me."

She understood without having to be told. I'd killed him to save myself, not anyone else, and I hadn't even done that right. I'd stayed with Gunnir and kept doing the things I hated because it was all I knew. And even knowing all this, she pressed herself against me because she believed I could be better. Even though a disease saturated my soul, she believed I could be healed.

I tilted her chin, looked into her eyes, and vowed to myself that I'd go no further than a kiss. I wouldn't be like The Man. I would be the man she saw in me.

I leaned into her and captured her mouth with my own. My hands rested against the soft, warm pulse in her neck, and I stepped into her until her back pressed against the wall. I kissed her. Our mouths moved together, soft and slow, but with an undercurrent of hunger that wasn't a one-sided need. I tasted it on her tongue, heard it in the soft whimper against my lips. I could claim her in a way The Man and Gunnir could never claim a woman. She was mine because she chose to belong to me.

A crash beyond the bedroom door pulled me away from her perfect mouth. "Stay here," I said.

I left the bedroom and entered the hall. Another crash sounded from the living room, and I aimed my feet toward the noise. When I rounded the corner, I saw Gunnir with a bat in his hands, standing over the shattered corpse of what had once been a lamp. He turned with a primal grunt and swung the bat over the coffee table, snapping it in two.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked.

When he turned toward me, his eyes were bloodshot and glossy. "I got nothing left, so no one should have nothing!" He brought the bat down on the splintered table again.

I closed my eyes and took a breath. I knew he would feel that way once he realized what he'd done. Once he realized he was alone without his captive and that he'd pushed me too far.

"You did all that, Gunnir. No one else."

Gunnir's gaze met mine, and a fiery anger settled across his face. "It's your fault."

"How?"

"Because we ain't supposed to like the girls. We ain't supposed to get attached. They're objects, with no more worth than this fucking lamp or table." Gunnir pointed the bat at the shattered remains on the floor.

I shook my head. "I'm not attached."

I was lying, and he knew I was lying. I let myself get attached to Ophelia after a lifetime of avoidance. Ophelia shined. Like a little ball of light in a world of darkness, she illuminated the hidden places and chased the shadows away. I was realizing—much too slowly—that I'd do anything for her, including becoming someone other than the demon brought into the world by the devil himself.

Gunnir screamed, took a wide stance, and swung the bat with all his strength. It collided with the old television and sent a spray of glass across the floor. "You're a fucking liar! I see how you two look at each other. She moves with you instead of against you when you fuck her."

He was right. Ophelia had escaped to some other place in her mind when she first came here, but that had changed. She no longer needed to travel outside of herself. She didn't lift her hips away from me, trying to put distance between her skin and my touch. When I had her against the wall the night before, she'd pushed toward me, inviting me deeper. She wasn't disgusted by me even though I was disgusting. Everything about this place was disgusting.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know what to tell you, Gunnir. I'm not any less of a Bruggar because I don't need them to hate me when I fuck them. It feels better when they don't."

"Pussy," Gunnir snarled. "The Man would be rolling in his grave if he heard you talk like that."

"That may be true, but our mother would be proud, and the devil's disappointment doesn't mean nearly as much as an angel's pride."

Gunnir gestured toward me with the bat and stormed down the hall toward his room. I didn't follow him. What I'd said had cut him deep, and if I went after him, he was liable to bring that bat down on my skull. I was about to retreat to my room and check on Ophelia when I heard rattling coming from his room. He could have been searching for another weapon, so I froze at the corner and waited. If he went for Ophelia, I could jump on his back before he got to her. If he went for me...

A closet door slammed and Gunnir popped out of his room with his arm behind his back. I backed up as he walked toward me with a crazed look in his eyes. My gaze wanted to leap to my bedroom door, but that would give him an idea. If I wanted to protect Ophelia, I had to keep him coming at me.

And he did. The corners of his mouth lifted into a smile, the arm behind his back fidgeting and wiggling around, situating something in his hand. It wasn't his hunting rifle—I'd have seen the stock or the barrel poking out, even around his massive body—but it could have been The Man's pistol. Still, I stood my ground until he came within six feet of me and whipped his hand from behind his back.

It was a skull. Empty sockets stared at me, and yellowed teeth grimaced in an eternal smile. The flesh had long since disappeared.

Gunnir tossed it up and caught it. "Do you know what I like to do sometimes, Alex?" he asked.

I shook my head. Did I really want to know?

He gripped the bat with his other hand, and for a moment I thought he'd toss the skull in the air and hit it like a macabre baseball. Instead, he placed the bat on the ground between his legs, unclipped his overalls, and let the wad of denim fall to his knees. As his thumb stroked the skull, his other hand stroked his hardening dick. With his eyes on mine, he brought the skull to his crotch and pushed into the right eye socket with a deep groan. My lip curled, but he kept going, swapping his thrusts to move the skull up and down his meager length.

"Do you know who this was?" he asked through a groan I knew too well.

I shook my head. It could have been anyone. We'd dropped countless women into the pit over the years, and I couldn't think of one he favored enough to keep like this.

A deep grunt rose from his gut, and his hips stuttered as he coated the skull with his come. "It's our mother."

I was almost too stunned to react. "What?" I asked, my fists clenching at my sides. Had I heard him right? I couldn't have. That was an act far more disgusting than anything he'd done before.

Gunnir placed the skull on the mantle. The come dripped into the empty space where a nose would have been. "I skull fuck our mother, Alex," he said with a smirk. "She made you a little pussy, and this is my way of repaying her. You should want to disrespect her remains, too. Look what she did to you. Does your whore remind you of our mother? Is that what you like about her?"

I saw red. Every shade in bright clarity. I had protected him all this time because he was my brother. The last living tie I had to my mother. But he had never been a part of her. She had birthed him from her body, but he was merely a parasite placed inside her by The Man. I was done protecting him.

Gunnir patted the mantle. "The thing about these women, Alex, is that they all become a bag of fucking bones in the end. And your whore is no different."

Anger tore through me. I charged forward and dove for the bat. I managed to get my hands on the grip but as I struggled to my feet, his hands encased my forearms and prevented me from readying it for a swing.

"Fuck you!" I yelled as we tumbled into the wall. Drywall crumbled around our feet.

He backed away a step, but the wall prevented me from raising the bat over my shoulder. Before I could move away, he rammed his weight into my gut, sending me to the floor in a breathless heap.

His greedy fingers snatched away the bat. "I'm going to have fun fucking her before I kill her, Alex."

Gunnir raised the bat and brought it down on my head. Pain shot through my skull, and a soundless scream clawed its way up my throat. My heartbeat thumped rhythmically in my ears...or was that the sound of Gunnir's receding footsteps?

Ophelia.

I had to protect her.

I hauled myself to my knees and the floor pitched beneath me, sending me into the wall. I touched the back of my head, and my fingers met with a warm, sticky spot. For a moment I forgot I had arms and legs as I rolled onto my back and looked up at the ceiling. My head lolled to the side, and I spotted the bat, a red streak smeared across the tip. The sharp ringing in my ears receded, and muffled screams drifted from the hall and doubled in my brain. Desperation ripped through me as I forced myself to my knees again and crawled toward those familiar noises—muffled whimpers and the rhythmic sounds of a scuffle. It was coming from the far end of the hallway.

Gunnir's room.

I got to my feet, blinking to clear the blurry fog that painted everything. A wave of disorientation swirled around my legs, and I stumbled against the wall. Steadying myself, I continued toward my room. Sunlight burst through the window and blinded me, and I covered my eyes with a shaking hand. It didn't help. I clenched my eyes shut and felt my way across the room until I found the closet. I reached around, trying to grasp cold metal, but my fingers only met with cardboard, cloth, and dust. When my hand finally wrapped around the shotgun, I breathed a sigh of relief and started toward the dresser. Still unwilling to open my eyes, I groped through the drawer until I found the shells. My fingers hardly worked as I struggled to load the tube.

Normally I would have racked the gun once I got behind him. The noise would have been enough to scare him and stop whatever he was doing. Make him think twice. If what I thought was happening was in fact happening, however, I had no intention of just scaring him.

I racked the gun.

Keeping the weapon at my side, I stumbled down the hall. Wood cracked as I kicked open the door and entered a room that felt like my childhood, like the day I found my dead mother. My jaw ticked.

Ophelia was on her back on Gunnir's stained mattress, and she'd been stripped of all her clothes. His hand covered her mouth, and her nostrils flared in a frantic rhythm over his fingers. I focused on the worst things. His hand on her breast, the fabric of my flannel shirt ripped from her skin, his dirty overalls puddled around his boots. She turned her bloodshot gaze to me. She looked so scared, so fucking desperate. She couldn't even disappear within her mind because he was just that vile. The fear on her face showed me how trapped she was in that horrible moment, and my heart shattered in my chest, breaking into shards like the lamp Gunnir had destroyed.

He destroyed everything.

I raised the shotgun, trying to focus my blurred vision into a clear image. I knew what I had to do, and it wasn't just for Ophelia.

It was for me.

It was for my mother.

It was for all of us.

"Gunnir!" I screamed. He lifted his head away from her, a thick groan leaving his lips. Before he could turn around, before I could see his face and change my mind, I pulled the trigger.

The top of his head exploded in a shower of red. His legs crumpled beneath him, sending him onto the floor with a thud. Ophelia's screams tore through me. She scrambled backward on the bed and when her back hit the headboard, she just kept screaming. Blood and brain matter painted her skin.

I balanced against Gunnir's wooden dresser, trying to gather my bearings. The squelch of a bleeding head shot, Ophelia's screaming, and the echo of the gunshot created a nauseating mix of sounds that continued to play through my mind long after they'd stopped. I forced myself to pull it together for Ophelia. The shotgun slipped from my hand and clattered against the floor, and I went to her side. She was crying, her cheeks blazing red from his grasp on her mouth. She looked so fucking broken. I wrapped my arms around her and held her against my chest.

Now I had to do something that would be more difficult than ending my brother's life. I had to set Ophelia free and ensure no one would ever hurt her again. I had to destroy the last monster.

Me.