Chapter 8

EIGHT

XERO

The burning in my lungs intensifies as I walk through the hospital’s utility exit carrying my prey. Jynxson distracted the night nurse as I extracted Reverend Thomas from his bed.

I throw his unconscious body into the back of a van, where he lands with a thud. Bandages encase his neck and one side of his face where Amethyst knifed him in the eye.

The mystery behind her peculiar behavior unravels, making my jaw tighten. She thought it was me. That I was the one who orchestrated that nightmare. No wonder she snapped.

Rage sears through my chest, but beneath the fury is an instinct that burns brighter. I want to protect Amethyst, even now. I haven’t told my people the full truth, because deep in my heart, I still believe she needs my help.

What I can’t work out is when the hell it happened.

The video is a near replica of how I chased her through the cemetery and fucked her on my grave. After that, I only left her unattended to investigate X-Cite Media. It was never for more than a few hours, and I would have noticed bruises on her body if she’d been assaulted by multiple men.

Then there’s the circumstances of our correspondence. No matter what Jynxson says, I still think she was a lonely woman reaching out to me for excitement after my mugshot went viral on social media. Even Father couldn’t manufacture a connection as profound as the one I share with Amethyst.

A pained groan pulls me out of my musings, and I turn to where I left the priest sprawled across the van’s interior.

I stamp on his chest, making sure to crack a few ribs. “Open your eyes.”

He cries out. “Who’s there?”

“What’s your connection to Amethyst Crowley?” I crouch at his side.

“Who?” he wheezes.

“Wrong answer.” I press my thumb into his bandaged eye, earning a shriek that gets absorbed by the truck’s sound-proof walls. “Tell me exactly why you attacked Amethyst.”

He groans, his breath coming in shallow gasps, the undamaged eye streaming with tears. “Please… I’ll tell you. Just stop.”

I ease off the pressure and take hold of his bandaged hand. In the videos my people retrieved from the vicarage, Amethyst stabbed a knife through his palm before she escaped.

The truck’s driver-side door opens, and Jynxson steps in just in time to witness the priest’s confession. He fires up the engine and pulls out of the parking space.

“I don’t know her as Amethyst,” Reverend Thomas says. “I only know her stage name was Little Doll or Dolly.”

“What are you talking about?” I snarl.

“She’s a porn star… Sort of.” He grimaces.

“Meaning?”

“Dolly started out with X-Cite Media the same as all the others. A few hot sex scenes, followed by the finale.”

Fury and disgust battle within my gut for dominance. He talks like the victims consented to being murdered and mutilated for his viewing pleasure. I clench my teeth and snarl, “By hot sex, you mean gang-rape, and finale means getting killed on camera?”

Reverend Thomas gulps. “Yes, but something went wrong. In the last scene, the man who was supposed to make the kill choked her out, but Dolly grabbed the knife and slit his throat.”

“And you know this because…?”

“I was watching the live stream. Everyone went wild to see her win. She scrambled off the bed, covered in his blood, and started slashing everyone who came close.”

My throat tightens. “What happened next?”

“The screen went black. All of us at home were going wild, wanting more of her. No one had ever seen anything like it.”

“When?” I rasp.

“I don’t know… Ten years ago?”

“A child?” I snarl.

“Hey, I had nothing to do with it. I was just a viewer.”

The last shreds of self-control snap. Vision narrowing, I punch him in the face, feeling the satisfying crunch of his nose breaking under my fist. His screams echo in my ears, intensifying my fury.

“Easy,” Jynxson yells from the driver’s seat. “We need him conscious.”

I pull back my fist, my molars grinding. Jynxson is right. We still haven’t gathered enough information. I glance over my shoulder to the windshield to find him already racing down the highway.

Turning back, I ask, “Then what happened?”

Reverend Thomas cowers, his body curling into a tight ball. I repeat my question with a sharp kick into his ribs.

“Weeks passed,” he replies with a groan. “Everyone on the forums was asking what happened to that girl. Eventually, Delta said she was still alive and set up a poll on how we wanted her to die. By then, we were all calling her the little doll.”

Reverend Thomas describes the next video on a gladiator set, where Dolly fought against three actors who took turns assaulting her in front of a crowd of men dressed as Romans.

Revulsion tightens my chest, aggravating my damaged lungs. I don’t believe this Dolly is my Amethyst—I can’t believe it—but every instinct screams at me to tear this man apart for contributing to the torture of an innocent girl. I hold back, my hands clenched into fists. He’s too useful. I need to keep him alive. At least until I’ve found my little ghost.

My mind makes rapid calculations across everything I know about Amethyst’s timeline. She joined the Greenbridge Academy for Behaviorally Challenged Girls ten years ago, just before turning fourteen.

Given that Melonie Crowley kept Amethyst at arm’s length, anything could have happened to her during that time. It’s not unusual for criminal enterprises like the Moirai to haunt boarding schools, looking to recruit children estranged from their parents.

“She killed the gladiator guy, and maimed the others,” the reverend says. “And stabbed the next one in a dystopian-themed movie. After that, Delta must have decided to keep her alive because they stopped trying to kill her.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I ask.

“She got cut, but that was it.”

A sickening wave of heat rolls through my gut. He’s talking about Dolly, but every instinct tells me he’s describing my Amethyst. All of it—the mutilations, the fights, the blood. They did that to her. A girl who was barely more than a child. My chest tightens until I can’t breathe.

Oh, my darling girl… what did they do to you?

Sorrow hits like a knife to the heart, sharp and devastating. I can see her now, young, covered in blood, fighting for her life. How could she even survive? How could anyone? And then—just as fast—the sorrow gives way to rage. Hot and pulsing and so blinding I could burn the world to ease her pain.

They did this to her, and I wasn’t there to stop it. Every fiber in my being screams for vengeance. For her.

My brow pinches as I force down the emotion, trying to hold on to reason. Amethyst wrote about having to stay in school during most vacations, but she never mentioned any traumatic experiences outside that music teacher.

“Fuck,” Jynxson says.

“When did she stop appearing in these videos?” I ask, my voice brimming with rage.

He coughs. “I don’t know… Three or four years ago? They say she became a director.”

I shake my head, not believing a single word, even though the priest shows no sign of deception. But could there be another side to Amethyst—someone hidden, like Jynxson suggested? Is there a part of her I haven’t seen?

“Why can’t we find her videos advertised on the site?” I ask.

“Old content gets pulled, so new members don’t get to join for a month, stream the entire archive and leave,” he replies. “But if you want to see them, I made screen recordings on my phone. They’re in my study at the vicarage.”

“Jynxson?” I ask.

He makes a right. “Already on my way.”

“Why did you attack her on camera?” I ask.

“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t target her. I thought she’d retired, so I wanted to give her privacy.”

“Answer the fucking question,” I growl.

“They were calling for auditions for the next movie. When she appeared in the vicarage, I thought she’d come to check my worth.”

I slam another fist into his face. This time, Jynxson doesn’t object. Over the drive across town, Father Thomas reveals that X-Cite Media is a private members’ club that offers subscriptions for thousands of dollars a month.

Members access months of content that’s streamed to the public for nearly a hundred dollars an hour. Piracy is expressly forbidden, and Lizzie Bath’s use of my execution video—which she’d screen-recorded to use as a background on her video—was what led to her abduction. Her fate was a public punishment for daring to pirate X-Cite Media content.

I shake my head, my fists trembling with the force of my rage. Rage at the members for buying into such wanton depravity. Rage at Delta for a catalog of atrocities that would take a lifetime to list. Rage at myself for wasting time punishing Amethyst, when I should have been keeping her safe.

But under that rage, there’s something worse—sorrow. My chest tightens at the thought of her as a broken girl, the things they made her endure.

If what the reverend says is true, then Amethyst must have escaped Delta and returned to her mother, only to spend the next few years in a drug-induced haze. Perhaps Dr. Saint suppressed those traumatic memories with medication and even more rounds of electroconvulsive therapy.

But that doesn’t explain the lack of scars. The thick ones across her belly are consistent with a car accident… or a single attack.

Amethyst exposed herself across social media with my fan club, not realizing Delta wanted her back. Father must have arranged that disgusting gang-rape to trigger her into a murderous rage.

It partially explains why she murdered her mother and uncle. But I don’t understand the scene at the airport. Was Amethyst deciding to rejoin the devil she knew?

Reverend Thomas wheezes. “Please… I’ve told you everything I know. Just take me back to the hospital.”

“We didn’t find a membership link on the site,” I say.

“That’s because it’s invite-only. Anyone who rents enough videos gets vetted before getting a chance to join the inner circle.”

My throat clenches. Thank fuck I kept the recruiter alive. I make a mental note to have Harlan Still re-interrogated.

“You’re still a member, right?” I ask.

“That’s right,” he replies.

“And you said auditions were running for the next video?”

He nods.

“Then you’re going to send a message to Delta and tell him you want to be his next star.”