Chapter 38

Chapter 38

A chill skatesacross 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.