11. ELEVEN

ELEVEN

I sit in the passenger seat beside Bone Saw, turning the blade over, examining it in my hands. It almost seems unreal—like a relic of a past life.

"Where did you get it?" I ask.

"I intercepted it from the police in Wyoming before they could send it to a lab," he says. "Just in case."

"It has my name on it," I say, tracing the letters etched into the blade with my fingertip. "You said I wouldn't be able to have a name."

"You won't. But when I see you, I'll know it's you. I could call you by your name if you wanted."

"Would we…be together?"

"No, you'd go wherever they needed you. We wouldn't be together."

"And you think I should do it? You think I'd be happy?"

"I think 'happy' is a deluded concept."

"Maybe you're right," I tell him. "Why'd you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Join."

He laughs. "I didn't join. I was like Sonia in a way. My dad gave me to them when I was six years old."

"What? Why?"

"He was part of The Order, and he broke the rules. He'd been scared shitless for weeks that they were going to kill him—even though I wasn't old enough to understand why, I knew that much. One night, a man came to our house with two men dressed like me and walked right into the dining room. They told him they had made a decision and that he could live, but only if he gave up one of his sons to The Order…forever. And he had to choose which to keep and which he wanted to get rid of—that was his real punishment."

"Oh my god…"

"I loved my father, and I thought he loved me, too. But I guess he loved himself—and my brother—more because he told them to take me. He didn't even get out of his chair when they dragged me from the room. The man took me home, raised me in isolation, educated me, and taught me to be a killer. After that, I couldn't be anything else."

"What happened to your dad?"

"He's one of The Elders now. I've seen him a few times, but he isn't aware of me."

"That must be hard for you…"

"It's not," he says. "It's nothing. He could drop dead, I could slit his throat, or he could become king of the fucking galaxy, and I wouldn't care about any of those things equally. It'll be like that for you, too, someday. People won't be able to affect you like they do now; it'll stop hurting."

"What about your mom?"

"I was told she left when I was a baby, but I recently found out she's dead."

"I still don't get it. Why would you be loyal to them?" I ask. "They took you from your home when you were a child. They abused you."

"They didn't take me. I was given to them. He had a choice—he could have died. As far as abuse goes…that's a spectrum, too, isn't it? Dictated by societal norms, where in the world you live, what religion or customs you ascribe to."

I scoff. "You sound like Dec—"

"Teagan," he cautions, cutting me off. "Do not. "

"Sorry. Why do I have a choice?"

"Because you're too old and too broken for blind obedience and loyalty unless you choose it. You'd end your life one way or another."

"But they're evil people," I say as he pulls into the garage. "I'm not evil."

"They're just a symptom, Teagan, of a sickness inside our society as a whole, in man. Everyone is hungry for power—for a higher purpose. You don't like what happened to those girls, and I get that. But you also can't stop it from happening. It's going to keep happening because of the sickness, at both the highest and lowest levels of society. Neither layer has any real desire to do anything to stop it or it would have ended a long time ago. They could go away, and there would be thousands ready to instantly fill that void."

"Well, I'm glad that helps you sleep at night."

"You don't know anything about me or how I sleep at night."

"Yeah, you're right. I don't," I tell him, slamming the door as I exit the vehicle.

I walk ahead of him up the staircase to the main floor of the house that isn't a home and then to the bedroom that isn't mine, closing the door behind me. I slip out of the red lace dress and boots and into one of those generic labelless black tops, turn off the light, and crawl into bed with my knife in my hand.

I was cared for. I do know what it's like to be touched in a loving way, and it does make all of this a lot harder for me.

Shortly after, the doorknob turns, and footsteps approach the bed.

"What do you want? I don't want to have sex with you," I say without turning to face him.

Bone Saw climbs into the bed behind me. "I thought I'd stay with you until you fell asleep again. Do you want me to?"

"…Yes."

He wraps an arm around my waist, slipping his hand inside the front of my t-shirt, and I feel it—no glove, just bare skin against mine. I close my eyes as he runs his knuckles up and down my stomach—a small concession, a tiny scrap of affection that, while soothing, also reminds me just how starved for it I am.

He says I'll forget about it—that I won't need it anymore, and I hope he's right. I'm so tired of how much it all hurts.

When I wake up, I'm alone. It feels like hours have passed, but I know it can't have been that long. It was after three in the morning when we got back, and through the open door, I can still see it's dark in the main room.

"How did you get this number?"

Bone Saw's voice—his unmuffled voice—carries into the room. Or, at least, I assume it's him. There's something vaguely familiar about it, but I can't quite place it.

"Yeah, well…plans change."

Who is he talking to?

Slowly, I climb out of bed and move through the room with my knife clutched tightly in my hands just in case. I stop in the kitchen, just out of view, maybe eight or ten feet away from where he leans against the bookshelf with his back toward me, talking on a satellite phone. He's still wearing a hood, but the mask must be raised.

"I don't answer to you. And it's not my job to ask questions."

Slowly, I step around the corner, holding my breath while I close the space between us.

"Yeah, well, she's not a kitten—she's a monster. And you can't keep monsters as pets."

My heart stops; I forget how to breathe, like I'm the one who's been stabbed in the kidneys over and over again. Tears well in my eyes, falling of their own accord because I can't even blink. I beg my body to move—to do something —and what it finally does is speak in a tone that doesn't even sound like my own.

"Is that Declan?" my high-pitched voice squeaks.

Bone Saw's posture stiffens, and as he goes to adjust the mask, I slice his shoulder and grab the phone.

"Teagan!" he yells.

"Is it you?" I shout into the phone.

The person on the other end doesn't answer, but I can hear him there, breathing. I backpedal until I hit a wall and hold my knife out in front of me.

"I know you're there!" I cry. "I can hear you. You can pick up a fucking phone?"

I wait, but still, nothing. "Say something!"

Bone Saw stops in front of me, his arms crossed in front of his chest, but he doesn't make a move to take it from me. I don't think it's because he's worried about me and my knife.

"I hate you." I choke on a sob. "You lied to me. You said you'd never leave me. You said you loved me and that we were the same and I would never be alone and then you left me. I have nothing , and I'm in pain all the time. They won't leave me alone, and he's hurting me. Do you even care at all?"

Nothing.

A few seconds later, the line cuts off. I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at it for a minute before letting it fall to the ground.

Then, I slide down the wall and let myself fall to the ground, too.

"I'm sorry, Teagan," Bone Saw says.

"No, you're not."

"But it's good that you're mad," he adds. "You should be mad."

"Fuck you."

I peel myself off of the floor and head for the door.

"Teagan, there's nowhere to go," he calls after me.

"I don't care. I can't be here—I can't be around you anymore."

Just like last time, the garage opens on its own once I reach the bottom of the stairs. I try the door to the Aston Martin just in case, but, of course, it's locked. I walk out into the night and start down the dirt road.

"What are you doing?" Bone Saw asks, not far behind me. "You're in the middle of nowhere, you're half-naked, and you don't even have shoes on. Nothing good is going to happen out here like this. Stop pouting and come back to the house."

"This is exactly why I can't be around you! You don't get it because you're not human anymore! I'm not pouting, I'm fucking suffering, and the only bad thing that could possibly happen to me out here is you. I'm a monster, remember? What do I have to be afraid of?"

"That's a compliment."

Furious, I stop in my tracks and turn back toward him. "It is not a fucking compliment!" I scream. I pick up a rock and throw it at him, but he ducks before it hits him. "Telling someone they can't exist anywhere—that no one will ever want them and you wish you could kill them is not a fucking compliment! And you're talking to him …about me . You lied, and I am so fucking sick of liars! I wish I could kill you, too. Just leave me alone."

I turn back down the path, but a sharp pain in the bottom of my foot knocks me off balance.

"Fuck!"

Just as quickly as I shift my weight onto my left foot, I slip and find myself tumbling down the side of the mountain with nothing to stop me. I know I should let go of the knife and try to find something to grab onto, but I can't. I tighten my grip on the handle, squeeze my eyes shut, and just wait for it to be over.

It ends a few seconds later when I'm stopped hard by a tree, curling around it and gasping for air.

"Teagan?!" Bone Saw calls. Dirt shifts around me, and when I look up, he's there, a few feet away. "Teagan!?" he screams again. "Where are you?"

Maybe if I don't answer, he'll go away. He'll think I'm dead, and they'll all leave me alone.

"Don't fuck with me, Teagan!" he yells. "There is no running away, and you're only going to piss me off! You better be fucking dead or unconscious, or I'm going to kill you!"

I hold my breath as he moves closer, afraid he'll hear me.

"Teagan?" he says from directly above me. "You don't look dead or unconscious."

"I wish I was. Does that count?"

"No."

"Well, go ahead and kill me then."

He sighs before bending down and picking me up. Holding me tightly against his chest, he trudges back up the rocky terrain toward the road, then into the garage, up the staircase, and back into the house. And I let him, silently surrendering. I don't have anything left to fight for anymore.

He sets me down in a chair in the kitchen. "My god, Teagan." He takes my chin in his hand, turning my face to inspect my newest injuries. "You look like you got hit by a truck. Does it feel like anything is broken?"

"I've had worse."

"Come on," he says, extending a hand to me. "I'll help you into the shower."

My lip curls in disgust. "No," I say, knocking it away. "I don't need your help, and I'm not taking another fucking shower. Stop fucking acting like you care about me."

"Teagan—"

"No! I know what you are and what you're doing—I'm not stupid. You're the old man who raised you in isolation, throwing scraps of affection at a dejected, mangled sad-ass excuse for a human being and hoping it'll be enough to get me to agree to whatever you want. You know, you really are just like him. And I don't care if you kill me for saying it—it's true. You're Declan De Rossi in a shittier fucking outfit."

I shove him hard before storming off to the bedroom, but he barely stumbles backward. And when I slam the door behind me, it bounces off his arm and flies open again.

"God damn it! What do I need to do to get you to leave me alone?"

He grabs me by the arm and backs me into the wall. "It was a compliment," he says. "I meant it as a compliment. I wish I could kill you because you're all I think about, and it drives me fucking insane. You asked me if I thought you were beautiful… I think you're flawless. You are poetry—your body, your eyes…your battered soul, and your rage. You're the perfect monster, Teagan—"

"I'm not a monster! You are, and I don't want you."

"Why not?!" he shouts, tightening his grip on my shoulders.

"Stop. Fucking. Hurting me!"

I slash at him with my knife, but with my restricted range of motion, I barely get a small slice of his abdomen.

"Fuck!"

I brace myself for retribution, but instead, he takes a step back and lifts his shirt. I watch blood run down his abdomen from a thin cut about three inches in length, just under where his sternum ends.

He removes his gloves and then, with one strong, tanned hand, grips my wrist, pulling my arm toward him and turning it over. With the other, he runs a finger through the blood. I watch him write the words I'M SORRY across my forearm again.

"I'm sorry, Teagan," he says as he releases my wrist, his tone soft. "You can hurt me again if you want—if it'll make you feel better—I won't hurt you." He takes a hand and smoothes my hair away from my dirty, tear-streaked cheeks. "You said you wanted to taste my blood…" He runs his fingers through the blood dripping down his abs again and then brings them to my lips. "Stick out your tongue."

I do as he asks and open for him, and he places those bloody fingers on my tongue. I close my lips around them and suck.

"It was a compliment." He cups my cheeks in his hands. "How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being?"

"I've heard that before…" I whisper, searching the libraries of my mind. Was it Declan? No…I've read that before.

"Have you?" he asks.

Where have I read that?

"A bad woman is the sort of woman a man never gets tired of," I quote. "It's Oscar Wilde."

"You surprise me."

I've been watching you for months.

"No…" I shake my head. "No…how can you…Sebastian?"

He neither confirms nor denies it, staring back at me with dark eyes through the holes of his mask. But are they Sebastian's dark eyes? The voice I heard on the phone earlier…it was familiar.

"But you were nice," I argue. "You were my friend. You can't—"

Sebastian was funny. He made me laugh…gave me extra drugs sometimes. But there were times he hurt me there, too—when he was incidentally cruel without knowing it, and I couldn't really blame him. Except if he was Bone Saw, they weren't incidents at all. They were intentional.

Like when he'd walk me to therapy and whistle the tune to "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by John Denver. Or when he made that joke about how drugs sound like they'll be fun until you wake up with a dead body under you, and your life is ruined. He acted like he didn't understand why I wasn't laughing.

Like when he told me there was a blonde girl waiting to see me on the front patio.

"Were we friends?" he asks.

"Don't," I sneer. "Don't do that. You're…you're ruining it."

"Ruining what?"

"You're fucked up." I shrug him off and move toward the back of the room. "Take it off!"

"It's not that easy."

"Then get the fuck out!"

He stares me down for what feels like minutes before he finally says, "Okay, Teagan."

His hands move to the chin of the mask and I don't breathe while he pulls it up over his head and lowers the hood. Sebastian stands in front of me—it was his dark eyes behind the mask, his dark curly hair I put my hands through, his mouth on my body.

It was him hiding in the shadows of my room at night.

"There's only one other person in the world—alive—who knows me as both things. And you like me as both things. You're an anomaly, Teagan. You're the only person in the world I've ever wanted to know. You're the only person I could never kill."

Things . He said both things, not people. Unable to speak, all I can do is shake my head.

"What'd I tell you, Teag?" Fake Luca laughs. He slaps Bone Saw…wait, no…Sebastian on the back before throwing his arm around his shoulders. "I told you he's just a man. To be fair, I didn't see this one coming, either."

"Teagan?" He looks back over his shoulder. "What are you looking at?"

"Luca is touching you."

"You're safe, Teagan," he says. "I promise. I'm going to move closer to you now." Sebastian slowly closes the space between us. "I ask that you consider not stabbing me."

Once he reaches me, he takes the knife from my hand and tosses it onto the bed. "Come upstairs with me," he says. "You can use my shower and sleep in my bed. You can look at my books, too. They are my books, and the records are mine, too. I don't live here or anywhere—that's the truth—but unlike the others, I do have some of my own belongings and get to choose where I go on occasion. A perk of being raised by one of the Elders, I guess."

"I thought you were good."

He shrugs. "Give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth." He takes my hand in his. "Come on."

He escorts me to his bathroom and then turns on the water for me.

"Do you need help?"

"No," I tell him.

"You were limping. You said you weren't hurt."

"I said I've had worse. I'm fine."

He frowns. "Okay. I'll get you some clean clothes and leave them on the sink."

"B—Sebastian?"

"Yeah?"

"If you set that fucking Texas tits shirt in here, I swear to god, I will stab you."

He smiles. And I've seen Sebastian smile. But that version of him was just a man—a twenty-something guy who didn't take his fucking job seriously and who, I'm pretty sure, was sampling the products from the pharmacy.

He was beautiful, and he played ignorant well enough that I believed it. I wonder who taught him how to lie like that.

Bone Saw, on the other hand, I've only heard smiling. I didn't expect him to be beautiful.

"I'll find something else, okay?" He reaches for me again, resting his hand on the nape of my neck, and then leans in and kisses me on the lips. Still in shock, I don't kiss him back at all. Frowning, he turns toward the door. He pauses with his hand on the knob, looking back to add, "I do care about you, Teagan."

"I'd hate to see what it would look like if you didn't."

He nods. "Yeah, you would."

When the door clicks shut, I strip down and step under the spray, washing the dirt and blood from my skin.

And when I step out, there are clothes waiting on the counter—my own clothes. Not exactly eager to face him again, I take my time dressing, lingering in the bathroom while listening to him on the other side of the door. But I have to face him at some point, right?

"Hey," he says when I step into the bedroom. "There's water…and something for the pain."

I pop the white pill into my mouth, wash it down, and then sit on the edge of the bed.

"These are my clothes," I say.

"Yeah. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"These are my clothes…that River bought for me. How did you get them?"

"From the tour bus," he says. "I'll give them back to you."

I crawl into bed, pull the covers over my body, and stare up at the ceiling.

"What's wrong?" Sebastian asks, caressing my cheek. "This is what you wanted, isn't it? That's what you said—skin to touch…" He presses his lips to my shoulder. "My mouth on your body."

"You lied to me. Everyone fucking lies to me. I'm so tired of it."

"I never said that I wasn't Sebastian."

"Is that your real name, or your real fake name?" I ask.

"Sebastian Torres is my real name," he says. "But I don't exist anywhere on paper anymore. I like to hear it sometimes, too. Just…not as this. I lied about growing up in the Philippines—I've never been there—but my mother did. I do speak Tagalog…along with seven other languages. And everything else I've told you as both things is true. I don't talk to the De Rossis."

"What's the point in speaking eight languages when you're not allowed to talk?"

"I do a lot of listening. And other things, too. Besides, I had a lot of motivation to learn very quickly."

"What kind of motivation?"

He sits up and pulls his shirt over his head, and I gasp when I see it—the motivation . His entire back is covered in angry, red scars. Some in thick ropes running down his back and below his waistline as if from a whip. Others are deep burn marks or knife wounds, and chunks of his skin are missing.

"Does it hurt?" I ask.

"No," he says. "Not now."

"And the person who raised you did this to you? To motivate you to learn languages?"

"That…and other things. Science, medicine, surgical procedures—I did save the big blonde idiot's fucking life, by the way—"

"Luca is not stupid," I snap.

"And to motivate me to kill—animals first, then people. He brought me a puppy one day. About a week later, he told me to kill it. A man with a mask hurt me until I did it. I wasn't born like this, I was made." He turns back toward me, propping his head on his elbow and running his fingertips down my arms. "The first one really is the only one that's hard, isn't it? After that, it's all just…blood and meat and bones."

"Why don't you just leave?"

"I'll never leave. I can't explain it, but I won't."

"I would go with you," I say softly.

"Now, why would you do something like that?" Sebastian asks. He pulls my body into his and threads his fingers into my hair. "What's wrong with you, Teagan? You keep coming when I call, just like all of the other pets, even though you know what I am…even though I keep hurting you, and you know I can't love you. I'd feel bad for you if I could—if I didn't like it."

I turn my back to him and curl my knees into my chest. "I don't know," I tell him. "And I don't know if I'll ever get used to your face saying things like that to me."

But I think I do know. It's because I'm starving and because he knows what's on the other side of my mask, and no one else ever will. I can never tell anyone the truth about the things I've done or the way I feel. That's my prison.

So, it doesn't matter if it's real or not. It still feels good—as good as it's going to get for me.

He kisses the back of my head. "I know there are things you think you need, but you just need a place and a purpose, Teagan," he whispers. "You can have that. I can give it to you."

"Sebastian, please stop. I'm tired. I can't take anymore."

"You'll be okay. Go to sleep, Teagan."

I close my eyes, but it's hours before sleep finally comes for me.