Page 1 of Genesis (Alter Arlo #2)

I’M FATE. YOUR KARMA

ZADE

Anger burned me up. Anger at the world. Anger towards my brother. Anger at my fuck-up of a father and my bitch of a mother. But overwhelming fury ate my veins and turned me scorching and unhinged, and I aimed it all at Cadoc fucking Dire.

“How fucking dare you?” I seethed at him, my dead twin’s hand clasped in mine while Cadoc cried over his body.

Cadoc barely blinked, ready to take the blame he so rightly deserved.

Death was all around us, but this one… this one turned me into a new person.

No longer half of a whole, I had to carry the burden of two lives in my tainted soul, and Cadoc was at fault.

He broke me because he failed, and I’d never forgive him for it.

Fury unleashed inside of me, and if my lungs didn’t scream their demand for air, I’d stop breathing just to join Zan in the afterlife.

Stripping a gun from Cadoc’s belt, I held it to his head as he cried over a loss that should never have happened.

My finger twitched, itching to pull the trigger and scatter his brain over the dead body of my other half—my twin.

I shook with the need for revenge, desperate to snuff out the life that took him from me.

If Cadoc never loved him. If Cadoc never helped him. If Cadoc never encouraged him. Fuck! Zan would still be here, standing at my side as my identical counterpart and the only tether to an emotion other than anger.

My jaw trembled and my eyes blurred with boiling tears, streaking paths down my bloody cheeks to drip onto Cadoc’s body like acid.

Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. In my mind, I saw his head explode with the force of the gunshot.

I saw his last breath through blood-stained lips, and I almost wept with satisfaction when I saw the light blink out of his deceiving blue eyes.

I hated him.

I fucking hated him.

Cadoc Dire was the single ruin of my life.

He took Zan from me and healed him while I got worse.

Helped him while no one helped me. Fed him love like he had a never-ending supply of it while I got left to rot in the darkness and fester in my anger.

Anger was all I had, but with that anger came the sadistic need to end him and any future he had.

To create balance. Something darker than justice.

The rage-haze smouldered within me, threatening to make his fantastical death a reality.

I needed it.

His blond hair soaked up Zan’s blood, and even that pissed me off.

That was my blood! If anyone were to absorb the remnants of my twin and carry him into the next phase of life, it should have been me.

The gun shook in my hand, the bullet so close to piercing his skull and ending his miserable life.

Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.

“Kill me!” Cadoc screamed, his voice full of misery. “Do it! Fucking kill me, Zade!”

I clicked off the safety, ready to end him.

He deserved to die for what he’d done. Zan’s death was on him, and he could rot at the bottom of Synner’s Lake forever, taunted by an unpeaceful, guilt-laden afterlife.

I wanted to do it. I wanted to be the fate that sent him to Hell.

I was his Reaper, and nothing would satisfy me more than snuffing him out.

I’d weigh him down and sink him in the lake as far away from Zan as I could get him.

He didn’t deserve the pleasure of being tied to his lover after what he’d done.

Be his Punisher .

Morality hit me. That’d hurt Zan as much as it would hurt Cadoc.

Fuck!

“Please,” Cadoc begged for death, snot mixing with drool and tears. “Please. I killed him, so kill me. Kill me, Zade. I know you want to. Fucking kill me!” His agonized screams forced my eyes closed in an assault of pain. “Fucking kill me! I killed your brother! I killed him! End me!”

“Ahhhhh!” I shoved the gun against his temple.

Stuck in perpetual anguish that would follow me for the rest of my days, I barely felt the bombs going off in the distance.

I was aware of, but unfocused on, the armies taking over.

Gunfire rang out nearby, and I craved the sound of a louder gunshot—maybe right next to my ear before I crumpled to the ground on top of my dead brother.

I wanted to die with him. He contained the only good parts of me, and without him, life would become nothing but anger and pain.

Not become—continue. Anger and pain were all I knew, but the depths of their depravity just opened wide, willing and eager to swallow me whole until I was nothing but a black hole of self-degradation and loathing.

My father’s body bled out beside me, but I paid it no mind. “Stand up.” My voice wasn’t mine. It was a demon’s voice, and I should have known it would come from me. “Stand the fuck up, Dire.”

“I-I can’t.”

Coldness overwhelmed me, staunching the fury burning me alive. My heart closed off to feeling and iced over in thick shards. “Stand. The. Fuck. Up.” I stepped back, giving him room to rise for the final time. He hadn’t earned the right to weep over Zan’s chilling body.

With monumental effort and no will left to live, Cadoc pushed himself to his feet, shaking and unstable. His blue eyes met mine through tears, and he did nothing to wipe the snot and drool from his already blood-slicked face.

“He’s dead because of you.” I aimed the gun at him.

“I know.”

My father may have delivered the death blow, but it was Cadoc who hadn’t saved him. Cadoc was supposed to protect him. Cadoc promised to keep him safe. Cadoc failed, and because of that failure, I lost every good part of me. The light had already winked out of my life.

Cadoc’s eyes never left mine, and they didn’t even blink when an explosion rocked the very cliff we stood on. Smoke and fire plumed into the air on the other side of Synner’s Lake, and the sound of people screaming only kindled the fire trying to defrost my heart.

“I fucking hate you. You ruined everything. He’d still be alive if it wasn’t for you.”

Cadoc just looked at me with pain in his eyes. I knew his heart was breaking the same as mine, but he could have stopped this. He could have saved him and he didn’t.

“His death is on you, Dire.” I clicked the safety back on and lowered it to my side. “And you’re going to carry it around for the rest of your miserable life.”

“No,” Cadoc wept. “Please. Kill me.”

“If you try to escape your agony by putting a bullet through your brain, I will stop you every fucking time. I will haunt you to keep you alive, and any bit of happiness you manage to find, I will take it from you.” I stepped up to him, disgusted by the nearness of his body.

“I just became your fucking karma, Cadoc. Because of this,” I pointed at my twin’s dead and broken body, “you will live a life of regret until you hate yourself so fucking much that it’s impossible to go on.

Then I’ll force you to continue just to keep the pain alive.

” I grabbed his chin. “He got to live with you and you ruined it. What was I doing while Zan got to fall in love, Dire?”

Cadoc swallowed, knowing the answer.

“Yeah, I got mind-fucked and mentally tortured. Guess what I’m good at now?

” My smile was sick, and it held nothing of happiness.

“I own the rest of your pathetic life.” I shoved him to the ground, anger taking control again.

My anger turned off my grief and forced me to act.

“We’re burying him in the lake. He deserves to be put to rest somewhere he loved. ” I kicked Cadoc. “Hurry up.”

Cadoc collapsed on the ground beside Zan, wishing he were dead. I didn’t care. I had nothing left to live for except ruining Cadoc Dire, and anything that would cut him deep was my new goal in life. I knelt beside my brother, my hand running down his cheek.

Identical in appearance, our souls so differently tainted. Zan carried hope and that deep kind of true love for Cadoc. I carried guilt and shame, hate for myself and hate for my life, and a darkness that consumed me. Anger. Anger was what I carried.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Zan, refusing to cry just yet.

“I love you.” My throat thickened, remembering Zan’s last words.

Protect my brother. He’d said it to Cadoc, and I hated that he got the last of Zan’s voice.

He’d made me promise to take care of his boyfriend, and I agreed without meaning it, just to make him happy in his final moments.

I reached into his jacket pocket, finding a family photo from a year or two ago.

My mother was in it, and I hated that. She’d dipped on us as toddlers, and this photo was the one and only time we’d seen her since.

I put the photo in my pocket anyway and tried to ignore Cadoc sobbing on the ground behind me, not even having moved from where I kicked him.

“Say goodbye,” I told him. “Say it for Zan. You don’t deserve the right, but he does.” I stood up, keeping my heart cold.

Cadoc flinched when a bomb dropped nearby, but we both dove on top of Zan’s body when a plane was shot from the air above our heads.

“Fuck, we have to hurry!” I shouted over the sound of a plane wreck on the far side of the lake. I hated teaming up with him, but I needed to put Zan to rest. I needed it.

Cadoc rolled my dad off the cliff without so much as a goodbye.

His body hit every jagged outcropping on the way down, and he got stuck partway…

in two pieces. He tried not to cry while we filled Zan’s pockets with rocks.

Tears burned the back of my throat. He deserved a better send-off than this.

He deserved a funeral and respect, but all we had time for was rocks and tears and hatred for each other.

“He has to make it to the water,” Cadoc said, sniffing his nose and wiping his eyes. “He has to.”

Agreed. If Zan’s body didn’t make it to the water, I’d climb down the cliffs myself to make sure he sank to the bottom. There would be no rest for him on the shoreline or the jagged cliffs, and I’d rather die trying to find him solace in the lake he loved than leave him on the edge with our dad.

I looked down the shoreline. “We’ll carry him there.” Should have done that before we loaded him full of rocks. “It juts out more.”

We carried him down the length of the cliff, Cadoc at his head and me at his feet. I hated him touching Zan, but I couldn’t carry him myself. We both collapsed when we got into place, and Cadoc took the time to cry harder.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you so much. I’m sorry.” He wept, kissing Zan’s dead lips and brushing his hair back. “I’ll find you again someday. I love you, Zan.”

My goodbye wasn’t vocal. It was the agreement to protect his fuck-up of a boyfriend, even though I’d make his life hell, and it was a soul-deep connection that brushed against my mind.

Zan comforted me in his death with nothing more than a calming feeling, but as soon as it disappeared, the anger and the pain came back.

I looked behind us. The gunfire had gotten closer, and we were running out of time. Cadoc looked at me, and wordlessly, we picked up Zan’s body. Cadoc kissed him one more time, and then we swung him.

“One.”

I love you, Zan.

“Two.”

I’ll avenge your death forever.

“Three.”

Goodbye, my brother.

His body splashed into the deep water of Synner’s Lake. We watched from above, with smoke and fire and war all around us, until Zan’s body bobbed and sunk out of sight.

“I love you,” we both whispered to the lake at the same time.

Another bomb dropped, and it spurred me into motion. I aimed the gun at Cadoc again, and he stopped, not even afraid of me.

“You’re coming with me to get my sister.”

All he did was nod.

I marked the tree nearest to where we had dropped Zan’s body, and then the two of us were running to the safe house to make sure my last living sibling was still alive.