Page 24 of Lethal (Wellard Asylum #1)

The secret door catches my attention, and it’s now ajar, and my self-preservation demands that I try to escape through it.

Just as I risk crawling toward it, Wren comes through it, laughing, snarling, a blur of pale, tattooed limbs, and fury and pushes it closed.

He looks possessed, teeth bared like something inhuman, and the sound he makes when he grabs the man’s head, and slams his own into it, is terrifying.

I collapse to the floor, pressing my back against the padded wall, gasping, torn coat clutched around me as I try to scramble to my knees, and move closer to the twins.

“Bash,” I choke. “Stop him. He’s going to kill him. ..”

“Stay back,” Bash replies, his voice cold and clipped.

I can’t tell if he’s speaking to me, Wren, or both of us, but Wren doesn’t stop.

Wren’s fists land punch after brutal punch against the orderly’s face.

The sound of bone cracking, and wet blood splattering, is loud even as it competes against our harsh breathing, as he crouches beside the fallen man, eyes blazing, and teeth bared.

“He touched her,” he hisses, his lip curling in disgust.

“He touched her, my porcelain doll! MINE! What has five fingers and a death wish? HIM!“ His face darts forward, and his teeth bite down hard on the man’s ear, ripping a chunk of flesh off before spitting it out, as if its taste somehow offends him. More blood splatters on the padded walls, creating a horrifying abstract painting. “He touched her, Bash! He bruised her! He wanted her to bleed... her blood belongs to me, to us! Hurt him. Flay him. Cut out his teeth and sew them into his eyes. Rip out his heart and make him cry!” Wren grabs the guard’s hair, and smashes his face into the floor with a child’s delight.

He mumbles incoherent things to himself over and over, and I realize the voices are screaming, and in control of him now.

Blood sprays along the padded walls and coats his hands, trickling down his arms, and over those puckered, burned scars on his flesh.

“Stop,” I choke on the word, my bruised throat making it difficult to utter.

“Bash, make... him... stop!” He’s going to kill him for hurting me.

Some part of me knows that’s not right, but another part wants to allow him to do just that.

Let Wren be our psychotic warrior. That fucker deserves to die for laying his filthy hands on us, my mind demands, but I can’t.

I’m still a doctor, one whose oath is to heal, not hurt.

Bash’s heated eyes slide over me, and I follow his glance, seeing how my coat is gaping open and exposing my body to him.

I quickly grasp the material, my fingers clinging to it, as if it could somehow protect me from what has already happened or, worse, what could still happen.

The fabric doesn’t have any magical abilities.

It won’t save me from two deranged, sadistic serial killers, any more than the disgusting, violent orderly, but it’s all I have.

Bash pries his eyes away from me, with a final heated look, and crawls over to Wren, taking his enraged face between his hands and whispering something I can’t hear, in a tranquil, strong voice, and then somehow, Wren lets go, his demeanor calming.

He turns away from the bleeding, unconscious orderly, grinning.

Blood coats his cheeks, chin, and teeth, and his blue-gray eyes, filled with utter madness, meet mine.

He claps his blood-stained hands, like a small child who has enjoyed an epic experience.

The thought that all of this is some sort of sick game to him, that he can’t understand the ramifications of his actions, blares through my mind, but I immediately dismiss it.

He knows he holds the power of life and death in his hands.

He enjoys the violence. It’s ingrained into him; it’s who he is.

No amount of therapy and drugs will ever change that.

I open and close my mouth, without the benefit of sound.

My body shivers over and over with both adrenaline, and fear, and yet.

.. I’m not running. Why the hell am I not running?

Why am I not trying to leave through that open door, and locking the monsters in here together?

Where are you going to go, Cat? You belong here just as much as they do.

Bash makes his way over to me then, almost as if he can sense the words speeding through my mind.

Silent. Measured. Beautiful, and horrifying.

A red-stained knight defending his queen.

Is that what I am now? He kneels before me, his fingers caressing my chin, and forcing me to meet his gaze.

“You’re safe now,” he says. “He can’t touch you again.

” I’ll never be safe again. I know it, even as he endeavors to convince me otherwise.

My breath exhales in ragged bursts, sharp in my ears.

I can’t feel my legs, can’t feel anything but the throb of terror, still working its way out of my spine.

I realize my lip is bleeding, the taste of rich copper on my tongue, but I don’t remember how it happened.

Bash reaches out and brushes his thumb across it.

Slow. Reverent. Possessive. A shudder runs through me, and I swallow my pained gasp as I let him.

My core tightens, with both fear and arousal, as I meet his intense eyes, and in their depths, I witness the monster that lies in wait, ready and willing to end me.

Behind him, Wren looms, shifting side to side on his feet, a dark presence awaiting his turn to touch me.

“Pretty little doctor in her clean white coat, now painted red, nowhere to run, no words to quote…” His voice is softer now, sweet and strange, as if he fears to spook me further.

They’re monsters and killers, they’re not afraid of anything, and they don’t care how you feel.

Don’t romanticize what is happening here, I warn myself, yet I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief at their presence.

I should pull away from Bash’s touch, and make some attempt to save myself, but instead, I lean in, breathing in his masculine scent.

My eyes meet Bash’s, and surprise fills me at what I glimpse staring back at me.

His calm, composed face is unreadable, except for the flicker of satisfaction in his eyes.

He watches me, with a hunger that staves off the chill in the air, and lights a fire within me.

I force myself to break the connection, and stare at Wren over Bash’s shoulder.

He’s wild-eyed and trembling, his fingers covered in the orderly’s blood, moving in a rhythmic, chaotic movement against his chest.

I force my glance on the man who’d tried to.

.. no, no, I can’t, I can’t allow myself to vocalize it into words, not even to myself.

I flinch at the thought, my mind trying to protect itself, and shutting down.

My skin, however, remembers the weight of his body, the press of his hand around my throat.

The smell of his arid sweat in my nostrils. If they hadn’t come…

“You’re not crying,” Wren says, his voice too loud and sudden. I glance up in his direction, and he’s pacing and twitching, as if he’s filled with too much energy. Is he about to have one of his episodes, and if he does, will I be safe here?

“You’re not crying,” he repeats with agitation. “You should be… he hurt you. He touched you. You didn’t call for me. You didn’t scream my name. Why didn’t you scream my name, porcelain dolly? ”

“Wren!” Bash shouts as he stares up at his brother, his shoulders flexing, as if he’s preparing to restrain him.

“No,” Wren snaps, whirling. “She was going to let it happen. She was going to allow him to touch what is mine , and now she just sits there... like a pretty broken doll. ”

“I didn’t,” I breathe unsteadily. “I didn’t let anything happen, Wren.

He came in here and attacked me.“ But somehow my words sound hollow and weak, because somewhere beneath the panic and the shame, another feeling has crept in.

Relief. Not because they saved me, but because it was them.

Because it was Wren and Bash who saw me come apart.

I loathe myself for that, for my irrational weakness when it comes to them.

Wren crouches in front of me now, head tilted like a puppet with a broken neck.

“Do you want me to hurt him again?” he asks softly.

“I’ll do it better this time. Slower. I’ll make him spill all his red blood, and paint the floor and walls with it.

I promise, I can draw you a pretty picture, dolly.

“ Behind him, the orderly groans, still alive, barely. I’m so distracted that I hadn’t even realized he was regaining consciousness.

Bash and Wren are crouching side by side, the twin mirrors of my undoing.

They’re fallen angels who’ve become demons, sent here to tempt me, and the truth is I’m more than tempted.

I’m wholly wrapped around their fingers, their claws sunk deep inside of me, where I fear I will never be free again.

“He hurt you,” Bash says gently, as if I’m some scared animal ready to bolt. “That’s not something we forgive here.”

“You already punished him,” my voice trembles with a mixture of fear and nervous energy.

“But he’s still breathing,” Wren whispers.

“And that’s a problem, a big fucking problem, my sweet porcelain doll.

” I stare at them, my eyes roaming over each of their frames, at the blood that’s smeared on their clothes, and the dark looks that grace their features.

Then I force myself to look at the man on the floor, at all the blood, at the violence he committed against me, for no reason other than that he wanted to hurt me.

He tried to take from me, and destroy what’s left of my dignity.

Then I heard it, a voice, my voice, from some hidden place deep inside of me.

The place that I keep concealed, and repressed, so it can never rise again.

A fever starts in my blood, heating and rising, demanding to be set free.

All the rage I keep a tight lid on bubbles, and threatens to implode.

A part of me fractures, and I feel myself splintering until there’s no longer just Caterina Vaughan, now there’s Cat too, and both of us stare out of the same eyes.

One of us is hungry for retribution, and the other is too weak to fight back.

He needs to die. He needs to pay for his sins. No one is allowed to just take from us, and wickedness must be paid in blood and death. Finish it. It’s the only way this can be over; he must pay.