Page 12

Twelve

blood rush

chapter-seperator

“ I never meant to hurt her,” I sobbed from my place on the shitty floor. Each word tasted like ash and blood.

Jace stood stoic the entire time, barely blinking while I confessed what happened that night Honey disappeared. His darkness gathered like storm clouds, thick and oppressive.

His jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth might shatter. A muscle in his cheek ticked, betraying the storm brewing beneath the surface. His chest rose and fell in shallow bursts, breath rattling like it didn’t belong in his body anymore.

For a fraction of a second—just a breath—something flickered in his eyes. Not just rage. Not grief. Something worse. Something he buried faster than I could name it.

Then he moved.

He scrubbed his hand down his face, rose up on the balls of his feet, and let out an animal-like sound—raw, guttural—before he began destroying everything.

Anything nearby, it didn’t matter what it was. It was useful to purge the shock and pain, I guessed. Or maybe it was to drown out the truth echoing in his skull. The monster showing its teeth.

I could have offered the truth; it wouldn’t work, nothing helped. It was always there because she no longer was and never would be again. Some sins couldn’t be washed clean.

But God, I wanted to be forgiven. Just once. By someone. Even if it was the wrong person, even if it was him. The ache felt like it lived inside my bones now, fused to the marrow, a weight I’d never shake off. I hated myself more than he ever could—but I still wanted him to hate me less.

Another truth?

I kind of wanted it to be over now so I wouldn’t have to feel it anymore.

Loss is something you never get over; nothing can replace what’s gone. If I could go back now, I would have gone with her; we would have left together. I would have lost Jace but that happened anyway and I lost one more—myself. Lost to the darkness that claimed us both.

I was a selfish, stupid girl and I reaped the rewards of my terrible choice, of that impossible choice.

All of the horrible things since then, I earned.

I couldn’t feel how harshly the cement floor treated my knees or how tightly my hand gripped the knife. I didn’t even remember picking it up. The blade calling for more blood.

Jace’s hand wrapped around my wrist. “What are you doing, kitten?” he asked softly. His eyebrow quirked up in that way I always found so sexy before. Before the darkness claimed us both.

It reminded me of how Honey looked at me in those moments before she died. That was a moment forever frozen in time in my brain. Some memories brand themselves on your soul.

“Making it stop,” I croaked. It was all I could manage. There were too many words that fought to be released from my vocal cords. But none of them fucking mattered; they wouldn’t change anything. I couldn’t ever take back what I did. Some stains don’t wash away.

“Fuck that, you’re not leaving me. I just got you back,” he declared as he tossed the knife and pulled me into his strong arms. His darkness wrapping around me like a shield.

Sitting on that shitty floor that had so many disgusting things perpetrated on top of it, Jace rocked me until my sobs were under control again. The monster gentling his touch for his broken toy.

“Kitten? Which one of these men murdered my sister?” he asked softly as he peppered kisses against my hair which hung limply in front of my face, shielding my ugliness from him. Each kiss a promise of violence to come.

“I killed her, Jace. It was my fault. Don’t you get it?” I cried, pushing at his shoulders but couldn’t budge them an inch. The truth clawing its way out of my throat.

His resolve was far stronger than mine. “Which one pointed a shotgun at my sister’s face and pulled the damn trigger?” he demanded.

I could answer that easily. “He’s not one of them. I don’t think he’s here.”

Spider, he was the worst one. The arachnid tattoos, he had more than one, baby spiders hatching from eggs inked into his cock, some sick horrific warning. He delighted in terrifying his victims. He liked to use both his tatted appendages at the same time. A monster among monsters.

He was noticeably absent which wasn’t altogether odd. He was obviously the monster in charge; he seemed to always come and go as he pleased whereas the others worked shifts—rotating like clockwork, cogs in the machine he controlled with a flick of his venom-laced grin.

The asylum had been their perfect front. Legitimate medical records tucked neatly over sins no prescription could cure. A cover story with paperwork to match, hiding the real business—trafficking girls like me. Girls they broke, not just with fists, but with chemicals. Dependency disguised as treatment until you couldn’t tell the difference between the need and the pain.

There were always four. But there were only three bodies strewn akimbo on the unforgiving floor. I was fairly certain Jace had killed them; if not then their last breaths were imminent. His violence painting the walls with their sins.

That made me happy and if I weren’t still reeling from recollections, I probably could have managed a smile. The monster in me recognizing his.

“It wasn’t your fault, you hear me?” he insisted, tipping my face up with a single knuckle under my chin. “You made a mistake; you were going to fix it, get help for her.”

My shoulders shook with the horrible tumult of feelings in a fresh wave of sorrow. “They wouldn’t let me, Jace!” I cried. The screams still echoing in my head.

He hugged me so tight I could scarcely breathe. “It’s going to be okay,” he soothed, running his hands down my back.

He couldn’t know those words killed me so, an echo of hers.

“No, it won’t. It won’t ever be again,” I whispered. It hurt so much, like bleeding out in micrograms, so slowly the agony was prolonged. Some wounds never heal.

“Just give me some time, kitten. I’ll make it better, somehow,” he murmured as he pushed the hair away from my face, his lips a soft brush against mine. A sweet, chaste kiss of comfort.

It worked.

I wanted more. My hand moved to the back of his blonde head as I kissed him back. It was the first time I needed to or wanted to since… since they broke me and remade me in their image.

Jace only gave in for a second before jerking back and looking at me like a crazy person.

Maybe I was now, maybe I would forever be broken in a way that couldn’t be fixed. But I needed to know something.

“Do you still love me?” I asked softly. I couldn’t blame him if he didn’t. He didn’t know of the horrors I endured under this very roof. He could kill me if he wanted, if that sated his need for vengeance. I would die for him, for what I did back then, for what I did to Honey. Jace killing me would hurt far less than if he stopped loving me.

“How can you even ask me that? Look what I did to these men who hurt you,” he replied, gesturing openly at the symbols of death lying around us. His violence a love letter written in blood.

“I thought you did that for Honey,” I said quietly.

“Naomi, I didn’t know what happened to my sister when I tore them apart,” he explained, shaking me just a bit to make certain I understood him. His hands gentle even in their strength.

I guessed that was right. That was how it happened. Jace came, he killed, I confessed, in that order.

He still didn’t answer the question directly, until his lips did.

I could still remember the first time he kissed me; it was just like this, with this much heat and passion. An ardor that couldn’t be easily quenched. A desperation you couldn’t escape. The darkness calling to darkness.

I felt like me for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long. The me that wanted Jace more than air, more than food or sleep. Oh, the hunger was fierce.

He was never unsure about anything, but I could feel his hesitance all the same. That brief and furious fuck back on that table in the clubhouse with a witness wasn’t our reunion; this was. This claiming among the dead.

It had to be.

Maybe some sick and broken part of me needed the carnage, the blood, the wrongness to feel right. Maybe I would never truly feel normal again, not the way I did before that night so many years ago. Maybe I’d become the kind of monster who needed blood to feel alive.

The purge, the expulsion and unburdening of all those horrible things that happened, helped. Jace was helping and he wasn’t even aware he did it just by being the Jace I always loved. He had found his way back to man he was before all the drugs made him go insane and do some colossally stupid shit. Found his way back to my monster.

“Please,” I begged him with only an infinitesimal amount of shame. My body already remembering his darkness.

The floor seemed slightly more forgiving with Jace’s weight pressing me into it. Yes, this felt right, to be with him here in this awful place. To make a good memory to erase some of the bad or at the very least push them back into the deeper recesses of my brain like I’d done that night. I just wanted to forget for a few moments, to feel something besides bad, besides hurt and pain. To let his darkness consume mine.

Jace swallowed my moan, offering one of his own as his hands traveled my body, touching me in ways I’d forgotten I found so thrilling or so damn hot. For years I was touched without permission in a million monstrous ways by a million monsters. But the only touch I ever wanted was this man who had the blood he just shed for me all over. My beautiful demon.

Clothes ripped and were shed like a snake does its skin as we fucked in the goddamn degradation of that horrid place. Jace drove deep the reminder that I needed him with pounding hips as my nails dug into his fine, firm ass in a futile effort to control the ecstasy his body always served mine. Each thrust claiming what was his.

“I missed your claws, kitten,” he whispered against my cheek. The sweat from his exertions, from both of ours, lubricating the way our bodies moved and slid together in a debaucherous act that felt more sublime than mere fucking ever should. Like demons dancing in hell.

I missed everything about my life before, but especially him. I wanted as much of my life back as I was allowed to have karmically speaking.

I hoped it included Jace.

His name was a prayer on my lips as the sounds of fucking rang like the sweetest music to my ears. I loved his groans, every sound he made really. Heaven could never feel this amazing, no more a salvation than this abandonment of every morality except love on a dirty floor, surrounded by the bodies of our enemies. Our darkness merging into one.

I felt like I was soaring, the ringing that increased in my ears as body parts tingled and went numb with too much blood flow or too little; I wasn’t sure which. I didn’t even know if that was an orgasm; I’d never felt it before, not like that. Like being consumed by fire.

I was about to ask Jace about it when I realized the ringing wasn’t just in my head. It was the sound of a phone. But that wasn’t shocking; phones ring all the time, at all hours.

It was the very obvious sound of it being answered, upstairs, in the loft. It was where the men sometimes slept and did normal shit when they weren’t torturing helpless young women. Where they planned their monstrosities.

The sudden shock of Jace leaving my body startled me. I’d never seen any man take so many stairs at one time. I definitely didn’t notice him grab a pistol. There’s something unforgettable about a man who while naked could keep his head in the game and would grab a pistol instead of pants. Priorities. A predator ready to hunt.

With no visual, the sound of flesh popping flesh was louder somehow. Punches?

“You didn’t have to stop fucking on my account. I was enjoying the show. It’ll make a hell of a movie,” a voice chuckled before Jace sent him ass over teakettle down the stairs. The spider finally showing himself.

I thought for sure the fucker had broken his neck, but he was still chuckling in a heap when he reached the bottom rung. Evil refusing to die easily.

Oh my god!

It was him, the spider.

I was surprised Jace hadn’t already torn him apart. Instead, he grabbed a handful of hair and dragged him over to me. It was then I noticed the pistol he’d had when he went upstairs was gone in favor of a shotgun, which he handed to me. Moving behind me, he helped me hold it, aim it at the motherfucker who killed Honey. Justice coming full circle.

He was getting to see what she saw. The poetry of it was so damn perfect my love for Jace doubled instantly. My hands didn’t shake because he was there to support me. The rhythm of our excited breaths joining more frightened ones. Jace’s presence steady behind me, letting me know this was right. That vengeance was mine to take.

The guy looked pissed or indignant. “You’re not even going to give me any last words?” he sneered.

“You just used them, bitch!” Jace hissed next to my ear.

“Why? You didn’t give our sister any!” I screamed with all the fury I felt for this piece of shit who had taken someone so precious to us both.

The last thing that entered his mind before it was scattered across the shitty floor was shock and confusion. I would have liked fear, but at least it was done. The final monster slain.

People always get what they deserve.

My mind was a whirlwind of excited electrical impulses all firing at the same time. The darkness we shared consuming us both, erasing every horror with new memories. The explosion building inside me, the intensity of tumultuous feelings ricocheting in my brain and heart made me scream.

Our reflections in the mirror showed what we’d become—monsters who’d found their match. Beautiful and terrible and perfect together.