Page 37 of The Blood we Crave

The news of what my father had done, what he was, spread like a blazing wildfire through Ponderosa Springs, torching any and all other gossip for the next five years. All anyone wanted to talk about was Henry Pierson, the Butcher of the Spring.

So maybe after my grandfather saw me in the backyard, ripping the limbs off bugs, he knew what he had to do. Shunning me would have only made it worse, so he accepted what my father had made me into.

He’s made my favorite habit much easier for me, even from the grave.

I never know all the details. He’s just as secretive as I am, but every six months, several files would arrive in the mail: different names, all men, and everyone suspected of murder in some capacity.

The perfect gift for a boy fighting the urge to kill. At seventeen, when I’d held the weight of a blade in my hand and ended my first life, it was the moment I stopped being my father’s protégé, and I became something far worse.

A nightmare worse than Henry Pierson could have ever imagined.

“They’d have to catch me first.” I smirk, tightening my grip on the wheel and passing two cars moving at a snail’s pace, weaving in and out of traffic on the freeway smoothly.

The drive is comfortable physically, but the closer we get to the facility, the heavier the air feels in the car. The edge sharpens because we remember why we have to make this trip every week.

It isn’t long before Rook’s fingers fidget with his Zippo, constantly twirling it through the knuckles of his left hand while his right twitches light at his side. The metal snaps open and closed repeatedly.

Click

Click

Click

Clic—

“If you want that to join your cigarettes on the asphalt, I suggest you knock it off,” I bite out, turning to look at him for a second. “If you have something you need to say, spit it out. Quit squirming.”

His response is a harsh glare, full of fire and burning anger. I know it’s not all directed towards me. Some of that hostility is what he feels for himself. Every time we visit, his subconscious tries to convince him once again that what happened to Silas is his fault.

Which is ridiculous, of course.

Silas Hawthorne is entirely his own man who makes decisions on his own. Stubborn and silent choices, but still, they are his. Rook knows this, and yet he still can’t accept he is faultless in this situation.

The guilt is eating him alive, and not even the love of Sage Donahue is enough to curb that. It will be years before he can look in the mirror and believe what we all have tried to explain to him.

“You think he’s okay in there?”

The question hangs in the air, dangling in the space, waiting for one of us to reach out and grab it. But I don’t think Alistair wants to answer because we know the truth.

“No,” I answer, refusing to lie. “I think he feels like a caged, rabid animal who is being taught how to roll over and sit on command.”

My gut heats an intense tug inside of me. I detest the idea of one of our own trapped inside a box. My heart may not care for the three men I’ve chosen to have in my life, but my loyalty to our bond does.

“I don’t—”

“But,” I interrupt, glaring at Alistair in the back seat, “he knows this is what he needs. Even if he doesn’t like it, even if we don’t like it, no one knows Silas’s mind better than him.”

I glimpse at Rook’s hand, watching the twitching slow down enough for me to know he isn’t going to try and blow this car up with himself inside of it. I know what he wants right now.

Punishment. Pain.

A way to release the guilt from his blood for even a moment, but he knows I refuse to hurt him for this, and more than that, he knows Sage would explode if he reverted to harm to deal with the loss of Silas.

I used to provide him with the pain he needed to survive whenever he needed it. But not now, and not for this.

“Yeah,” he breathes, looking out the window. “You’re right.”

A mist of silence falls inside the car as we end our trip and close in on our destination. When I pull into the parking lot of the multistory glass building, we all sit there for a moment longer than necessary.