Page 17 of This Blood That Breaks Us (This Blood That Binds Us, #3)

Fourteen

Zach

Nights were hell on earth. One downside of training was the need to sleep to heal.

The nightmares left me feeling like a zombie when I woke up. I never dreamed of Sarah, but that didn’t mean she didn’t haunt me in the daytime. I couldn’t stop remembering those days. A time when I was almost happy. One memory I thought of every morning the moment I opened my eyes was the last time Ashley, Sarah, Luke, and I were ever together at the same time.

“Let’s go in there! We should get readings for our first week at college.” Ashley pointed to a house across the park. A muted-pink two-story house with a neon sign in the window that read Tarot Card Readings.

Ashley and Sarah were prepped and ready for their time together at the university. They walked arm in arm between Luke and me.

I remember thinking how perfect it was.

“ My dad told me to steer clear of that stuff ,” Sarah muttered.

“It’s nothing scary. I do readings all the time.” Ash was already steering us toward the building. Once she had her mind set on something, we usually went along with it.

Luke and I weren’t religious or spiritual in any sense. Mom tried to get us to go to church with her, but we’d end up in the back playing in the pews.

Luke rubbed Sarah’s back. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Ashley shot him a glare. “It’s not dangerous. I wouldn’t suggest it if it was.”

“ We can try it ,” Sarah agreed.

We walked up the concrete steps. The door squeaked and a bell rang. An old woman who looked like someone I’d want to party with greeted us. Her arms were covered in tattoos, and she had long catlike nails.

She scanned us over but stopped when she saw Luke and me. Her eyes lingered and shone with some kind of recollection I thought nothing of at the time.

“We want a reading because we’re starting classes next week.” Ashley squeezed Sarah close to her.

She would always pull Sarah to her like a comfort teddy bear.

“Lovely. Come this way and we’ll get started.”

She ushered us to a small table covered in green velvet in a room that smelled of old incense. I hated that smell. The walls were full of frilly things like doilies and pink-striped wallpaper.

“You’re both . . . ” She panned over Luke and me as she took her seat. “Trouble.”

“That’s an understatement.” Ashley giggled.

“Geminis. Twins.”

“ Uh, yeah ,” Luke coughed out.

“Are you a psychic medium too?” Ashley asked.

“Yes, I have been since I was a young girl. Is it you two girls that want the reading, not the four of you?”

Ashley’s eyes lit up as she turned around in her chair, so I said, “ We didn’t plan on it. But we can .”

“Please sit. All of you.”

“For this reading, you will each get two cards.” She pulled out a deck of cards with a deep purple on the backing.

I might as well have been scratching a lottery ticket. It meant nothing to me. Cards were a kid game, but it made Ashley happy, so I didn’t complain. She closed her eyes, and a silence settled between us. Luke and I shared a shrug. The girls were pressed together between us. Sarah had her brows scrunched, but Ashley had a calming hand on my knee.

The old woman placed two cards in front of me and flipped the first card. It appeared to be some building being struck by lightning. Ashley squeezed my knee.

“The tower. A great change is coming in your life. I see danger. Sadness. Something shifts, and you will not see it coming.”

Typical.

She flipped over the next card, revealing two skeletons embracing.

“The lover. I feel something that you’re connected to. Something dark. It calls to you.” She looked over at my brother. “And you.”

She didn’t wait this time as she shuffled the deck and drew Luke’s cards. His card revealed the same sad little building and dead lovers.

“Interesting. Your fates are set on a similar path. You have a deep connection with each other . . . and another.”

I swallowed. No way this lady knew what the hell she was talking about.

We watched as she shuffled her deck and drew for Ashley. Her first card was different— death, but the second was the same. The tower. I sighed. None of this was any fun.

“How often does that happen in readings?” Luke chewed his lip.

“ It’s rare ,” the woman said.

She shuffled the deck but stopped before pulling.

“I’m sensing a powerful force here with us.”

I had to fight an eyeroll.

“Powerful and malevolent.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “It sees us here. It’s watching. Observing. Waiting.”

“ We’re waiting ,” I said, and Ashley kicked me under the table.

“ Yes, yes ,” the old woman said quickly. She placed two cards in front of Sarah. A dead man with ten swords piercing his back, and we waited for the flip of the last, and sure enough, the tower stared back at us.

“We all drew the tower card?” Ash’s tone had shifted.

“Your fates are all intertwined very closely right now. I’d step lightly in the coming weeks.” Her eyes panned over to Sarah, and she rested her hand on the back of the cards. “Especially you, dear. I don’t want to startle you, but I see something life altering happening in your future.”

I scoffed. It was all bullshit.

The woman looked up at me with eyes full of sadness. “Darkness follows you.”

I wondered if I’d taken it seriously if I could have avoided the future that came after. That was the last time we were all happy together. A week later, Sarah was missing and our worlds crumbled. I’d never be able to forget the hell that followed Sarah’s disappearance or Ashley’s words to me.

“ She could still be out there ,” I’d said.

I hadn’t known what to think about her disappearance at the time. I’d been too focused on keeping Luke’s head above water and dealing with the backlash. Like Sarah’s father busting into our house and asking Luke and me for answers we didn’t have. I was so angry back then. Everyone thought it was us. Sarah’s dad even asked the police to investigate us. I’d felt betrayed then, but they were right. It was us the darkness followed.

“You and I both know that’s not likely.” Ashley didn’t waste time on false hope for anything, even her best friend.

I went to comfort her, but she stopped me.

“It doesn’t make sense. There is no reason that it was her. She was smart. No one would hurt her. The only thing that connects her to anything bad is . . . you and Luke.”

“What? You think I did this?” I remember the stab in my stomach when she’d said it. I didn’t understand how she could accuse me.

“On purpose, no. Unintentionally . . . maybe. Tell me what your big secret is. Tell me about this thing you’ve never been able to say. It used to not matter. I didn’t care if you and Luke were doing something you shouldn’t be. But now it’s the only thing that matters because she’s gone. And I think you know who did it.”

I was such an idiot back then. Brainwashed child or not, I think it was the last night she ever trusted me. Ashley never started her classes. Not without Sarah. Probably why she wanted to go to San Francisco. To leave the carnage of her planned future behind. And I let her. Looking back, it all made perfect sense. I’d ruined her life. She was lucky to make it out alive after knowing me. Not everyone was so lucky. I would have ruined her, and she knew it, but she didn’t leave unscathed. None of us did. Sarah haunted us all, and I hoped she would continue to haunt me for the rest of my days. I owed it to her.

Luke’s voice snapped me out of my morning fog. “They hate me.”

We were on our way to the training room. Ezra had kept his end of the deal. Luke was spending more time with me than with the queen. He had to see her every morning, but most times, I could come along unless Sirius threw a fit.

It was more of the same mundane stuff. Walking in the cold. The queen put on Her show and tried to charm me and my brother into trusting Her. The scary thing was—it kind of worked. Mornings were quick. Being so close to Her felt like taking a nap. Once we left, I hardly remembered our conversation, but I always remembered how it felt to be close to Her.

“They don’t hate you.”

“They don’t respect me.”

“They’re delinquents who are brainwashed by a cult. Do you really want them to respect you?”

“Well, they like you.”

“Yeah, because I’m an asshole. They respond well to other assholes making them feel like shit.”

“You’re not an asshole,” Luke said matter-of-factly.

“Luke, we’ve established I am.”

“Yeah, but you’re more than that. You’re a good leader in a different way.”

I sighed. “They need someone like you more than they need someone like me.”

It was sounding like one of the many talks we kept having over and over.

Luke punched my shoulder. “Shut up.”

We walked together where the others were sparring. It was the room Sirius and I used most of the time. You needed little in a room that’s sole purpose was to tear people’s arms off. Connell was having a hard time with Henderson. They were too unevenly matched, and Henderson had a mean streak, but those were good here. Everyone I’d ever sparred since turning had one. They loved watching others suffer. That’s one reason it was so fun for me to make them suffer.

Connell was a weak link, though, and I didn’t know where to place him. I didn’t like watching the kid get the shit kicked out of him and his limbs almost tore off, but I couldn’t help him just because his blond hair was the exact same color as my brothers’. Or the fact that when he laughed it sounded like the laugh I used to make fun of Aaron for.

I couldn’t be soft.

“Hey, that’s enough.” Luke motioned for them to stop.

Luke, on the other hand, couldn’t help himself.

“What? We’ve only started getting warmed up. Connell is my partner.”

“Not today. I’m your partner.”

Oh shit.

That got everyone in the room stirring and moving in closer. The lower-ranked members had leaders, and Henderson was one of them. Each member of The Guard had their own little squad to look over, but no one was technically under Luke and me yet. We were in a weird in-between stage. Not quite The Guard but not one of them either.

“Luke, can I watch?” Connell was a bloody mess on the floor and could barely move.

“Course you can.” Luke beamed.

“You have him calling you by your first name now?” Henderson scoffed.

“There are two Calems here. Can’t really identify me that way, can he?” Luke tore a piece of his sleeve from his shirt to help cover the blood gushing from Connell’s shoulder.

Pain shot through my chest like someone speared me from behind. It was so sharp that for half a second, it felt as if something had. At first, I thought it was from Luke, but this wasn’t the usual dull ache in my chest that could turn from zero to excruciating, depending on the day.

This was all mine.

It was confirmed when Luke shot me a worried glance. He felt it too.

Feelings were more of a suggestion as far as I was concerned. I filed them away in my suggestion box that then got set on fire. Problem solved. I didn’t take suggestions. This wasn’t that. This wasn’t something I could control. I turned away while Luke tended to Connell’s shoulder. The sadness crept up my throat, and I beat it down like the vile rabid dog it was. Nope. Not here.

“There. You’ll be all right,” Luke said.

“Come on, sir. We should get this started, don’t you think?”

Henderson made it easy to grab on to the only emotion I enjoyed feeling—an unholy amount of anger. He was cocky. From his smirk, I could tell he thought he could beat Luke. They all wanted to beat us because they wanted to be us. They thought they’d be next. The missing two from the prophecy. Or maybe they wanted someone else to be chosen.

Luke might lose to me in a fight eight times out of ten, but those times, he showed me he wasn’t someone to be messed with. He had something I didn’t have. When I was knocked down and couldn’t get up, I was fueled by pure spite, but Luke had actual resilience. The kind you couldn’t learn and had to be born with.

He tore off his shirt and threw it over the side. With a bite to the wrist, blood ran in a steady stream onto the floor. The drain system in the concrete of the floor was perfect for washing away the buckets full of blood spilled daily.

“Alright. Let’s see what you got.” Luke was oddly serious, but I knew why. He didn’t tolerate bullies.

“May fate guide you, sir.” Henderson bowed.

Luke bowed back, though he didn’t need to. “May fate guide you.”

Sirius taught us that stupid phrase the first time we sparred. More cult bullshit.

Henderson rushed him, and Luke countered easily like I’d shown him. He pushed Henderson to the ground with one hulking arm. Henderson wrapped his arm around Luke’s leg and tried to pull him down.

“Amateur,” I whispered under my breath.

He may have been older than me and liked to fight, but he had a lot to learn. I guess Sirius and Ezra had other things they deemed more important than training the men like they’d taught me. Luke was a hulking mass, and even if they seemed equal in build, unless Luke was good and drained of blood, knocking him off balance would be nearly impossible.

“See, bad idea. You want to wait to pull me down after more blood is drained.” Luke grabbed Henderson from the floor and flung him into the wall with ease. “Okay, try again. This time, keep your chin up. Slow down and watch my movements. Read me first.”

Luke rushed him, and Henderson went straight for a cheap shot chokehold and bite at the neck, but Luke flung him over his shoulder into the concrete.

“I said watch!” Luke grabbed him by the collar and pinned him to the ground, holding down his arms and feet.

“What are you playing at?”

“I’m trying to make you a better fighter.”

I smiled. He didn’t like fighting, but he loved teaching and challenging people to make them better. Luke taught me to be a better fighter. He taught me to be better at everything, and he would teach them too. The medium was right. Darkness had followed us, wrapped us in its arms, and placed us there, and we shouldn’t have fit. It shouldn’t have worked. If it wasn’t true, we wouldn’t have.

Something about Henderson softened. He let his shoulders drop and listened to Luke’s guidance. Luke’s audience of blood thirsty assholes had turned into a more silent group, watching him as he explained things step by step.

I smiled. It was working. He was fitting in. We both were.

Luke and I could be okay if things didn’t work out with the escape. I wanted to believe it would stick. That this time would be different, but I didn’t know for sure. I had to have a backup plan. I had to be ready for anything.