Page 29 of Worse Fates

“Yes, you!” Kai pokes me in the chest. “You act like that fucked up cunt was your only option, when I’m standing rightbloody here. Remember our plan to get a flat together when we finished school?”

Exasperated, I throw up my hands. “You were a tattoo apprentice and I worked part-time at a fish and chips shop! We couldn’t afford a pot to piss in, let alone a flat!”

Kai’s mouth forms into a stubborn line. “You’re my family, too, mate. What’s it gonna take to get that through your thick skull? I’ve never left your side, and I never will. So, if you’re running, I’m coming this time.”

We stare at each other, rain pouring down hard and breathing harder.

“You’re a right soppy sod…” I sniffle, throwing my arms around him.

Kai hugs back. “Yeah, I know. C’mon, we’ll address your many, many, issues later. Right now we’ve gotta leg it.”

“And why would you wanna do that?”

That voice cuts through the air like a knife. Then, in the direction we’ve been running, a man walks towards us.

“Hey, goofball.”

I move in front of Kai. “Jace.”

Jace looks so normal that sometimes I forget he’s my big bad wolf. Average height, tan brown skin, hair shaved close to the scalp. He’s got a hard face, but when he smiles his dimples shine like the sun. It’s what makes Jace disarming, what makes people trust him.

Jace strolls towards us, something bulky and square strapped with thin black belts on the outside of his upper thigh. From the wrinkled grey leather, it almost looks like an old book. And as his smile grows wide, like he really missed me, my stomach sinks lower.

“I’ve been worried about you, goofball. The flat doesn’t feel like home without you.” Jace’s voice is kind. Full of lies. Or worse—a truth that he wants, but I’ll never give him.

My eyes track him, unblinking, wide, trying to capture any sudden movements. I push at Kai, silently begging him to escape while he’s got the chance. But the idiot doesn’t move.

“I-I’m allowed to leave whenever I want,” I tell him, hoping he doesn’t hear my tremor.

He strolls closer, towering over me like the blocks of flats. “‘Course you can. I’d never trap you. But then you took something of mine. Didn’t you?” Eachclapof his shoes on the cracked path makes me flinch.

Panic closes my throat as Jace stops in front of us.

“Where is it, Golden?” he asks, a smile full of promises meant to inflict pain.

I push harder at Kai, wishing he’d leave. But Kai doesn’t budge an inch.

“I…” Squaring my shoulders, I face him head on. “I flushed it.”

And like the rain washed it away, his kindness melts to reveal a rage that has Kai grabbing hold of my forearm, forcing us both to stumble back.

“You. What?” Jace hisses out, low and deadly.

I’m about to stutter out a lame excuse, but then the flash of a knife pulls my attention to the glinting point.

“Jace,” Kai says, voice tight. “Chill out, yeah? We’re all good…”

“Stay out of this, Kai!” Jace shouts, then does something I don’t expect—he cuts his arm open, blood flowing out.

“What the fuck.” Kai and I say in unison.

Between clenched teeth, Jace, the man I still think of as my big brother, snarls, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Jace holds up his arm, blood gushing from his parted flesh. None of it hits the floor, however. It flows up to above his outstretched hand, swirling like a red whirlpool.

The belts at his thigh unclasp with asnap, the bulky thing begins to float before him, and I realise with a start that it really was a book. An ugly grey thing with wrinkled leather.

Mouth hanging open, I’m frozen as I watch the whirlpool of blood grow from a tennis ball into the size of a football. A squishing sound, like mushy, raw, meat squeezed between fingers, pulses from its centre.