11. Wolf
Archer howls out of the rolled down window like an animal. Despite the rain lashing down, drenching his face, he doesn’t seem to care.
“Yes!” he shouts, dropping back down into the front passenger seat with a thud.
He howls again, using his hands over his mouth to project the sound, and then he leans across the centre console, shaking his soaked hair over Thorne. Our eldest brother tuts, using the control on his driver’s side door to roll Archer’s window up.
“I love boys’ night!” he whoops, his legs spread wide, head lolled back on the headrest of his leather seat, water running down the sharp bone structure of his face. “Why don’t we do this more often?”
“You mean sneak into girls’ bedrooms in the middle of the night and snatch them from their beds to sate your brother’s wolfish appetite?” Hunter drawls from beside me in the backseat of Thorne’s car, his face pulled into his usual stern scowl.
“Yeah, that!” Archer chuckles, this loud, raucous sound that is the polar opposite from his sobs less than an hour ago.
“Gee, I wonder,” Hunter huffs, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “I don’t want to be here,” he grunts with a sigh. His dark eyes coming to mine, “I’ll do this for you, but you know, I’d obviously rather be in-”
“Your wife,” Archer interrupts. “We all know that, but, Hunt, man, I don’t know if you know how this shit works, but it doesn’t matter how many more times you nut in her, she’s already knocked up, all the spunk in the world isn’t gunna make it twins,” Archer slaps his thigh, mouth open wide, head thrown back, laughing like a hyena.
“Archer,” Thorne warns lowly, trying to stop the impending collision.
But Hunter’s face draws into something dark, his eyes narrowing on the back of Archer’s head, who’s now humming a tune under his breath and tapping his fingers on his thigh.
“Watch what you say about my fucking wife,” Hunter warns lowly, his brow pulled low, eyes shadowed. “I know you’ve got shit going on, but that’s your sister. Show some fucking respect,” he hisses the last word before leaning forward and punching Archer in the bicep.
Archer, seemingly unaware how close our brother is to ripping his throat out, peers out the window, rolling his shoulder, like he hardly even felt it, “Sorry.”
Hunter exhales, a short, sharp breath, but he lets it go.
For now.
“She is on the move,” Thorne says calmly, each of us leaning forward in our seats to stare at the screen in the centre of the dash, the little blue dot, representing the business card with the tracking chip he gave Luna, moving fast.
“Where the fuck would she be racing to at four in the morning, isn”t it her night off?” Archer mumbles, less like an actual question and more like he’s speaking all of our thoughts out loud.
I’ve had a bad feeling since Archer decided to drag Thorne and Hunter out of bed and get us all in the car. It feels wrong, somehow, what we’re doing, but I don’t think that’s the source of my dread. It’s as though, as soon as Archer told me to get my girl, everything moved at a million miles an hour and it suddenly became urgent.
The thuds of my heart banging around inside my chest are loud in my ears as Thorne takes an unexpected left turn. The blue dot is moving so fast, racing its way across the map, Thorne accelerates harder, effortlessly following the marker.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” I say out loud, but nobody comments.
My insides churn, my gut twisting into knots as we keep driving.
“Maybe she dumped the card,” Thorne offers up, “we know the location of the card, not the girl.”
“Yeah, plus, she wasn’t at a house anyway, was she? Where did you say it was originally, Thorne? A pub?” Archer asks, peering up, his black hair falling into his eyes.
“Yes,” Thorne replies, cold and quiet, his tone has goosebumps raze across my flesh.
“So, maybe the card fell out of her pocket or her hand when she was get-”
“Getting dragged out of a car.” I don’t know why I say that, but it feels like truth. “Thorne,” I say my brother’s name like he’s my lifeline, and in this moment, that’s how it feels, my anchor. “Drive faster.”
Every fucking twist and turn makes sickness swirl inside my gut. I’ve never felt both so hot and so cold all at the same time before. There’s a pressure inside my skull so intense it feels like the bone is going to crack.
The streets get darker, street lamps busted, bulbs blown. The buildings grow bleaker, boarded up windows and steel barricades replacing doors. It’s silent inside the car, bar the hammering rain assaulting the roof and our collective breathing, mine much harsher than everyone else”s.
The blue dot stops on the map, and we get closer and closer, the blue marker still unmoving and I don’t know whether I’m close to screaming or vomiting.
Thorne stops near the edge of the docks, the blue dot blinking in the same spot for the last few minutes, and despite the pull in my wounded chest, I’m tearing my way out of the vehicle without thinking of any consequences. My brother barks my name at my back, the sound of the other car doors opening and closing loud in the echo of the rain. Thunder claps directly overhead making me flinch, my shoulders hunching up around my ears as lightning lights up the river ahead.
I swipe an arm across my face to clear the rainwater from my eyes, and find her slumped in the shallow water.
My heart drops into my stomach, tears filling my eyes and pain bolts up my thigh bones as I rush towards her, my knees crashing to the wet ground. There’s so much blood and flesh and tangled black hair. I’m not even sure what it is I’m looking at. She looks mangled, the way her body is positioned. Long limbs twisted together, blue scrubs torn and stained with large dark patches, thick, raven coloured hair strewn across her pretty face, plastered wetly to her icy skin.
A sob catches in my throat, hitching my chest, and I don’t breathe as I crawl forwards in the shallow water, weakly dragging myself closer. My backside hits the gravelly riverbed, water seeping into my clothes. I’m pulling her up into my lap, smoothing down her hair, kissing the crown of her head as I cradle her in my arms.
The storm rages overhead, but I barely feel it, the cold air whipping around us, the pelting rain punishing my skin, the thunder cracking and lightning flashing.
The weight of her feels different than it did just last night, when I dragged her into my lap at the hospital, whispering words over her lips. She was light and stiff, but she wanted to give in, the way she rocked slightly into me, as though it wasn’t intentional, didn’t realise she was doing it. She felt the pull between us too, the tether.
She feels a lot heavier now, like the entire world is weighting this dead girl”s body.
I can’t strangle the sounds that fall from my throat, rocking back and forth with her in my arms as I cry. Sobs ripping their way out of my bleeding heart, choking their way up my throat. Luna’s body is floppy, her head heavy on her shoulders, and as if to punish myself, I bring my fingers to her throat, holding my breath, closing my eyes, I still the jerky rocking movements and feel for a pulse.
Long seconds pass and there’s nothing. I keep my fingers pressed to her neck, denting her beautiful pale skin with the pressure, but I don’t feel anything. Panicking, I lift her up higher, shushing her pointlessly as if to calm her as I rest my ear over her heart. I clench my eyes shut tight, holding my breath once more, desperately praying to anything that will listen to let her come back to me.
Give her back to me.
The cry that spills from my lips is that of a wounded animal when I still get nothing. I’m curling her up into my arms, bundling her limp body into my chest, and crying into her neck.
I’m not sure how long I sit in the water, rocking back and forth with Luna’s body, but my brothers stand guard around us on the shore. Even though it’s raining, even though the longer we stay here the more at risk we are of being spotted. But none of them rush me. Not until the sun is just lifting behind the dense black clouds still spilling mourning tears, and Archer drops into a crouch before me, his booted feet in the river too.
I’m quiet, still clutching her to me, trying to warm her freezing body up, but my own teeth are chattering now, my skin like ice, rain and river water soaking me through to the bone.
“We’ve gotta move, Wolf,” Archer rasps, his voice thick but gentle. “Let’s get you both into the car, yeah?” I’m nodding as he and Hunter help me up by gripping my elbows, our footsteps splashing, nobody tries to take Luna from me as Thorne leads us all back to the car.
Hunter threads the seatbelt around us both, being careful to move the strap so it doesn’t press against her as he reaches across and buckles us in. Thorne drives once everyone is seated, and I am silent. Barely hearing the murmurs from my brothers’ hushed conversation, I blink, staring unseeingly at the back of the headrest in front of me. I can’t bring myself to look at her again.
“Take me home,” I manage to get out, my voice strained. “I want to do this myself.”
Nobody argues with me as Thorne flicks on his indicator, the ticking of it like a hammer to the head. I squeeze my eyes shut tight and listen to the static humming in my ears. My hands hold onto her so tight I’m sure it’d bruise, and I loosen my grip for just a second before I realise it just doesn’t fucking matter anymore.
Grief strangles the heavily thudding organ inside my chest cavity like barbed wire pulled taut. And in this moment, I’m praying for the healing bullet wound to open back up. Let my blood ooze and spill, and my soul leave my body to find hers.
It isn’t fair I only just found her and now she’s gone.
It hits me like an artic lorry smashing into me at high speed, I’m the one that got her killed. If I hadn’t pulled her into my lap in that lift at the hospital, if that man hadn’t seen us when the doors opened.
I should have followed her. She was scared, we could all see it, but I let her go.
‘Because I”m not free.’
Archer’s words roll around inside my head next, ‘Don’t fuck up by walking away, Wolf. It feels like the right thing to do because you’re a good man. But you’re also a fucking Blackwell.’
But I already did walk away.
I am a Blackwell.
And I’m not a good man.
I think of dinner earlier tonight, nearly the whole family together, all of us around the table, eating steak and ale pie whilst this girl, this perfect, perfect girl was beaten to death.
There’s pain in my temples, a pulsing ache in my forehead.
This is all my fault.
The drive onto the property as we reach Cardinal House is long.
Thorne navigates the wet gravel perfectly, the grind of the tyres is a welcome sound as we get closer to my home. I stare out at the graveyard on our left as we pass it, the dirt road overgrown with grass and weeds. New potholes forming because of the cracked, dry earth suddenly being flooded with rain. More things for me to fix. I suddenly don’t see the point.
Eventually, the car pulls up to a stop outside my front door, and I stare at it for a long time before deciding where we need to be.
“Take us ‘round the back,” the words scratch on their way up my throat, my stomach convulsing as my vocal cords protest.
“Wolf,” Hunter says from beside me, his big body angled towards his door, giving me and Luna as much space as possible.
After a quiet moment without response, Thorne lifts the handbrake and takes us around the two connected buildings to the back door we use for disposal transfers.
They leave because I ask them to, once they help me out of the car, I watch my brothers drive away before heading inside.
The building is cold and dark as I carry Luna through passages and hallways, taking us down a few steps into the morgue.
Reluctantly, my arms protesting our separation, I lay her limp form down on the ancient, white tiled slab, positioning her so she’s lying flat on her back. Pushing my own hair out of my eyes, my hair tie having come loose somewhere, I take a deep breath, flick on the bright overhead lights, and finally take a proper look at her.
Her lips are violet, her skin pale, blue veins stark like lightning forks beneath her skin. Her blue eyes are closed, there’s a slice in her throat, just above her pulse point. A gash in her temple, stretching back into her hairline and bruises blooming across her delicate face. I study the side of her head, my thumb sweeping beneath the wound that looks like a bullet scrape. I track it into her thick hair, parting the inky strands to follow it all the way to the back of her skull. This would have bled a lot, but there’s no way this could have been the cause of death.
I’m suddenly wondering if she drowned, and I could have given her CPR had I not been in such a fucking state. But I picture her lying in that water, and bile rushes up the back of my throat. I spin around, heaving into the deep steel sink, my chest aching, throat burning as I empty my stomach into it.
What if I made her leave the hospital with me?
What if I’d snatched her up and chained her to me, forced her to come with me and my brothers?
Why did I try so fucking hard to be a good man, to want her to come to me?
She’s dead because of me.
Good men, heroes, they never fucking win.
The bad guy, the villains, the ones who stalk through shadows and bathe in blood, those are the men who win.
Pain swells in my chest, pounding in my temples, and tears drip down my face, but I don’t think of her as mine in this moment. I can’t, or I won’t be able to get this done.
Mechanically, I grab the scissors, cutting through her stained, wet clothes. I ignore the mottled black, purple and green bruises as I carefully lift her limbs, threading the clothing out from underneath her and dropping it into the black bag hanging open at the end of the table. Thorne’s card wet and crumpled, the corner just poking out of the breast pocket of her top.
The river water and rain has mostly cleaned away any blood, but I’m struggling to find an injury that could be the cause of death. Nothing is adding up, unless it’s internal damage, haemorrhaging, and from the bruising, it’s likely.
Carefully, I lift her upper half forward into a sitting position, using my forearm to band across her bare breasts, I scan her back, nothing but more bruising, one in the shape of a fucking boot. My teeth grind and I gently lay her back down, turning her onto her side, I step around the table to get a better look, my hand gently clasped over her shoulder.
The bruising that I find on the backs of her thighs, her buttocks, fingerprints and blunt blooms of purple has bile painting the back of my tongue. But I can’t not look, I can’t not know, whatever it is she had to go through, endure until death… Me only seeing the evidence shouldn’t be hard. She had to go through it, the least I can do is look, to know for sure. It’ll drive me insane, all the what ifs, the not knowing.
With trembling hands, I reach out, smoothing my rough hands over her soft skin, skating my palms over her soothingly, like I’m saying sorry for what I’m about to do, and I wish the bruising was enough for me, but I have to know. I part the flesh of her bruised cheeks gently and find the evidence I expected. And it doesn’t make me feel better knowing for sure that she was sodomised, probably until it killed her, or she was so near death anyway, maybe she begged for it.
Suddenly, I can’t feel the disconnection anymore.
This isn’t just another body in my mortuary.
I can’t just do this like she’s nothing to me.
Like she hasn’t infected my blood, wrapped herself around my heart and strangled me with that soft, clean scent of hers. The slow blinks, blank expressions, that tiny hidden smile she gave me, reluctantly, but she did it, and it was for me. It felt fucking amazing.
My soul fucking bleeds black for what it can’t have.
It isn’t fucking fair.
The sobs rip out of me like an exorcism. The pain in my heart is enough to kill me, and I wish it would. In this moment, as I slip to the floor, my fingers clinging onto the edge of the table. I know. I know that I’ll never be able to get the image of her cold, lifeless body out of my head for the rest of my life.