40. Splatter
Chapter 40
Splatter
CALLIE
“ W hat’re you doing here, Nash?” someone asked, and I grimaced.
I hate this dream.
“I told you that you’re not welcome after your betrayal,” the same voice angrily warbled in and out.
“But I’ve atoned to you. To it . You know that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And I brought you the final piece you need. That we need.”
I floated through the air.
“My goddess.”
At the name, I tried to blink the sleep from my eyes. Tried to shake off the weird dream.
I’m at home in bed with my men where I belong.
But as the haze began to lift, I realized I was wrong.
So wrong.
I wasn’t dreaming. And it wasn’t sleep slowing my thoughts and weighing down my body. It was the same inhaled drug as last time.
When he’d stabbed me in the garage.
The vaguely familiar smell of cigarette smoke clung to my attacker—twice over—as he carried me. I peeked out as best as I could without fully opening my eyes to see we were moving across a lush landscape. Not at Eternal Sun.
How will they find me here? I don’t even know where here is.
I wanted to panic, but they would notice. I did the smart thing. First, I used my thumb to slowly spin my engagement ring so it just looked like a normal band. And then I repeated my mantra.
They’ll find me.
They’ll always find me.
I’m theirs.
Unlike the ones ES used to teach, I actually believed that refrain.
It allowed my body to stay limp as we followed a pristine path that led to a massive house. Ostentatiously huge.
Ugly as hell.
“Why do you have her? What’s going on?”
“It’s time,” the agent rumbled.
“For what?”
“Ascension.”
Marco
“What?” I forced out through my dry mouth.
“Yeah, an FBI agent,” the gate guard said.
“You’re sure?”
“He had the badge. Looked legit.”
I pressed the accelerator harder. “What was his name?”
“I don’t re?—”
“Okay, what did he look like?”
“Uh, is everything okay, sir?” His voice lowered. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
I inhaled sharply to keep control since reaching through the phone to tear him a new asshole wasn’t an option. “What?—”
“Hold on.”
“What the fuck?”
“Sir, it looks like there was an incident at your house. One of the front windows was broken. Would you like us to call the police?”
Something beeped, and Cole answered for me. “No.”
“Sir?”
“No,” I repeated, my gaze going to the side to try to see what was on his phone. “What did the agent look like?”
“Kind of tall. Thirties. Just… average.”
Nash. Why the fuck does he have her?
“What’s—”
“Thanks,” I muttered as I disconnected the call and cut off his questions. “What?”
“Everything is back on.” Cole propped the phone on the dash. “She’s moving.”
“Toward Eternal Sun?”
“No.”
Callie
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You’re not listening. They have too much information.”
“Too many lies. Fabrications. You said you would fix it. And you failed me. Again.”
A sob rocked the chest I was pressed to. “I tried. Abraham, you have to believe me. I twisted things. Gave them other leads. Hid every piece of evidence I was brought.”
“Yes, but those were all brought because of you. We welcomed you and were thanked with false pretenses. Deceptions. Your sins carried these shadows.”
“And I’ve done everything I could to repent.” He shook me in his hold. “She abandoned you. Abandoned all of us. I warned her, but she didn’t listen. I needed to punish her.”
‘I warned you.’
His words from the garage echoed in my head, and they were true. He had warned me. As Michael—or apparently, himself since he was a believer—he’d once told me that I should appreciate the blessed bounty before it was too late.
I thought about his reaction when he visited me in the hospital. How he’d cautiously watched me when he entered the room. I’d assumed it was because he knew I would remember him from ES, but maybe it was more.
Maybe he was waiting to see if I remembered the attack in the garage.
I wondered if that was also the reason he’d been so nasty. To have an excuse to leave the interview in case something did come back to me.
Or maybe he was just an insane monster.
“What did you do?” Abraham seethed.
“She didn’t care about us, so I made her care. I made her see how short this life can be so she would remember that it doesn’t have to end. Then the mannequin was to scare her back to you. To eternal blessings.”
“Whoa. I never asked you to do that.” Abraham’s breath fanned across my skin as he spoke, like he was leaning in to check if I was dead.
“Yes, you did. You said if I did everything I could to aim the shadows away from your light, that you would let it shine on me. Well, I did that. I gave up my career. My life. Other people’s lives. Veronica, Boden, the ones who ran from your divine wisdom. All of it for you. For this . And now it’s time. They’re preparing the raid now.”
“Wait, raid? On what? Do they know about this house?”
“We need to get your followers to safety.”
Footsteps quickly retreated. “Fuck my followers.”
My body bounced as the agent rushed to keep up. “No, you don’t mean that.”
“You need to leave. Take a car for your trouble. Hell, take anything that’s not nailed down.”
I was dropped to the ground in a careless heap before Nash nudged my stomach with a hard, heavy shoe.
Going slowly like I was still unconscious, I rolled to curl myself protectively around my stomach.
I had no clue if I was pregnant. As often as they filled me, it seemed like I should’ve been.
Times three.
With them, I could hope for that. Hope for more and never settle. They would make every dream I had come true. They would make sure I got home to them because they hadn’t said I could leave.
They would never say that.
They would protect me so we could raise any potential babies.
Together.
I barely held back my whimper, but Nash was too incensed to notice.
“You said when the time was right, you would join with your goddess. That your coming together would shine a light so blinding, it would wipe out the shadows. I believed you.”
At the growing panic in the agent’s voice as he screamed at Abraham, I knew what was happening. I’d seen it every time my parents left one community for the next.
Something in his beliefs was being rocked. Only he wasn’t going to deal with it by finding a new path. A new philosophy. He was in too deep.
His entire foundation was crumbling.
And he was getting more enraged when confronted with the truth. “I believed they were setting you up. That the predestined marriages are the universe’s will to make more brightness even if they weren’t legal. That the money was better spent on shining the eternal light, not wasteful government taxes meant to smother our freedoms. I believed you about everything!”
“Yeah, well, maybe you shouldn’t have.”
Nash moved with the smooth reflexes of a man trained to stay alive under the worst circumstances, and I realized just how lucky I’d been that night in the garage to have turned when I had. I shouldn’t have survived.
Abraham didn’t.
A knife plunged in his neck. When it was yanked free, hot blood sprayed out in an arch. Staining the open safe he was emptying. The walls. The ceiling. Me.
He dropped instantly.
Oh fuck.
Oh fuck, I’m next.
Cole
My door was open before we came to a stop behind an SUV with government plates. I looked back at Freddy. “Stay here.”
“Fuck no,” he shot back instantly.
Marco unlocked the center console and grabbed a gun, handing it back to the usually unarmed man before pocketing one of the syringes from Ash.
Moving fast but carefully, we ran through the sprawling yard and into the wide-open house. Our heavy footsteps echoed in the cavernous space.
“Callie!” I called, heading toward the steps.
Nothing.
“Callie,” Marco tried, going deeper into the house.
“Here. I’m here.”
We almost missed the hoarse, breathy response coming from the front of the house. Backtracking, we started down the hall as she stumbled from a room. Blood coated her face, hair, and side.
“Not mine,” she said immediately, running to us as we ran for her. I wasn’t sure if it was her socks on the slippery floor or her full-body trembles, but she nearly fell as I pulled her from the hallway and out of the line of any incoming fire.
We had her.
We would always have her.
As badly as I wanted to soak up her being safely in our arms, that would come later. We needed to know what we were walking into. “What happened?”
“Abraham. Dead. Agent Nash. Stabbed me in the garage. I knew you’d find me. You didn’t say I could leave, so I knew you’d find me.” She was trying so hard to keep it together. Our brave girl. “ How ?”
I told her the truth. “Tracker in your ring.”
She smiled like that was the most romantic thing she’d heard before panic overtook her, and she tried shoving us toward the door. “We have to go.”
I shook my head and passed her to Freddy. “Get her into the car.”
Jaw clenched, he argued. “But?—”
It was Callie who cut in. “ Please , let’s just go. He’s insane.”
There was very little I wouldn’t do for Callie. Leaving was one of them. That couldn’t happen until we ensured she was safe. “Freddy, keep our girl safe.”
Without another word, he tucked her close to his body and used himself as a shield as he guided her toward the door.
Marco and I moved quickly to the room she’d exited, needing to get there before the other two were outside where they would be vulnerable in the open.
I wasn’t sure what I expected.
For Nash to be armed with his service weapon—aimed at us or himself.
To walk into an evil trap that would paint us as the murderer and him as the hero.
Some wild shit out of the crime show Callie liked.
Instead, he was staring down at the body at his feet. The bloody knife was still in his hand, and a look of reverent awe softened his face.
It was full-fucking-circle moment because it was the same way Abraham had looked when he’d talked about Callie.
He didn’t come at us. Not even as Marco slowly rounded the desk.
“It was a lie,” he whispered. “All of it.” He finally tore his focus away to look at me. Tears rolled down his cheeks, traveling to mix with the spray of blood that coated his skin. He stared at my gun. “Go ahead. Life isn’t worth living without the god and his goddess.”
Marco jabbed him in the neck with the syringe. “That’s our goddess.”
He let the body fall.
“We probably could’ve done this without the drug,” I noted. “He wanted to kill himself.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
I lifted a shoulder. “We’ll see if you feel the same when you’re hefting him up, old man.”
“Good point. My bad back. You’ll have to be the one to do it.”
“I guess I’ll also have to be the one to fuck Callie later.” I scanned the gruesome, bloody scene. “Or next time. When she’s ready.”
He shot me a glare before looking at all the cash in the safe. “What a waste of money.”
“This whole house is a waste of money. Since when do columns equal affluence? It looks like the construction was so shoddy that they had to add supports.”
We gloved up as the undetectable paralytic finished coursing through his bloodstream. Like the one Ash had used to punish one of the fuckers who’d attacked his wife, Nash wouldn’t be able to move.
He would, however, be able to feel everything .
Starting with the hefty crystal paperweight in the shape of the sun—including a row of shiny little death beams. Positioning the longest, sharpest one, I carefully stabbed it into Nash’s ribs.
Payback for Callie.
His eyes went wide, and he hissed out a breath. That was the extent of his capabilities.
I placed it precisely in Abraham’s dead hand. I was disappointed that it hadn’t been me to end his life. Framing him for something was a small consolation.
“Let’s do this.” Marco hefted Nash up.
I used my hand to wrap his limp one around his knife. I paced to the side. Then the other.
“Any day now,” Marco grunted.
“Do you want it done, or do you want it done right?” I asked as I made hesitation cuts, going deeper with each one.
“My bad, Picasso.”
“I think it’s Pollock who does the splatter paintings.” And then I used Nash’s knife and hand to slice his own throat, being careful to stay out of the splash zone.
Marco released his hold, letting him fall without a concern in the world. He immediately put his hands to the middle of his own back and stretched. “I was fucking around before, but shit. I’m getting too old for that.”
I threw an arm around his shoulders. “But what would we do without these bonding experiences?”
“Fucking our fiancée together isn’t enough?”
“Fair point.”