Priest and his Anarchist

Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

priest

I crash against my bedroom door to slam it closed, the bottle of whiskey slipping from my fingers when the room swirls around me in a blur. I can count on my hand how many times I’ve been drunk.

Twice. The first time, and now.

I learned quickly how to handle my liquor, a secret passed down from every father of the EKC. Bordering alcoholism, we were trained to start by sipping alcohol at a young age, before it moved to a finger a day, to a glass a day, before moving to a glass and a sip, and a glass and a finger and so on. Handling our liquor to never be vulnerable was one of the first lessons we learned.

I don’t even want to know how much I put away tonight, and it still wasn’t enough.

A kaleidoscope of patterns carves a story into the wooden door, one that I’m sure she’ll tell one day. A story of a girl. Of the dark. Of death. Instead, my fingers find the cold handle and I twist it open onto the spill of darkness.

My muscles relax the longer I stay in place, but when the sweet hint of her scent hits me, it’s a brutal reminder of what triggered my drunkenness to begin with. I wanted her to know how much I hate her. How much I despise her. She’s everything I hate about the human species. She loves too much, cares about shit that I’ll never understand, and fucking smiles way too damn wide.

I hate her.

Despise her.

I want to wipe her from this earth so I never have to be reminded of the kind of stain something so delicate can leave on a place so dark.

But I can’t.

I. Fucking. Can’t.

Not because I don’t want to, or because there’s some lost place inside of me that feels something for her, despite Vaden’s words, because there isn’t. I hate everything about Luna Nox, and there is no changing that.

My feet carry me down the familiar concrete path. As soon as I reach the end, dots dance behind my eyes as my shoulder crashes against the wall. Resting my hand over my stomach, I clear my throat and slowly lift my head up to the room in front of me.

Walls spoiled in white permanent chalk, drawings, words she’d hear. Everything reminded me of her while I was too busy trying to do the one thing to get rid of her.

The plush carpet takes your weight when you step foot on it, and even lost in the land of too much whiskey, I know one thing for sure.

I want this.

Her.

“Hello, Darling…” I whisper hoarsely, rolling to my back and leaning up to stare at the blank ceiling of color. “Did you miss me?”

The sound of her dragging herself across the carpet draws my attention down to her body.

“I don’t know,” she answers, and I angle my head to the side, trying to widen my eyes.

Fuck. I shouldn’t have drunk so much. Fucking Luna.

“Did you miss me?” Her memories sting far more than they ever have, but I’m not willing to touch on why.

In a fit of laughter, my legs give way as the wall catches my fall. Drawing my legs up, I rest one arm on my knee, widening them further for her. Deep mauve-painted nails crawl through the darkness.

“Well did you?” The familiarity of her voice is both ends of a curse.

My tongue dampens my bottom lip to hide my smirk. “I don’t know, Darling…did I?”

Something vibrates against my thigh, pulling me out of my head, and my agitation has me rolling my eyes as I fish it out of my pocket. The bright light from my screen burns my retinas when I slide to answer.

“What?”

“We’re in the Watch Tower.”

“You’re early.” My teeth clench. That’s twice in one night I’m unable to hide my agitation.

“Technicalities are not my thing, dearest brother. See you soon.”

With the lights out, I’m back in the confinement of my nightmares, the kind I crave. My thumb finds her burgundy lips before it slides down the middle toward her chin in a perfect river of spilled blood. “I’ll be back.”

“No you won’t…” She shakes her head slowly, retreating into the shadows of the room.

Writings on the farthest wall catch my eye. They are the last ones she drew when she was in here. It feels like a lifetime ago now.

If you want to feel pain, love him.

I’m sorry for what I’ve done, but more importantly for what I’m going to do.

Never be enough.

Pushing up from the carpet, I stumble backward, clutching the bottle of whiskey between my fingers and making my way back through the hallway. As soon as the door’s closed, Evie’s face sobers me up faster than snorting a line of coke.

She crosses her arms in front of herself in the same way she’s always done whenever she’s about to judge some shit. “Well, if I didn’t know you better, I’d say that you look a little on edge.”

“Good. Perfect for you to finally push me over it.” I glare up at her, shoving my shoes back on.

Her green eyes come to mine. Evie is all long legs, sassy attitude, and manners I’m not sure anyone this day and age uses. We don’t associate with many people outside of the EKC, but Evie and her father definitely started the exception to the rule. It became obvious the moment she and Halen first met.

But there is also that one time…

“You and I both know that I would have pushed you over a long time ago if I really wanted to.” She’s in front of me now, reaching up to grip me by the chin and forcing my eyes down to hers. When we were in tenth grade, a list of names went around Riverside Prep about the hottest girl in school.

Evie was number one. Until Stella grew an attitude that had all the boys thinking they could be the one to change her.

Evie was chestnut hair, dark skin, and bright eyes. She has the kind of smile that could cure anything. She’s also one of the only people walking this earth who even comes close to knowing a smidge of the kind of darkness I carry inside of myself.

How she found out was an accident, but when she kept it to herself, that proved her loyalty.

“How much have you had to drink?” Her eyes narrow, before she lifts the hand holding the almost empty bottle.

I don’t pull from her, not bothered by the way she’s always handled me. “Not enough.”

Her hand falls to her side and the two worry lines I’m well acquainted with form between her brows. “Priest…”

I reach for the door handle, desperate to get away from her before she does what she’s good at, penetrating the other side of my brain. The side that she’s always wanted.

The side that once wanted her.

I know she’s not following when the door closes behind me. For one, she knows the rules and how it goes. Evie is still on a need-to-know basis, but she’s not stupid. She knows when to push and when to keep her distance. It’s partially why she’s managed to stay around for so long, and why she’s being pulled in deeper.

Keeping the Watch Tower close was one of the first things I knew I wanted, so we connected it with the pathway that separates the black sunflowers all the way to the entrance. The elevator closes, and I hit the only button inside that takes you to the top. The doors open onto everyone, where Halen is already at the table, her finger tapping against the marble. River and Stella are to her left, with Vaden and War opposite.

There haven’t been many times that we’ve all sat at this table, but it will be the first time we have with me now holding the gavel, and with it now on my property.

“Finally, Priesty!”

Stella’s nickname for me is going to land her ass at the bottom of the ocean one day. I bare my teeth at her in passing, making sure to swipe the bottle of Don Julio on my way. My mind is a mass of identical scribbles and words like the ones she’d left in my room.

“Should you be drinking that much?” Halen asks, her head jerking toward the bottle in my hand. “Or has the gavel got to you that much?”

I clear my throat from the poison of tequila while lowering myself down. “You and I both know that alcohol doesn’t affect me the way it does you. I could drink this entire bottle and still put a bullet clean between your eyes.”

Halen’s smirk vanishes as Vaden remains quiet to my right.

I place the bottle on the table, tossing my phone beside it. I don’t want to fucking be here right now, seated between any of them. This is the one day a week I told them to leave me the fuck alone.

Simple instructions.

“Updates. Go.”

War traces his upper lip, as if considering whether he should launch at me right now. “Close. We’ve shut the doors during the day, managed to change the hours to five to nine, and I’ve hired a new faculty of staff.”

“Close never got you far,” I answer his small warning with a shadow of a smirk, and he replies with one that matches my own. I know the same love that he has for my sister will be the same that he uses for his loyalty to the Kings. Anyway, he’s Nate fucking Malum’s son. I refuse to believe anything less than terrifying would leave the nut sack of that demon. “So you’re on track.”

War being a Riverside Malum, means he is taking over his dad’s role in the schooling system.

I point to Vaden. “You?”

Vaden slides his ringing phone across the table, flashing an unknown number. I tap the speaker button.

“I hear your pet has returned.”

Vaden glares at me as he lowers himself back to the table, confused. He probably expected me to answer it privately, but there’s no point hiding this now.

“Mmhmm. Sure has.” Ash dusts my fingertip when I butt out my cigarette. “You not had enough?”

Silence. That’s never a good sign when it’s a Thorn on the other end.

“Interesting.” Not the words I expect from him.

“There a reason for this call, Thorn?” My skin prickles with unease.

“Hmm. I’ll call you back.”

The line goes dead. Vaden kicks me from beneath the table and I look up to catch everyone watching.

I don’t know how many minutes pass when an unknown number flashes across the screen of my phone. I stand this time, bringing the phone to my ear with annoyance itching down my spine. In the background, Halen’s questions about the Hunt and what it is we do on those nights are aimed directly at Vaden. He’s big enough to handle her.

“What’s with the theatrics?”

“No theatrics. We can talk when I see you.”

Leaning against the back of the sofa, I cross my legs at the ankle. “What do you want?”

“Simple,” Archer says smoothly. “I want her back.”

“You can’t have her. Next request.” It shouldn’t annoy me the way it does, but the fucker had her long enough. “Nice touch on allowing her to dance around the circus all those years though. Kept me from having to fill her mommy and daddies in on what happened.”

He pauses for the second time. Archer Thorn only does this when he’s observing. Never one to waste his own time, if he’s done with a conversation, then it’s over. There are no pauses. “You’re going to want to give her back, Priest.”

Everything around me caves in, and I slowly push up from the sofa. “You threatening me?”

The line goes dead. I stare back down at the screen, wondering if I imagined the entire conversation. Archer Thorn and I aren’t exactly enemies. We’ve never had any issues. It is why I allowed him to take Luna all those years ago because I knew that they lived by a code that was much tighter than ours.

“What is it?” Vaden comes up behind me, and I turn to everyone at the table. The gavel, the destruction, everything that has happened comes to this point.

“He wants me back, doesn’t he?” Her voice triggers a side of me I didn’t know existed as she brushes up behind me. Any time she’s in the room, my focus switches, like a damn werewolf on a full moon.

Vaden doesn’t move from my side. I feel his anxiety as if it were my own. If I manage to ignite a war with Thornhill the week I’ve taken the gavel, I’ll be everything that everyone said I’d be. Insane. My will to prove them wrong outweighs the chaotic nature of my kill streak.

“What’s going on?” Halen cuts through the tension. “And no offense, but remind me why you’re here, Luna?”

That’d be my sister to put her foot in dog shit because she’s too focused on what is happening around her.

Vaden and I both make our way back to the table, and it’s not until I’ve sat down at the head, the gavel on one side and my bottle of Don Julio on the other, that I decide they need to know everything.

From the beginning.

River clears her throat, pulling out the chair beside her. “Nightmare, sit beside me.”

Halen’s decision to not say another word is smart, but she watches with narrowed eyes at the exchange between River and Luna.

“Luna didn’t go missing after that trip in Aspen. The reason why none of you had seen her—” I pause, looking directly at my sister. “Is because she was with me.”

Halen’s jaw slams shut, and War stills from my left. They’re all smart enough to allow me to finish.

Waiting until Luna is beside River, because if she’s not near me, at least she’s beside the second deadliest person in this room. And I’m not number one. “She was brought to me by Dad. Because we’re the first generation where the Vitiosis line doesn’t include kidnapping young girls and keeping them locked in their castle, and Luna held a particular—” I pause, searching for the right word.

Halen scoffs.

My eyes snap to her. “—set of skills that could be harnessed once trained.” I bare my teeth at my sister in warning, because she’s not going to sit there and judge something she doesn’t understand when she was fucking her way around boys to make my best friend jealous this year. I continue. “The Fathers watched her over the years as she grew, and decided that she needed to be at this table with us, the first of her kind. They weren’t sure how at that time, but that was why she came to me and Vaden. We trained her in the same system, only structured for her. The first year she spent recluse and alone, bleeding out any reliance she may have had on other people.” I find Luna’s lavender eyes. “Which she flourished at.”

“As a fucking Rebellis? Dad himself can’t change traditions as old as fucking time!” Ever the purist, it makes it easier for her to be a bitch. This is why Evie is important for Halen. She tames the feral cat that lives within her.

“No.” My mouth twitches in the corner when my eyes land on my sister. “As a Hayes.”

“Wait—” War lifts his hand, pausing the conversation. “She’s you guy’s sister?”

“—that’d be kinda hot…” Vaden murmurs, leaning into me. “Imagine if you did all the things you did to her and then found out she was your sister.”

Ignoring Vaden’s incestuous obsession, I find Luna again. “As my wife.”

“What the fuck!” Halen flies off her chair, her anger narrowed on me.

“Careful, sis. You know jealousy gives you hives.” Smoke rings veil my chuckle as I roll the trunk of my joint between my fingers.

“How the fuck could you keep something like this from all of us?” Halen’s tongue is about a second away from getting cut out. “So typical of you, huh, Priest. You dance around the truth just like Dad. So, when is the wedding?”

“I knew.” River raises her hand.

Halen’s eyes swing to her.

I clench my jaw. “Halen, sit down.”

“How the fuck could you not tell me!” she continues, ignoring everyone.

“Halen, sit down,” I flatline.

Her tantrum feels like nails on a chalkboard. When she doesn’t stop, I trace the lines of the table until my eyes collide with hers, and finally, everything falls silent. Her mouth hangs open mid-argument before she lowers herself back down. It takes a lot to shut her up. The vein pulsing against her forehead further proving that.

“One.” It’s too late. I’m already locked on her and the way she squirms in her chair, she knows it. “For a Hayes, you sure as fuck forgot how to rein in those emotions. Two, you’re not gonna start firing the blame around the room. There will be things you won’t know. There are secrets you still don’t know, and that’s how it’s going to be going forward, so if you have a problem with that?” My brows rise. “Speak now or forever hold your peace, but I warn you, whether we shared a womb or not, I will make decisions that best the society, and not your ego.” When enough time has passed for her to object, I continue. “And there isn’t going to be a wedding. She’s already mine.” The joint is back between my lips before I pass it to War.

Halen is smarter than she is a brat, and that’s saying something. As much as she has a lot of emotions, she usually directs them in a way that doesn’t implement the EKC.

She needs reminding every now and then.

“So why was she with you?” Stella asks from the other side of War, her eyes bright. She’s excited for the story, probably hoping for more blood and gore. I smirk at my cousin. “I mean, there’s always a reason, right?”

“She came to me for three years. I lashed out when Dad had told me that I had to make her my wife at the end of her training to be able to sit where I do. I wanted to punish them through those years, and her, for simply existing. For being the one thing that I couldn’t control.”

“Surprise, surprise….” Halen snickers under her breath.

I ignore her. “The night of Mom’s final gala, I put Luna up for auction.”

“Of course you did.” Stella settles into her chair as if I’m telling a bedtime story. “Who to?”

My tongue slides over my bottom lip. “Archer Thorn.”

Stella’s eyes widen, unblinking. Her head tilts a little. “Huh. Not my choice of subject but okay.” She turns her attention to Luna. “What happened there?”

Luna doesn’t answer. Bone structure framed from an ancient goddess, her dark lashes are almost too dark to frame eyes so damn surreal. There’s not a single woman walking this earth that comes near her kind of beauty. She simply isn’t for this world.

Definitely not for someone as fucked up as me. If the Fathers and her parents didn’t forge the marriage, there’s no way I would have had a chance at ever coming near her, even if I was interested. Which I wasn’t. She merely intrigued me. She always has.

She tucks her hair behind her ear. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times that surprised me. That maybe I’d seen a smidge of something else in her. “Nothing spectacular. He set me up, allowed me to leave whenever I wanted, see who I wanted, and only checked in on me when needed.”

My eyes narrow. If she thinks she can dance her way out of her secrets this time, she has another thing coming.

“And I’m guessing the Fathers helped you with getting to Perdita to perform in your little tent once a week?”

That side I see from her every now and then bubbles to the surface when her eyes land on mine, but the alarm of the elevator door opening distracts us.

Swinging my chair around, Moose buttons up his suit and jerks his head toward the exit. Everyone gawks at the stranger in the room, but it’s Luna that lingers on him the longest. She remembers him.

Good.

“Moose is my driver.” I’ve caused enough bullshit tonight. Everyone probably should have left me to get drunk in my hole.

Vaden laughs under his breath. “That’s one way to put him.”

“—and as you all may know, his father once worked for Dad.” I turn back to him. “What’s wrong?”

“Can’t get hold of your parents.” He adjusts his suit. “Any of them.” There’s shuffling around the table before I dismiss Moose out of the room. His head dips between his shoulders, his eyes find Luna at the last second. He warms. “Hello, kiddo.”

Tapping on my dad’s number, the phone rings but doesn’t connect. The same thing on Mom’s.

“What is it?” Halen asks, and I look up in time to catch the lines in the middle of her brows deepen. “Priest!”

“I don’t know.” My feet carry me to the other side of the room as I wait for the elevator to light. Moose stands beside quiet, almost at my height and with shoulders as large.

“This isn’t like them to not answer.” His voice is low.

“I know,” I grumble, stepping into the elevator. It’s not until we’re back outside and when Halen pulls away in her Skyline that I notice the white MC20. Flared and dropped, it’s what I would own if I was to roll in Euro.

Luna’s blonde hair catches in the wind, her steps directed right toward the waxen weapon.

“I wondered why my Amex had a charge to Maserati.”

The innocence in her eyes widens up at me as she pops the door open, but the corner of her mouth curls a little. “Hmmm. And I worried you maybe didn’t see it, you know, past all that red hair.” Her subtle reference to the girl from the house party earlier that week isn’t so subtle.

“Jealous?”

Her stare holds me in place. “Not sure.”

My smirk slips. Luna has always been if anything, honest, which is why she hasn’t been so forthcoming about where she’s been for four years is unsettling.

War and Vaden sit opposite when I slip into the back of the city car, closing the door and ready for the questions.

“Why’d you keep this from me?” War wastes no time.

“Simple.” I follow the line of trees as we drive. Without the lights beaming up the castle, it’s a stranger instead of the walls that raised me. All things that are empty inside are simply that, unlivable. “It wasn’t something you needed to know at the time.”

“And now?” The balance in his voice is why he is who he is, because he’s unproblematic. “What about now? Why are you telling me now?”

“Beside that for whatever reason, that same man who took her that night has decided he still wants her, it’s simply time. You forget, I was following orders back then, and now I give them. You won’t be kept in the dark again.”

War rests his head back against the chair, waiting for the puzzle to slip into place.

Vaden bends his neck until it cracks. “You think what she said was the truth?”

“Why would he want Luna?” War keeps his eyes on the ceiling. “Why would he agree to take her back then? She was barely an anyone.” I ignore the way his words trigger the twitch in my left eye.

Vaden sighs. He’s bored. “Because she was already his wife, War. Click on.”

War looks back at me. “And are we forgetting why this is a bad idea? Are we forgetting about the very reason why this is a bad idea? And yes, I know I said that twice, but I need to, because, Priest…”

I block him out, and his words fade into the existence of nothingness.

Of complete…nothingness.