Priest and his Anarchist

Chapter 40

Chapter Forty

luna

P riest moves a branch out of the way. “You should have stayed behind.”

“I deserve to be here just as much as you do, and you know it.” I step away from him, but he reaches out to stop me as we follow Bishop, Nate, Tillie, and Brantley through the dense snow.

He grabs me by the arm and pulls me in close. His fingers are around my chin and he’s forcing me onto my tippy toes faster than I can blink. “Tell me, when have I ever given you the impression that I give a fuck about what you deserve? Hmm?”

When I don’t answer, he lowers an inch. “Because you and I both know that if I did, I would have thrown you back onto your mommy’s lap a long time ago instead of having you ride on mine for the past however many years.”

“And still…” It comes out a whisper. Mostly because I’m not surprised. “You underestimate me.”

“You. Underestimate you? Yeah. Yeah, I do, because the only danger you’ve ever been around since you were seven years old was controlled by me. ”

I pull back an inch. “I ran shows on Perdita, Priest. On a damn prison island filled with the spawns of EKC!”

The corner of his mouth twitches and I hate that it draws my instant attention. “Funny that. And how many times did you feel unsafe?”

Only the times you don’t know about.

I glare at him when he releases my chin, swallowing the words that want to come out. “Let’s just get your mother.”

“She’s dead.” His words may as well have slapped me across the face, and it shows it when I flinch, blinking back at him.

“She could still be alive.” Even as I say those words, I know they’re not true. There’s no way she’s alive. She’s with him. The only person we can’t track.

The unfindable.

“She could still be alive,” I lie, stepping beside him when we reach a large branch that hides a clearing. He moves it out of the way, exposing the farmhouse in front of us.

I swallow.

“ Your optimism bores me, Madness.” He turns, walking the steps at a pace that has me catching up to him quickly. “Making me second-guess choosing the wrong sister.”

My face falls. “I hate you.”

I quicken my steps, shoulder barging past him. Feels ridiculous because of his size, sure, but I still give him a good shot, and besides…

He can’t outrun a throwing star.

As soon as I hit the bottom of the steps, wide shoulders overshadow me from behind, and I try to sidestep away from him. His hand comes out to stop me, turning his head to the side slightly.

“Get the fuck back, Luna. I don’t want to have to fucking see you get?—”

“What, Priest?” I wait for him to say it, and when he doesn’t, I duck beneath his arm and try to hurry forward before he can catch me. I don’t want to make what he’s going through even worse, but he and I both know that the next words he was about to say were only going to complicate our already over-complicated life. Things would be easier if I just…told him the full extent.

My tight black cargo pants feel sticky against my skin, and the heavy boots on my feet are a far change from the ballet slippers or heels I usually wear. With my hair slicked back in a tight low bun, it’s enough gel to put tween boys to shame.

The twin holster strapped around my thigh doesn’t move when I pivot in the opposite direction as Bishop, following the wrap-around patio as if I’ve been here many times before.

I slow when I hear voices inside, turning over my shoulder to find Nate directly behind me. It shocks me that it isn’t Priest. Maybe he’s finally backed off.

“You’re good?—”

“—the best…” I tease, only half-serious.

“Exactly. Too good to die.” He shoves me backward, and I scowl at his back.

“You didn’t train me for four years to be the weapon that I am for you to shove me behind like some preppy little princess, Nathanial Malum.”

His shoulders stiffen before he releases, waving me over to where he stands near a full-length window that looks out onto a valley of snow. Thank God. “All in due time.”

I lift my foot to take the first step behind Nate when a hand is on my throat and I’m thrown up against the crumbling wall, my feet dangling off the ground like a hopeless little puppet. When Priest’s dark eyes pin me down, the corner of his lip curls as he moves in just close enough that only I can hear his next words. I can almost taste the mint on his breath, feel the way his hands want to touch or kill me, and his lips….

“I don’t care who the fuck you were before you bared my name, Madness. You’re to do as you’re fucking told and hang back.”

I try to shove him off, but it’s no use, because although I’m good and have had training, Priest was born a weapon. I was forged.

“I’m not staying back, Priest.”

“Why?” His eyes narrow to slits before they open again. “Ah, I see. Is this the guilt that’s eating you, Madness? Maybe wondering why it wasn’t you ?” He steps in closer. “Or maybe why I chose to keep you and kill her?”

He releases me, and I fall to the ground with a thud.

The fuck!

A growl leaves my chest, but I shove past him and the asshole actually fumbles as if I could move a mountain as big as him. I push forward, ignoring Priest and his words, peeking my head around the corner. The noises coming from the house have gone. The sound of cicadas and birds chirp through the air.

“I flipped a coin, Madness one side, Lunatic the other.”

“I hate you.” What just happened? Where’s Nate?

“Good.” He bites the back of my neck. “All the more hate to fuck me with.”

My brows pull in, the pest of Priest shoved to the back of my mind. “Nate—” The floor gives out from beneath me in a blink. I fall.

I feel weightless as the light above me shrinks the deeper I get. I quickly maneuver to the front position, arms tucked, and hands spread. I’d rather break my hands than my—the force of the fall knocks the wind out of me when I hit the ground, and my chest explodes. I roll around to my back, the taste of silver filling my mouth. Blinding pain radiates all the way to the back of my head as vomit spills out of my mouth.

“Fuck!” I groan, crawling to the side. The scraping sound of metal against concrete snaps me back into focus.

Two fractured wrists.

A cracked rib.

Fractured collarbone.

Possible broken tit.

I’m going to live.

I fly to my feet, reciting the same numbers over and over, and back up as quickly as I can. I hit a wall. Cold, concrete. Wet.

My eyes close. The smell. The smell. Oh no. The decay of metal mixes with the stale odor of mold.

Dripping water splashes against the ground. The sound of metal once more.

“Well, well, well…if it isn’t Little Miss Madness.”

The room tilts to the side again. I know I’m shit out of luck if I try to fight right now. There’s no way I’ll be able to. I was never good at combat with one sense.

Shit.

“Who are you?” The words feel as though they shatter whatever’s left of my ribs. “Why are you hiding?”

He steps out from the shadows, the handle of a machete squeezed tight in his hand. Fresh bloodstains drip from the rusted metal, and just like that, I’m back in this room. Not under the floorboards hiding and reliving it in the midst of my triggers of small places.

I’m right here.

Maybe I was wrong. I’d be able to fight…

Or maybe I’ve got a damn concussion.

“Show your face.” I try the words out loud, the pounding of my head refusing to let up. I slide to the side when he takes another three steps closer to me. Without moving my eyes from him, I take in the surroundings. My boots slide against the ground when I counter his steps. Dirt floor. The stream of soured waters.

“I should, Darling…I really should.”

Darling…

I freeze, and the corner of his mouth curves up in a smirk. “Tsk tsk…has she figured it out? The final puzzle?”

What puzzle? Smoke clouds the memories that lie beneath the surface. Cold, ice, snow…blood.

Wait. He thinks I am Darling. Darling would know what the fuck he’s talking about.

He clucks his tongue, a tune playing over from his mouth. God. There’s something so…taunting….

Carnival lights, lilac tent, naked, murder—blood….

I swallow past the bile rising in my throat.

“It took you far too long, but that leather sure suits you.”

My brain hasn’t allowed me to fully immerse myself yet. Probably out of self-preservation since the hidden man standing in front of me yields a damn machete. “Where’s Madison?”

The holster on my thigh tightens, and when I go to take yet another step, I’m backed into a corner.

Fuck.

He pauses in front, stepping into the dim light of what’s drifting down the hallway. “You really don’t remember, do you?” His head bends, and the ends of his hair touch the top of his shoulders. His mouth opens, lifting his head and—my blood turns cold. How could you.

Corbin smiles. “Fascinating. Utterly fascinating that the monster ensured he never feasted on…well… you. ”

“Where’s Madison?” I repeat, ignoring his stab at Priest. Little does he know the monster does feast on me.

Often.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m his favorite meal.

“Does he know what I know? What we know?”

“Madison Hayes….” I don’t realize one of his hands is hidden behind his back until he flips a familiar black top hat in the palm of his hand, shifting it to his head. “Oh, this will earn me points.” Did Darling know his name? Why is he so different? It’s definitely him, the same scar marred over his brow. Has he always been this crazy?

He flips the machete around, and I do a double take. Now the metal is replaced with a black slick cane. “Riddle me this, Little Luna Nox Re?—”

“Hayes,” I correct. I don’t think I care whether he knows.

He flies forward, shoving me against the concrete wall so hard my head cracks and stars explode behind my eyes. “You ever speak that name in front of me again, and I’ll kill everyone, Luna. Little, tiny Luna…he was your master, you were his toy, his pet, and you liked it, didn’t you?” His breath sticks to my skin like nicotine. “Admit it.” His mouth hovers close to mine. Memories of us when we were kids are too much to touch right now. Had he always been this ugly, and I was misguided? When I came back from Del Morts, I noticed the shift of my feelings for him. Saw a smidge beneath the surface, but this…

I keep my eyes on his, my fingers itching up my thigh. “I did.”

“Even though he was cruel? Even though he made you do bad things to dying people? Even though you watched him touch the decaying limbs of ex-lovers? Even when he said he hated you and wanted you dead?”

“Even then,” I whisper, leaning farther into him. My fingers tighten around the throwing star.

“Now, now, I wouldn’t do that, little Luna, because here’s the thing. Would you like to hear it?”

My fingers don’t move from my weapon. “Sure,” I answer sweetly, keeping my breathing steady and my eyes down the bridge of my nose on him.

“Bring her in!” His eyes widen on me to match his smirk. “First thing you need to know, is—” He pauses, stepping back finally with his arms spreading wide. “Welcome to Midnight Mayhem. We are not a circus, we are not a carnival, and the only thing you should be afraid of losing tonight?”

The room melts around me, and my hand drops from the star around my thigh when I finally force my eyes away from the maniac. Glass walls encase the full circle we’re standing on, and I stare out at the audience below. Rows of seats back upward into the dark corners of the space.

“ Is your life.”

“Sound of Madness” by Sundown starts pounding around us and I finally look at who’s being dragged through the only exit in the room. A young guy around my age walks through shirtless, blood splatters all over his chest and his face painted in the iconic Midnight Mayhem clown paint. That isn’t what stops me. It’s the distance in his eyes, how they peer through me. Familiar. His face paint materializes into a black mask, a suit, Riverside Elite and the gala. I squeeze my eyes to shake off the vision.

Fuck—I do have a concussion.

Matted hair with dried blood, her head bowed between her shoulders. If it wasn’t for the blinging twenty-million-dollar diamond on her finger, I wouldn’t recognize her. I rush forward, catching her body when he tosses her as if she’s a piece of meat. I move her hair out of her face, my fingers tangling in her knots.

“Shhh…god, please still be alive.” I rest my head below her nose. Nothing.

Nothing.

My throat swells and the realization of her really being dead crawls over my skin like a disease. No. No. You can’t.

Hot air evaporates over my cheek once.

I stop.

Seconds pass before it happens again. Twice.

I release a steady breath, slowly shuffling her to the corner of the room while unclipping my leather jacket. I place it over her semi-naked body, leaving me in a tight long-sleeve black sheer top.

I turn back to Corbin, my movements slow. Madison is alive. “ What is this?”

“Well…you see…this is Aspen, Darling. Don’t you remember now?” I squeeze my eyes closed, my fingernails biting into the palms of my hands when anger surges through my blood.

“Why!” I don’t know if there really are people in the audience, but I don’t care. If they paid to watch, they’ll be dead soon too. “You had her. You took her and left me in there! Why!” It doesn’t make sense. I don’t remember much of my childhood since all it was was running through the tunnels on my trike and answering to a higher power.

My skin prickles as if a thousand spiders crawled all over.

“If you think they’re going to save you, they’re not…and can’t, Darling. No one exits or enters without my access. Why won’t you come back to me? Why did you make us do something so dramatic? You’ve upset the Minister, you know—” His steps are chaotic, no rhyme or reason. “We’ve not seen him in quite some time! But this—this will appease him enough to bring him back.” His eyes move over my shoulder. “Kill Madison.”

He’s using her name to taunt me, or he thinks I am Darling, and I’ve switched. If he thinks Darling could switch, he was mistaken. That bitch was as evil as they come.

“No!” I scream, putting myself between him and Madison. “No…” I soften my tone. “You’ve got me.” I need to try another tactic. This is not going to work. “You’ve got me—you don’t need to take her to prove anything, the Minister—” I pause. “Danny will not want her, you know that. He wants me, remember? Just me!”

“Hmmm…” the Top Hat muses. I can’t bear to call him Corbin. “You were awfully hard to get to. He sure made it difficult. He doesn’t much like when things are flipped around, does he?” He starts pace-walking back and forward, and the man watches him carefully, as if a ticking time bomb ready to explode. “Where is the Minister? Why is he not coming!”

“You don’t need to hurt her. You have me now…”

Priest killed her, he kept me, but we haven’t had the discussion yet.

Is Corbin confused with which one of us Priest loves? Does he mean to kill her? We still haven’t spoken in detail about what happened on that day. Is this why? Is this why he is still mad, because he hates that it wasn’t me who died?

Jesus. That question is going to haunt me forever.

Doubt fills the wires of my brain. It’s ridiculous that I’ve found this exact inconvenient moment to have this crisis, but now I’m second-guessing everything I know. I assumed he didn’t know about her. That he always thought I split like they all had for so long and that he only just figured it out the day that he killed her. He locked me away so no one could find me, but I didn’t see him. Not the entire two weeks that passed after he killed her. I am in love with a man who not only isn’t capable of love, but what little part he has inside of him, he had for her, because it all boils down to that one simple thing.

He knew her first.

“We will get his attention.” He rests against a stray metal table.

I stand my ground. “I’ll do whatever you want. They don’t want me anyway. I’m a hurdle in their world.” The words are like poison, but I can’t help how honest they feel.

“Lie!” Corbin flies forward, his eyes flicking between me and Madison. Unease slips into my bones.

“Corbin, what happened to you?” At the mention of my friend’s name, he turns slowly, his steps gaining closer to Madison. “If you so much as breathe too close to her while I’m here, I will kill you before you can lift that cane…” I warn, my chest brushing him. “And I don’t know if you know this, but I am not the mute child you swapped for her all those years ago.”

Pride overrides his shock when he smiles up at me. Obviously not wanting to touch on my statement yet. “Still in the face of this, you protect a King? Even when you came back to me, after all those years, you protect him!” His laughter is like nails on a chalkboard. “So fucking predictable, Luna! No one liked you. No one! I did! I liked you! But no…never enough. The time I put into you to get you here was useless. For nothing. We needed you!” He steps closer. “You owed us that, because it was you who took him!”

“Took—that wasn’t me!” My arms fly around the room. “That was Darling!”

“You’ll still protect a King…” he whispers, ignoring my words. It’s useless trying to get him to see reason. He’s too far gone. A master of acts, his life is the biggest show of all.

“Always,” I answer, flexing my fingers. “Because even if they didn’t want me, I needed them.”

“Him,” Corbin corrects, testing me with a curved brow. “Admit your feelings and I’ll let the woman leave. I’ll have her dumped up in the hills of Colorado.”

“Why?” I ask, confused. “Why does it matter how I feel about him?”

“It matters because I’m curious.”

To think I let this man kiss me. Put his hands on me.

“Yes,” I hiss. “I want him. All of him. The ugly parts even more so, because?—”

“Because?” he asks, his eyes beaming with excitement.

Sweat slides down the nape of my neck.

“ Because!” he roars so loud I wince, my hands fighting to cover my ears. “Because why, Luna Nox!”

My legs turn to jelly, the walls around me caving in.

The dripping of water.

The smell of decaying bodies buried within the concrete.

The house he built deep in the crux of the earth’s core, where he sat, waiting for me. His nakedness open. His smile wide. In a house, there was a couch, and on that couch, there was a man, and that man was Danny Dale, and beside Danny Dale was Jeremiah, and in Jeremiah’s hands was Moses. Small child. So small. Like me.

Like me.

His hands on my body, tearing at my underwear. They were old. I only had three pairs. I’d wash them when they’d soil. Or after they’d be finished. His weight on top of me. In this house there were three bad men, and I killed them all.

“Why do you love him so much, Luna!” he yells, spit flying out of his mouth.

I scream so loud my throat bleeds. “Because I’m just like him!” With a stream of tears, I look up to find him smirking back down at me with pride, a strange sense of accomplishment.

“Well done. Now the real work will begin.”

My head bows between my shoulders, my heart fracturing in my chest. I’ll never get out. Even with Danny, Jeremiah, and Moses dead, someone else will fill the spot.

He moves closer, and the closer he gets, the more I pull away. Leaning down, he meets me at eye level. “We’re not so different, you and I. Aside from our differences of views, you were the one we saw first. You were the one.” The rings around his eyes darken as he draws close. The smell of earth and metal hover around him like his own personal cologne.

“Did you ever talk to him about me?”

I swallow. “I barely know you.” I thought I knew everything about him. He was the son of a Kiznitch. He was the son of—my head spins. “He was your dad, wasn’t he?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Kohen was your father.”

In a sad tale of twisted fate, I hate that it makes sense. That Corbin was a victim in yet another one of Darling’s acts. Not that Kohen was one of the main brothers of Kiznitch, since he doesn’t have much to do with them all. From what I know, he’d broken into the cabin and tried to take—Darling—me—whatever. It just so happens that Priest was faster.

“Don’t you know?” He shifts around my body, looking me up and down. “Oh, Darling. He meant to kill you both. He was just lucky that you were a twin.” He stops, and the fear I thought I’d worked through grabs me by the throat, tossing me around like a rag doll. “He wanted her. He fought for years to bring that side of you out because he couldn’t bear to look at you and see her. He hated you, Luna. He loved her, yet…he was still willing to lose her.”

My cheeks flush and the fire beneath the surface slowly spreads.

“He figured out that you, in fact, didn’t have a disorder but that you were two different people after he killed her. He thought you were both when he did the act.”

His words penetrate the wall I’ve kept up. The Fathers of the EKC were nothing short of brilliance. Mad, powerful, ethical. My annoyance with Priest came from him not being his father. Not being Nate. They would never, and if he was saying these same words in light of Bishop or Nate, I wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t second-guess. I’d know it was a lie.

With Priest…I am not sure. Because it makes sense. Because through the confusion of my own emotions, I’ve allowed myself to get lost back in the fantasy that he loves me, but does he do so with the thought that he’d killed me and not her? I’d heard she pretended to be me with him a few times toward the end. Vice versa would make sense.

My heart breaks for the final time.

I have no reason to believe he knew who I was. None.

“You know I know this to be true because you know how…”

I did. God, but I knew how he knew.

Grabbing me from my arm, he forces me to my feet. Turning to look over his shoulder he pauses, tucking me under his arm. I follow his line of sight to the audience behind the glass. A dozen people sitting in their seats, probably happy to even get an invite. There aren’t whispers. There is no fear. Simply because what this is, what Corbin is, doesn’t exist to anyone. He is simply the mechanism beneath the surface. No one takes apart a watch to see how it works, you simply trust the face. That’s what this is.

Corbin smirks, squeezing me. “I got my girl back.” He looks to the side before back to the audience. “Sic ’em.” The sound of blood-curdling screams are cut short when the door to the only exit closes, encasing us inside.

He reaches backward for me, and I look between his hand and his face.

“You can drop the act now. Come.” Act…like a dark cloud on a sunny day, it dawns on me what he means. The confusion of his back and forth tosses me in place.

Okay. He does think I’m Darling. He thinks I’m her and that Priest killed me on accident.

“One day, we will need a favor, Luna, and you can’t tell anyone, much less Priest, what this is because he will jeopardize it.”

“Did you let Madison go?” I ask, my mind blank.

He laughs, the side of his cheek crinkling against his leather coat. “Of course not. Chopped her up into little pieces and fed her to the animals. They’re rather hungry and haven’t seen you since you joined the show on the podium.”

My mouth dries as I shut out the memories.

His harsh thrusts. Pain. Pain radiating between my thighs as people would stare down on me from their seats. In a ring of torment, that’s all they would do.

Was watch.

He reaches for me once more.

This will be the performance of my life.