Chapter Seven
Tomás
Time lapsed in spurts of consciousness. I’d been knocked out, woke up on a hospital bed, both wrists cuffed to the frame as they bled me. I couldn’t move to scratch the itch under the surface of my skin. The sound of bugs in the room was driving me fucking insane. And when I used my legs to fall off the bed, they had strapped that too.
And now I had to pee.
After I peed myself, they stuck a catheter up my urethra. That was not fucking fun. And none of what they did to me made Miguel Moya, my psychopathic brother, disappear.
So. I started to sing. I sang until I tasted blood in my throat. I sang until the words fell away. I sang until I damaged my vocals.
“Do you want to learn how to play?” The kindness in his dark eyes made me squirm. Not Miguel this time. But him. Enzo. And Enzo wasn’t a figment of my imagination. He’d been a secret I had buried deep in my mind never to see the light of day. He had been the reason I had freaked out when Kieran had touched me for the first time. He’d been my lie, my shame, my guilt, my fear. And now he’d escaped the prison I had sent him to inside my mind. The walls surrounding him had collapsed.
My memories had been freed to roam.
“Do you want to learn how to play?”
“Yes,” the younger version of myself responded.
“You have a beautiful voice,” he said.
I wanted to have a good voice for him. Afterall, we were friends. He’d been older. A lot older. And rich. He had a big place in a tall building with tall ceilings and windows that overlooked the world. At least my stupid self had thought it was the whole world. It’d been Chicago’s skyline. But what did I know?
He could’ve been my dad. And at one point in time, I had wanted him to be my dad. He’d been nice to me.
“No, he wasn’t,” Miguel said.
“He listened when I needed to vent.”
“And hugged you when you cried. Made you feel better.”
I shut my eyes, refusing to see what Miguel meant. He had made me feel better. And I’d burn for it. “He cared!”
“He fucked you over,” Miguel’s voice whispered into my ear. “In more ways than one.”
“Fuck you!” I cried out, though it sounded garbled.
“He made you into what you are. The reason you love music. Didn’t you wonder why you were so good. Why the musical seemed to be your thing?”
I shut my eyes, fisting my hands. My nails dug into my palms. The pinch of pain felt better than whatever was crawling under my brain because Miguel was right. I had loved being up there. I had loved the music. “He made you a pussy, never letting anyone touch you.”
It’s all I’d ever been good for. A pretty face.
Everything I’d ever felt became an extension of the rot building inside of me. The fruit of the poisonous tree, and worms were rising to the surface to consume everything good that had been left behind.
Worms.
I knew a guy who believed he had worms coming out of his skull, out of his skin. He saw them in the mirror. He’d been crazy as shit. Maybe I’d gone crazy too. There was no way Miguel was here.
Unless Maddox had saved him too. Maddox would’ve saved him so he could torment me. Maddox hated me.
“Just leave me alone. Please,” I cried. I couldn’t help it. Despite Miguel being a psychopath, he had been my brother and I loved him.
“You didn’t love me. You were afraid of me.”
That too.
“I can help you get out of here,” he said. “Just do as I say.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
“You’ll have to if you want to survive. Just like you hurt him.” Miguel groaned. “ And there she comes. Don’t believe her, Tomás. She’s the warden in the place. You’ll never be free.”
“Tomás,” Dr. Shanahan said.
“Please,” I cried to Dr. Shanahan. “Please let me go.”
I liked Dr. Shanahan. She’d been nice to me. Except this wasn’t her. Shadows swirled around her. Her face morphed into something dark. An inkblot. I shut my eyes.
“Just listen to my voice, Tomás. Can you do that?” Her voice. Just remember her voice. “There’s a toxin running through your veins, a powerful hallucinogen. Something new. We need to flush it out of your system.”
I heard the words. I didn’t understand them. I didn’t take any drugs. I didn’t remember.
“We’re waiting on Maddox—”
Maddox. The rest of her words died in my ears. “NO!” I cried, struggling with my bonds. I couldn’t move. “He wants me dead! I hate him! I hate him!” My throat burned. My eyes burned. I was burning. “Make it stop! Please, make it stop!”
But nothing ever stops.
My mind never stops. The madness never stops. I heard Miguel laugh. “Welcome to my world,” he said, then he faded.
Everything faded.
Except the fire.
And my screams.
****
Thirty-six hours later I’d been taken off suicide watch and given the okay to be discharged. They’d freed me of the tether to Hell and as I waited for my ride, I shut my eyes, clutching onto the edge of the bed.
“You don’t know what Hell is until you die. Right? Like me,” Miguel said. “You let them kill me just like you let them kill Jack. And then you go and fall in love with the enemy. Dad would be so proud.”
The mention of my dad made my eyes prickle.
“Tomás?”
I shot my head up to Dr. Casera walking inside my room. They’d already given me the okay to leave. The drugs in my system should be at safe levels now. I just had to let my body purge it on its own. I shouldn’t still be hallucinating.
“Not getting rid of me that easy, bro.” Miguel’s voice in my head pulsed inside of me like a toxic thing.
“Are you ready?”
I hopped off the hospital bed, my plastic shoes squishing on the gleaming tiled floor. “Yeah.” The one word made my throat burn. A reminder of the last thirty-six hours in this place. I was more than ready to leave.
I followed Dr. Casera into the elevator. Shifting. I couldn’t stop moving. I clenched my hands, sending feeling into them. The elevator spilled us out into the foyer. The admin building was quiet. Not that Arcadia had a bustling student body. There were only about a hundred of us, if that, but it felt too quiet.
The clouds made everything look gloomy, the sun gone. Dark shadows everywhere. Rain pelted against the ground in rhythmic sounds. I used to love listening to the rain in the trailer. I’d hide under the bed and just listen as the drops pounded against the metal roof. It felt like living inside of a shipping container. A box. I glared at Casera when he tried to hand me an umbrella. He took the hint and said nothing as I followed him to his car, already wet when I hopped inside. The cold made me shiver. As he drove slowly along the winding narrow path, the steady vibration of the car’s engine under me, the soothing rain on the roof, and even the sound of movement as the tires spun on asphalt made the tension in my body melt off.
“Dr. Shanahan has prescribed antibiotics for your throat and some soothing remedies. You should drink plenty of water and rest.”
I almost snorted. But my throat hurt too much.
“She says the irritation won’t be permanent. You should be able to continue to sing after you heal.”
Sing.
I turned my gaze out the window. Because singing and dancing like a fool is what I’d always been good at. Useless skills, if they could even be called skills. “Does his family know?” I asked, my voice husky.
“We have contacted his sponsor.”
“Reapers. You mean the fucking reapers. What about his real family? The family he was taken from?”
When Casera didn’t answer right away I turned to look at his profile. He looked haunted. “No, we don’t have that information or the authority.”
“So they’ll never know.”
Casera didn’t say anything. I thought about Jack dead in that shithole with his mother. Of Dad and Miguel. Amir. “Was it the drugs?”
“I can’t divulge—”
“Are you even going to investigate who’s behind the drugs?” I cut him off, anger fueling me. “Because you damn well know those drugs were meant to kill.” The croak in my throat forced my eyes to water. “This whole shit is wrong . Just wrong and you know it.” I wiped the tears from my face, then broke out into a coughing fit.
Everything hurt.
My throat. My head. My body. My soul.
I wanted Dr. Casera to tell me everything was going to be okay. That he’d fix it. That he’d at least fucking try . I shouldn’t have expected anything. That’s what I got. A big fat nothing. He stopped in front of Harper House and handed me my medicine. My vision watery from pain, I snatched the bag, got out of the car, and slammed the door hard. Anger better than this sense of wrongness raging inside of me. This feeling of being insignificant. Who would fucking care if I died? They wouldn’t even tell Nick. He’d never know. The reapers would come and bury me in an unmarked grave. Or why even bother with the grave at all. I’d be cremated and discarded in the wind.
I knew the house was empty as soon as I walked in. My pile of unopened mail in a box under the foyer table. Letters from Maddox I didn’t care to read. The living room was dark. No vibration of noise. Ever since I was a kid, I could sense other people. My superpower so I could hide as needed. I’m sure Morgan was hiding from me now, probably begged Dr. Casera to move him somewhere away from me. People around me tended to die.
I climbed the stairs to my room, which once belonged to the guy I let die. Like some fucking omen I’d set on myself for being an idiot.
The clothes on my body burned my skin. I tossed the brown paper bag on the bed and emptied the pockets of my scrubs. Some dollar bills and Kieran’s bracelet with his obol. The one he gave me when I thought he loved me. The obol was something every student in Arcadia received when they started school. A coin engraved with their family sigil and imprinted with their DNA. Wren had put Jack’s coin inside his mouth the night Kieran killed him. So that cops would know not to investigate too deep into his death.
I removed the thin garment as fast as I could. Showering with the hottest water I could tolerate, I scrubbed myself raw. My body had turned into a live wire after I’d been purged from the drugs. The echo of false memories carved into my mind still unfaded.
Truths within the lies. I just couldn’t pull them apart.
Except for the screaming, everything else was a haze of memories. I leaned my hand against the tiled wall, letting the hot water turn cold. My skin pruned. The voices in my head still an echo somewhere at the edge of focus.
Miguel, my dead brother, taunting me. “ He hugged you when you cried. Made you feel better.”
“Fuck you!” I cried out, my ruined voice brittle.
“ He made you a pussy, never letting anyone touch you.”
“Fake it, Tomás. So long as he doesn’t turn you into his bitch.” Daniel had said when moms had sold me.
Daniel had pimped me out just like moms.
Maddox wanted me dead.
And everyone else that could protect me from him was dead.
I was alone and aching. A pain so deeply rooted inside of me that I couldn’t yank it out.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. I didn’t even remember getting out of the tub. I lifted my eyes, my reflection stared back at me. I slammed a fist into the fucker. The mirror’s surface shattered, spreading like a web. The pinch of pain brought me back into the present. I punched the surface again, then again, until the shards fell on the floor and blood dripped down my fingers.
I couldn’t break.
I couldn’t let him break me.
I couldn’t.
I wrapped my bleeding hand in a towel, dressed in a pair of joggers and nothing else, and sprinted downstairs to the kitchen to get some fucking ice. Because with my luck, I’d lose the fucking hand which happened to have been the hand that Kieran branded me. I should’ve peeled the brand off my skin. It’d meant shit, just like his fucking obol.
I opened the freezer and pulled out a bag of corn. I pushed the door closed when I felt someone behind me.
I dropped the corn.
“What did I tell you would happen if you ran from me?” The voice I knew so well whispered in my ear. All the tension lifted and for a slight second, I let myself be vulnerable. Kieran had come for me. The reaction to him that got me in this mess in the first place—trusting Kieran. Giving him space in my heart. But he hadn’t come back when he promised. He hadn’t been there when I needed him. Ignoring my body’s response to him, I wasn’t my dick, I moved. I just wanted to feel physical pain, so damn tired of the pain I couldn’t reach inside, the itch I couldn’t scratch burrowed under my skin.
I twisted my body, grabbed his arm meaning to throw him over my shoulder to the floor, but the fucker was fast. A surprised inhale brushed my cheeks. Oddly satisfying in my current pissed off state. I didn’t get to slam him against the floor. Fucker had cat reflexes. His feet landed on the counter, and he used the leverage to push off, sending me back against the refrigerator hard. Shit tumbled around us. He used me to keep his footing, pushing off and putting space between us.
The low light was enough to still get a good look at his face. Three months and four days hadn’t changed his appearance. He looked … good. As if he hadn’t suffered like I had. As if he hadn’t cared. I wanted to talk shit, but my ruined voice would only come out meek, cracked, broken. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of hearing me pathetic, so I said nothing.
Kieran took my silence as submission. He narrowed the gap between us. “What is your problem?” he started.
Once he was close enough, I swung. The fist to his face felt better than I thought it should. He stumbled back. And I moved before he could recover. I spun him against the counter and shoved him face down onto the surface. His ass against my groin. I may have been bigger than him, but he had more fighting skills than me. I knew he could’ve gotten free from my hold if he wanted to, but he didn’t.
He didn’t even struggle.
“Fuck you,” I managed to whisper into his ear, pushing my body against him. “I’m no longer yours.”
“You sure about that?” he said, pushing out his ass right into the rod tenting my joggers. Because of course my cock would respond to him with an erection. Which only pissed me off more.
“Unlike you, I’m not my dick. And unlike you, I can put my dick into whoever the fuck I want.”
I felt the vibration first. Like a canvas rippling against my skin. The jolt of it forced me back, but only a fraction before he had me on the floor pinned under him. The impact pushed the breath out of my lungs, made me disoriented. He pinned my wrists above my head, his body sprawled on top of me, his face close enough to see the lighter green bursts in his eyes. “You think I would ever let you stick your dick in anyone else,” he hissed. “Try it, Tomás. Test me. I will end that motherfucker.”
“You can’t,” I whispered.
The smirk he gave me made me cold all over. This wasn’t him hating me anymore—this was something worse. A dangerous, violent edge no longer directed at me but whoever came close to me. I shouldn’t have been turned on by his violent possession of me. I shouldn’t want it. Want him. But my body spoke for me. And I was hard for him. “Rules don’t apply to heirs.” His soft breath teased my lips. “I’m no longer a bastard.” He slotted our dicks together, the sensation shooting desire through me. I bit back the want to moan.
“You left,” I managed to say. The pain in my vocals too damn much to say a solid sentence. Not what I had meant to say, but not untrue. He fucking broke me when he broke my heart.
He thrusted his hips into my already leaking cock. “I wanted you with me, Tomás. You chose to stay.” He kept moving. The friction on my cock so fucking good. “But we don’t have to be anything but this.”
Because I wasn’t worth anything more. I wasn’t worth fighting for. Because my pretty face was all I was good for. I didn’t even hear my mother’s voice anymore. It was all my voice, my thoughts. My heart shattered. The last pieces flaking off like the shards of the mirror I’d busted. If this was the only way to have him, I didn’t want it. I couldn’t do this. Not with him.
I couldn’t breathe.
My chest hurt. I couldn’t fill my lungs. Spots danced in front of my eyes.
No. No. No.
“You said…” the words became jumbled. He stopped grinding but he didn’t let me go. “You said you would stop. Please. Stop.” My voice came out as a shattered whisper.
“Tomás.” His voice grazed my skin, soothing, toxic. Wrong.
Kieran’s hot and cold settings confused the fuck out of me. One minute he spoke rainbows and sunshine, the next he wanted to bury me in a grave. I couldn’t make sense of anything. I pushed him and he didn’t fight me. Rolling over onto my side, I cupped my head, and shut my eyes.
Close your eyes, Tomás. The monsters can’t see you.
But Daniel had lied. The monsters always saw me.
I concentrated on breathing. Deep breath. Out. Deep breath. Out . As the world around me crashed. Kieran raged. The house practically shook from it as he pounded the cabinets, shattered the stools, swept the counter with anything that was on top of there.
Chaos reigned around me, and I couldn’t make it go away.
You’ll never be free of me, Tomás.