Chapter 9 – Ava Jade
AVA JADE
I ’d be sticky for days after this, but it was going to be worth it to see their faces.
“Hurry up,” I urged Rook, they could be back any minute.
He ladled more of the red liquid from the metal mixing bowl onto my stomach, letting it drip and puddle on the kitchen floor.
“Does it look real?” I asked, trying to arrange my limbs in an unnatural way. The way I’d have fallen if I was a hundred and twenty pounds of dead Ava Jade.
“ Shit, ” Rook hissed, stepping back to admire our handiwork. He bit his lip ring, sucking a noisy breath in through his teeth. This was turning him on, I could see it in his dark eyes.
It’d been easy to mix up a couple liters of fake blood.
You only needed a few household ingredients.
Hell, we had all those ingredients back at the trailer and that was saying something since our cupboards were chronically empty.
But with corn syrup as the main ingredient, it was going to take some elbow grease and a full bottle’s worth of shampoo to get it all out of my hair and off my skin.
Worth it.
Unless they killed Rook, but I was banking on that not happening. They’d probably say something like I knew this would happen, or I told you so , and then offer to help get rid of my body.
That’s when I’d jump up and shout surprise motherfuckers , and hopefully scare the ever-loving shit out of them.
Solid plan.
Definitely a solid plan.
Rook sloshed more blood to the floor and nodded to himself. “You’re a masterpiece,” he said.
I smiled. “Hurry, let me see before they get back. Take a picture.”
I put on my dead girl face and held my breath while Rook took out his phone and snapped a picture, kneeling in the fake blood afterward to let me see.
Damn.
“It looks so real,” I said on a laugh. Getting my skin to look so pale hadn’t been easy, but the darker reddish-purple circles around my eyes weren’t faked. They were au naturel, courtesy of Diesel’s watchdog order. Sleeping with another person in my room didn’t bode well for comfort.
The blood though...it was looking super realistic. Pooled on my belly until it was dark, concealing the fact that there wasn’t actually a wound there. Spilling over onto the floor, pooling around my ‘corpse’ until it soaked into the edges of my dark hair, fanned out over the floor.
One of my blades on the floor next to me, just out of reach of my bloodied fingertips.
So fucking dramatic.
Tires over gravel had Rook pocketing his phone. “That’s them. They’re back.”
“Go!” I hissed. “Like we planned. You come in from the other room when they get to the kitchen.”
Rook’s lips pressed into a smile as he shook his head. “This is so fucking cruel.”
“They deserve it,” I whispered, hearing a car door open outside. “Now get the fuck out of here.”
He lifted a hand to scratch the back of his neck, the first and only sign that he might’ve thought this wasn’t as good of an idea as I did.
He’d see. It was a great idea.
I owed Corvus a mountain of vengeance after the way he’d been treating me. I was only just getting started.
I took a few slow, shallow breaths as the front door opened, willing my body into stillness. I am dead.
I am dead.
Dead girls don’t breathe.
Dead girls don’t move.
My body grew heavier, each limb forced into a state of relaxation. Limp. Numb. I got ready to only permit myself the shallowest, tiniest of breaths.
“I need a real bed,” I heard Grey mutter from the doorway, continuing their muffled conversation from outside. “I have bruises on top of bruises from that floor.”
“So buy a mattress.”
A pause.
Clearly Grey hadn’t considered that as an option.
Corvus sighed. “Fine. I’ll stay at Briar Hall with her tonight. Tomorrow we’ll go get a fucking cot or some shit. Sound good?”
“Yeah. Thanks, man.”
“I still say it’d be easier to chain her up here.”
Grey chuckled and a wicked sense of satisfaction raced through me.
My blood sang with anticipation, making it almost impossible to stay still as their footfalls echoed down the hall, coming closer.
Oh my god.
This was going to be fucking priceless .
They entered the kitchen.
Don’t breathe .
“Good luck with tha?—”
Grey’s words abruptly cut off, along with the sound of their footsteps.
“ AJ… ” Grey’s voice was no more than a whisper. A rough exhalation of air.
He flew into action a split second later. Uncoordinated footfalls pounding on the floor as he rushed to me.
“AJ!”
I could sense him at my side, my heart pounding so loudly in my ears it was a wonder he couldn’t hear it as his hands hovered over me, brushing over the surface of my skin, my clothing, as though he were too afraid to touch me.
A playful whistled tune drifted into the room, along with the sound of crinkling plastic as Rook dragged a tarp into the kitchen as we planned.
But, unlike we planned, his whistled song paused. So did the sound of the tarp dragging over the tile floor. It took everything within me not to open my eyes and see what made him stop.
“Corvus…” Rook trailed off, his brother’s name on his lips almost a question. Confusion evident in his tone.
“ What …” Corvus snarled, trailing off as he struggled to inhale. “ What did you do? ”
“Come on, man, she was a liability and you know it.”
“What the fuck did you do!”
Something crashed and there were five stomping steps that shook the ground as Corvus went after Rook.
Another crash, the sound of something raining down onto the plastic tarp.
“Stop!” Grey called, his voice sounding oddly broken, pitched all wrong.
But he didn’t go to help Rook or to stop Corvus; he stayed with me, his hands less fluttering now, but insistent as they struggled through the sticky blood to find the hollow under my chin, searching for a pulse as he twined the fingers of his other hand through mine, squeezing tight.
This...this wasn’t funny anymore.
Rook coughed as a loud thud resounded in the kitchen. The cough turning into a laugh. The fucker knew this would happen. He was probably banking on it. I doubted he was even fighting back. Reveling in the pain like I once did.
Another thud, and I shuddered. This wasn’t what I wanted.
“She was one of us!” Corvus roared, and I heard Rook struggle for breath.
Enough.
Grey found my pulse.
“She’s still alive,” he called, but Corvus was beyond hearing him.
I squinted an eye open, wincing at the sight of his face, drained of color, frantic. “Gotcha?” I said, biting my lip to draw attention away from the feeling squirming around in my gut.
He fell back, blinking like he was seeing me for the first time. The reality of the situation slowly registering as Corvus threw Rook against a wall at the other end of the kitchen.
“Christ,” Grey said on a breath, scrambling to his feet, slipping on the blood. He caught himself on the kitchen island, getting his footing as he called to his brothers.
“Corv, stop!”
Corvus’ hands were around Rook’s throat. His back tight and biceps flexed to bursting.
Grey grabbed hold of him. “I said stop!”
But Corvus flung him off, blind to everything but his target.
Shit.
“It was a joke,” I blurted, standing. “Corvus.”
No response and Rook’s face was turning a scary shade of red, though it didn’t diminish the gleam in his eyes.
Just like I thought, he wasn’t even fighting back, not really.
He held Corvus’ arms, staring his brother square in the face.
Daring him to finish what he started. His lip dribbled blood.
A fresh shiner swelling on the edge of his left brow.
It hurt to watch.
I closed the gap, batting Grey’s hands away when he tried to stop me from advancing. “ Corvus ,” I hissed.
I put my hand on his arm near the wrist, gripping him. Forcing him to see me.
He flinched, his burning stare finding me through his rage. His pinched face twitched, a knot breaking and reforming between his brows as his bright blue eyes flickered with recognition.
“Let him go.”
His hands loosened, and Rook choked for air, bending over to hack until he could breathe again.
“You could’ve killed him,” I said, the words venomous. Not how I intended them.
“Sparrow?”
His fingers brushed my cheek, and I pulled back, flushing hot.
“It was a joke,” I repeated, angry, though I couldn’t peg the reason why. “Just a stupid fucking joke.”
I licked my fingers violently to prove the point. “See? Corn syrup.”
His lips parted on a breath, a vein throbbing at his temple when he clenched his jaw again. “ A joke? ”
“Yeah.”
“You think this was fucking funny ?”
He shook his head before shoving past me, the smack of his firm body into my shoulder sending me back a step. I felt the hit all the way down to the pit of my stomach. It festered there, the ache spreading to my chest.
The front door slammed a second later. Then another door. The garage outside.
We all listened to the backdrop of Rook’s strained breaths as an engine started. A motorcycle. And then he was gone. The whine of the engine and exhaust loud as he sped away from the Nest.
Rook found his way to the sink, hunched, running the water cold and cupping it into his mouth with his hand to spit reddish water down the drain. He swiped the back of his hand over his mouth when he finished, reaching for the whiskey on the counter to take a swig.
Grey’s hands balled to clenched fists at his sides, his expression darkening by the second.
“Grey?” I hedged. “I didn’t mean?—”
“I need a minute,” he interrupted, walking away before I could finish as he left too. Following Corvus’ path out the door, to the Rover, and away down the road.
I pressed a hand to my stomach, hating the guilt that I felt lying heavily there. “That was way less funny than I thought it would be,” I muttered.
Rook shrugged, setting the whiskey aside. “I thought it was pretty funny.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He laughed and winced, coughing.
“You’re hurt.”
He licked the blood from his lip and looked away.