Chapter 20 – Ava Jade
AVA JADE
T he image of him falling backward from the roof played over and over against my closed eyelids despite the tears trying desperately to wash it away.
He’s gone .
He just… fell.
I screamed my pain, thrashing uselessly against all the bindings keeping me caged tight. I screamed until my throat was raw. Until the pit in my stomach turned into a chasm, draining away all the good things until there was nothing but this.
Nothing but bad, bad, bad.
There would never be anything good again.
Through the tears, I found him watching me, his head cocked to one side as he relished in the sight of me broken. This time, I couldn’t bring myself to care if this was exactly what he wanted.
I didn’t care about anything at all.
I wanted to expunge the last three minutes of existence. Go back to hallucinating peacefully in the dark room.
Hallucinating.
That was it. Wasn’t it?
It didn’t happen.
It didn’t happen.
“Oh but it did, Angel,” Drake said, coming to sooth me with a palm against my cheek, and I realized I was chanting the words like a mantra aloud. I tried to bite him, but he pulled away too quickly, leaving my teeth to click against nothing.
“I’ll leave you to process this… loss. I have some things to take care of. More Crows to turn to roadkill.”
This made my breath catch, and my skin burned everywhere. I pushed and pulled against the chair, shouting obscenities at him as he backed out the door, letting it fall closed behind him.
As one door closed another door opened, and I jerked my gaze back up, blinking through tear-stained vision as Grey crashed out the door to the roof, rushing over uneven gravel to the edge of the building.
“Grey!” I shouted uselessly, knowing he couldn’t hear me. I could only see him through the live camera feeds Drake left open on the screen. “Don’t look!”
He tripped against the ledge, throwing his upper body over to look down, and froze.
I couldn’t breathe, but the pain in my chest was beyond measure as I watched him take in Corvus far below. Grey staggered back from the edge, his eyes blinking, face white.
His head shook. His palms went to his knees as he bent his head, unsteady, lips moving wordlessly.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked to the screen. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He rose up suddenly and kicked the gravel, arching his back, his mouth open in a scream I couldn’t hear but that still shattered my heart all the same.
Grey’s lower lip trembled as he fell to his knees, eyes shut, face tipped up to the cloudless sky. Hands limp in his lap.
His grief filled me, doubling my own, pushing me to the edge of what I could take. A heart couldn’t handle this kind of pain. Surely, surely any minute now it would just stop.
I hoped it would.
Grey’s attention jerked to his left, back toward the edge of the roof, and I blinked through my tears as his hard gaze focused on something I couldn’t see from the angle of the camera.
He scrambled to the edge, kicking up gravel in his wake. When he stood, it was with Corvus’ cell phone in his hand. He tapped the screen furiously, dragging the back of his hand hard across his eyes as he searched for anything that he could use.
His fingers stopped moving and his upper lip curled at something he found before he lifted his head and spun in a slow circle. He stopped when he found what he was looking for, eyes locking with mine through the camera he was now stalking toward like a lion let loose from his cage.
Grey stopped just short of the lens, his rage and pain showing through in the tremble of every muscle in his sculpted face.
I couldn’t hear him, but it was easy enough to read his lips when he roared into the camera.
I’m coming for you.
I won’t stop until she’s safe. I won’t stop until you’re a puddle of blood at my feet. You hear me, motherfucker?
You fucking hear me!
Grey lifted his head suddenly, his eyes searching all around as though he’d heard something.
My pulse spiked as a fresh wave of fear arced through my body, thudding in my ears.
He took off like a shot, darting for the door leading back into the hotel.
“No, wait, Grey! ” My voice broke on his name. Whatever it was… wherever he was going… it was probably a trap.
Probably going to get him killed.
Get Rook killed.
Oh god, where was Rook?
This wasn’t going to end, was it?
Unless…
Unless I put an end to this madness.
I stopped fighting against the agonizing images filling my skull like the strongest sort of poison, screaming as flashes of Corvus flicked past my closed eyelids.
Him boxing me in against the cliff side at the Docks.
Wanting him. Hating that I wanted him. The moment I realized he was the Bone Man. The moment I decided he was mine .
And the moment I saw the decision to jump flash in his cut glass eyes.
His body falling, arms spread in an attempt to take flight doomed only to fail.
Grey’s grief at the loss of his brother. His body arching in pain as he roared his fury to a god who wasn’t listening.
The darkness that’d been slowly sinking lower, beneath the crust at the floor of my being, started to break free. Something shifted, cracked, and it leaked out, twisting pain into white fire. Grief into the fuel I needed to keep that fire burning hot. Wild.
The smooth metal object in my hand almost slipped out, but I clenched my fist around it, setting my jaw.
The memory of Drake’s fingers on my chest, between my legs, beaten back by the darkness whispering that we had something.
If he hadn’t come so close. Been so distracted.
We wouldn’t have been able to dip our two fingers into the outside pocket of his jacket.
We wouldn’t have been able to lift out the item there and stuff it between our palm and the wooden arm of the chair.
The lighter, well worn, with initials engraved in its reflective surface was the first spark of hope I’d had since I’d woken up in this horror show of a place. And I wasn’t about to let it go to waste.