Chapter 24 – Rook
ROOK
I peeled the wrapping from a fresh pack of cigarettes, putting one to my lips as Grey turned onto a dark backroad we’d already driven down three times since this afternoon. Just like every other road within the thirty-mile radius Diesel marked on the map for us before we left.
“She has to be here,” Grey muttered to himself. We’d already searched every nook and cranny of Lennox, tempting fate by crossing into King territory even though Diesel expressly told us to keep a low profile.
We were relying on the older model two-seater Jag with the super tinted windows—Pinkie’s prized possession—to keep us concealed and so far, it’d been working.
There was only one instance where I might’ve been seen, during a quick in and out at the local pub under the guise of taking a piss.
Kind of disappointing that they hadn’t noticed us yet. I hungered for pain. Thirsted for blood. I wanted them to find us, maybe then I wouldn’t need the poison burning a hole in my pocket to keep me going. I could inhale their souls instead.
“Unless you want to start knocking down doors, Bro, this is what we’ve got to work with.”
He didn’t answer, and I knew he was thinking that knocking down some doors might not be a half bad idea.
“Where was that service road again? We should go back and check out that way. Maybe there’s a dirt road we missed? A trail?”
“We already looked.”
“Well, let’s look again .”
I held the dart between my lips as I opened the map app again on my phone, zooming into our location, scrolling to the left to find the service road again. “Take the next right and then it’s a left about a half mile down.”
My heart beat out an uneven rhythm in my chest, and I coughed to cover a violent shudder, grinding my teeth as I set my phone down in favor of tapping the armrest. Mouth dryer than if it had been scoured out with a fresh kitchen sponge.
I couldn’t wait anymore.
“Pull over, man. I gotta take a piss.”
“Again?”
I fixed him with a look, gesturing to the bottle of bourbon by my feet and the water in the cup holder he’d been making me drink alongside it.
He rolled his eyes before pulling the Jag onto the shoulder. I stepped out into the moonlight, stalking a little ways into the tree line, limping, making a show of stretching out my legs while the Jag idled at my back.
A quick glance over my shoulder showed Grey’s face illuminated on the light from his phone screen. Checking the map again no doubt. We’d planned to do one more round of driving through this area before starting on foot into the forest around the place where Grey’s found footage cut off.
I wasn’t looking forward to that, but I had something that would help get me through.
I took the silver ball of foil (name) gave me at the Pub and opened it, careful not to drop any of the powder contained inside.
“Let’s go!” Grey shouted out the window, honking, nearly making me drop it.
“Jesus Christ, I’m coming!”
I bent low, pretending to fix my boot lace as I fingered the blade from the sheath at my ankle, lifted a small mountain of white from the foil with the tip and snorted it from the sharp metal.
My eyes rolled back as the chemical burn shot through me, making my muscles ripple with it. The pull of exhaustion fleeing like a distant memory.
“Dude, are you taking a shit right now? Really?”
“Fuck, Grey!”
I heard the window roll up, and I wrapped the foil back over the blow, twisting it tight before sheathing the blade back where it belonged.
Rising to my feet, I luxuriated in the feel of a fresh white wave crashing through my system.
I stopped, squinting into the dark.
A light shone dimly through the trees ahead to the left. Headlights, I realized. Far away. On the road that intersected this one a half a mile up.
The car wasn’t driving, though. The headlights were sedentary. Whoever it was, they were pulled over. On a random backroad. In the middle of butt fuck nowhere. At almost eleven at night.
A horn blasted, long and loud.
I raced back to the Jag, ripping the door open to throw myself inside.
“Did you hear?—”
“ Drive ,” I roared, dread singing in my veins, vivid images of my Ghost, pale and unmoving on the side of the road strobing in my mind.
I braced myself on the dash, my heart a jackhammer in my chest as Grey peeled away from the shoulder back onto the road.
My skin tightened, flexing, constricting me like a cage.
“What is it?” Grey shouted over the roar of the engine. “What did you see?”
“Go!” I hissed, urging him to speed up, my breaths coming ragged.
He took the turn at nearly eighty miles an hour and the Jag fishtailed out on the road, facing the minivan pulled over on the shoulder a hundred yards down.
The driver’s side door hung open to the night air, and in the cabin light I could see the woman making wild gestures with her arms, lifting them high. Trying and failing to fend off the person attempting to steal her wheels.
A glint of steel in the moonlight.
A flash of dark hair whipping in the wind.
I was already opening the passenger side door before Grey could slow the Jag.
“ Rook ,” he hissed, his fist twisting in the back of my jacket to stop me as the tires screeched, slowing the Jag and her face turned toward us, sea glass eyes violently unhinged.
Ghost.
I lost my footing, thrown to my damn face on the uneven pavement on the side of the road as I stepped out of the still rolling car.
She threw the woman from the drivers’ seat onto the ground and stepped into the minivan.
“No!”
The Jag purred as Grey floored it, cutting her off, the front of the van crushing against the side of the Jag.
“Ghost!”
She fell from the driver’s side door, coughing, struggling to get back to her feet. To run.
I chased after her, willing her to see me, hearing the Jag door open.
My Ghost limped as she ran, barefoot, wearing nothing but a bit of torn, dirty fabric on her naked body.
“Ghost!”
This time she jerked to a standstill, her shoulders heaving as she hunched her body, curling in on herself, her palms pressing tight to her ears. “No, no, no,” she muttered.
“AJ!”
Grey blew past me, catching up to her.
“Not now,” she was screaming, pounding on her head.
She lashed out as Grey neared, a skinny bit of sharp metal in her fist. She slashed at him violently.
“AJ. AJ, it’s me. It’s me .”
I panted, throwing an arm out to stop Grey from advancing on her.
“Ghost,” I said, calmer now despite the buzzing in my veins.
I knew that look.
The sheen in her too-wide eyes. The pupils dilated to extremes.
When I got my hands on the filth that drugged her, I was going to rip him apart.
“This is real,” I told her, shocked at the sting in my eyes. The ache in my gut that demanded I go to her. Touch her. Hold her. To make sure I wasn’t the one hallucinating. “We’re here.”
I felt the moment Grey caught on to what was happening, his body stiffening against my still-extended arm.
“We aren’t a hallucination.”
Her fist clenched around the bit of metal held out in our direction, face breaking as her gaze darted between us.
Behind her, the woman from the van ran down the road, shouting for help, but I could barely hear her over the thump of my own heartbeat. Didn’t give a fuck about anything or anyone else in this moment except her .
Ghost’s grip on the bit of sharp metal faltered. “But…”
Her lower lip trembled, her watery gaze searching the air behind us as though there was something missing.
“If you’re real, then…”
Her face broke and a heavy sob racked her body.
She dropped her makeshift weapon, and I rushed her, pulling her into my chest, holding her tighter than I’d ever held anything in my miserable life.
She shattered against me, her entire body shaking, making my darkness whisper sweet nothings in my ear about all the things we’d do to make sure this never happened again.
I pressed my lips to the top of her head, cradling her skull to keep her tight against me, tucked into the crook of my neck.
Her scent, tainted by smoke and earth filled me.
The feel of her, cold and small, made my primal instinct recoil when Grey tried to move closer, snatching her away from him. Keeping her close.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked between sobs. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
The black thing in my chest splintered.
This time when Grey came close, I let him touch her, but I didn’t let go. I wasn’t sure if I could. Not yet.
He brushed the hair away from her cheeks. “Hey,” he crooned in that way only Grey could. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay, you’re safe. We’ve got you. We’ve got you.”
She pulled away from his touch, shaking her head against me. “No,” she sniffed. “It’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay again.”
“ Shhh ,” I whispered against the top of her head. “It will,” I promised her.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “It’s all my fault.”
Grey took her chin, forcing her to look at him from the cocoon of my embrace. “Hey,” he said, sharp. “None of this is your fault, you hear me?”
“It’s ours,” I growled, feeling the guilt of it like water in my lungs, suffocating. “We should’ve never let him get his hands on you. We should’ve found you faster. We should’ve saved you. ”
“But you did save me. You were all there with me. Helping me escape.”
Grey frowned, his brows drawing down in confusion. “AJ, you aren’t making sense. You saved yourself.”
She shook her head again. “Not fast enough. Becca… and Corvus, ” her voice broke on his name. “I wasn’t fast enough to save them.”
Shit.
I released my hold on her to hold her at arm’s length, needing her to see the truth in my eyes.
Her body shook with another sob, and I thumbed a tear away from her eye. “Corvus is alive, Ghost.”
She stilled, the fevered hope in her eyes spurring a fresh wave of tears.
“So is Becca,” Grey added, and her lips parted in mute shock.
“Corv was hurt bad from the fall,” Grey explained. “He’s in the hospital, but they’re hopeful he’ll make a full recovery. And Becca… she’s…”