37. Caspian
Caspian
I t was the silence in the house that was the worst.
I’d flown through London until I got stuck in the traffic. It only took a minute for me to lose my shit. I launched myself out of the car and ran the last five miles as fast as I could.
It was why I was wheezing, heaving, nearly dead on my feet as I dragged myself through the eerie silence.
I’d spent so much time in the family house that it was more like my second home.
And I’d never seen it quiet.
Even in the middle of the night, there would be at least one security guard and a maid awake in case we needed anything. There were always ticking clocks, humming lights, shoes clicking on floors and stairs.
There was never any fucking silence.
It was only when I reached to the back of the house did I hear something.
The London townhouse was where Camille lived when she wasn’t having treatments. She had the largest bedroom on the bottom floor that looked out onto their back garden.
And I didn’t worry about how she was hidden away from the main house because she seemed happy there.
But now those seconds it took to run from the front door to her room were a fucking torment.
As soon as I turned down the corridor to her room, a small sound whispered from the doorway where the light shone.
A rustling noise, like wind through the trees, followed by a heavy thump.
The light called me forward as the rustling noise came again, so bright that I couldn’t see the room until I stepped over the threshold.
And I froze.
And I stood there.
And I stared at the sight before me.
The three of them hadn’t noticed me. They were too focused on each other. Two of them moved around the room like it was a normal day and they weren’t just picking severed limbs from the floor.
I couldn’t catch up. I couldn’t work it out. I couldn’t understand why the pure white room that I had spent half my life visiting was bathed in red.
“Caspian?” Camille rasped as she looked up from the far corner of her bedroom. Her face paled as she was hit with my shock.
She gasped, throwing herself backwards like she needed to escape. From me.
She knocked off the wall, landing with a hard thud in the crater under her feet. The wallpaper around her was shredded. Deep gashes, like an animal had sliced it, and huge cracks in the plaster shooting out from where she sat.
Ice white, her thin nightgown stuck to her body, red streaks of blood glueing the cotton to her skin.
“What are you doing here?” she choked, wrapping her arms around herself.
“It’s okay,” Flint said softly, discarding a bloody leg to crouch in front of her. “Just look at me.”
He held his palms flat out to her, murmuring to her, trying to hold her attention.
Something happened with his aura, some kind of wavelength which vibrated around them and covered her body like a force-field. Auras were meant to be an invisible energy field that couldn’t be seen, touched, tasted, or smelled. So how the fuck was there a cloud shimmering around her like a mirage?
“He can’t… Flint—” She dragged in a wheezing breath as she looked at her bodyguard, my former fucking employee, for help. “He can’t be here.”
Her chest heaved as panic beat out in her scent. Camille’s eyes widened, and I swear I could hear the walls creaking as she began to twitch.
“Flint,” she rasped, the floor shaking under her as she reached for him. “Flint, I—”
Her head suddenly flung back as a scream ripped from her and she slammed her hands against her ears, her stark gaze fixed on me.
“No, no, no, no!” she screamed again. “Caspian, please… You have to—”
But she jerked, her whole body spasming like she was having a seizure. The area around her cracked and splintered as another scream flung towards me, thumping me straight in the chest.
I gasped, grabbing the door, trying to stay standing as the force of it nearly knocked me over.
“Sin…” I croaked, looking at my mate, who watched us from the centre of the room. “What the fuck is going on?”
Sin arched a brow. I knew what he was holding in his hand. My eyes could tell exactly what it was, but my brain couldn’t register it was a torn up arm.
And the rustling noise I’d heard was Sin forcing the arm into a nearly full bin bag.
It was still Camille’s room. That hadn’t changed. Flint and Sin seemed unhurt, but I couldn’t see the Hiscoxes.
Mum said she’d sent them here, but there was no one else around.
Because it wasn’t like there were three bodies on the floor with pools of blood around them. There were just parts and limbs and fragments of flesh scattered around the room.
Camille screamed again, and I clenched my teeth as another wall of power hit me. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t tell why blood seeped from her nose, why she kept spasming, why the walls behind her shook so hard they looked like they were going to collapse.
“Sin!” I shouted, but he just stared at me. “What the fuck is going on?”
It was as if a bomb had dropped in the room.
Sin stood over a torso in a black jacket, facedown in the carpet, with no arms or legs. Behind Flint was another body under the window, its ribcage burst open, and furniture shattered around him as if he’d been sitting when he was hit.
His face was frozen in silent shock, and it was definitely one of the Hiscox cuntbags. But I couldn’t tell which one, as too much blood ran from every orifice. And the only parts left of him were stuck to the chair.
But it was the third body on my far left that made my stomach roll. A large patch of red like a firework splattering up the wall to the ceiling in a thick streak, easily explained by how it was missing its entire fucking head. Like it had exploded so hard that blood spurted violently upwards.
I looked back to Camille, my mind trying to catch up with what I was seeing.
Because it didn’t make any fucking sense.
Why was Camille curling up in the fetal position, another scream tearing from her as she looked at me like I was a monster? Why the fuck were Flint and Sin acting so normal when it felt like my skin could be torn off my face by the sheer force of whatever was hitting me?
Camille rocked back and forth, blood replacing her tears, seeping from the corners of her eyes.
Every piece of furniture bolted to the floor stayed in place, but there were still shards of glass and wood embedded into the walls.
“Camille,” I said hoarsely, numbly taking a step towards her. I couldn’t even feel my mate with the panic beating in my veins.
“Sin, please,” she gasped, her fingernails digging into the sides of her cheeks, scratching harsh lines downwards, scarring red against her pale skin. “Sin, make him stop.”
Sin twisted his lips in concern, meeting Camille’s shaking gaze as he dropped the bag and the arm to the floor.
“This is incredibly unfortunate, Caspian.” Sin sighed. He was speaking directly to me, as if the bloodbath I’d stepped into wasn’t the issue.
“What?” I snapped out in shock. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Like always, he was completely calm. But that was the fucking problem. Because, out of all the times, why was now the steadiest I’d ever seen him?
“I kept asking her to explain this to you, but she didn’t want you to find out,” my mate said.
“Sin. Camille… Fuck, Flint—just answer me!” My gaze fled to Camille, who looked at her brother with a terror. “Tell me what the fuck is going on!”
He sighed again as he reached a bloodstained glove into his pristine suit.
“I apologise in advance, Caspian,” he said, not sounding the least bit sorry.
There was a high click that I recognised anywhere. I heard that click every day at work. I’d trained so much that that click was as familiar to me as my own heartbeat.
Sin pulled a pistol from his suit pocket. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in his movements as he lifted his arm to aim the barrel straight at me.
“Wait, hang on.” I stepped backwards, hitting the thin edge of the open door. “You’re joking, right?” Eyes wide, I choked out a scared laugh as he adjusted his finger on the barrel. “Sin, come the fuck on. You can’t be serious. Look what’s happened here—we have to help Camille.”
He crooked his head, confusion breaking his empty stare.
“I am helping Camille,” he said simply, in that easy way of his that drove me absolutely insane.
I turned to her, to the omega I’d been beside my whole life, to the girl huddled on the floor in a bloodied lace nightgown, and I realised she was a stranger.
“Camille? What’s happened? Why is he—”
“Wait!” she cried seconds before Sin fired.
A guttural animal shout flew from me as I threw myself to one side, but it was no use.
Agony burst in my neck, sailing through my body as my legs instantly gave way. Even through the pain, I remained fixed on Sin’s unfeeling gaze as he watched me tumble to the already bloodstained floor.
The last thing I saw was my mate coldly turning from me to his sister, betrayal pounding through me as the world faded to black.