Chapter 9
Two hours was a pathetically short amount of time to keep someone alive.
It wasn’t even close to Ares’ personal best, certainly not a detail he’d be sharing with Zar later—or ever.
But after the first sixty minutes, Eden had started noticeably shaking.
By the one hundred and twenty mark, he’d sat down on the ground and covered his ears, unable to bear another second.
So Ares had stopped. He’d called it for the sake of his Starling, even though the only reason he’d been torturing Zonnie had been because Eden had wanted him to. He would have been fine slitting the man’s throat in the beginning and being done with this whole mess.
And it was a mess.
Blood coated everything, seeping through his clothes, making the sweatshirt hang heavy on his body. His boots made a sticky sound and clung to the plastic as he moved, and there was hair stuck to his leather gloves.
Ares had kept things fairly simple, breaking all of the bones he could without having to worry about accidentally causing internal bleeding too soon.
Then he’d swapped the bat for the knife and got to carving, creating the image of a bird across his flesh in red.
The final blow had been delivered to his chest. A bullet to his heart, the same way Eden’s mom had gone out.
Effective and arguably quick, but still painful.
Hopefully in his next life, Zonnie still felt it.
Sometimes that happened.
Sometimes the pain felt from one physical form lingered in the subconscious and could be felt in a new one.
The weapons clattered to the ground once he was done, and Ares turned to take Eden in. There was no immediate reaction despite the growing silence, as though the Starling was tuning it all out and incapable of noticing it was over.
He probably was.
Ares had experience with that sort of thing, too.
With a sigh, he stripped out of his clothing, dropping pieces over the oozing body. Once he was in nothing but his socks, he made his way over to Eden and scooped him up, carrying him out of the room and into another smaller one next door.
The older man gave no reaction, merely wrapped his arms around Ares’ neck and clung to him.
Leaving him to linger in his own reality for a moment longer, Ares set him down on a chair and then turned to where he’d left a fresh change of clothing earlier.
His socks came off and he flung them back into the kill-room.
It didn’t really matter; this whole place would be cleaned top to bottom anyway, but he still did it.
After cleaning himself up and changing, he turned his attention back to Eden, who’d yet to move a single muscle. Kneeling before him, he tipped his head forward until his face blocked out anything else Eden might have been looking at.
“Do you regret it?” he wondered aloud. This reaction wasn’t totally unheard of.
Eden was clearly in freeze mode, but they’d need to get him out of it soon.
Ares wasn’t comfortable putting it off much longer.
It was too easy to get lost inside oneself.
“He took a bullet to the chest. I could try bringing him back for you, if you want me to.”
That seemed to finally reach him, and Eden’s lips pursed. He blinked, focusing slowly until he was finally present again. “Wh—what did you just say? Can you repeat that?”
“It’s unlikely,” Ares told him. “But not impossible. If you want—”
“I want him dead.”
He paused and gave those words a chance to settle between them. For Eden to really hear and process them. “Still?”
“Still.” Eden laughed, but it was manic. The sound of a broken person, unaware they’d been rendered to pieces. “What does this make me? What am I now?”
Ares knew what he was asking.
Was he a killer by proxy?
A monster?
A devil?
“Mine.” He planted a single kiss on Eden’s brow and stood. “Stay.”
Eden grabbed onto his wrist when he turned, a wild, frightened look overcoming him that had Ares’ heart leaping oddly in his chest.
He wrapped his fingers around Eden’s arm and gently pulled him off. “Stay.”
“Don’t—” Eden caught himself and seemed to reconsider whatever he’d been about to say. “Where are you going?”
“To give you what you want.” Ares tapped his temple. “Head shot, remember?”
That was the only way to guarantee anything in this fucked up reality.
He’d intentionally stopped Zonnie’s heart in the off-chance Eden had changed his mind.
He’d be useless to Ares if he broke completely, and the torture he’d just witnessed, that he’d been partially responsible for inflicting…
Not everyone could handle that sort of cruelty.
That sort of evil.
Eden frowned. “But…he’s dead already.”
“I’ll only ever offer you absolutes, Starling. There’s no room for chance with me.”
“No, but…Not even the best doctor in the universe could bring someone back from that.”
“I could.” He offered a comforting smile, though honestly, he wasn’t really sure he was successful at it, since Eden’s frown only deepened. “Wait for me. It’ll only take a moment.”
Ares left, careful with his steps, only walking on clean parts of the tarp that covered the ground. It helped that he didn’t have to get that close to the body. A few feet past the threshold, he pulled out his blaster, aimed, and put a bullet in the spot between Zonnie’s eyes.
There.
Done.
No more of this reality for him.
He found Eden exactly where he left him and, testing the new terms of their relationship, held out a hand, silently commanding him to take it.
Eden hesitated, but eventually he stood, wobbling a little on his feet, and came over. His hand was clammy when he rested it in Ares’, and there was a tremor that shouldn’t be there.
“You never looked at your family’s crime scene footage, did you?” he guessed, but Eden’s eyes flashed and his fingers tightened in his.
“Yes, I did.”
“Oh.” He’d assumed not, considering how pale Eden was and how many times he’d vomited. “Did you puke then as well?”
Eden tried to pull away, but Ares held on. “Let go.”
“You aren’t team leader anymore, babe,” he reminded. “You aren’t Ransom either. I’ve leveled up my affinity points and unlocked my official companion. You’re Starling for real now. My Starling.” He took him in. “You’re trembling.”
“Shut up. No I’m not.”
“You are. It’s an odd thing to fight about. Should I carry you out?”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Answer my question and I won’t.”
It took Eden a second to backtrack, but then he found it. “Yes, of course I threw up a ton while viewing what was left over of my family, asshole.”
“Ares,” he corrected, then considered, “or Creation. Baby is fine too. Honey. Sweetheart—”
“Lucifer, I will hit you if you don’t stop talking.”
That was interesting. “You aren’t afraid of me.”
“Why would I be?”
“You just watched me beat a man within an inch of his life for two hours straight. Oh.” He hummed. “I guess it was actually for one hour and forty-seven minutes. Your eyes were closed toward the end there.”
“I can’t tell if you’re trying to shame me or not,” Eden admitted.
“I’m not trying to do anything,” he said. “But I would like to leave. The cleanup crew should be here any minute.”
“Again?” Eden glanced toward the door to the other room but didn’t let his gaze linger. “You mean you aren’t taking care of that yourself?”
“Of course not. People like me don’t need to bother with stuff like that.”
“Then what was with all the preemptive plastic?”
“I was just setting the scene for you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know how it is. Setting is super important to keep the right mood in every game, especially a murder mystery one.”
“This isn’t a game, Ares. This is real life.”
“Sure it is.” He tugged Eden out of the room and into the hall. “Come on. Your temperature is dropping already, and we’re not even outside yet. I’m worried you’ll get sick.”
Eden barked out a laugh. “That’s hilarious. You’re worried about me, after doing something like that to somebody else?”
“That was somebody else.” He was failing to see the connection, but no matter.
He moved more slowly than he would have if he’d been on his own, but whether Eden wanted to admit it or not, he was in a bad way.
Ares couldn’t tell if it was due to what he’d just witnessed, the cold, or both, but by the time they’d finally made it outside of the building, he’d decided he was done taking chances just so his Starling could hang onto his pride.
“Tell me you didn’t come here on that shitty piece of metal?” Ares scowled at the bike, and then, before Eden could answer, bent and scooped him up a second time. Ignoring his protests, he turned and headed around the side of the building to where he’d discreetly parked his hovercar in the shadows.
“Put me down!” Eden’s fingers were like ice when they grabbed Ares’ throat threateningly.
Wordlessly, Ares dropped him to his feet the second they’d made it to the car, pulling the door of the passenger side open before pushing Eden toward it. He sighed when the voice actor refused, twisting in his hold until his back was pressed against the vehicle and he could glare up at him.
“Don’t be stubborn,” Ares said. “It hasn’t even been three hours, and you’re already going back on our deal?”
“I agreed to give you a night in bed,” he snapped, “not to obey your every command. I’m not some servant you can boss around yet, and if that’s what you’re after, then we need to have a compensation discussion.”
Ares smirked and set a hand on the roof of the car at either side of Eden, bending slightly so their faces lingered close together. “You want me to pay you?”
“If your plan is to use me as an assistant or boss me around like one, yeah.”
“I don’t need an assistant.” It’d be a bit odd for him to walk around campus, treating a professor like a personal employee, but Ares kept that to himself. “I don’t need a popsicle either.” He cupped his cheek, happy when his Starling didn’t immediately try to push him away.