Chapter 48
SINN'OUS
When Reni’s clique made their presence known in the cafeteria for dinner and they weren’t being trailed by one hazelnut haired inmate, Sinn'ous’s anxiety skyrocketed.
And he doesn’t do anxiety. But Satan give him strength, he has anxiety now.
When Izz disappears it never ends well. The whole prison should know by now who the boy belongs to but there are always stupid people in the world that need to die.
He’ll introduce them to their deaths and their afterlife in Satan’s home. But this doesn’t require his boy being in the middle of it.
Scanning each group he exercises his legs past, he is no closer to who is searching for.
His mind being a rattled mess experiencing the new and unwelcome presence of anxiety weighing down on him, he misses the rational thoughts that tell him to check A-Wing and their cells.
It takes him glaring into the tightly packed B-Wing for the thought to click into place.
Sure enough, Izz’s exactly there. He’s half put out by his boy being in Sinn'ous’s Satanic cell and not over in his own shared one.
The pleased air of discovering his boy sitting here is short lived.
Because the air surrounding his boy is not one of giddy excitement or laid-back casualness, it’s cold and it’s unsettled.
His boy’s leg is bouncing on the floor, expression drawn in and closed off, showcasing just how much Izz has opened up to him, now that he is shut off it’s so glaringly obvious.
“You didn’t show up to eat.” He structures his words in an open-ended demand to give his boy the chance to fill in the blanks.
If this has anything to do with David, Sinn'ous will kill him. Repercussions be damned.
The only reason that waste of space lives is because Izz wanted it to be, but if David has upset Izz again, promise or no promise, he will end him.
Sinn'ous stays in the cell’s doorway, stepping in could be disastrous to his long-term plans for his boy if what Izz says is something he does not want to hear.
“I . . . Um. I have something to tell you . . .”
Fucking hell, if he’s about to tell me he’s kissed someone else, or has agreed to someone’s protection proposal, I am going to lose it. In a way that will drop bodies every-fucking-where.
Pinching off his nerves so he doesn’t lunge forward, his back stiffens into an unmoving rod hovering in the entrance.
Izz’s chest expands in a massive inhale. “Vince offered himself in exchange for me asking you a favour.”
Vince?
Shit, his mind is not with him right now. Nothing slots into place, he just stands there like English is a foreign language to him.
Which in turn has Izz scrambling to fill the thick silence. “He has an inmate who he owes money to . . . he wanted you to . . . k-kill them. Asked me to ask you . . .”
Words filter in. Vince. Owes. Kill them. They circle and cling when they’re something his deeper soul catches. The meanings and sentence structures are lost to him.
Izz’s eyes are on the floor when Sinn'ous clears the fog to see his boy.
“What did you say.” He’s aware his voice is flat and very much cold. Devoid of any emotion. Yet he can’t bring himself to care or try to shove out some.
His boy aims his words towards the floor, eyes remaining downcast. “I didn’t really answer him. I wasn’t expecting to be asked such a thing. It caught me off guard.”
Vince touched what’s yours. A dark voice screams in his head.
“He touched you.” Sinn'ous all but growls. And if Izz replies further it’s lost to him. Red is all that becomes of the cell. A deep saturated colour driving his instincts to kill into his frontal lobe.
Kill.
Kill.
KILL.
~~~
Walking to C-Wing, pinning Vince to the cell bars by the throat with feet dangling, was a Satan be damned blur of red-hot rage. An all-consuming fire he’d peeked through while it devoured everything. Every scrap of control he tries to pretend he has any say over, snapped and burnt to a crisp.
He’s fairly sure he snarled in Vince’s face about touching Izz. What words were spat out he couldn’t say. He’s not sure why his conscious mind is back either, but the red is receding, it’s still tickling the edges, but it’s cleared to where he can see, feel, and hear.
But why?
The answer writes itself in the form of an instinctual flare. And he knows without a shadow of doubt that Izz’s standing behind him watching this.
He clings to this. To the knowledge that if he kills Vince right now he will undo everything he has worked so hard to build. Every lie and half-truth to manoeuvre Izz into the right sized box will be demolished.
He grits out sentences he half tracks. Things not said for Vince, but for Izz’s benefit. “Save it. We all know you were. I don’t kill for hire—I don’t kill, at all. There is no evidence. No proof. And there never will be.”
His grip remains strong, tightly constricting Vince’s airway. The sacrifice’s eyes are bulging, face turning a deeper shade of red. How easy it would be to break the neck. Just one swift twist.
He’s so close to a kill he can taste it.
Vince’s pathetic struggles, sloppy attempts to shove Sinn'ous off, only have him considering shaking the half limp body like a ragdoll.
Ave Satan, give me the strength I need to step back.
To drag himself out of the kill is the same as diving headfirst into quicksand then swimming back to the surface. Damn near impossible.
“Keep away from Izz,” Sinn'ous snarls, leaning closer to Vince’s face, “and you and I won’t have a problem that needs . . . solving . . . Understood.”
Through his choking and whimpering, Vince drops his head slightly, nodding. Unable to utter a verbal reply, and his lips are changing colour, growing an unnatural blue tint for any living person.
Satan. Sinn'ous drives the name into his limbs and uses his prayer to forcefully drop the sacrifice.
He has to leave. Leave before he turns on everyone and slaughters those few who hover in the shadows of C-Wing’s almost completely empty cells.
One foot in front of the other, he drives his thighs into the steps and takes himself out of the Wing, not once looking back at Izz.
It’s ironic and laughable that his strides take him to the far side of H-Wing, the corridors where Sandstone Correctional’s church is stored.
He says stored because no one comes here, not since Alexiel took over H-Wing and you have to pass the Wing to get to this corridor.
And not since the gym was shut down, if it had ever been open.
Half the population probably doesn’t know the gym exists.
Sinn'ous knows because he’s been here before.
On other occasions where he’s needed isolation to regulate himself.
When Rogers had dragged him down here to do just that.
And now his subconscious mind has led him straight back here.
Sinn'ous bellows and lashes out, punching his fist into the solid wall. And when the flare of pain ignites a burn through his arm and scrubs back more of the red haze, he does it again.
And again.
And again.
He stopped. Why did he stop? Why did Izz’s presence there stop him?
What happened to him? How has he become this? When did it turn from the drive to kill his boy into this demanding drive to only hurt him. From kill to hurt.
Where did it go wrong?
His boy.
Sinn'ous screams again and hits the wall, driving his fists into it.
When did his prey turn into his boy?
Was it the guard? Was it CO Leo Anderson’s murder? Is that when all the lines became blurred?
Is he still going to kill Jasper Marcelo?