Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
YORICK
“So that’s pretty much everything that happened.”
Julian is staring at me with a raised eyebrow. “You got a bit graphic there during the sex scene. I really didn’t need to know that much, did I?”
“What? You told me to tell you everything!”
“Yeah, not the fucking sex part! Didn’t you see the look on my face?”
I most definitely did see the look on his face, but it sure didn’t slow me down. “I thought that was like… you anticipating what was going to happen or something!”
“You didn’t hear me going, ‘Let’s skip this part’?”
“I don’t know, Julian! I got really into my story!”
“Okay, sorry, I just needed to get that out there. So Morpheus’s plan to keep you in Atticus’s life was achieved by making Atticus turn you?”
“Yep.”
“So did Atticus still push you away?”
“Not as severely as before, but he was very closed off. He acted like our night of intimacy—that you don’t want to hear about—never happened, and anytime I tried to do anything, he pushed me away.
I didn’t fight it, though. I felt like I didn’t deserve his kindness after everything I’d done, since I was betraying him to the very man he fought so hard to protect me from.
But today… today he kissed me back. It was such a lovely kiss. He pulled me in—”
Julian cuts me off. “I think we were focusing on the other part? You know, the Morpheus part?”
“We were?” I ask, feeling like my romance with Atticus is significantly more important.
“If you knew how bad Morpheus was, why did you go with him the other day?”
“You have to understand, all of that happened nearly five hundred years ago. I’ve interacted with Morpheus many times since and he’s always just…
let me be. I give him what he wants and we do it all again in ten or fifty years.
Hell, it’s been over a hundred years since I saw him last. It wasn’t like any of this happened just yesterday. ”
“Yeah… I guess I get that. For someone like me who’s only in my thirties, I can only imagine how much someone can change in five hundred years.”
I turn and listen when I hear a noise that very much sounds like familiar footsteps. “Hide your collar or shift,” I say.
Julian shifts, and I hurry over to the door and open it just in time to see Johnny walk into the main room.
“Johnny, how pleasant to see you here,” Morpheus says.
“The feeling is not mutual,” Johnny retorts before tossing something. It rolls across the rug and comes to a stop in front of Morpheus’s feet.
“Here is Wick’s head. I will be taking these two with me,” Johnny says, eyes narrowed.
“Oh?” Morpheus puts his foot on the head and rolls it to look at the features, but the way the skin has shriveled and burned up from being exposed to the sun makes it hard to tell if it really is Wick. “David, give someone on watch a call and see if the monster is lying.”
Johnny smirks at Morpheus. “I dream about cutting your head off your body every night.”
“Oh, join the party. There are so many of you that you should start a little support group. That would be fun,” Morpheus taunts.
Johnny isn’t amused by this, but when the driver confirms Johnny’s story, Morpheus waves us over to him.
“I’m a man of my word. Take the dog and my pretty little Yorick and be on your way.” Morpheus turns to me. “But know this. Right now, I’m not the man you need to be worried about. I don’t always have to play the role of bad guy, now do I?”
I stare at him, uncertain how he could possibly play any other role in this.
It’s an automatic reaction to assume that he’s going to stab us in the back on the way out, but when the three of us get into the elevator, nothing happens at all.
Even so, Johnny stands in front of us, as if he’s prepared to take on Morpheus if he chooses to move.
The second the door closes, the tension in Johnny’s body dissipates as he slumps against the wall, and I immediately reach for him.
“Are you okay?”
“Been better,” he says as I realize how much he smells like blood.
“Why did you come when you’re so hurt? What if he’d attacked you?”
“Then I’d be dead,” he says. “He won’t attack me. Why destroy his very own creation? That wouldn’t be much fun for a man like him.”
“Creation?” Julian asks after shifting back and pulling on the pants I hand him.
Johnny ignores him, and when the elevator door opens, I help him out to the car.
Julian pulls the door open, and I assist Johnny into the back seat.
We’re all moving as fast as we can, fully prepared for Morpheus to tell us it was a joke, just to see our pain.
I’m barely seated in the passenger seat before the car is moving, but Julian makes sure all doors and windows are firmly secured before we escape out into the sunlight.
“Where should we go?” Julian asks.
Johnny cracks an eye open. “The hotel we were at last night. They have a private underground parking garage.”
He closes his eyes and seems to doze off before I can ask him more. Julian is driving fast, like he thinks Morpheus has gained the ability to walk through the sun and is coming after us.
Julian’s eyes snap over to mine once we’re a good distance away. “Oh fuck, I can’t tell you how scared I was. It was such a stupid decision to go with you. What the hell could I have even done to help you?”
I look at him in surprise since he’d appeared so confident the entire time he was with me.
“What are you talking about? You helped me more than you’ll ever know.
For all of these years, I’ve had to deal with Morpheus alone.
Do you know how terrifying it is seeing him, knowing each time that you may or may not live to see the next day?
That you might be subjected to watching people you care about die?
It got better as the years went on, and even got to the point where it was almost casual when he’d insist we meet up.
But Lou’s death—and the way Morpheus acted—really reminded me of the monster that I thought was someone in my past. All of it is just…
you don’t know how relieving it was to have you with me this time.
Can I take you everywhere with me? You’ll be my very own support puppers. ”
“I… don’t know about everywhere, but I’m glad I could help this time. I still would have preferred it if the sex scene had been fade to black or skipped entirely. You could have even just been like ‘We got a bit frisky’ and left it at that. Why do you think I needed that knowledge?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” I ask. “It wasn’t even that graphic!”
Julian sighs, and I smile at him. “I’m really happy I met you.”
“Yeah. I do wish we could have met under better circumstances… but me too.”
“Should I just like… dig a grave now, though? Casimir is going to murder me because you chose to go with me.”
Julian grins and shakes his head. “He’s not going to murder you.”
“How sure are you about that? I’m pretty sure he’s going to. I wonder if he already dug the grave.”
“It’s sunlight out, so he can’t yet.”
“Yet?” I whine as he pulls up to the hotel. He heads over to the valet sign, and they direct him to the underground garage. Once it’s clear we’re safe, I get out and open the back door. “Come on, Johnny,” I say, but before I can grab Johnny, someone is grabbing me.
“Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?” Atticus asks while he jostles me around, trying to see what happened to me. My life feels like it’s more in danger now than back when I was with Morpheus.
“I’m fine,” I assure him.
“You won’t be when I’m done with you,” Casimir growls.
“Knock it off, you know it was my idea,” Julian says, at which Casimir grumbles.
“I’m glad you both are okay!” Ezio exclaims, patting both of us on the head with a beaming smile.
“I see you got everyone here safely, Cyrus,” Julian says as Atticus continues to examine me.
Cyrus nods. “I did. Our party fared the best, for sure. There were a lot of others who weren’t able to heal and perished. We believe that the blood served at the party was spiked with poison, so when the bombs went off, they couldn’t heal from the damage.”
“You think Niles spiked it?” Julian asks.
Casimir shakes his head. “I don’t know when he would’ve had an opportunity to. I was watching him the entire time.”
“It feels like someone knew Niles was coming and took advantage of that,” I say. “Niles was there a while, but after he arrived, no one really drank anything. It had to have been done earlier in the evening.”
I tell them what Morpheus had said to me.
“He loved to emphasize that he was the good guy and by doing this, he was simply disposing of those handling the poison,” I grumble.
“Good guy?” Cyrus asks with a laugh. “His bullshit led to a bunch of people dying. Was everyone there guilty? I can’t imagine. He just didn’t care who died to accomplish his goal.”
Atticus is saying very little but still has a hold of me. It’s not the lovey-dovey hold that Casimir has on Julian, it’s much more menacing than that, but I’m happy as fuck. He can drag me around all day for all I care. I just love the fact that his hands are on me.
“I think we should get Johnny fixed up, get some blood for everyone, and get some sleep. I’m not quite sure what else we can do today,” Julian says. “Then once the sun is down, we get the hell out of here.”
“Should I take Johnny to a hospital?” Cyrus asks.
“No, I’m fine,” Johnny says as he pushes out of the back seat and heads toward the hotel.
I look at Atticus, but he shakes his head. “He knows best. Let him be.”
“Did you really kill Wick?” I ask.
“I did,” Atticus says. “Now let’s go.”
I can tell he’s uneasy, and I wonder if we’re still being watched by Morpheus’s men.
“Everyone, stay in your rooms. If you are leaving for any reason, call me,” Atticus demands. “As soon as it’s night, we leave this place.”
I follow Atticus as he drags me over to the elevator.
Everyone crams in with us while I stare at the hand that’s wrapped around my wrist. I’d kind of prefer it to be holding my hand instead of this vise grip thing he has going on, but I’m digging it.
“Did you ask Wick about my parents… before he died?”
“I talked to him some, but it’d be best to talk about it later.”
Well, that confirms that someone is watching us. “Okay. That’s fine,” I tell him as I watch the number panel showing which floor we’re on. When we reach our floor, I help Johnny into his room, but as soon as he flops down on the bed, he waves me off.