32. Brontë
Love into a Weapon - Madalen Duke
J ael was nowhere to be found when I returned to Hurst Manor. The aftermath of the carnage that had been inflicted that night lay before me. Bodies in their own pools of blood like Mr. Vanderson and his wife, but otherwise there was no sign of life.
My chest heaved, slick with sweat, every nerve in my body alight with pain that had long since outgrown its name.
It was an agony most people would never know, reaching me to the bone.
But I couldn’t slow down. I had to find Jael. I stepped over Mr. Vanderson’s sprawled out body, eyeing the deep gash carved into his round stomach. He died with his eyes open, unlike his wife.
She was collapsed on the stairs in a heap of ballgown fabric. Someone had stabbed her in the chest, presumably as she tried to get away.
I didn’t give a damn who was behind the murders—or any of the dead bodies I came across at Hurst Manor—but I did know I had to find Jael.
I ripped apart the property searching for her, tearing through rooms, flinging open doors with enough force to splinter wood. The hidden passages—the ones most people wouldn’t even know existed—lead to nowhere.
The underground tunnels and chambers where the players and employees were kept for the duration of the games were empty.
No one around to be found.
I kicked open more doors and wrenched back curtains. I checked inside closets and under beds, half expecting to find Jael in hiding.
But she wasn’t there.
I moved outside, past the hedge maze where bodies rotted in the damp night air. I checked the beach at the back of the property, which leads to a rocky shoreline where the tides from the sea rush in. She was nowhere to be found, nowhere on the estate.
I grew feral with desperation, heaving ragged air into my lungs, as I turned back and charged toward the main house. Bursts of pain shot through me, but I pushed on, gritting my teeth from under my minotaur mask.
"You’re wasting your energy, Bront?," my father said once I’d made it indoors again. His voice sounded before he appeared from a hall that led to the kitchens. He stepped toward me with his arms folded behind his back and a pitying expression on his face. “I know what you’re doing and it’s causing you nothing but pain.”
I whirled to face him, fists clenched. My pulse roared in my ears, my muscles coiled with an aggression that was barely contained. He stood in the dim light of the foyer, as unruffled as ever. If he noticed the blood smeared across the floors, the shattered remnants of the games or the dead bodies, he didn’t react.
It was all background noise for him.
“Where is she?” I snarled.
He sighed as if I were a foolish child. “She left the island.”
“Liar!”
His expression never wavered. "What reason would I ever have to lie? If you don’t believe me, take a look for yourself.”
He reached into his pants pocket and produced his cell phone, holding it up to show me the photo on his screen.
It was of Jael seated in a small boat, her cloud of curls floating in the wind. He swiped to the left to a second image, the boat from an even further distance, as the dark water lapped at the sides.
A chill trickled over me. The photos were real. They were new .
…from tonight.
My father pocketed the phone. “She found what she was looking for. Or rather, realized the next place she needed to look. That was why you were here, was it not? Her quest to find her sister?”
“Where?” I grunt.
The edge of his mouth quirked. “She’s gone to the Caplan Hills. It’s where the famed Raskova estate is—or, rather, was—located. If there was anywhere for Kaden Raskova to escape to, it would be his father’s magnificent property, would it not?”
“And her sister…”
He nodded. “She’s with him. Which is why Jael left.”
“No.”
“She left before you could follow. Why else do you think she was on that boat?”
I heaved another ragged breath, refusing to believe what I was being told. “She didn’t leave.”
“You saw the photo. If you want to find her, you can. I’ll help you.” He stepped closer, staring up at me like I was more a creature that fascinated him than his son. “We can use the tracking device. That should help you find her.”
It was true.
All the patients at the hospital had one implanted. Jael had no idea about hers. If she had left to find her sister and Raskova, then we would be able to track her.
My father watched the realization flicker in my eyes, tilting his head to the side. “You’re in agony, aren’t you? I hear it in your irregular breathing. The effort it takes you to keep going. When was the last time you took your meds?”
I refused to answer, though it was useless; we both knew the extent of the pain I was in. My entire existence had become living with the debilitating pain from the fall.
It had been weeks since I left the hospital to follow Jael. The struggle increased by the day. The pain was reaching a level even I couldn’t stand, echoing through every part of my broken, disfigured body.
“Let me help you,” my father said. “We’ll get you your meds and I’ll show you the tracker location. Then you can go find her. You can go off with her like you’ve always wanted.”
My jaw tightened as I regarded him. If not for the sharp, aching torment sawing away at me from the inside, I might’ve turned him down.
I might’ve been too stubborn to ever take help from a man who’s spent his existence repulsed by me.
But my body was breaking down and the fight to keep going had taken its toll. Reluctantly, I gave a nod.
He smirked. “I knew you’d see reason sooner or later.”
The Caplan Hills overlooks the thick forest that serves as a barrier between any nearby cities and the secluded hilltop, where the wealthy buy silence and isolation.
Dmitri Raskova wasn’t the only eccentric rich person to build a mansion this far removed from the rest of society, but his estate sits at the very top. The property has been forgotten, the trees overgrown and the wrought-iron gates covered in webs from lack of use. They groan as I force them open.
The driveway is cracked, weeds splitting through stone. The house itself is massive, made up of marble and intricate carvings, but the windows are dark and lifeless. I enter without hesitation, aware there’s a low chance anyone living is inside.
Dust floats in the air and settles on the once polished floors. I pass through, observing every detail of the place, searching for the slightest sign she was here. The massive staircase splits into twin paths leading to the upper floors, but I don’t stop to admire the architecture. I tear through the house.
Room by room, I turn over the furniture, kick open doors, wrench curtains apart and empty closets. The silence presses in, suffocating, making my pulse hammer in my ears. I open closets, flip mattresses, check behind bookshelves for hidden doors.
She has to be here.
The tracker shows that she is in the Caplan Hills. I saw it with my own two eyes.
But the deeper into the mansion I search, there’s no evidence to be found.
There’s no proof her sister or Raskova were ever even here.
I stagger outside, into the forest, lungs burning as I run. The mist clings to my skin, curling around the trees. My breath comes out ragged, harsh against the stillness, eyes peering through the slits in my mask for any sign of her. And then?—
Leaves rustle in the distance as someone flits by.
My heart lurches and I let out a desperate grunt. I surge forward, my boots crashing down on the earth.
I push harder, cutting a direct path to the point where I saw...
I slow down as I reach the area and realize it was nothing. It was some woodland creature scurrying through.
Jael’s not here and she never was.
I return to my father, barely containing my rage. He sits at his desk, calm and composed yet concentrating hard on his work at the hospital. When I walk through the door, he brings up the tracking map again. The dot glows on his screen, the location the same.
“She’s still in the Caplan Hills,” he says, gesturing to the map. “It shows she’s on the Raskova estate. It’s possible—you may not want to face it—but perhaps she doesn’t want you to find her.”
I return a second time. I search for days. I don’t sleep, don’t eat, don’t stop moving. All I do is scour the area for her, even the other estates that exist in the Caplan Hills. At one of the homes, I’m confronted by a security guard, who I give a concussion to, slamming his skull into the stone wall that surrounded the property.
The rage consumes me as I search the Caplan Hills until it feels like I’m on the brink of insanity.
I storm into my father’s home a second time and shatter everything within reach. Vases explode against the walls. Glass rains down like shards of ice. My mother screams, cowering in the corner as I tear through their belongings, my breath heaving.
“WHERE IS SHE?!” I roar.
My father remains impassive, nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Stop this now or security will be called. And I will no longer give you your meds.”
“I DON’T NEED THE MEDS!” I boom, smashing my fist through a window.
Next will be his face. Blood trickles down my knuckles as I round on them and my mother whimpers.
“If I find out it was you,” I growl at him, “I will kill you.”
Days later, the staff at the psychiatric hospital scream when I come storming through. My boots hit the tile in heavy, resounding footsteps as I stride through the area and make everybody go still. It’s not every day they witness a six-foot-seven man in a minotaur mask ready to tear the place down.
I get started, throwing open doors, scanning each room. I flip over desks and knock over supply tables. Patients scream and scramble to get out of my way. The nurses are no different as many recoil and flee in fear.
One nurse attempts to stop me. Nurse Hinkley blocks my path, awareness on her face. As head nurse, as one of my father’s highest-ranking staff members, she’s fully aware of who I am.
“You can’t be here!” she yells.
I shove past her. A second nurse reaches for my arm.
“Sir, you need to calm down?—”
I slam my fist into his face and send him tumbling several feet back. I round the nurse’s station and tear away at the piles of documents like a beast unfamiliar with what paperwork is.
“WHERE?!” I bark. I crush a piece of paper that lists the room numbers of every patient at the hospital. Jael’s nowhere listed. “WHERE IS SHE?”
Nurse Hinkley stumbles over with a phone and canister of bear spray. “Stop this now or I’ll spray you in the face!”
“WHERE?!”
I flip the desk and send the computer, printer, papers, flower vase, and everything else on it crashing to the ground.
More nurses scream in alarm.
But this is only the beginning. I will tear this hospital apart brick by brick if it means finding where she’s gone.
My father insists she left without telling me. She didn’t want me to follow, but that can’t be true. She wouldn’t go where I couldn’t follow.
She never has before…
I storm down another corridor, wrenching door after door open. I’m at an intersection that leads into the high-risk ward, where patients who are considered extremely unstable are kept. A gut-wrenching scream sounds from the end of the corridor.
It belongs to a man. It’s the kind of cry of agony you release when consumed by pain.
My pulse picks up, beating harder in the side of my neck. I grit my teeth and stride forward. Wrapping my fingers around the handle, I let out a roar worthy of a beast as I rip the door wide open, leaving it hanging loose on its hinges.
The room’s empty except for the padding on the walls and a bed in the middle. The scene before me is unexpected and surreal.
My father kneeling on the bed, clutching at his neck as blood gushes out. Underneath him lays a bound Jael whose mouth is painted red from the bite she’s taken out of his jugular.