Chapter 38 Eden #2
I look down at the swimming words upon the crumpled parchment in my free hand. “Row... twelve.”
“Deep breath,” Malachi murmurs, pulling me tight against his side as a crimson guard stalks past us, its baton crackling. “Do not pass out on me, Eden. Not here.”
We pass Row eight. Row nine. Every step like wading through wet concrete.
I focus on Malachi’s boots hitting the metal grating.
I focus on the heat of his hand. I focus on anything but the terrified thought that in thirty seconds, I am going to see the face that has haunted my nightmares for a year.
He stops abruptly, the momentum nearly sending me crashing into a support beam. I stumble, catching myself on the cold railing, and look up.
“Row twelve,” he says, his voice devoid of any emotion. “He's in there.”
From what I can see through the chain-link, it doesn't look like the other pens.
It isn't a riot of screaming and wailing. It looks like an airport terminal delayed indefinitely, filled with men in varying states of decay pacing back and forth in tight, anxious circles. But somehow, the sound’s worse.
“You're overreacting,” one man mutters to the floor. “I never said that. You're crazy.”
“She made me do it,” another insists to the corner. “If she hadn't pushed me, I wouldn't have had to hit her.”
A red guard unfolds itself from the shadows near the gate, its head tilting down toward us, and Malachi shoves the crumpled paperwork toward it.
The guard scans over everything before stepping aside and tapping the locking mechanism with its baton.
A violet spark arcs, and the lock disengages with a clunk.
The cool metal of the iron handle presses into my palm, sending a cruel shudder up my spine. With one deep, heavy breath, and push.
I wipe my palms against the rough fabric of my trousers, but the sweat comes back instantly.
It’s cold and clammy, a physical manifestation of the terror clawing at my throat.
My boots move silently over the stained concrete as I wade into the sea of pacing, muttering men, with a demon and his hound flanking me like royal guards.
“I can't do this,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “Malachi, I can't—”
“You can,” he answers, his voice a low rumble against my ear, as he steers me forward.
“Eden? Babe?”
A thousand spiders skitter over my skin, and fighting against my own bones, I turn.
And there, standing in the shadow of a rusted support pillar, clear as day, is Matthew.
He looks exactly like he did the last time I saw him. He’s wearing the same grey cashmere sweater, only now, the chest is a sunken, concave ruin where his sternum was crushed by the steering column.
“Babe?” he asks again, taking a step forward with a lurching, uneven gait.
My spine collides with Malachi’s chest as I take a stumbling step back, hot, stinging tears welling in my eyes.
“Am I in a coma, Eden?” He chokes on a sob. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not... I’m not one of them. Take me home. Please, babe. Just wake me up. Get me out of here.”
He reaches for me, but his wrist flops uselessly, the shattered bones grinding audibly.
He winces, tears cutting through the grime on his face.
I’m paralyzed by the sight of the silver watch sliding down his arm.
It’s the exact one sitting in my nightstand drawer back home—glass smashed, hands frozen at the exact minute of impact.
A warm hand slides up my spine, settling firmly between my shoulder blades. Malachi. He doesn't speak, but the heat of his palm burns through the thin prison tunic in a silent, grounding reminder: You are not his anymore. You are standing on solid ground.
I take a deep, shuddering breath, staring into the wet, blue eyes that used to dictate my every waking move. “I didn't come to get you out, Matthew.”
One second, he’s a weeping mess; the next, the mask drops. His face goes slack, the tears instantly drying up as his eyes narrow into a dark, familiar cruelty.
“No. No. You're not doing this,” he snaps, his voice rising, filling the space with that suffocating, demanding weight I used to drown in. “You're not leaving me here. You're waking me up, and you're taking me home!”
“Matthew, you're dead—”
“Because of you!” he screams, lunging at me weakly. “You think I don't remember?! You were the one driving, Eden! You lost control! You smashed us into that divider! You owe me this!”
A year ago, that tone would have made me drop to my knees. It would have made me scour my soul for a way to fix him, to take his pain onto myself, to twist reality until I was the villain and he was the victim.
But the hand on my back is warm. The air in my lungs is mine. And something inside me snaps. Not a bone, but a chain.
My chin lifts as I force my spine straight, stepping away from Malachi’s hold to stand on my own two feet, looking him dead in the eye.
“I didn't kill you. You grabbed the wheel,” I tell him, the memory no longer a nightmare, but just a cold, hard fact.
“I was trying to pull over because you hit me. And you reached over and yanked us into the divider. It was your fault the car flipped.” I take a step toward him, and he actually flinches.
“You died because you needed control more than you wanted to live.”
The silence that follows is deafening. The other men in the pen have stopped pacing. Matthew stares at me, his eyes wide, his pathetic gaslighting shattering against the absolute wall of truth.
“I built a shrine to my own abuser,” I say, my voice steady, ringing out in the damp air. “I spent a whole year haunting myself for you. I let you rot in my head, and I let you convince me I was the monster. But you're just a memory I don't want anymore. And you belong here.”
Matthew's face contorts, his mouth working silently as his bruised ego flares into a violent, humiliated rage. “You ungrateful bitch—” he snarls, raising his broken, flopping hand as he surges forward.
He doesn't even make it a full step. Malachi moves faster than human eyes can track. One second he’s behind me, the next, his hand is clamped around Matthew’s throat, lifting him completely off the ground.
Matthew gurgles, his ruined chest heaving as Malachi’s fingers dig effortlessly into his flesh, hauling him up until they are eye-to-eye.
“You think you’re suffering now, Corpse-Boy?
” Malachi sneers, his golden eyes glowing with a sick, predatory joy.
“You’re in the waiting room. But I have acquaintances down in the Pit who owe me favors.
I’m going to make sure your paperwork gets fast-tracked.
They will peel you apart layer by layer, forever, and they will take great pleasure in doing it. ”
Malachi leans in closer, dropping his voice to a lethal, mocking whisper that carries perfectly in the quiet pen.
“But before you go to the meat-grinder, I want you to know something. She isn't crying over your ashes anymore. She’s mine now. She’s been in my bed.” Malachi’s lips pull back in a wicked, feral, fanged grin. “In fact, I made her come while I was wearing your favorite coat.”
Matthew lets out a muffled, strangled noise of pure, impotent rage, his face turning a mottled purple.
With a look of utter disgust, Malachi tosses him aside like a bag of garbage. Matthew hits the concrete hard, sliding through the grime and coughing violently, clutching his crushed chest.
Malachi doesn't even spare him a glance. He turns to me, the demonic rage instantly melting from his features, leaving only that heavy, grounding warmth. “Are you ready?” he asks softly.
I look at the pathetic heap on the floor and nod.
But as my gaze lands back on Malachi, I gasp.
My knees buckle as my hand flies to my sternum, and I double over, clutching my tunic as the pain shoots through my veins like liquid fire.
It feels like my ribs are being violently ripped out without anesthesia.
A wet, broken cackle bubbles up from the concrete behind me. “Yeah,” Matthew wheezes, his voice dripping with spite. “That’s right. It hurts, doesn't it? Leaving me behind? You deserve to hurt for what you did to me. You deserve to burn.”
A deafening roar shatters the air as Chain-Chewer lunges forward in a blur of black stone and shadow, his jaws snap inches from Matthew’s face, dripping saliva that hisses against the concrete.
But I barely hear it. Because behind me, Malachi lets out a genuine sound of agony. He grips my shoulder, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, but his other hand flies to his own chest, clutching the tunic right over his heart.
“Malachi?” I gasp, the world tilting.
“The blood-bind,” he grinds out, his teeth clenched against the wave of fire lashing through our blood. “It's... it's snapping. You did it. But we need to move. Now. Before the backlash floors us.”
The sound of sharp, furious footsteps echoes through the cavernous building, cutting through the wails of the damned like gunshots.
“Where are they?” The voice is shrill, imperious, and terrifyingly familiar. “I know they’re here! Get them, now!”
Veraxia.
Outside the pen, the red guards halt their patrol, heads snapping up in unison, turning toward the source of the noise, and then slowly, they turn toward the open gate of Row Twelve. Their batons hum to life, crackling with lethal, violet energy.
“She's here,” Malachi growls, grabbing my arm and whistling sharply for the hound. “Run.”
My boots skid as we scramble through the bodies and out of the pen, leaving Matthew cowering in the shadows of his own making. Chain-Chewer leads the charge, a boulder of muscle and teeth, bowling over a soul who gets in our way.
“There!” a voice screeches.
Two guards materialize directly in front of us.
“Malachi!” I scream as a cold, crimson hand clamps around my upper arm and I’m yanked off my feet, my toes dragging uselessly.
Malachi roars, turning to strike, but the second guard catches him. A baton cracks across his silver jaw, sending a spray of blood into the air, but he doesn't go down. He fights like a rabid animal, snarling, thrashing, trying to tear his way back to me.
Veraxia steps into the light, her eyes burning with a malice that promises an eternity of torment.
“Found you, little fuckers,” she purrs, raising a hand to command the guards. “Hold him. I want to watch him bleed.”
My vision goes static, like an old television losing signal.
I look down at my hand, the one the guard is gripping, and it looks translucent.
The edges of my body are blurring, turning into smoke.
I feel light. I feel untethered. The sounds of the wailing souls, the growling hound, the crackle of the batons—it all sounds like it’s coming from underwater.
Malachi’s eyes widen in pure panic he sees me dissolving. He knows what it means. The anchor is gone. I don't belong here anymore.
“No,” he yells. “Not yet!”
Ignoring the baton striking his ribs, he lunges, and with a roar of exertion that shakes the catwalk, he breaks the hold just enough to crash his body against mine.
He grabs my face with bloodied hands, and crashes his mouth to mine.
It’s a kiss of desperation. It tastes of blood and ozone and the terrifying heat of a star going supernova. He kisses me like he’s trying to breathe his own soul into my lungs, trying to anchor me to him by sheer force of will.
But I’m already slipping. The static swallows the world. The cold grip of the guard fades. The heat of Malachi’s mouth is the last thing I feel.
And then I'm gone.