Chapter 5
PENELOPE
There’s a huge pentagram beneath my feet, tiled into the floor, black on white, like a mosaic that I stand in the centre of, but I don’t look down, trying not to focus on it again.
There are strange things happening inside of this house, my entire nervous system is on high alert, but my heart reassures me that Billy won’t hurt me.
Everyone else around us, it’s them I don’t trust.
I don’t trust anyone.
I suck in a deep breath, the air icy, it’s so cold, it feels like frost nipping at my skin, the warmth of Billy’s body long forgotten, even though he only stands just across the room from me.
The room is large, echoey, and despite feeling the temperature of the space metaphorically strip me to my core, beneath my skin my blood is fire.
Billy’s eyes heat my insides, setting my soul on fire, turning my heart to ash, my soul to dust. The way he looks at me like he wants to devour and consume me, piece by little piece, makes me yearn for him in a way I haven’t before.
‘Be a good girl for me.’
Don’t you know I would do anything for you?
A shudder claws its way up my spine as the door opens, people drifting into the room at his back, and from another entrance at mine, I still don’t look, keeping my eyes on the bright blues that burn just for me.
But I can feel them, the others, their energies, changing the atmosphere of the space that was, just a moment ago, quiet.
Now, even without anyone making a single sound, it feels loud.
I don’t move from where I stand, Billy slipping his hands into his pockets, his smile melting back into its usual smirk. Like he let me see him, his real face, just for a moment, and now it’s time to put his mask back on, hide his true self from those around us.
Moths take flight inside my tummy, fluttering up towards my heart, tickling the organ as it swells and aches and lurches for my love.
Then Gore steps forward between us.
His big body blocking Billy from my view, and the eclipse deep dives into the pit of my stomach, their wings burning up like they were lit with a match, getting too close to the fire, obliterating them into nothing.
The other people in the room surround the three of us in a loose circle, no more than ten to twelve people around us, but it feels like too many, even in the huge room, it feels like they’re meant to suffocate.
Gore stops between us, only a foot from me, and he’s huge.
Shadow falling over me, hard green eyes staring me down, like he’s trying to get me to shrink, intimidate me, get me to be subservient.
Even though a cold wash of terror tries to drown the warmth of Billy’s soul tangled inside of me, strangling mine with love.
I keep my back straight, my shoulders squared, and I don’t cower when Gore steps in closer, eating up the distance between us, until he’s so close I can taste his scent on my tongue, leather and cloves.
“Kneel,” Gore orders me, his voice, his tone, his hard stare, all of it unwavering, and his dark emerald glare tracks me as, without hesitation, I drop to my knees at his feet.
The bloody inverted cross on his forehead is dry and flaky like mine, but it’s still clear on his light brown skin, a little lighter than Billy’s warmer tone.
His dark brows are slightly pulled together, his face a scowl, like this is just any other day.
One where rituals and murder and willing sacrifices are merely part and parcel.
“Do you, Penelope Hart, promise to do whatever it takes to be Paired with my blood brother, my second, number Two of the founding Blackwells, the second son of the first father, the holy entitas that is Father Black?” His voice is rough, like steep mountain terrain in a harsh, stormy wind, low and coarse but full of power, of command.
“Yes,” I tell him, “I do,” my voice low, but it doesn’t break with my nerves, something I have spent many years practising.
When I first met these men, Billy’s brothers, earlier tonight, I felt true fear, something I haven’t fully experienced since I was a little girl, but they brought the feeling rushing back to the surface.
I was dressed in a pretty frock and led gracefully through throngs of immaculately decorated people, and then we entered the dim seclusion where his brothers lay in wait, it was like I was the chum in the water of a shark tank.
“Billy,” Gore says, “come,” a clipped summoning.
My chin tipped up, eyes still on Gore’s green ones, I listen to Billy do as he’s told, his footsteps coming closer, something for me to focus on over the hard drumming of my rapidly beating heart.
Then Gore turns, and I’m left staring at the backs of his legs, his tailored suit trousers pulled taut across the muscular build of his thighs.
“Kneel.” There’s a soft shift of fabric, the subtle sound of his shoes on the tiles, and then Billy must be on his knees like I because Gore starts to speak once more.
“Do you, Billy Blackwell, my blood brother, my second, number Two of the founding Blackwells, the second son of the first father, the holy entitas that is Father Black, promise to do whatever it takes to be Paired with Penelope Hart?” Gore repeats, his voice no warmer than it was when he spoke the same words to me.
“Yes,” Billy says proudly, without fear. “I do.”
“Take off your shirt,” Gore instructs him, making my breath catch.
And then the eldest brother steps away, allowing me to see Billy, and I feel safer as soon as my eyes land on him, his on mine.
His long fingers work the buttons open down the front of his black shirt, tugging it up and out of the waistband of his slacks when he unfastens the last one.
The soft cotton falls open, revealing the ink I couldn’t properly see before, and even in this dull light, I can see it now.
It holds my attention as he pushes the shirt back, over his shoulders, letting it fall down his arms, keeping it gathered in the ditch of his elbows, so he can easily pull it back on.
My eyes take him in greedily, running over his smooth, warm skin, goosebumps springing up on his flesh and his own nipples pebbling in the cold.
I study his ink. Webs, I realise. The dark, delicate inked lines adorning his left side.
My fingertips twitch, wanting to ghost over them, dance across the designs.
And even though we are still apart, separated by six feet or so, it feels as though the thick heat of his flesh still warms me as my dark eyes follow the decorations.
Tracking each individual line across his brown skin, almost ashen in the dull light of this room.
A sharp breath sucks into my lungs, an involuntary reaction.
Spiders.
Something that feels as though it should be softer, but is bitter and acrid on my tongue, the meaning behind the inking of them.
Something I am gentle with, love, now, but was frightened of as a child, innocent creatures I used to pluck the legs off of, letting the bodies writhe into death.
Billy helped me learn to love them, stopped me hurting something innocent, the way others always hurt me when I was innocent too.
My breath feels acidic as it splatters through the insides of my lungs with sudden uneven gasps, I feel lightheaded, twitchy, all out of sorts.
Up until this very second, I’m not sure I understood, or even really thought about, why our connection was so strong after being apart since we were children, twelve long, hard years without each other.
Because he saved me, even if just for the year we spent together.
And then he left.
He decorated his section of this house with me in mind, he’s inked his skin with things that make him think of me, like the carved critters on his ceiling. There is love for me in everything he does, has done, even when we weren’t together.
He says he loves me, I know I love him.
I am sick.
Sick in the head, sick in the heart, sick in the mind.
Sick in love.
Lovesick.
But this is all moving too fast.
It’s been one day, and now I’m on my knees, agreeing to invisible contracts I don’t understand, with a cult he calls family. I haven’t had any time to think. What if I don’t want this?
“Billy, I-”
He cuts my whisper off with a single shake of his head, panic beginning to well up, choke me from the inside out.
The heat inside of me dies, everything cooling, and I shudder, my ears muffling, my eyes feeling glazed, like I’m fighting my way out of my own body, Billy watching me with narrowed eyes.
I don’t know what’s about to happen inside this room, and as much as I am submissive to him, I don’t want to do this.
Whatever this is, I don’t want to do it.
Sweat beads along the nape of my neck, a single drop running down my breast bone, slipping beneath the silk fabric of my dress.
I glance to my right, seeing only Gore’s back as others surround him, huddled together, their voices low murmurs.
I flick my gaze back, turning my head, my chin touching my shoulder, and her eyes are on mine, the only other woman in the room, limp blonde hair, sad blue eyes.
Dolly.
She looked out of it earlier, spacey, not in the room, but she doesn’t look like that anymore.
Her features hard, her body standing tall, assertive.
My lips part, as if to speak her name, and like she knows, can read something in me I’m not aware I’m sharing, she cocks her head, her soft pink lips pulling up at the corners.
It’s not a comforting smile, the gesture, it’s terrifying.
Whatever this is, I don’t want to do it.
“Billy,” swinging my head back around, I say it firmer this time, my voice shaky but louder, hysteria almost, the way his name pops out of my mouth, scraping up my throat. “I don’t w-”
Billy throws himself across the floor, skidding towards me on his knees, closing the distance, the palm of his hand covering my mouth, the side of it tight against my flaring nostrils, fingers digging into my cheek.