Chapter 19
BILLY
In the distance, lightning spears the sky, bright flashes of purple follow the low bellowings of thunder. The rain beats down on us, the ground turning to marsh beneath our boots, a river of water rushing towards us as we trek uphill in the dark.
Side by side, we both carry spades, I have the axe, and between us, the backs of our hands almost brush. I want to pass the axe handle into my other hand, carry the spade and it together, lace our fingers together, draw her in closer, let our arms touch as we continue to walk in silence.
But I don't.
Thinking about what’s inside of hers.
I turn my head, looking down at the top of hers, covered by a hood that matches mine, her eyes on the uneven path ahead. I want to understand, desperate to claw my way inside her head and dig through the piles of rot and ash, just to find the reason why.
Is it me, is it here, is it The Obsidian, is it her?
So many thoughts race around inside my skull, I’m barely paying attention to where we’re heading, where she’s leading me. All I know is, this is the last fucking thing I wanted to be doing tonight.
“It’s here,” Nellie says finally, the curve of her spade slicing through the air before thudding down into the oversoaked earth.
“You’re sure?” I ask incredulously, because right now, in the pitch fucking dark, nothing but a singular lantern between us, the orange glow only just enough to see a foot ahead, it’s impossible for even the best killers to find a grave.
But she looks over at me, one eyebrow curving higher on her forehead, holding my gaze for just a few seconds, both of us silent, and then without answering, she hefts up the spade and starts to dig.
I’m the first to find it.
Him.
Thomas Avery.
My shovel hits bone, sending a vibration up the length of my radius, stumbling up my humerus, my entire arm jolting with the impact.
The more mud we remove, the clearer it becomes that the freezing temperatures we’ve been having have kept his body pretty intact.
He looks more or less just the way he did when the girls brought him out here, the hammering rain washing away the dirt on his skin as we fully uncover him.
“He’s still like that ’cause of the cold temperature, huh?” Nellie sighs, knowing this’ll make the job longer, knowing that’s why we brought the axe out here with us, just in case of this.
It almost makes me smile. How we’re both endlessly on the same page, same thoughts, same time, even when neither one of us says it. But then I remember how I’ve spent the last two months trying to knock her arse up and she’s got a fucking implant stopping me from doing just that.
Nellie crouches over the grave I’m standing in, a good four feet deep, lifting her eyes unto mine from staring down at the body, but I don’t look up.
I don’t look at her, because between me and her, the axe at my back, and this already dug grave, there’s too much of a possibility I’ll kill us both and toss our pathetic bodies into the second-hand pit.
“Yeah,” I reply, sighing too, wishing tonight had never happened at all.
That I’d handled things better with Imogen.
That my father wasn’t secretly back, hiding in the manor somewhere just waiting to spring out on us when he’s got something to punish us for, to torture us about.
That’s how I know he’s in that house.
Imogen being in my suite in the middle of the night.
That wasn’t a coincidence.
Not dressed the way she was, in her uniform, but ruffled…
It means he sent her for a reason.
To look for something.
And I’m sure it’ll have had something to do with my little lamb.
Penelope jumps down beside me, her feet squelching as her welly boots sink into the sodden ground, the puddle of water quickly deepening.
“Head or feet?” she asks me, and I just want to scream at her, but I don’t.
“Well, why don’t we let you choose, Little Lamb, since it was you he hurt, you can decide which part of him you’d like to hack up first.”
She smiles at me then, this shy curl of her lips, something real, something dark.
Her big ash-brown eyes drop to her feet, lashes fluttering, she looks up at me, her chin still dipped, and it looks like love, the way she holds my gaze.
It’s as though she’s reached inside my skeleton and dug out the marrow, replaced it all with pieces of her.
Devotion.
It almost tricks me, almost makes me forget, but then I get angry all over again, remembering what she’s done to me.
How that can’t be, how that isn’t, love.
Not at all.
Her first swing at his naked body isn’t his cock like I thought it’d be.
Penelope cleaves the axe over her head, both hands spaced perfectly, tight grip on the handle, grunting as it makes perfect contact with his mouth.
Her swing so hard, his body almost frozen, that the contact cuts straight through the bottom half of his face, severing his lower jaw.
And with a second swing it completely separates his face, top from bottom.
“I didn’t like the shit he spewed,” she tells me softly, her voice almost lyrical as she kicks the top part of his head away, eyes and nose going face down in the puddle of water we’re standing in.
And then she keeps going.
And I, I just watch on in awe.
She works like creation itself owes her an apology.
Precise, relentless, consumed by the need to make something pay.
Every movement is deliberate, almost holy, as if she’s performing a ritual no one else is pure enough to understand.
I watch her hands, steady, strong, certain, and the air bends to her will.
There’s devotion in her craft, the kind that borders on madness; a kind I’ve only ever seen in those who serve higher things.
She doesn’t just build, she resurrects. And though I know better than to worship, after everything she’s done, I find myself doing it anyway.
If I were a stronger man, a better man, I’d drop to my knees right here and now.
But I’m not.
And she still fucked up.
“Are you just gunna stand there, Billy?” she shoots my name at me like it’s the world’s biggest insult, and memories of having no name as a child, being nothing but a number, meaning nothing to anyone, having to earn my food, earn my place, earn my name, all of it comes crashing back to me like I’m still right there.
“What is this?” I’m shaking her before I even realise I’ve moved, standing on body parts, my booted feet sinking into the muddy sludge.
She’s blinking up at me, shock and something like guilt on her face.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” I scoff, squeezing her arms. “You thought I’d never find out, never feel it?
Never work out why, years and years down the line, we couldn’t conceive?
I know I have a fertility challenge, Penelope, but there is a chance, it’s not an impossibility.
How long were you going to carry on with this charade?
” I’m shouting in her face, to be heard over the rain, to make me feel like I’m releasing at least a tiny portion of the rage I feel building and building and building.
“Billy, I-”
“Billy, Billy, Billy!” I scream back, “Always using my name to manipulate!” She frowns hard, not trying to get me off, make me let go, just limp and pliable in my brutal hands. “Why would you do this to me? After everything I’ve done for you!”
“Done for me?” she screams back, water rolling over her cupid’s bow, down her mouth, over her chin, her hands coming up now, nails gouging divots into the backs of my hands. “You manipulated me! If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t even be here right now! I’d be somewhere else, with someo-”
“Don’t fucking say it, Little Lamb.” I’m smiling at her, grinning wide, all teeth and spread lips.
My nostrils flare, thinking of her being anywhere else.
With anyone else.
Someone that isn’t me.
And for a second, I wish she were.
All of this trouble, all of the lies, all of the pain.
I could have spared her from it all.
Except, I couldn’t really, could I?
Because all of the time I wanted her here, I didn’t. That’s why I dragged it out so long, my behaviour.
I was trying to keep you safe.
Far, far from here.
“I’m always trying to fucking protect you, and the entire fucking time, you were protecting your fucking self,” I swallow back the bile, momentarily squeezing my eyes closed, gritting my teeth so hard my jaw cracks.
“From me!” I’m screaming in her face, my eyes popping wide, shaking her so hard she rattles in my hand like a box full of shattered glass, all of her broken shards dancing around themselves, cutting deeper and deeper and deeper.
“If I hadn’t come for you when I did,” I start, her eyes wide and wet, from the rain, from tears, from both, I don’t know, but I don’t believe it, her sadness.
“You’d be dead now.” I say it so solemnly, so truthfully, so naturally, that I want to bite my own tongue out.
I want to take it back.
I want to take it all back.
Putting her in more danger.
Us.
But I can’t.
“What?” she asks slowly, a crinkle to the perfect skin of her forehead, I want to smooth it out with my thumb, it’s an instinct, to soothe her.
Instead, I’m breaking free of her grip, her arms thudding heavily at her sides, my hands gathering the sodden material of her hoodie and tearing it over her head.
I’m walking her back, throwing her against the slippery mud wall we’ve built, boxing her in with my arms, hands on either side of her head, fingers splayed, tips digging into the mud.
“Fuck you, Penelope,” I say it with a smile, and I watch her swallow, her entire body shivering with the cold, the wet, her thin black T-shirt clinging to every curvature of her body.
“Fuck you, too, Billy Blackwell,” she replies quickly, spitting it back in my face, tit for tat, but it means nothing to me.
She doesn’t move as I strip her bare, her boots, her jeans, top, bra, underwear, leaving her in nothing at all. Every part of her exposed to the elements, to me.