22. Saint
22 SAINT
I enter the house in West Falls.
My chest is full of an old pain that pulses with every heartbeat.
I can never get rid of that reminder.
Like the hourglass branded on my chest, or the scars that mar some of the tattoos on my lower torso.
That torture was inflicted as punishment, and I remember it to punish myself, too.
It’s why I return to this house, why I now sit on the floor and throw my head back against the wall.
I do it until I’m dizzy, until the spots in front of my eyes don’t immediately go away.
Sometimes I think about concussing myself badly enough that my memory leaves me completely.
I’d be a blank slate.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Slam .
Elora’s face floats in front of me.
Slam .
Artemis lifting her shirt, exposing her breast.
Slam .
Tattooing Elora, her pale white skin soft under my gloved hand.
Slam .
Going through the motions of tattooing Artemis, even though I have no ink.
I’m just doing it to fuck with her.
But she hasn’t mentioned it at all.
Slam .
Shoving her dress up, feeling irrationally angry that my body was reacting to hers.
Slam .
Nothing.
I breathe out raggedly, the pain from my chest now transferred to the back of my skull.
I sag down the wall, nearly falling over.
I catch myself on my forearm, then crawl toward the bathroom.
I barely manage to get there before my stomach cramps, and the little I ate for breakfast comes back up.
From outside comes shouts, jeers.
Cheering.
Not the nice kind.
I drag myself to my feet and crash into the wall.
Fuck , that hurt. I keep going to the front window, splitting the blinds to see the street.
Someone is being carried.
My brow furrows, and I lean forward more.
The sun has mostly set, giving everything a twilight hue.
It’s hard to pick out details, but I do see long brown hair caught up in a fist.
I yank open the door and stumble down the front steps, barely keeping myself upright.
Too many hits .
I somehow stay on my feet and push the gate open, calling to them, “Where’s the party, fellas?”
There are five of them.
No, six.
One turns back to me.
“Go home, bro.”
Anger stokes in my chest, and I glare at him.
“Bro? We’re buddies now? I just want to know what kind of fun you’re having.”
“You’re drunk,” he says.
A brush-off.
He gives me his back, and I follow him.
My head throbs, but it’s my own fucking doing.
I hurry. My stride is uneven, the pitch of the sidewalk definitely not helping.
And yet, I can’t let them take some girl with them?—
I reach out and clamp my hand down on the guy’s shoulder.
The one who stopped to talk to me, who’s at the back of the pack.
They’re shit talking.
Saying what a good catch they found.
An Olympus bitch.
I drag him backward, and it opens up my line of sight to the girl in their grip.
Artemis .
She’s not conscious, not as far as I can tell.
Her feet drag on the concrete.
They’ve got her by her arms, although one just holds on to her hair, keeping her head yanked back.
Eyes shut.
Limp.
I don’t think—I just react.
The first punch sends blessed fire through my knuckles, and the guy’s eyes roll back.
They haven’t noticed me yet, somehow, and I catch the guy before he makes noise collapsing to the ground.
“Fuck her up and leave her at their altar.” The one with his hand in her hair laughs.
They agree.
“Good idea.” My tone is cold, and the red that had been creeping across my vision engulfs me completely.
They jump. Turn. But I’ve got the drop on them.
The first two take my punches and stumble away, clutching bloody faces.
Fire sings through my body.
The third gets a hit in, but he goes for my stomach.
My abs tense, absorbing the hit, and I strike back harder.
I move like a dancer, until there’s just one left.
He has an arm under Artemis’s breasts, holding her back to his front.
A knife at her throat.
We stare at each other, and he edges backward.
She looks innocent like this.
The way she judges me, the hostility in her gaze any time she so much as catches a glimpse of me, isn’t there.
Of course, I don’t get the warmth of her brown eyes either.
“Let her go,” I order.
He sneers.
I want to ask more.
Like why? And who are you ?
And how fucking dare you?
But I don’t. I keep my mouth shut, waiting for him to make a decision.
His gaze ticks from me to his fallen buddies, and then my bloody knuckles.
I think they’re bloody.
They feel wet, although the pain isn’t there.
The pain in my head is gone, too.
Blasted away by adrenaline, only to surge back later tonight.
I’m sure of that much.
He shoves her toward me.
Still fully unconscious, her body falls forward.
I dive for her, managing to save her from breaking her face.
He turns and strides away.
Not even fucking scared—like he knows I won’t go after him.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
I lift Artemis into my arms and carry her back to Elora’s house.
She feels solid in my arms—unlike living with the memory of Elora.
Her skin is warm, her head lolls against my shoulder.
Her hair spills down my arm.
Stop it .
There’s a sweatshirt tied around her hips, but otherwise she wears a plain black t-shirt and gray sweatpants.
The t-shirt is cropped, exposing a slice of her golden abdomen.
I get Artemis up the stairs and into the house, kicking the door shut behind me.
We had Elora’s funeral here, but there were a lot of other memories, too.
Now, it’s up to me to keep everything maintained.
Her parents never came back to Sterling Falls, which is fine.
I mow the lawn once a week, planted wildflowers in the raised beds out front.
Repaired a broken window from some stupid kid.
Installed a security system.
It’s not enough, but it gives me the slightest bit of peace.
Like she might actually be okay with how I’m handling this.
She wouldn’t judge me .
No, she loved me. We talked about everything, we were in everything together.
Together or nothing.
And now I’m nothing.
I stand in the living room for a second, blinking back tears.
It takes me a minute to focus, to remember what I was doing in the first place.
I lay Artemis on the couch, making sure her head ends up on a pillow.
There’s blood on the backs of her forearms and elbows, her sweatpants are ripped down the fronts of her thighs, her skin dirty and scraped up.
Even her shirt is messed up, with bits of rocks stuck into the cuts on her chest.
What the fuck happened to her?
I fumble with the blinds, shutting everything before I switch on the lamp.
Almost immediately, there’s a knock at the door.
Before I answer it, I grab a knife from the kitchen and return, peering out the little side window.
It’s a woman.
A neighbor?
I open it roughly, and she starts.
“What?” I snap.
She fiddles with the front of her coat.
“I told her not to come back,” she whispers.
“I warned her that she was marked. The Cyclopes are serious about it. Is she okay?”
Cyclopes?
“She’s fine?—”
“You should get out of here. It’s not safe for her.”
I’m experiencing some weird form of déjà vu, I swear to God.
The woman seems… normal .
Mid-forties, maybe older.
Maybe younger. Curly hair.
The kind of makeup style that makes me think she might be a grandmother.
That’s kind of mean, isn’t it?
It’s definitely mean.
“Okay,” I tell her, although I’m not sure I fully understand what’s going on.
“Thank you.”
“Hurry,” she says.
“Just?—”
She spins on her heel and rushes away.
I track her down the sidewalk, where she crosses the street and disappears into a house.
No light comes from it.
Is she paranoid?
Or…
I shut and lock the door, then arm the security system.
At least I didn’t wave the knife in that lady’s face.
It was in the hand braced against the door.
I toss it on the counter and hunt for the first-aid kit.
I locate it under the kitchen sink, which I never understood.
My mom always kept hers in the bathroom.
Under that sink, but still.
It’s different. Kitchen sinks are for cleaning supplies and dishwasher tablets.
The adrenaline is fading.
By the time I drop down next to Artemis’s hip on the couch, my headache is creeping back at an alarming rate.
I clean the wounds I can reach on her arms. There’s a gash on her face, too, that I pinch shut and tape gauze across.
All the while, she doesn’t so much as fucking stir.
I should remove her sweatpants.
They need to be thrown away, with the state that they’re in.
But some sort of moral…
I don’t know, high ground, keeps me from doing it.
So I just clean the skin that I can reach, shift her legs over my lap so I can sit more comfortably on the couch, and lean back.
My eyes close.
It’s not too late to forget everything , a little voice in my head whispers.
The same voice that tells me to hurt myself.
I need to get us out of here , another voice says.
The rational one.
Instead, I pass out.