Chapter 27
Elise pulled herself from the darkness with little strength.
Sharp pain pounded through her head, and warm, sticky blood spilled down the side of her face as she sat up.
The room around her had been torn to pieces.
Curtains hung in tatters over the stage, and gangster bodies littered the floor amid blood and chunks of flesh.
Elise struggled to her feet, the world swaying as her head pulsed.
She found her gun several feet away, smeared in blood just like the rest of the room.
It held only two bullets while the others remained scattered across the floor.
Her foot crunched on an empty glass vial and splintered wooden remains of tables and floorboards as she continued to move around the room.
The fight that had ended in this carnage flashed through her mind like bloody pictures from a horror show.
All she heard was Layla’s screams over and over, each reminder of her pain digging into her heart.
The reaper was nowhere to be found now, and with the amount of blood that covered the floor and the walls, Elise could only assume the worst. It was as if hell had broken loose and rampaged through the room.
What disturbed Elise the most was the blood that stretched from one side of the room to another, before it ended in a puddle, still damp with heat and ripe in scent, just feet away from where she had woken up.
In the middle of it, Elise recognized the silver hairpin she had given Layla.
Crimson covered almost all of it, but a tiny patch of silver peeked out from the slaughter.
The pin Elise had placed gently in Layla’s hair and gazed upon with admiration only a couple of hours ago now sat in a pool of enough blood to stop her heart.
Tears threatened to spill past Elise’s eyes, but she blinked them back, turning to look for any clues as to where Layla could have been or been taken to.
The only hope she held that kept her moving forward was knowledge that Layla was no human.
She had survived worse. What might have killed a human would have had to be doubled to even wind Layla.
How devoted Elise must have been to throw herself into uncertain danger for Layla—the blade of understanding twisted deeper in her chest. Layla never would have let Elise get in between her and a fight that was her own.
Elise bent to pick up the hairpin, and the sound of a door opening nearby had her swinging around to aim at the intruders.
She lowered her gun when she saw Josi, quickly followed by Jamie and Sterling.
They wore matching expressions of torment, their faces pale as they looked around the room.
It was Josi, little Josi, who bounced up to Elise in a state of frenzied excitement, her teeth gleaming while she grinned.
“My venom worked!” Josi cheered. She gestured to the dead gangsters, whose bodies had been ravaged by advanced reaperhood.
Elise’s heart stuttered in her chest. Eyes dull and tired, she slid her gaze to Josi and demanded, “What did you just say?”
Josi’s smile fell. “It normally takes a few hours to work, but this time it worked right away. I poisoned them so they wouldn’t help Nicoletta. I…”
Elise’s expression hardened.
“I wanted to help. Karine always says I can use my venom to help… I thought I was helping.”
Silence filled the room for what felt like an eternity.
Eventually, when the quiet of the night became too still and suffocating to bear, Elise moved forward.
She wiped at her face, where her hair had fallen into her eyes.
Blood smeared over her cheek, and she couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge who it belonged to.
She focused on Josi, her lips trembling.
“You did this?” Elise’s voice came out flat and lifeless.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sterling burying his face in his hands and Jamie turning to rake his fingers through his hair.
Only Josi remained in her spot, still and with her gaze trained on the pool of Layla’s blood.
Josi sniffed and finally lifted her eyes to Elise.
True guilt shadowed the usually warm brown of her gaze.
“I’m sorry, Lisey. I tried to help. They were just supposed to die—I didn’t want them to hurt you,” Josi cried.
A heavy breath shuddered out of her, curving her spine and her shoulders until she curled into the fetal position on the blood-soaked floor.
Even with her words to guide her through her misery, Elise could not find it in her to feel sorry.
Not now. Not when her entire life had been upended in a matter of moments just seconds after she thought she had pieced it back together.
A calm fury spread through her body, taking to her blood like ice and fire until she could no longer feel the brush of the outside air flowing in through the open door.
Her younger sister continued to sob. She looked smaller than ever.
Her newly evolved strength had vanished in an instant with the emergence of her tears.
The little girl Elise had remembered before everything had come crashing down slowly returned, yet all Elise could think of was how every bad thing had been attached to Josi’s arrival.
She stormed forward and gripped Josi’s chin so hard, the girl was forced to her knees in front of Elise.
“You did this?” Elise screamed. She pointed at Layla’s final struggle marked in blood; her finger, bloody and trembling, was a devastated accusation.
Josi cried harder. She reached for Elise’s hand and tried to pry her fingers away from her face.
Even with her new strength, her grief seemed to overpower her.
Elise kept a firm grip on her chin to the point that red indentations began to form along Josi’s jaw.
“You’ve ruined everything. Do you understand?
You’re cursed,” Elise screamed again. Fear struck across Josi’s expression then, but with every furious emotion overtaking Elise now, she had no will to stop.
She might have continued if it weren’t for Sterling throwing his arms around her waist and hauling her away from Josi.
“That’s enough,” he gritted into her ear.
Elise wrenched herself out of his arms and picked up the bullets she had left on the ground. “Take Josi home. I’m going to get Layla—”
“You don’t even know where she is—” Jamie started.
But Elise was already halfway out of the alleyway. She heard Sterling mutter something about going with her and the shuffling of feet before Jamie was by her side again. With one final stormy look at her sister, Elise tore out of the area, leaving the calamitous death behind.