11. Sorrowful Songs & Breakfast
11
SORROWFUL SONGS a narcissist at heart, he’d love to call himself our hero.
When Soren’s tune changes to something even darker, I sit up to avoid my feelings. My ass and crotch are both sticky and crusty, coated in dried cum that does nothing but make me feel ashamed. What the hell is wrong with me?
I orgasmed. While he assaulted me—again. I had no idea it was going to happen. I was scared… and then I was coming, and it scared me even more. I can’t think about it without losing my mind, so I swing my legs over the side of Krypt’s bed and pad to his closet, buck naked. I grab the first set of sweatpants and hoodie I find and carry them into the bathroom. Peeing, scrubbing myself as hard as I can at the sink because I don’t know if I can use the shower, I throw the clothing on as protection and stand there, unsure what to do now.
Am I allowed to leave this room? Will I see other people, or am I confined to this space to keep their secrets intact? I want to find Cain and make sure he survived whoever that lunatic in the blue mask was.
I listen at the bedroom door, hearing only Soren’s music. With my hand on the knob, I hesitate. I’m already overloaded with things to process. Do I have what it takes to go out there and learn more secrets?
The door smacks me in the chest and pushes me back, and I don’t have time to pretend like I wasn’t standing there. Krypt walks in, dressed in sweats and a black t-shirt. No mask. His black eye is turning green and yellow, and the bruise on his cheek isn’t as harsh as it was under the purple glow of the neon light last night.
Krypt, I remind myself. Not Keegan. The Vile Boy who killed a girl for no known reason and threw a dagger at a Krampus last night. Krypt, who has sexually assaulted me twice and burned my house down.
Not Keegan, the weird teen who grew into a weirder adult.
He says nothing to me, but he takes in my outfit and seems to appreciate me in his clothing. Pushing past me, he walks straight into the bathroom, leaves the door open, and undresses. I don’t know what to do, so I stand here and watch. His back tattoo is even more daunting in the daylight. The splashes of purple, vibrant and bright against the darkness of the black ink, consume my focus. His name shouts at me from the bottom of the tattoo, sitting between the dimples in his lower back, reminding me once again that this is Krypt, not Keegan.
His ass muscles flex when he drops his pants, and the heaviness of his cock and balls hangs between his legs when he bends down to pull his socks off. He looks back at me, and I try to look away, but I get stuck staring at the chains rattling within his eyes. What happens if those monsters break free?
“Come,” he commands, stepping into the shower.
A shiver shakes me from head to foot, and outside the bedroom door, Soren’s music stops. Ghost. Not Soren. We’re in Vile House now, and I need to manage my expectations.
“Remiel.”
I walk into the steamy bathroom, fisting the material of his shirt in my hands, uncertain about how this level of fear is affecting me. His demand is obvious, but it still takes me monumental effort to undress. He’s seen me naked, tattooed my body, fucked my face, and come on my ass, but shedding the protective outfit in the daylight still makes me vulnerable. The only thing that puts me at ease is that he’ll be more pliant if I comply with his demands.
I undress, my fear worsening.
I step into the tile shower, noticing for the first time that the bathroom is more modern than the bedroom. The glass wall is fogged, but that’s probably a good thing. I don’t want to see myself in the mirror or the reflection of the glass.
I hover, but Krypt grabs my wrist and pulls me under the too-hot spray, tilting my head back to wet my hair. Wordlessly, he soaps my body and washes the marker from my skin, and when I’m red and the last of it has been cleared away, his eyes calm down and his jaw unclenches. He peels the wrapping off my new tattoo, gently rinsing the damaged skin with a washcloth and soap.
Then he looks at me. His dark hair barely grazes his shoulders, but it plasters to his forehead, framing his face nicely. The tone of his tanned skin and the dark brown of his hair make his eyes pop, and maybe that’s why they always look so intense. Maybe it’s not all monsters.
No… it’s mostly monsters… monsters I have no intention of meeting but am intrigued by anyway.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
My eyes widen, but the shower water warms me comfortably. “For what?” Raping me? Tattooing me? Burning my house down? Killing the girl?
“That you had to find out about your brother like that.”
I snort and immediately regret it when his fingers tighten around my biceps. His nostrils flare. “Are you making fun of me?”
I clear my throat and try to bring back his calm mood. “No. It’s just that, out of everything, I find it odd that you’re apologizing for that. Specifically.”
“What else should I apologize for, Remiel? Everything else should have been expected when you made a deal with a devil. But your brother? That shocked you and wasn’t part of the bargain.”
Well, when he puts it that way, I guess he’s right. I severely underestimated what I thought giving my life to a Vile Boy meant. I figured he’d try to control me a bit, hover, keep a watch over me, and get me to do a few things against my will. I had not expected him to completely overtake my life to the point where I can’t even touch anyone, and no longer have a house, ID, vehicle, or any free will.
“How long have you two been… uh, here?” Never had a conversation in a shower, naked, with a mysterious but familiar man before.
He puts body wash on a sponge and my eyes follow it across his chest and down his abs. I swallow when he gets to his cock, looking up at his eyes instead. “We initiated when we were seventeen.”
“Seventeen?” I gasp. “So, you’ve been the purple mask for, what, eleven years?”
“Three years. Before that, I had to work my way up. Same with Ghost.”
“Ghost,” I repeat my brother’s new name. “Right. Why Ghost?”
“That’s his story to tell.” He spins to rinse off, but there are no bubbles on his back, so I take the sponge from him on autopilot. He tenses when I run it over his muscles, but relaxes into it a heartbeat later. Why am I doing this? Plying my captor to make him less abusive to me?
I’m such a fuck-up.
“Why do you hate the letter C?” I ask instead, ignoring my dick hardening.
“I don’t know. It just sets me off. I went through a lot of psych evaluations where I had to look at blobs and describe what I saw. A lot of them looked like the letter C.”
“Oh.” Strange.
“One of them looked like a C, but also like a pregnant belly. Nothing weirds me out more than pregnancy,” he says, hands braced on the wall while I wash his back. “Things itch at me sometimes.”
I’m smiling, and I don’t know why. “Pregnancy kinda freaks me out, too.”
He spins, and the water stream pushes his hair over his eyes. When he wipes it away, his biceps flex, showing me another tattoo. Keegan with a giant X through it, crossing it out. He notices me looking.
“Keegan died a long time ago,” he says. “I feel more like myself as Krypt.”
Maybe Remiel will die and I’ll feel more like myself as the hero he calls me. I nod, rinsing the sponge clean. He puts shampoo on my palm and pushes me under the water again, so I wash my hair while he watches, forcing myself to get comfortable while I’m this raw and vulnerable.
“He’s pissed at me. Told me to refuse your bargain. Doesn’t want me anywhere near you.”
“Well, considering what you’ve already done, I don’t blame him.”
Krypt’s face is blank, but his jaw muscles twitch. “You think he’s innocent? You think he hasn’t done worse?”
I’m sure he has, but he hasn’t done it to me . Krypt has. I’m selfish enough to care about what happens to me and not what happens to anyone else. Except Cain. And my sister.
“Rinse,” he says.
I tip my head back, exposing my throat to Krypt while the water washes the shampoo away. Eucalyptus and aloe. The scent reminds me of my house that no longer stands. No point in mourning it now.
“Please don’t burn my music shop down. It’s… I can’t live without it. It’s the only limit I have.”
His thumb and finger pinch my chin, making me lower my head. Water drips into my eyes, blurring my vision. His face is right in front of mine, eyes intense and lips together. “It’s the only limit I’ll respect.”
I lick my lips and nod to accept that, despite how baffling it is. “Am I a prisoner here?” I ask. “Am I confined to this room?”
“Our deal is etched in your skin and sealed in blood. You’re allowed to know the others now. They’ve all agreed to it. Except the one who leads us.”
There’s a leader? “You mean there are eleven of you?”
“There are ten who wear the masks. One who leads us, a small group of leadership, and about seventeen other members who live in this house when they aren’t in their own homes. You have to work your way to the top around here, and most never get there. But they’re still Vile. Still family.”
Oh, no wonder they hold initiation every year, then. I’m already learning so many Vile House secrets I refused to look into before my bargain.
“And what am I?” I ask.
He leans in until his lips brush against the corner of my mouth, water dripping between our faces. “Mine.”
My stomach clenches.
I want to ask why Krypt took my bargain. Why did he willingly risk his one true friendship by betraying Soren to tether himself to me? None of it makes sense, and I’m too raw to hear the answer, so I don’t ask.
After drying off and getting dressed in his clothes again, he leads me out of his bedroom.
Vile House is… exactly how I imagined it would be. Resembling an old live-in psychiatric ward or one of those houses that hosted conversion therapy back in the fifties, it’s eerie and spacious. More ward than home; more gothic than modern. He takes me to the medical room, where he puts something on my tattoo and covers it in plastic again, and then we walk into a cafeteria-style kitchen.
It smells like breakfast, but is empty, apart from my brother. Soren—Ghost—sits on the top of a cafeteria table, a mug of coffee between his palms, watching the door we just came through. He’s been waiting for us.
“Leave,” he says to Krypt.
“No,” Krypt says right back. He pushes me to sit on the bench seat, then goes to a table at the front to fill plates and get us coffee.
“Remi,” Soren says. Ghost. “You won’t survive this.”
“I don’t plan to.”
He shakes his head at me and moves down to the bench beside me. “Please, Remi. Whatever the fuck you asked him to do, back out of it. I’m handling the curse.”
“So am I,” I tell him, not bothering to call him out on his selfish reasons for wanting to handle our family issue. “And I can’t back out of it. It’s sealed.”
Soren’s eyes sweep over every bit of my exposed skin, and when he finds nothing, he tugs on my sleeves.
“Don’t touch me,” I hiss at him, glancing at Krypt. “It’s right here.” I pull down the collar of Krypt’s shirt to show him the tattoo.
My brother looks disappointed in me. He shakes his head and sighs. “Let me guess, you want him to kill you? You thought you’d strike a deal with Vile House and find a way to end your life so it isn’t suicide?”
I widen my eyes and nod.
“He won’t do it,” Soren says. “But you’re going to wish he would.”
Krypt brings me a plate and a mug of coffee, sitting on my other side and glaring at my brother over my head. I take the coffee and drink it so fast my throat burns, but fuck this. They’re supposed to be best friends, and I’m already in enough of my own shit; I don’t need to be in the middle of theirs, too.
I’m still trying to find the mind space to process my two sexual assaults, the loss of my house, the dead girl, the ownership staked on me, and the fact that I got off while he pinned me down against my will.
“Any tea?” I ask.
“Tea!” my brother yells, and a minute later, someone brings me a pot of hot water and a few different tea bags. He’s younger than me, and I recognize him from the shop. I don’t remember his name, but he plays the oboe. Really well, if I remember correctly. He must be one of the lower-ranking ones Krypt mentioned.
“Thank you.”
He nods and disappears again.
“So, what now, Krypt? Gonna rape my brother a bit more? Rough him up until he’s battered and broken?”
“At least he won’t be dead,” Krypt deadpans, eating his pancakes.
There’s no point in defending my decision, so I pick up my fork to eat, unsure when I’ll be able to again, and let them talk around me. I don’t like the shame that engulfs me, knowing that my brother is aware of how weak and pathetic I am. His best friend sexually assaulted me, and here I sit, in his clothing and under his watchful eye.
“It’s none of your fucking business, Ghost. I have a bargain with him, not you. So fuck off about it and worry about your own shit.” Krypt means something else by ‘your own shit,’ and it makes my brother lean back, almost in reluctant submission.
“I’m working on it,” Soren—Ghost—says. Jesus, I really need to get used to the name change. “I need more time.”
Krypt nods. “Ask Facts.”
“I will,” Ghost says, and then he touches my arm. “Remi.”
“Hands off.” Krypt growls.
My brother’s jaw clenches so hard it clicks, staring down his best friend while trying to get to the root of their issues. Me, I’m their issue, but I never intended to be. How was I supposed to know Soren’s best friend was the one in the purple mask? Hell, at the time of the bargain, I had no idea my brother was standing in that room listening to me stutter.
Reluctantly, he removes his hand from my arm and glares at Krypt again. “Remi, shit is going down in Moros, okay? I can’t explain what, but… just fucking be careful, okay? Don’t go anywhere without one of us knowing. And try to stay away from Mom’s.”
“Why?”
“Because the Matter Cult isn’t the only—” Soren cuts himself off, exchanging a silent conversation with Krypt over my head. “She’s fine, but stay away for a bit, okay?”
Yeah, not fucking likely. I nod anyway. “Where’s Cain?”
Ghost looks at Krypt. “Oh, shit. Menace get his hands on him finally?”
Krypt nods. “He’s fine. I’ve told you that three times already.”
“Well, I want to see him,” I state, picking up my tea.
Krypt slams my tea back down. “What you want is no longer yours to desire. I decide what you fucking want from now on, Remiel.”
Soren groans, standing. “This is so fucking weird. I hate it.” He only hates it because it doesn’t serve his own needs, but I figured he’d at least be pleased that the burden of me is off his shoulders. He stops behind Krypt, bent down with his mouth by his ear. “Rape my brother again, and I’ll rape yours. Tit for tat, bud.”
Krypt barely reacts. He scoffs and keeps eating. What fucking world do we live in where threatening to rape someone’s brother happens over breakfast? In an old insane asylum… that I apparently live in now. Because my house is gone. Because a maniac burned it down.
I pull my tea towards me for warmth. I feel myself chilling in a way that isn’t welcome.