Chapter 24 - Malachi
Malachi
Everything is shattering around me. We’re falling apart. I can sense it.
Last night, Ophelia slept curled up with Roman, I slept on the couch, worried about Cain, and Cain… well, he didn’t sleep at all. I tried to talk to him, but he couldn’t listen, wasn’t in a place to.
All he kept saying was that he was a piece of shit, and his family was poison.
He paced up and down, repeatedly, until I gave up trying to sleep with him in the same room and went and crashed in the room Daisy had been using.
It felt kind of weird sleeping in the dead girl’s bed, but I figured if she was going to haunt anyone, it would be the parents who sat and watched her die and did nothing.
Roman and Ophelia are still in bed.
Ophelia’s sleep has been unsettled. She’s cried out a few times, and one awful moment, at around six in the morning, I woke to her talking and crying in her slumber loudly enough for me to hear.
I went to the room and peeked inside, my heart tearing when I saw the tears streaking down her cheeks from underneath her closed lids.
Roman was holding her close, so she was being cared for, his arms locked around her in sleep.
I’d wiped her tears, and murmured to her until she fell back into a deeper, calmer sleep and then I left her and Roman and went back to stare at the ceiling until fractured dreams took me under for another hour or so.
The heavy weight of depression is sitting on my chest, threatening to suffocate all the good in my life. How do we come back together?
Can Ophelia even be with Cain now she knows his father was responsible for the truly terrible things that happened to her? It’s such a huge, life-altering trauma to go through, and she’ll never get over it. I worry that she won’t be able to see Cain the same way again.
I’m even more worried Cain won’t be able to move past this and forgive himself. Cain might seem like the most well-adjusted of the three of us, but in some ways he’s the least.
Whereas Rome has built a faith system, and I have my music, what does Cain do? When he can’t deal, he hurts himself. Or rather he lets others hurt him, in those damned fight clubs, but that tendency? That need? It bothers me. What if he does something really stupid?
Would he harm himself irrevocably? The thought sits heavy in my mind because I truly fear he might. The guilt must be eating him alive. He already blames himself for his father hitting his brother all those years ago and leaving him deaf, and now this?
Fuck.
I push out of bed and head to the living room.
As I near the space, I suck in a breath at the sense of trepidation that hits me.
Half of me is dreading that I’ll find Cain holding his own gun to his head.
The image makes my chest ache. I love him like a brother, and seeing him so broken yesterday by the news of his father’s betrayal fucking hurts.
Instead, I find him on the couch, head lolling to one side, and an arm dangling off the cushion with a half empty bottle of scotch still in his hand.
Great. So, he’s taking the drinking himself half to death route instead.
Heading into the kitchen, I put the coffee maker on and prepare a cup for us both. I’ll let Rome and Ophelia rest for a while longer. They need it.
Taking the cup to Cain, I place it down on the floor while I take the bottle from his hand and set it to one side.
“Hey, Cain.” I shake him gently. “Wake up, man. I made you a coffee.”
He jerks awake, sitting up, eyes wide and reaches for me, his massive hands finding purchase around my neck.
Shit.
Panic hits because, damn, he’s so strong and I wasn’t expecting the attack. He squeezes as I try to grapple his hands and wrestle them from me, but he’s hard to budge. Then he blinks, and it’s as if his brain comes online. He lets go of me suddenly, scrambling back against the couch.
“Fuck. Man. I’m so sorry.” His chest is heaving, and so is mine. “I was dreaming, and it was my father speaking to me.”
I rub my throat, and I can still breathe and swallow, so no harm done, but if it had been Ophelia? If he hadn’t let go? He needs to work through this for sure.
“Here.” I hand him the coffee. “Drink it.”
He sips at the dark liquid, strong the way he likes it. I get my own mug and sit on the end of the couch, him curling his legs up to give me room.
For a moment, there’s just silence, and I steel myself to say what I need to.
“Cain, you can’t take this on your shoulders. It’s not your fault.”
He shakes his head and lets out a bitter, dark laugh. “I’m fucking poison, Mal. It’s in my veins. My brother is deaf because of me. I wasn’t there for him. And then Ophelia.” His voice catches and he turns his face, hiding from me.
Christ, I’ve never seen Cain look like he’s about to break down crying.
“You had no idea of the lengths your father would go to,” I argue. I know I’m right, but logic rarely beats emotion.
“She’s better off without me,” he mutters. “Once I’ve dealt with my father, I’ll leave and run the family business. I’ll take care of my brother. I know she’ll be safe with you two.” He lifts his heavy gaze to me and holds me in it. “You’ll take care of her, I trust that. She’ll be happy.”
Fuck no. My stomach lurches at his words. “You’re not leaving, Cain. You’re a part of this. It doesn’t work without the three of us and her.”
His jaw sets tight. “It will have to, because she’ll never look at me the same way again.”
“I think she will,” I say softly. “And you don’t get to decide that for her.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t get to decide for me. I’ll make this right, but then I’m done.”
I don’t think he means it, not truly. For a start, he hasn’t wanted to run the business for a while now, and he won’t enjoy being back in the family fold, even with his father gone.
Now’s not the time to argue with him, though.
And maybe there’s another way to show him how wrong he is.
I’ll talk to Roman about things; he’s good at this shit.
Cain stands, walks to the sink, and throws the remainder of his coffee away. “I need a shower, then I’m going for a run. I need to clear my head before I set off to see my fucking piece of shit father, and I want to get there early.” He pauses. “You’re coming, right?”
I nod. “Yeah, you don’t even have to ask. We all will be.”
“No, not Ophelia. And I don’t want her here alone, so I’m going to ask Roman to stay, along with one of my father’s men, and I’d prefer for them to be up at the college, as there’s no way anyone’s ambushing the college itself. Not with all the extra security the dean has now.”
“That’s not many men for you.” I frown.
He shrugs. “She’s more important than me. Plus, I have an advantage.”
“What’s that?”
He smiles coldly. “My father won’t want to kill me—not because he loves me or anything so normal as that—but because he needs an heir.
My brother can’t be the next in line because he’s deaf, which in my father’s twisted mind makes him weaker.
It means my father needs me alive to see his legacy continue.
He’ll hesitate to kill me, whereas I have no such compunction about him.
” He winks at me and grins, but it’s cold and hard. “Gonna get ready and take that run.”
A run doesn’t sound like the best plan, not with half a bottle of scotch still churning in his stomach. Still, I don’t say anything. If I try to reason with him right now, he’ll only become more intransigent.
I need to talk with Roman.
Cain takes his shower, dresses in a loose pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and heads out of the door. I stare at the wall, thinking, trying to figure out a way to mend the broken pieces of us back into a whole.
About twenty minutes later, Roman comes down the stairs and pours himself a coffee from the pot. He looks tired, but a damn sight better than Cain.
“Is Ophelia okay?” I ask.
“Still sleeping.” He yawns and scratches his cheek. “Where’s Cain?”
“Gone for a run.” I suck in a breath. “He says once he’s killed his father that he’ll leave and it will just be me, you, and Ophelia.”
Rome swivels his head to look at me. “You’re fucking kidding, right?”
“No, afraid not.”
“Like fuck he’s leaving. This won’t work without him.” He rubs his chest as if the thought makes him panic. “Ophelia would leave, too, I’m sure of it. Eventually.”
I don’t like him saying that. “You don’t think we’d be enough for her?”
“It’s not that.” He blows out a long breath.
“This... the way we are might be different, but it’s balanced.
With Cain gone, that balance falls apart.
It works perfectly like this. It won’t if it’s just the three of us.
Plus, Ophelia is going to blame herself for Cain leaving.
She’s going to think she’s the reason us three Preachers fell apart, and that’s going to eat away at her.
She’ll be reminded of that every time she looks at us. ”
I hate this. “They’re both suffering so much emotional trauma, I don’t know what we can do to help.”
Roman’s gaze turns molten. “We bring us all back together the way that works best.”
“And that is?”
He smiles. “Sex.”
I frown. “As much as I want to sink into Ophelia, more than I want my next breath, I don’t think we should be thinking about sex right now. We need to heal the fucking broken mess that is the four of us.”
He nods slowly. “Yes, I agree. And sex is the way to do it. You know, it’s not just a physical act, Mal. It’s so much more.”
I narrow my eyes and cock my head. “I know that, Rome. I’m not fucking stupid. I know it has emotional aspects, too, and can bring us close. I’m just not sure it is going to work that way.”
Sighing, he shakes his head. “It’s as if I never taught you anything. It has more than mere emotions, too. It’s spiritual, when you do it right. There’s a ritual we can use. It’s not one we’ve tried before, but it’s powerful, and it’s meant to tie people together. Bond them.”
“What does it involve?”
He shifts and faces me full on. “Blood. It involves blood.”
I flinch, unsure he’s on the right path. I remember being back at the church and how Ophelia’s hands had been covered in the Prophet’s blood. “Um, how much blood, Rome?”
“Enough to bind us.”
I wrinkle my nose at the thought. “We’re not vampires. We might die if we lose too much blood.”
Roman laughs. “I’m not going to slice an artery open, Mal.
Just a nice cut on the tips of our fingers, and a few drops from each of us, then it’s mixed with herbs and hibiscus.
The hibiscus I will stew beforehand so the water is a deep red, and that will make the blood go farther.
Liquorice root is for binding. We each pour some of our blood into a cup.
We mix it with the herbs, and then we paint it on our bodies. ”
My eyes widen. I’ve studied rituals, too, ever since meeting Roman and getting into this as well. “Binding is baneful magic, right? It’s destructive, not good?”
“We aren’t binding ourselves to one another in that sense.
No one will be giving up control of free will, but we are binding our love, strengthening it, and banishing the negative thoughts and energy.
” He chews his lip for a moment. “We need mug wort and camomile, perhaps lavender, too. The most important part though is we paint our bodies with each other’s blood, and then …
well, we consummate the magic, the same we would a marriage. ”
“Except there’s three of us. Do we have to fuck one another, us men, I mean?
” The idea isn’t exactly gross to me, but I’m quite open with my sexuality.
I can’t see Cain being onboard. Roman clearly isn’t either, because he shakes his head, brow furrowed.
“No, we don’t. We all must be in Ophelia at the same time. That’s enough to join us.”
“In her pussy? Three of us?” Christ, we’ll break her apart.
“No, just… inside her. We all have to come in her, and she must climax or it won’t work, and we must be covered in the blood. While we carry out the ritual, we’ll be within a binding circle. I could make a ring for us, too. From wood.”
“Like a wedding ring?”
He snorts. “Deeper than that. This is fucking powerful shit, Mal. I’d hesitate normally, but I think you’re right, and if we don’t do something, we risk the four of us falling apart. I won’t have that.”
The finality of his words sends chills running down my spine, but I nod because I don’t want it, either.
Are we about to mess about with things we don’t truly understand?