42. Julian
Julian
The latch finally gave way—a sharp, metallic pop that shot through the air.
I left skin behind on the broken, bloodied lock, my shoulder aching violently as I heaved the lid of the trunk open.
I fell out of the car, tumbling onto the ground, a mess of blood and desperation.
My boots hit gravel with a heavy thud, my legs failing beneath me. I was covered in my own blood, my lungs a burning wreck of exhaustion and failure.
I scrambled to my feet, my vision blurring. I saw the trail of broken branches leading away from the car and towards the golden glow of the cabin porch. I ran. I felt the tether—the invisible, gold thread that connected my soul to hers, fraying into nothingness.
I rounded the edge of the cabin, and my entire body locked up. I froze, every nerve ending screaming as the reality of what I was seeing failed to register.
Cain’s back was to me, his shoulders working with an animalistic intensity. I saw his arm move—a frantic, heavy motion that made my stomach turn.
“NO!” The word died in my throat.
Cain reached deep into the open ruin of her chest. I heard the sickening, unmistakable sound of muscle tearing and the wet scrape of steel against her ribs.
He turned slowly, the moonlight hitting his blood splattered mask.
He was holding her heart—a dripping mass of raw muscle that was still twitching in his palm.
It was her last bit of life, her final pulse, and he was holding it like it was his birthright.
The scream that finally tore out of me, was a primal, sickening sound of a man being hollowed out alive. I collapsed into the dirt, my fingers clawing at the earth as if I could dig my way to her.
“CAIN, STOP!” I was wailing, a high, sickening sound of total madness.
I watched her heart give one last, weak throb before going permanently still.
I watched the light in June’s eyes vanish, leaving behind nothing but empty glass.
The connection between us was obliterated, leaving me a stranger in my own body.
Cain looked down at the dripping muscle in his hand, then shifted his gaze to me. There was no anger in his psychotic eyes, no heat of triumph. He just looked disturbingly satisfied.
“You… you.. fucking. Killed. Her,” I choked out, my forehead slamming into the dirt as my body convulsed with a ferocious sob. “You took her from me. She was mine. She was the only thing I ever truely loved.”
“She was a catalyst, Julian,” Cain countered, rising slowly from the muck.
He didn’t let go of the muscle, he pressed the dripping heart against his own chest as if he could graft her stolen warmth onto his cold skin.
“You were the one who poisoned a Ritual with the sickness of romance. You’re the reason she suffered—you gave a sacrifice the delusion of a future. ”
I stared at her hand lying in the mud, the silver of her bracelet clotted with the red ruin of our life together. The man I used to be wasn’t just gone—he had been executed in the dirt right beside her.
I hauled myself up. My soul was a black, hollowed out void, and the rage in my veins was turning into ice. Weaponless and without a plan, I had only the brand on my chest and the unwavering, feral need to tear the life out of the man who had stolen hers.
“I am going to kill you,” I promised, my voice a flat vibration. “I’m going to drain every drop of that sick poisonous blood pumping through your veins, until there’s nothing left of you but a stain on the ground.”
Cain smiled—a thin, cruel and calculating line behind the mask—as he placed her heart into the silver bowl. He beckoned me forward with a blood-stained hand. “Then come and try, brother. Let’s see which of us the dark loves more.”
I attacked.
The night exploded into a blur of teeth and nails. The Ritual was over, but the war had finally begun.
The world dissolved into a blur of animalistic violence. I couldn’t feel the gravel tearing at my skin or the cold bite of the night air. I only felt the heat of Cain’s throat beneath my fingers and the crushing need to erase his heartbeat from the universe forever.
I slammed into him, the impact sending us both crashing into the dirt beside June’s still-warm body.
I had no knife. Just my hands.
I swung with a frantic, uncoordinated rage, my fist connecting with his jaw in a sickening crunch that sent a jolt of instant searing pain up my arm.
Cain took the blow, his head whipping back, but he didn’t falter.
He surged upwards, his movements far more calculated, far more clinical.
He caught me in the pit of my stomach with a knee that drove the air from my lungs in a congested wheeze.
I collapsed forwards, my face hitting the dirt, the same dirt drinking in the blood of the woman I had just held in my arms.
We grappled like two demons birthed from the same nightmare. I clawed at his eyes, my nails digging into his skin, but Cain was a wall of immovable muscle. He pinned my wrists to the ground, his shark eyes boring into mine with a total indifference.
“You always were the soft one, Julian,” he hissed, his face inches from mine, splattered with the ink of our harvest. “You wanted the girl. I wanted the eternity. But in the end, we both get her blood.”
With a sudden, explosive burst of strength, Cain shifted his weight, straddling my chest and pinning me into the earth. I thrashed beneath him, my boots kicking up clouds of dust, but he was a statue.
He reached out, grabbing the silver ceremonial bowl with his left hand. Inside, the heart I had heard beating against my chest only an hour ago sat in a pool of dark, thick liquid.
“NO!” I choked out, a fresh wave of horror paralysing my limbs. “Cain, don’t—”
He didn’t listen. He dropped the bowl and grabbed my face, his fingers digging into the hinges of my jaw with a strength that felt like it would shatter the bone. He forced my mouth open, his thumb pressing down on my tongue until I was gagging, my eyes wide and pleading.
“If you won’t accept the power of your own will,” Cain whispered, his voice a lethal hiss. “then you will accept it as a parasite.”
He reached for her heart.
I watched in a silent, paralysed scream as his hand closed around the dead organ. He held it directly over my open mouth. I saw the moonlight catch the dark, viscous liquid dripping from his fingers.
Then, he squeezed.
The first drop hit the back of my throat—thick, hot, and tasting of iron and the end of the world. I tried to twist away, to spit it out, but Cain’s grip was fused. He leaned his full weight onto my jaw, forcing the sacrifice down my throat.
The blood—June’s blood—flooded my mouth. It was salty and sweet, a metallic syrup that coated my teeth and filled my lungs with the scent of her taken life. I was drowning in her. I was swallowing the very essence of the woman I’d promised to save.
“Drink, Julian,” Cain commanded, his eyes glowing with a predatory fire. “Drink her in. Let her DNA fuse to the very fibre of your being.”
I convulsed beneath him, my body rejecting the act even as my throat instinctively swallowed. I was sobbing and choking at the same time, the liquid of her life force sliding down my throat like poison. It felt like a violation more intimate and horrific than anything I had ever experienced.
When the last drop was drained, Cain let me go.
I rolled onto my side, retching and heaving at the dirt, my mouth stained with her blood. I looked back at June’s body—at the empty space in her chest that once held her heart. As Cain stood over me, looking up at the stars. The Ritual was complete. The Deal was sealed in my own stomach.
I fell, scrambling away from the ruin of her body, retching until my stomach was empty and tearing up only bile.
Cains mask was gone, tossed aside in the dirt, damaged and broken like my soul.
But the horror was branded onto my vision, her empty chest cavity, the soft thud of her body hitting the grass, the stillness of her eyes fixed on the man who had promised her safety.
I had done this. My love, my promise, i had just committed the ultimate, irreversible act of betrayal and failure.
She’s gone.
She’s fucking gone.
And it’s my fault.
I crawled back to her on my hands and knees, the grass staining my palms, until I reached the edge of her cold, mangled frame.
“June,” I choked out, my voice an unrecognisable ruin. “June, please. Junebug, look at me.”
I gathered her into my arms, hauling her upper body against my chest. Her head fell back against my shoulder with a soul crushing, limp weight that told me she was already far, far, away from me. I began to rock, a frantic, repetitive motion as if I could lull her back into the world of the living.
I reached up, my trembling fingers tracing her face with a desperate, starving intensity. The coldness of her skin was an eviction notice, a brutal reminder that the soul I worshipped was gone, leaving only the beautiful, ruined shell behind.
Clutching her closer to my chest, I rocked her. A ragged, broken sound tore from my throat before I forced it into a melody—a soft, weeping lullaby she used to love.
"And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side..." I sang, my voice faltering on the words as my tears smudged the dust on her cheek. "Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, in her sepulchre there by the sea... in her tomb by the sounding sea."
The Poe verses echoed through the empty space like a funeral mass. I kissed her cold forehead, singing the words into her skin over and over, as if the rhythm of the poem could somehow coax her heart back into beating.
I memorised the path of every single freckle—the constellations I had spent years worshiping in the garden. I traced the bridge of her small, perfect nose, the one I used to kiss just to hear her laugh. I touched the corner of her mouth, waiting, praying, for even a ghost of a smile to return.