15. TATE
TATE
At least, that’s what I think he’d do. Luke chose this form of fucking martyrdom, fighting in Uncle Jasper’s underground ring, and I’m left with little choice but to let him have it.
The man is older, but Luke’s bigger. More skilled.
I don’t worry about his body when he fights; he can handle the beating, but how many more punches can his soul take?
It weighs on him, punching people. Luke’s not like me.
I don’t think twice about punching someone in the throat if I need to.
That’s what happens when you’re not powerful enough.
You’re forced to do another person’s bidding, feed them tiny pieces of your soul until you’re running on fumes and mercy.
Once I’m like Uncle Jasper, I’ll beat him at his own game. My soul will be dead by then, snuffed out, but Luke’s will live on. He can have enough soul for both of us, and that will have been worth losing my own.
The door bursts open. I do a quick brush-down on my suit jacket, smoothing it in place.
Uncle Jasper expects perfection. If he doesn’t get it, there’s hell to pay.
But it’s not hard for me since I expect so much from myself.
What I don’t like are all his fucking rules.
I might be eighteen, but I’ll never be out from under his thumb until the bastard dies.
When I demanded he teach me everything he knows, I didn’t expect to become his life-long protégé.
Clarence is to his right, always flanking him when he’s at these events like a lovesick puppy, always turning his nose up at me. Half the time I’m in trouble with Uncle Jasper; Clarence is behind it somehow. One day I’m going to fuck him up so bad for that.
There’s a stormy look on Uncle’s face, his steel-blue eyes and white hair making him look like a mafia version of Jack Frost. VanCourts are large creatures, generally, but Uncle Jasper towers over us all.
“Uncle, you wanted to see me?”
“Yes. I’m here to give you the verdict on draft season.” Clarence’s smirk isn’t comforting. He knows what’s coming for me. “You’re going to college instead. You can play hockey there.”
“Sir, I can be drafted and defer so that I can still attend college if that’s what you’d prefer,” I say as if he doesn’t know. He fucking knows.
“What I’d prefer is for you to do what you’re fucking told. You were in charge of the alcohol for this weekend’s event, yes?”
He’s just being an obtuse prick. We both know I was—despite the fact that I’m underage. Not that I’m drinking any of it. Luke would fucking kill me. “Yes, sir. I secured the order. It should have been delivered last night. I planned to check on it after our meeting.”
“No need. It didn’t arrive, and it’s not going to. You bought from the Salvatores, I told you to deal with the Kanatovas.”
“Those goddamn assholes. I assure you I’ll deal with them, Uncle.”
“I’ve already dealt with the situation. Why didn’t you obey me?”
“The Kanatovas were overcharging. The Salvatores were giving us a deal.”
“The Salvatores are unreliable, and if you’d looked at the records of our past interactions with them, you would have known that.”
I’d speak, but my fucking heart’s about to stop. Maybe it already has, frozen in my chest. I was meticulous, I’m always meticulous. I did look at the records—every godforsaken record we had about alcohol, or so I thought. I couldn’t find anything about the Salvatores.
Uncle Jasper won’t be interested in my excuses. I missed something, end of story.
“I was trying to save you money, sir.”
“Save me money? I’m out a ten-thousand-dollar liquor order and the sales for tonight.”
Clarence’s smug little smirk makes sense now. He must have been dreaming of this moment all day, me humiliated, stripped of what I want most.
“Sir, I deserve to be punished for my fuck up, but barring me from the draft altogether? That’s overkill.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not your punishment. It’s good sense. You’re not ready to be me, and you won’t be if you don’t learn some goddamn discipline. You’re going to college, you’re getting the degree I tell you to fucking get, and then I have plans for you.”
This is how I know the string of “experts” Uncle Jasper took me to is right about at least some of their diagnoses.
There’s rage and frustration, but instead of defeat or the cavern of self-rumination that the rest of the world would fall into, my mind spins with every possibility, every angle to turn this back into my favor.
The irony that it was Uncle Jasper who taught me how to do that effectively isn’t lost on me.
But once his mind is made up, that’s the end of it.
“What if I don’t want to be you anymore?”
“This isn’t a life you get to leave, Tate. I brought you in; there’s only one way I’ll let you get out.”
Yeah, yeah. In a body bag. I’ve gotten this speech before. I twist my lips. “Then let’s get on with the punishment portion of this. I’m bored.”
He might have the upper hand, but I’m not going to be afraid of him. His hand wraps around my throat, fingers digging in.
“Watch it, Uncle. Don’t want Luke to see that,” I wheeze.
“You little fucking shit. You think that protects you from me? Or maybe you think that because you’re a little fucking psychopath, I can’t terrify the ever-loving fuck out of you. Challenge accepted.”
Uncle Jasper lets me go, a throbbing ring of finger indentations in his wake. Clarence’s smirk returns, but this time it’s laced with glee.
For the first time in my memory, a deadly shiver crawls up my spine. Maybe I need to get a handle on my shithead tongue.
Itake everything back. The therapists and other experts were wrong—so very fucking wrong. I can feel terror, and I want it gone. Next time I’m craving that unnamable something, a feeling, I’m running the other way, and sewing my mouth shut.
If he ever lets me out of here.
He has to at some point. Right? My disappearance would be hard to hide from Luke. But he thinks I’m away at a hockey summer camp, so Uncle Jasper has at least two months to torture me to his satisfaction.
I don’t know how long it’s been, though.
Two days? Two weeks? Surrounded by the stench of sweat and decay, slow breaths are all I can do to prevent myself from puking.
Lying here, as I am, I’d drown in my own vomit.
Can anyone even hear me? I don’t know. I can’t see.
A cloth that’s soaked with my tears cinches around my eyes, cloaking the world in utter darkness.
I can’t move, and with the awkward way I’ve been trussed up, like I’m a worm attempting to cocoon and become a butterfly, pain worse than my na?ve little mind could conjure aches bone-deep.
I’d sell my soul just to be able to move.
I hurt.
Cry.
Scream.
Beg for fucking mercy.
Apologize to all that’s holy, and all that isn’t.
My first days in this tomb were much different.
Spewing every threat and insult I could think of into the void beyond my consciousness, unable to break free of the rope and chains I’m tied down with.
But I broke down like he said I would. The nerve-grinding pain whittled away my endurance and sawed jagged tears at the edge of my brain.
That’s when I entered something beyond terror. Can’t move. Can’t get a full breath. Pain. Ache. Please, please, let me out. Let me breathe.
Sometimes my body offers me enough adrenaline for a break from the maddening ache. Thoughts flood my mind. Ways I’ll kill my uncle. Ways I’ll please my uncle. And I beg till my throat’s raw for him to come for me.
He doesn’t.
At first, they kept their distance. But their behavior’s shifted to curiosity.
And I swear to fuck there’s more of them.
More little feet pressing into my strained tendons, more noses and whiskers tickling my face and ears, their slithery tails, dragging over my skin.
I wouldn’t care about their tails under the usual circumstances, but drained of energy, helpless, muscles screaming for release, I want them off me.
They’re unpredictable. What will they do?
Nibble on my wounded flesh? I can’t get them off me.
Even with a little wiggling, some shake off, but they come right back.
Soon, enough of them are running over me that I’m covered in writhing rat bodies—over my face, over my arms and legs.
There’s no end to the crawling, the disgusting noises.
There’s no escape. No getting them to stop touching me. Constant contact. Feet. Tails. Whiskers. Claws.
Tails.
Feet.
Feet.
Claws. Claws. Claws.
I scream until I’m sobbing uncontrollably. I scream until I want to die.
“Mom. Mama. Mama, help me.” A voice I don’t recognize, one from the little boy that never was. I guess he does exist, trapped forever inside a monster.
Eventually, it’s quiet and empty. I don’t know where the rats go.
Just that they’re nocturnal. We must have reached the morning.
These are my two realities—chaos and helplessness or pain and suffocation—until I’m released.
When I’m overwhelmed by the bastard creatures, there’s enough adrenaline to numb the pain.
Once that’s gone, it’s back to the brain-itching ache, praying that my ligaments will just fall off so I don’t have to feel them anymore.
I get to cycle through this exciting bit of theatre. Rats or pain. Helpless overwhelm or burning alive on the inside. And somehow, between the cracks of those sensations, the shame seeps in like a weed. I was supposed to hold my shit together, endure, not cave and scream for my long-dead mother.
It all happens again, and again, and a-fucking-gain. Until I stop begging for someone to come for me and yearn for death.