16. Rafferty
Rafferty
M y muscles burn, a deep, satisfying ache that’s the only thing keeping me from finding the nearest wall and punching a hole clean through it. The rain is a cold, constant prickle on the back of my neck and hands.
Blake works beside me; his movements are economical and precise. He’s not just digging; he’s performing a goddamn archaeological excavation. He’s probably memorised the soil composition. Fucking prick. But he hasn’t stopped, hasn’t complained. He’s covered in the same shit as the rest of us.
I hear Viper’s heavy tread before I see him. He looks like ten miles of bad road, but his eyes are fucking live wires.
“She out?” I ask, not breaking my rhythm.
“For now,” he grunts, grabbing the shovel from Blake. “We dig and then we bring down as many as we can in one go. Even if it’s in a fucking wheelbarrow,” he grunts, placing a detached attitude on this shitstorm.
“Agreed.”
“We did it Venetia’s way while she was here,” he carries on, like he still needs to convince us. “We showed respect, but we need to get this done before she wakes up. She doesn’t need to see this again.”
“Agreed,” I grit out.
The rain keeps falling, turning the gravesite into a fucking swamp. It doesn’t matter. We’ll keep digging. We’ll bury our dead.
“I’ll go and see if I can find something suitable for transportation,” Blake mutters.
“Yeah, go,” I mutter back.
Viper and I work in grim silence, the only sound the rhythmic squelch of our shovels biting into the mud.
The rain is relentless, soaking us to the bone, but the cold is a welcome distraction.
It keeps the rage at a low simmer instead of a full fucking boil.
Every shovelful is a name, a face I can barely remember, a life snuffed out because of us. Because of her.
No. That’s not right. This isn’t on Venetia. This is on the fucking cowards who did this. Who used kids as a message. They want a war, they’re going to get a fucking war.
I glance over at Viper. His face is a thundercloud, his jaw set so tight I’m surprised it doesn’t crack.
He’s a fucking machine, powered by a fury that matches mine.
We’re two sides of the same bloody coin.
The only difference is that I had privilege and my family name behind me.
He had the streets and a driving ambition to be better.
Blake returns, pushing a large groundskeeper’s cart, its flatbed perfect for our grim cargo.
Viper looks up and nods before returning to work.
Blake picks up the shovel from the flatbed that he also procured and gets back to work. The three of us work in grim silence, until there are more holes than the ground can cope with. We are going to have to move location.
“Let’s start loading up, and then we need to cover them,” I say.
“Blake and I will go and retrieve the bodies. You start covering up.”
I nod, happy with the arrangement. I’m soaked, pissed off, starving, thirsty, and fucking exhausted, but I’d rather be out here throwing soil on top of dead bodies than piling them onto a piece of garden equipment.
Death is my business. It has always been my business. It’s in my blood, but this? This shit is taking it too far. I take lives from a distance. I don’t know them. I don’t give a flying fuck who they are, what they did, or what they like for breakfast. A location, a face, a bullet. Clean.
This is messy.
This is personal.
Every shovelful of mud I toss onto the white-shrouded form in the grave feels like a betrayal of my own code. I’m a ghost, an ending. Not a fucking gravedigger.
I work methodically, my body moving on autopilot.
Fill the shovel. Toss the dirt. The wet slap of mud on linen is a sickening sound that will probably follow me into my nightmares, if I ever sleep again.
I finish one grave, move to the next. The line of shrouded bodies beside the growing row of mounds seems endless.
Blake and Viper return with the cart, their faces masks of grim determination. They unload another four bodies, laying them out in the ground with a quiet reverence that feels fucking alien in this place.
My grip on the shovel tightens until my knuckles are bone white.
We work in complete silence.
At some point, Viper takes my shovel and sends me with Blake on body retrieval. I don’t want to go, but arguing the toss about it in the middle of a makeshift graveyard in the pouring rain seems crass.
“You okay?” I ask Blake as we head up the service lift with the garden truck.
“Peachy,” he grits out.
I leave it at that. Blake is harder than most of this academy put together. Behind his fancy suits, cultured speech, and neurospicy brain lies a fucking warrior, but he’s cracking. We all are, and that’s a scary fucking thought.
The dining hall is a fucking tomb. The smell hits me even worse than before. The messages on the walls scream at us, a declaration of war. Blake doesn’t flinch. He just grabs the end of a tablecloth and starts wrapping the nearest body, a girl with red hair fanned out like a halo in her own puke.
I join him, my stomach twisting into a hard knot.
My hands feel clumsy, my movements stiff.
This isn’t a hit. This is desecration. I lift her legs, the body unnervingly light, and help Blake hoist her onto the cart.
The thud is dull, final. We don’t speak.
What the fuck is there to say? We work our way through the room, a two-man clean-up crew in hell. Four bodies later, the cart is full.
Blake wipes his hands on his already ruined trousers. “That’s all of them,” he says, his voice flat, devoid of emotion.
But I see it in his eyes, the same cold fury that’s burning a hole in my gut.
We push the cart back out into the night, the wheels squeaking a protest under the weight of the dead.
The rain hasn’t let up. It’s like the sky is trying to wash away the sins of this place, but it’s too fucking late for that.
The wheels of the cart dig into the mud, a grinding noise that sets my teeth on edge. Blake doesn’t say a word, just grunts with the effort of pushing. The silence between us is heavier than the fucking cargo we’re hauling.
We get back to the clearing, and it’s a scene from some fucked-up film. A row of fresh mounds, dark against the grey light of dawn that’s starting to bleed through the clouds. Viper is a fucking animal, still digging, his movements relentless. He’s coated in mud, barely human.
We unload the last four bodies, laying them in the waiting graves.
The dull thud of shrouded limbs hitting the muddy bottom is a sound I’ll hear for the rest of my fucking life.
When the last one is in place and covered up, I straighten up, my back screaming in protest. I toss the shovel down, the clang of metal on wet stone a final, sharp note.
This part is over.
“I need to get back to her,” Viper mumbles and stumbles off.
Blake and I are close behind him.
The walk back is silent, each step a fucking effort.
The mud tries to suck my boots off, a last, desperate attempt by this godforsaken place to claim another piece of us.
Blake walks beside me, a ghost in a ruined suit, his face a perfect blank mask.
But I see the tremor in his hands, the way his jaw is clenched so tight a diamond would shatter between his teeth.
The control is fraying. The banker is becoming a beast.
“I’ll shower in my room,” I say to Blake. “And then I’d better find us some food.”
He turns to face me full-on. “From where?”
I don’t answer. I have no answer, but the fact is, we need fucking food, reserves. I turn away from him and stalk to my room, slamming the door closed behind me and leaning back against it, eyes closed.
But once again I hear Venetia’s words. There is no rest for the wicked. So, I open them again and move. I just need to keep moving until this next day is over, and we can come back from this stronger and more fucking vicious than these arseholes have ever seen.