Chapter 19 #2
“You motherfucker,” I gasp, trying not to inhale the water plastering my hair to my head.
“This is humility, Willow. You’ve lived too long without it.”
He steps back, rolling his shoulders, centering himself like he’s about to align his chakras.
“Fear is the body’s way of purging pride,” he says, almost gently. “You’ll thank me when it’s over.”
And then—he flips on a small speaker. His own damn voice hums softly through it, whispering affirmations: you are safe, you are becoming whole, you are surrendering to peace.
It’s grotesque. The soundtrack of a murder wrapped in spa ambiance.
Phoenix grips the arms of my chair and drags it around to face the kitchen. Before I think quick enough to headbutt the bastard, he steps away, back into the kitchen. He opens the fridge and pulls out ingredients. “Do you know what happens when you detox pride?”
I watch him as he works. He pulls out the expected ingredients. Kale. Ginger. Strawberries. But there’s this powder in a bottle that has no label. “You end up alone in a cabin, surrounded by corpses?” I snarl.
He grins. It’s slow. Genuine. Terrifying.
“You end up pure.”
He turns and pulls open a drawer behind him. Metal clangs as he digs through what I assume is silverware. When he turns back around, he holds a knife and meets my gaze.
My pulse spikes.
I’ve been around death plenty. I’ve known its aura, its impending prophecy. So, for the first time ever, I know with absolute certainty:
I am not getting out of this one.
But instead of charging at me and plunging the blade into my chest, he turns to his ingredients. He simply chops them and then dumps them all into a blender. He rinses the knife in the sink, and my heart rate spikes again when he turns back around, knife still in his hand, at the ready.
But it’s his own hand he presses the blade into.
The knife pierces the fleshy part of his left palm. Disgust fills my expression as I watch him hold his hand over the blender, and he makes a fist. Phoenix’s own blood pours over the top of the kale, the ginger, the strawberries, staining them dark red.
“Pure,” Phoenix says with a maniacal grin. He gives his hand one last shake over the blender before he washes his hand and bandages it like it’s nothing. He shovels a heaping mound of that powder on top, splashes in some water, puts the lid in place, and turns the blades on.
The noise of it fills the air as I watch his blood instantly whip around the clear container for a fraction of a second before it mixes with everything else.
And I realize what’s coming the moment the blender turns off.
No. Oh, shit. No.
Phoenix pours everything out of the blender and into a glass. And his eyes snap up to meet mine.
Fucking hell. Don’t smile. Don’t you smile.
He does exactly that.
“You deserve to die,” I say as he steps toward me with the glass of ego and ruin. “I wish I’d been faster, wish I would have just pulled out my blade and made it messy, right there in that garage. I wish I’d gutted you and carved every finger from your body and fed your eyeballs to the vultures.”
“Words, words, little witch,” he says with both a snarl and a grin. “I think we’ve both had enough of them. Make your peace with whatever devil you worship. Rest easy knowing I will continue to heal the world.”
“Fuck you!” I suck in as Phoenix grips my hair and yanks my head back. He pours an ungodly amount of that vile smoothie into my mouth, and instantly slaps a hand down over my mouth so I can’t spit it in his face.
The taste is acidic. Something in it burns, and my eyes instantly water.
I surge against the chair, but it’s heavy and solid.
I only arch off it a little. My heart thunders in my ears, threatening to rupture my eardrums. I feel bile rising up my throat, my body trying to reject the poison of Phoenix’s blood.
But if I throw up, with his hand fixed over my mouth, I will absolutely asphyxiate.
“Accept it,” Phoenix says, his whole body shaking as he holds his hand over my mouth. His grip is tight enough, I can’t bite him. “It’s time we end this, Willow. Drink, and let it be finished.”
I can’t. I can’t. If I drink this down, I’ll die. Of that, I’m certain. Phoenix is too much of a coward to get his hands dirty, to do it himself. But he’ll put poison in a drink and force it down my throat.
Phoenix sets the rest of the drink on the bookshelf beside me, and suddenly, he pinches my nose. All my air cuts off. My body instantly convulses, panicked instantaneously. And before I can logic or reason with my body, my throat opens up, and I swallow.
“That’s it,” Phoenix says as he releases my nose.
My whole body revolts. He’s in me. This man, this monster, this toxic excuse for breath is inside me. His blood is now racing down my throat, headed to my stomach, where my body will absorb it. Phoenix fucking Marrow has infiltrated me from the inside out.
I yack. I gag. I use every abdominal muscle to try to eject him from my body.
The drink burns, my mouth tastes of iron. The humiliation is the point; the degradation is the sermon.
I gasp in a breath, and I’m too deep in survival instinct to protect myself. The second my mouth opens to drag in the oxygen I need, he dumps the rest of his smoothie in my mouth. His hand clamps over my mouth once more. He pinches my nose. And my body wants nothing more than to survive.
I swallow the burning concoction.
Even though I know I’m now fucking dead.