Chapter 28
I stared blankly at the clinic ceiling.
I lay on my bed as soft morning light streamed in the windows. I couldn’t remember how I got here. Did Trey—
Pain lanced through my chest and my breath caught hard. Immediately a familiar face appeared above mine.
“Bones?” Griz asked with a strange desperation. “Hey, how you feelin’?”
I remembered Griz bleeding. In a panic, I struggled to sit up, my eyes dropping to his stomach. He reached out and gripped my shoulder, halting me.
“I’m good,” he said. “Jax is too. You healed us both.”
I let out a shaky breath and relaxed back down onto the mattress, the panic fading.
“When you’re feelin’ better, I’m gonna yell at you for scarin’ the shit out of me.” Griz released my shoulder and took my limp hand. “You’ve been unconscious for almost four days.”
He waited for a reaction, but I had none.
“Madame is behind bars,” Griz added.
I should have felt relieved or something, but there was nothing inside me.
“We got all the kids into homes after you left. They’re all safe.”
I was sinking underwater and drowning on dry ground. I’d been called heartless before, but now it was true. A giant hole gaped in my chest where my heart used to be.
“Things are gonna be different now.” He squeezed my hand. “Nemo’s in charge. He’s makin’ changes, big changes. We’re gonna make this place better.” He paused, his voice growing gruffer with emotion. “We’re gonna make it what Trey wanted it to be.”
That awful pain shot through my chest again, and I had to focus on breathing in and out. The silence stretched on, waiting, but I had nothing left to give.
“Bones,” Griz said, soft and pained, “please talk to me.”
About what? I wanted to ask, but the words sat in my chest heavy like rocks.
“I miss him, too.”
The emotion in his voice made my throat ache, but I closed my eyes.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but eventually Griz left, and I needed the outhouse. I pulled the blankets off and scooted to the edge of the bed, when the door opened.
Mac filled the entryway.
“Careful,” he warned, “you had a fever for a long time, and you’ve got a bullet wound in your leg.”
I didn’t remember getting hit, but as I stood, legs trembling, a sharp ache flared in my left calf. I started limping toward the door.
“You need the outhouse?” Mac asked, hovering close. I nodded. “Can I help you walk?” he added, an edge to his voice.
“I can do it,” I muttered.
While I sat in the outhouse, I pulled up the skirt I wore to see my leg. It had been cleaned and bandaged, and I wondered who did it, now that Trey—
I forced air into my lungs and shoved down the memory of his bloodied face and empty eyes.
When I came out, a small crowd of people stood in front of the clinic. Mac took my arm without asking if I needed help, and I didn’t argue. As we approached, the crowd shifted, revealing Nemo. He leaned heavily on a cane, his face pale, but he smiled at the sight of me.
“Good to see you up, Bones. I’m sure you heard I’m taking over, but I wanted to make sure you knew you’re an important part of the hold and your place here is solid.”
I didn’t say anything. Did he think he needed to remind me that I belonged to the Vault?
Clearly, I knew. I’d learned my place. An awkward silence fell, but finally, Nemo said something about letting me rest and left.
The crowd of people followed him, and I watched them leave. Mac still had my arm tucked in his.
“Bones?” Mac asked.
I flicked my eyes up to him. I couldn’t find the energy to do much else. His brow furrowed as he studied me.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Are you sure?” he pushed. “I mean besides your leg.”
I shook my head again and looked away. I hurt inside and out, but he couldn’t do a thing about it.
“Bones, you can talk to me. Nobody expects you to be okay right now,” Mac said in a low, urgent voice.
I wasn’t okay, and I wasn’t trying to pretend anything different. I was just empty. I didn’t understand what they wanted from me.
“You want to go see some of the kids?”
I shook my head.
“Did Griz tell you that you healed fifteen people at once with that burst of power?”
Fifteen people, but not Trey. Not Dune.
The silence stretched as we stood there, watching people move about the hold.
The bodies had been removed and people moved about, cleaning up debris and patching the damaged buildings.
The clinic had already been repaired, and the wooden building resembled Trey’s quilt with its many patches of different-colored wood and materials.
“I loved him, too,” Mac said, low and rough. “I miss him every damn day.”
Unshed tears ached in my throat.
“We buried him,” he added, releasing my arm to gently wrap my cold hand in his. “Took a long time to get through the ground ’cause it’s still a little frozen, but I can take you to his grave whenever you’re ready. If you want.”
His grave.
I pulled my hand free. When I turned and limped back inside the clinic, he let me go.
—
The next day, I sent Griz on a fake errand and went straight to the watchtower. None of Nemo’s men questioned me when I said I’d been sent to see Madame. One of the guards, a big burly man named Smith, took me down to the cells.
“Never got to properly thank you for healing my family from the sickness,” he said as we walked. “Thank you.”
I mumbled a response, hoping he wouldn’t keep talking.
He seemed to pick up on that and stayed quiet until we reached the cells.
Madame sat against the wall, her eyes glinting with anger.
Her grey dreads were covered in blood, her face was bruised, and her lip was split.
Someone had wrapped a bloody bandage around her upper thigh.
Smith unlocked the door and let me in, locking it behind me. “Holler when you’re done,” he said.
I stood inside the cell, listening to Smith’s footsteps fade away.
“Come to heal me?” Madame sneered. “Of course, Nemo would send you. He was always soft.”
I stared down at her, feeling so damn hollow.
I remembered Trey saying that when Madame’s lover died, it broke something in her, and I wondered if the same thing had happened to me.
I sure as hell felt broken. I knelt at her side, looking directly into her icy blue eyes.
Desperation lurked behind her glare, like an animal caught in a trap.
I could still smell that sugary scent that always surrounded her, partially hidden under sweat, dirt, and blood.
I leaned forward, resting one of my hands on her shoulder. “Nemo didn’t send me.”
Madame’s eyes narrowed. “Then what—”
With my other hand, I slashed her throat with the knife Trey had given me.
Everything slowed, just like it had when I’d stabbed that knife into Juck’s chest. My mind seemed to go somewhere else as the sharp little knife cut deep. Dark red blood poured down her neck.
Jugular, my brain supplied.
I kept going, pressing harder as she tried to jerk away, her head thudding into the wall. She let out a horrible gasping noise.
Trachea.
Warm, bright red blood sprayed with such force, it hit my face. I didn’t even flinch.
Carotid.
Her eyes widened in panic and fear as she began to suffocate on the blood pouring into her airway. I knelt there, my face impassive, and watched her die like I’d promised. Her wide eyes stayed locked on mine until they glazed over and her body slumped to the side. Madame was dead.
I wasn’t sure if her death made me feel any better, but it sure as hell wasn’t gonna make me feel any worse.
I sat against the wall next to her body, tilting my head back to lean against the cool stones. I tried not to think about anything at all, but I kept hearing Trey’s last words. I love you, Bones. When the guards came back to check on me, all hell broke loose.
A flurry of noise and activity exploded. They hauled me to my feet and wrestled my knife from my clenched fist. The others knelt beside Madame’s body, examining her. They stared up at me wide-eyed when they saw the bloody slash in her throat.
“Did you do this?” the one feeling for a pulse on Madame’s bloody neck asked.
I didn’t answer.
“Bones, did you do this?” Smith demanded, but I stayed silent.
“She’s dead,” the one on the floor announced, like it wasn’t fucking obvious.
“Somebody get Nemo!”
“Did you kill Madame?”
“What happened?”
The questions blurred into noise.
“Bones?”
I looked up to see Nemo looking between me and Madame’s body, and then up at Smith.
“Sorry, sir, we weren’t sure what to do with her,” Smith said.
Nemo studied me a moment longer before gesturing at me to follow him. “Come on, Bones. Let’s go upstairs.”
“Do you want me to—” Smith produced a pair of handcuffs.
“No, that won’t be necessary, but fetch Mac, will you?”
I followed Nemo up the stairs, pretending not to notice the concerned glances I received.
The remains of Madame’s office door leaned against the wall, peppered with bullet holes and hacked to pieces.
The inside of the office looked the same, except for a box full of papers on the bloodstained floor.
Nemo took a seat behind the desk and motioned toward the other chair. I hesitated, then sat. He leaned back, steepling his fingers together.
“I’m glad you’re feelin’ a little stronger,” he said.
I waited.
“You’re not in trouble, Bones,” he said. “We were gonna have a public execution. Not my choice, but that was what the majority voted. Some folks might be disappointed, but I don’t think anybody’s gonna blame you for what you did.”
I stared at my hands, covered in dried streaks of Madame’s blood.
“I certainly don’t.”
I glanced up at him, and he offered me a half smile.
“I’d like to talk to you more about all of this, but I don’t think now is the right time.”
As if on cue, running footsteps grew louder, and then Mac burst through the open doorway, looking uncharacteristically panicked. He sought me out first, scanning me before turning toward Nemo.
“It’s alright, Mac,” Nemo said. “Could you take Bones back to the clinic?”
Mac stared at him, breathing hard like he’d run all the way here. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Nemo replied.
Mac grabbed my arm, pulling me to my feet and propelling me out the door as if he feared Nemo might change his mind. Once we were outside, he glanced down at me.
“Why the fuck would you go and do something so reckless?” he asked.
I didn’t bother answering. He swore under his breath and marched me back to the clinic. When he towed me inside, we found Griz and Raven waiting.
“Did you really kill Madame?” Raven asked, her entire face alight with surprise and something like pride.
“Raven,” Griz warned.
“She did,” Mac answered for me, his voice simmering with anger.
“Damn.” Raven actually grinned. “Good.”
“Raven,” Mac snapped at her as he tugged me over to the sink.
I looked in the mirror and saw blood smeared across my cheek.
“You should clean yourself up,” Mac muttered.
I glanced at his reflection in the mirror and caught him watching me, tension still tight in the lines of his jaw.
I washed my hands and face as he turned away to reply to Griz’s and Raven’s questions with short one- or two-word answers.
My sunken eyes stared back at me in the mirror, dull and empty.
Someone came in with a sprained wrist, giving me something to do, but none of Mac’s crew left.
They spent the rest of the day casually hanging around the clinic, trying to pretend they weren’t watching me, like they feared I would snap and kill someone else.
If I’d had the energy, I would have reassured them that I was done. That was it, the whole of my plan for vengeance.
Now there was nothing.