Chapter 72
Seventy-Two
CADE
Crime scene tape draped across the door sways in the gentle breeze like a forgotten party streamer.
Gnats and bugs swarm in the twin headlight beams, illuminating the disturbing stigmata emblem of St. Gemma’s Chapel.
Under the hazy moonlight, the blood weeping from the open palms looks too real.
I can almost hear it splat… splat… splat on the steps.
This place is a vortex for some evil, evil shit.
Or maybe a breeding ground.
A breeding vortex…
“It’s a trap.” I blurt. “I’m calling it now. He’s not coming. He’s too much of a pussy to take Sebastian out himself, so it’s probably a hitman. Or a bomb. Definitely a bomb.”
Sebastian inhales. Holds. Exhales. “Cade, baby, I love you, but I’m gonna need you to shut the fuck up.”
“You can’t go in there. If you die, then I’ll die, then Andrea will die and we’ll all be ghosts and I cannot haunt this place! It’s tied with bathtubs for shittiest places Cade’s almost died—”
His hand snaps out and catches my jaw. “Take a breath.”
I try. It’s kind of a huff.
“Good. What color?”
So he does listen to my rambling after therapy. I could cry. Still might.
“Hella blue with a dash of red. So technically purple.”
He tilts my face to meet his intense gaze.
Everyone always talks about how pretty light colored eyes are.
But pretty does nothing for me. I’m drawn to dark depths— bottomless pits of curiosity and sincerity.
Give me the deep soil, the stuff from far beneath the surface.
I crave the warmth they radiate like slow-burning coals.
Let me lap up every emotion swirled in molten chocolate.
Wrap me in the safety of unrelenting love pouring from warm, brown eyes.
“I can work with purple,” Sebastian murmurs, his thumb stroking my cheek.
“But when I’m right— and I will be, because pattern recognition is my super power— I vote we burn this place to the ground. If we don’t get blown up first.”
Seba sighs. “We’re not getting blown up.”
“Fine, smited from afar, because the overlord of Jesus’ Cult is nowhere to be found.”
“He’ll be here,” Andrea says so quietly that I almost miss it. It’s the first time she’s spoken since we parked. She stares through the windshield as if she can see through the outer wall of the chapel. “He’s arrogant to a fault.”
“And we’re gonna use that to our advantage,” Seba adds. “He thinks he’s a living extension of God, so he assumes everything will go his way.”
Andrea glances between us. “We need to feed the illusion that things are going to whatever fucked up plan he’s got in his head.
Follow the routine. Act like this is regular scheduled programming.
” To Sebastian. “You enter from the back. We’ll go through to the lector’s entrance and stay in the hall— it’s got a clear view of the whole chapel. ”
Chewing my thumbnail, I cycle through all the ways this could go wrong. We’re dealing with a holy drug lord here. Anything could happen. Bombing would be the most efficient method, yes but who knows? He could go with a baptismal drowning…
Sebastian laces our fingers, bringing our joined hands to his lips to kiss my knuckles. “Nothing’s gonna separate us again, baby.”
You’re right. We’ll die together.
A thin layer of sweat coats my palms. I rip the cuticle, not even phased by the blood now bubbling from the nail-bed.
The churning in my gut isn’t just Blue panicking. It’s not Mom fabricating paranoid delusions. It’s not even Red being a reactive bitch. It’s me— my very essence screaming at us to LEAVE NOW.
“Hey, look at me.”
If I do, I’m gonna cave.
Shit, I can’t not look at him.
Ballsacks, I’m gonna cave.
I’m caving.
“I don’t like it.”
“I know, darlin’, I don’t either.” He leans over and kisses my temple, lingering as he breathes me in. I turn to putty. “Just one last thing. Then we’re free.”
Andrea gently takes my other hand, wrapping the hem of her shirt around my bloody thumb.
“Let me make something clear to you, love. The three of us? We’re stuck with each other.
Forever. Even in the afterlife. And the after-afterlife.
And whatever the fuck is after that, because there’s not a place in any world, universe, or realm where we don’t belong together.
We're a package deal. Our souls? Superglued at the seams. We’re an unholy trinity, bound by shame and forged in hellfire.
Together, we’re Sinclair’s worst nightmare. That righteous bastard should fear us.”
They’re so sure. So convinced. I want to believe. So badly. But a voice I haven’t heard in over half a year slips past the tightly sealed vault door in the back of my mind.
You know the way this goes…