Chapter 41 The Last Night on Earth #2
“I said I was sorry, Fin,” she said, as a traitorous lump grew in her throat.
Dammit. She meant to call him Pádraig. And she didn’t have time for this now. Didn’t he know this was her last day on Earth? Maybe he did, and he didn’t care. The thought pricked her eyes, which welled with tears. She had to get out of there.
Shoving the whole messy pile of notes into her bag, she ran off with her head bowed, eyes fixed on the ground.
You’re a weeping cesspool… Well, yes, she was weeping, but she didn’t think she was infectious waste. His cruel words reverberated in her head, bouncing around, turning over and over. Hope’s greatest fool…
Oh, stop it! Why did she keep torturing herself? Because those words are familiar, her subconscious reminded her. A memory…it was a memory—she’d seen those words before, but where…?
Hailey glanced back, keenly aware that it might be the last time she laid eyes on him. His head was bowed as he trotted off.
“Goodbye,” she whispered.
Fin burst into Asher’s house without knocking, hell-bent on a confrontation that would hopefully end with his death—once and for all, sparing him another second of living with the agonizing heartache that sucked the air from his chest. He’d hurt the only woman he ever loved, and he’d probably lost her forever.
Not that he deserved her anyway. He didn’t deserve to even look at her.
“Asher!” he barked, storming from room to room. When the Envoy didn’t answer, Fin bellowed as loud as he could, gritting his teeth, his face hot with rage, “Asher!”
“Where is she?” Asher answered urgently, appearing suddenly in the doorway behind him.
Fin pivoted and lunged at the Envoy. “You listen—”
Asher grabbed his neck and squeezed. “Cobon obscures my vision, Pádraig. He may already have her, where is she?” Asher repeated, his eyes a volcanic fury. He eased his grip enough for Fin to speak.
“I just saw her leaving Eureka—five minutes ago,” he croaked, his voice partially strangled. “She had her books, library?”
Asher tossed Fin to the floor and spun around.
“I’m going to tell her the truth, Asher!” Fin shouted as soon as he caught his breath, and Asher turned back scowling hatefully.
“You will tell her nothing, slave,” he said slowly.
“Suck it, Asher. I won’t miss another second of her life.
” He said it with conviction, because he wanted it to be true.
He wanted to stay with her forever. But Asher would never allow it.
He’d destroy her, and Fin’s heart would turn inside out.
He’d die a thousand deaths if he ever did something to hurt her again.
No, this was the end for him. He couldn’t bear to face another dawn without her.
He knew what he wanted. An end. And Asher was the only one that could provide it.
“You delay me with your misplaced defiance when her very life is at risk. And you will tell her nothing!”
It was working. He was angry. Maybe even furious. Fin shook his head.
“I’m going to tell her the truth,” he repeated, his voice weary, defeated.
“Wrong answer, Fin.” Asher grabbed him up by his neck again.
“What are you going to do, Asher? Kill me?” He tried to hide the hope in his voice as he egged the Envoy on.
“Oh, I can do far worse than kill you…”
Matthew the book worm did his best to fetch Hailey some helpful references from the stacks, but honestly, he was so gorged with tea, he moved more like Jabba the Hutt than a zinging inchworm, and it took him ten minutes to return with The Banshee’s Guide to Handling a Soul, which read like bad furniture instructions.
Hailey slammed it shut. While she waited for Giselle, she returned to straightening and smoothing her crinkled notes.
As she made her way through the pile, something strange caught her eye.
There among the mound of windblown pages, she found a handwritten note and held it up. She recognized the print immediately…
Hailey clutched the note with both hands…the phrases…the metaphor…
Oh my God!
The rose…the lonely soul…the weeping cesspool…
She gasped. Hopes greatest fool!
Fin wasn’t insulting her—he was trying to talk to her—to tell her in a code that only she would know—a code he’d used before—he was begging for help!
Realization hit her like a freight train. The rose… The sketch of her at Holly’s grave…
It wasn’t Asher who’d carried her home from Holly’s grave. It was Fin! All this time he was trying to tell her, and all this time, she was too stupid to get it.
She had to find him.
She pushed back from the table, but when she stood, her legs buckled, and she fell back into her chair.
The room went black. Her breath caught in her throat; her ears filled with muffled silence.
And she was falling, through the chair, through the floor, flailing her arms at the nothingness in desperation, anticipating—no dreading—the impact.
Then with a whole-body quake, she woke, and she was watching Asher and Fin from the shadows of Fin’s room again—just like she had in her premonition dream, only there was no haze, no mistaking the words they exchanged.
“Did it ever occur to you in all your cerebral-ness that Cobon lied to get you to do exactly what you’re doing? To kill Hailey?” said Fin.
“Hailey belongs to me. I will do what I please to her.”
Hailey’s stomach dropped. He sounded so cold.
"We had an agreement, Asher, don’t you remember? Hailey will choose who she wants to be with, and we will respect her choice,” he said firmly, but Asher was unmoved.
“I love her,” he told the Envoy. “And she loves me.”
Hailey’s breath caught.
“You think you love her, but you do not. Cobon uses you, Pádraig. You will drive her into despair, and you will destroy her.”
"No,” Fin said firmly. “Nobody is controlling me, Asher, I’m free.
Asher stepped toward him, a furious storm swirling in his eyes as they traced a path through the distance. “You will always be our slave,” he concluded. “Forever was the deal your parents made with Adalwolf, and forever you will obey."
“I’m not a slave to the Envoys anymore, Asher,” Fin said irritably.
“Are you so sure?”
Fin took a swing at him, but Asher caught his fist and held it.
"Perhaps you’d like to live this life with one hand,” he said, and he squeezed Fin’s fist until it collapsed with a sickening crunch.
Fin howled and fell to his knees.
“That’s more like it,” said Asher coolly, and Fin’s mutilated hand turned to dust in his grip. Asher brushed his hands together, and Fin gnashed his teeth.
“I won’t do it!” Fin cried out.
“Perhaps I’ll take your arm, then. You won’t heal from this, you know.” Asher’s voice was menacing, hateful, even.
He snatched him up by his arm and cremated that as well.
“Go to hell!” Fin yelled, as he pushed himself to his feet. Squaring up with Asher, he spit in the Envoy’s face.
Asher’s eyes exploded. Grabbing Fin by the neck with one hand, he seized him by his manhood with the other.
“Shall I take something more valuable?” he threatened, and Fin squeezed his eyes shut.
“Tear me limb from limb, Asher. I love her, and I won’t hurt her.”
Asher released him and tilted his head as Fin surveyed his shoulder stump.
“I’ve gone mad,” he said, suddenly.
“I know,” Fin panted.
"If I cannot have her, I will destroy her,” Asher said with pain in his voice. “I cannot control my rage.” His admission sounded more like a plea. His eyes darkened, and quite suddenly, he grabbed Fin up by his neck again.
“I once saved you from an eternity in Hell, Pádraig O’Shea. It’s time for you to repay your debt to me.” Asher raised Fin higher and plunged his hand through his chest.
Fin struggled to breathe.
“Is this the fate you want for her? You would drive me to rip her apart, to shred her soul, to slash and tear until there is nothing left of the woman we both love?”
“She’d—destroy—you,” Fin grunted.
Asher squeezed Fin’s neck until it cracked and tossed him to the floor.
“No, Pádraig,” Asher said while he waited for Fin to heal. “We both know what destroyed Adalwolf. It was a confluence of impossibilities, a cosmic accident when he exploded. And you can’t make it happen again, or I’d already be dead, Righteous Man.”
Fin’s neck cracked back together, and he rolled onto his side.
“We can do this all night,” Asher said grinding his teeth, and he grabbed Fin up by his neck again. “I would do worse to her!”
“Alright I’ll do it!” Fin shouted. “I’ll do it,” he moaned.
Asher released him and stepped away.
“She’ll know you did this,” Fin panted, nodding to his missing limb, and Asher surveyed his one-armed slave.
“On your knees, Pádraig,” said Asher gently, and Fin obliged, his face etched with shame.
Asher placed his hand on Fin’s back and watched as an arm grew perfectly out of his shoulder.
“Make it public, Fin, and make it hurt,” Asher said, turning to leave. “I’ll be watching.”
“Wait,” Fin said.
Asher stopped and looked back.
“If you loved her, you wouldn’t force me to hurt her.”
His eyes pleaded with Asher’s.
“I will comfort her. I will protect her from Cobon,” the Envoy reasoned.
"Can you protect her from yourself?”
“And what would you do?” he spat. “How would you save her light, human?”
“With my dying breath, Asher. I would die or spend an eternity in agony before I hurt her.”
“Then you’re a better man than I, Pádraig the Defiant.”