CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
‘We’re going to have a little Q and A,’ Craig Fenwick says later that day, pouring water into his own mouth from above, letting it spill down his cheeks and chin, swallowing with relish. ‘Ahh, that’s the stuff. One question at a time. Everyone ready?’
No one speaks.
Richard, Madeline, Mikhail, Roman and the medic are with Lachlan in the room where Prescott Delacroix was slowly eaten in the night.
Fenwick kicks Roman in the middle.
Lachlan doesn’t react.
‘I said—’
‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know,’ Madeline utters, lifeless eyes fixed on the spot where her brother went to sleep and never woke up. ‘Anything.’
‘Yes, but what do you know of value, you old cunt?’ Fenwick asks, swishing the water around in the bottle. This part of the mansion is bathed in full sunlight. Lachlan’s skin is burnt to fuck. ‘Do you know who killed my brother?’
She whines. ‘I… I can find out. Alistair trusts me.’
Fenwick cocks his head. ‘Open your mouth.’
Stupidly, she does it. Like an eager, trusting baby bird, she waits.
Lachlan already knows what’s coming.
He likes to think he himself wouldn’t exert so much inefficient cruelty, but he’s not remotely shocked when Fenwick spits in her mouth.
She makes a truly horrified sound, gagging.
Fenwick laughs, gaze landing on Lachlan.
‘We need to get into the second panic room. Who can help?’
Richard clears his throat. ‘If you find their ventilation, you could—’
‘No.’
‘Maybe if you light fires outside the door—’
‘I don’t want suggestions, I want solutions,’ Fenwick says, tipping water away onto the floor. ‘One of you knows something.’
Madeline looks at Lachlan, wild with desperate loathing. ‘Him! He can get inside! He’s fucking the boy!’
Fenwick wrinkles his nose. ‘Who, him?’ he asks, gesturing to Roman.
‘No, Alistair’s son! They’re together. I walked in on them. If you take the bodyguard down, Julian will open the door for him.’
Fenwick stares at Lachlan. ‘Is this true?’
‘You can try,’ Lachlan tells him, ‘but they’re billionaires. They don’t care about their own friends, let alone staff.’
‘The boy is in love with him, everyone knows it!’
Fenwick looks around. ‘You have anyone to back your claim?’
Richard nods. ‘It’s true.’
‘And how do you know?’
‘I saw them kiss on the beach. It was dark, but I saw it.’
‘What about you, Sorrenko? Care to corroborate?’
Mikhail stays quiet.
Fenwick punches him in the ear.
Roman looks away.
‘I’ve been reasonable,’ Fenwick says, and Lachlan, despite everything, knows it’s true.
There are multiple lines he hasn’t crossed.
Men are capable of such things no god ever thought to forbid.
‘But now I want real answers. Either get me into that panic room or tell me what happened to my brother. I think only one of you knows the latter,’ he says, gaze fixed on Lachlan. ‘So the first is your only chance.’
‘We don’t know how to get into the panic room,’ Richard whines, eyeing the water. ‘Please.’
‘Tell me about the boy. Julian.’
‘He’s a wretched little brat, an attention-seeking whore,’ Madeline falls over herself to say. ‘Nothing but problems for Alistair since he was born!’
‘How so?’
‘He was weak and sickly, almost died several times! That’s why he had the girl, for her bone marrow!’
‘What girl?’
Lachlan says, ‘I can get you inside.’
Fenwick looks at him, brows quirked.
‘Oh, now you want to talk? Interesting.’
‘I’m done fucking around.’
The soldier crouches in front of Lachlan.
‘Was it the little girl, hmm? Is she special to you? She a Paranatural too? The little one is…’ Fenwick inclines his head, thinking. ‘Jessie? No, Jessamine, am I right?’
‘I can get you in.’
‘Is she a witch like her brother?’
‘Your brother lost his shit, and he died for it. If you want to know how he died,’ he says, mouth tugging up into a smirk, ‘ask me what his guts felt like.’
Fenwick lands a blow that knocks him sideways, head spinning.
Two men quickly grab and right him.
‘You’re a fucking liar.’
‘Although,’ Lachlan chuckles, blood trickling down his chin. ‘I could have told you that before I eviscerated him because I fucked him so deep, I was practically in his—’
Another punch, but Lachlan stays upright for this one.
‘I think,’ Fenwick bites out, gripping Lachlan’s face with one hand, fingers digging cruelly, ‘that little girl is your weak spot and if it’s yours, it might be Julian’s too, hmm? Am I close?’
‘They won’t open that door for anything.’
‘If the kid’s a Paranatural…’ Lachlan says nothing, swallows his own blood. ‘I bet he could open that door himself, even without the button. Or I could send a team to the Penhalyx Estate in Varrow City.’
‘Your big brother came on my cock like a teenager.’
‘Drag the little princess out, have someone livestream it.’
‘I didn’t even touch his dick he was that desperate for it.’
‘And I think once I have her in hand, I’ll know the—’
Lachlan lunges forward and sinks teeth in Fenwick’s throat as hard as he possibly can, bite radius wide enough to potentially dislocate his own jaw, but not quite. He wraps both legs around Craig’s middle, grips him like a snake and bites through skin, muscle and veins.
The other men yell while Craig struggles. He relishes the wet crunch of body giving way to teeth. A fat oval of ragged flesh comes loose in his mouth when the soldier wrenches away.
Lachlan spits it after savouring the blood because water is water.
Everyone stares at him with shock and horror.
‘Mason never even talked about you. I know a runt when I taste one.’
Blood pours through the gaps of Craig’s fingers, hand pressed against his neck while his men scramble to get gauze on it.
‘You fucking cunt.’
‘This island is gonna eat you alive,’ Lachlan whispers, smiling red at Mason Fenwick’s brother, lets his tongue loll for a beat.
He must look demonic. Psychotic.
I’m your psychopath.
Craig scrambles to his knees, pulls out a knife.
It’s Lachlan’s own.
The one Jules made for him.
Craig’s men are trying to talk him down, but he ignores them.
‘Enough of this shit!’ Wake, who was lurking in the doorway says, ‘This is so far from the mandate now, you’ve lost the fucking—’
Craig whirls around and stabs him with Lachlan’s knife in the chest, in the neck, over and over until he’s on the floor and silent.
He stabs until his rage has been spent on someone else.
Madeline is softly sobbing.
Roman’s eyes are closed.
Mikhail watches Lachlan, who chuckles, helplessly emboldened by how easy it is to rile him. ‘Lack of stamina runs in the family, huh?’ he teases.
Rather than stabbing or maiming Lachlan, Craig drags him through the wrecked mansion down into the bunker where Lachlan sees evidence of their desperation to get the doors of the second safe room open.
Blast burns in the concrete, cinders of what they burned to create heat.
Craig slams Lachlan against the locked door.
‘I know you hear me in there,’ he calls out loudly. ‘I’ve got your man here, Julian. Your precious bodyguard.’
Lachlan stays silent.
Fenwick pulls out the taser.
‘You’re gonna scream until your boy opens the door.’
Jules is on the other side of that door.
Lachlan won’t let him know it.
He should have apologised.
He should have kissed him more than he did.
Loved him better, better. Been better.
All Lachlan can do now is keep him safe.
Craig shocks him with the taser and gets nothing for his efforts.
Lachlan is miles away with his little girl and the crows who love her.
He’s under the sun with Blaire.
He’s in the water with Jules.
It’s only his body.
Body.
Bodyguard.
It doesn’t mean to guard the body.
It’s the body that guards you.
Craig spins Lachlan around, face to face. His neck is pouring blood from the bite, too angry to notice that four of his men followed him down, they’re watching from above in case he passes out which he will unless he cauterises the wound soon.
He threatens the taser between Lachlan’s legs.
‘Call out to him.’
Lachlan spits in his face.
Craig closes his eyes, jaw lax with shock.
The bodyguard whispers, ‘Do your worst.’
Craig drops the taser, hellbent on lashing out.
He beats Lachlan brutally outside the door that mercifully stays shut the entire time.
Rage and grief make magma, and it pours all over Lachlan.
His bones break, he loses a back tooth, but he never once makes a single sound because his boy is in there and Lachlan is terrified that Jules loves him enough to actually open the door if he heard him.
Love puts us on the losing side.
Day two bleeds into three.
Lachlan barely sees it.
?
Craig Fenwick is sun crazed and ragged-tempered.
He seems to Lachlan like a man who tore apart the beams of his own ship in a rage, now adrift on the whim of the ocean.
Lachlan’s memory is faltering, he’s barely functional.
All his hopes are pinned on Danya finding the island.
The crabs, the snakes, the beetles and the birds go where they please.
‘We are all subject to feast by fauna, flame or flora,’ Blaire tells him, except… no, she’s not there. She’s home with Mimi. Both of his girls are safe and sound.
He’s not sure when he starts hallucinating.
He can’t reliably track time in this place.
But when he sees Mimi, he knows he’s close to the end.
His little girl is sitting on the ground playing with the snakes, she’s naming them.
Lachlan tries to tell her to be careful even though he knows they’d never hurt her, all animals love her, they love her like he does, because he too is a wild animal at heart, a violent creature domesticated by love.
He belongs to the Penhalyxes.
He will never be free of them.
She looks up at him, dark blue eyes catching the sunlight.
‘Daddy,’ she says, smiling so sweetly, ‘this one’s my favourite!’
He looks at the snake she shows him.
Snowy white scales decorated with coral red dots like blood droplets. The snake curls gently around her arm, nuzzling her wrist.
‘He never saw sand before. It’s different than snow.’ Mimi cocks her head. ‘You miss Jewel?’ Lachlan nods. ‘You just have to be patient like Mari was.’
‘Yeah,’ he says, eyes dropping shut. ‘Like Mari.’