Chapter 15 #3
“Who did this to you?” he asked, his voice menacing.
I didn’t answer for a moment, but I was so scared and hurt and broken that I turned my head toward him and opened my eyes.
Gentle hands cradled my face as he looked through my memories of Juck branding me with his initial while I screamed in pain, but his intrusion into my mind didn’t hurt this time.
Maybe he was being careful, or maybe it was because I was volunteering the information.
I couldn’t find the strength to care. His rage grew, but for the first time, it felt like a shelter for me to take refuge in.
“I will kill them for this,” he seethed. “You are mine and only mine.”
That sounded eerily similar to what Juck had said, but I shoved that thought aside.
I was so tired, and his arms around me didn’t feel cold now.
They were warm and comforting, and I didn’t want to think about the consequences.
Someone seemed to care for the first time in a long time, and I wanted to feel that so desperately.
So I didn’t fight, didn’t try to stop him as I felt him rifling through my memories.
My head rested on what felt like a broad chest, my face tilted upward, staring into the darkness where I somehow knew his face was.
His arms around me remained gentle despite the anger radiating from him.
We stayed that way until I felt the drug begin to fade.
I didn’t try to escape this time. I just stayed where I was as he started slipping away.
“They will pay, Ember,” he promised right before he vanished. “I swear it.”
I felt shaky and nauseous as I came back to the present.
I’d just shown Mac far more than I’d ever told Trey, and exposing my vulnerabilities like that terrified me.
As I opened my eyes, I realized there were tears on my cheeks.
Mac still stood by the sink, but as he blinked and seemed to return to himself, his eyes locked on mine, dark and stormy with emotion.
“What happened after that?” he asked.
I twisted my fingers together nervously. “The Reapers turned on each other four days later.”
His eyes narrowed. “You think he had something to do with it?”
“He had to. None of it made sense.”
“Will you show me?”
I hesitated for a moment but then nodded. I could force myself to endure one more. Mac frowned like he was about to question me, so I quickly pulled up the memory so I didn’t have to answer.
I was in the med tent bandaging up a wound I’d just stitched shut when Vulture burst inside.
My heart started pounding. We weren’t supposed to be anywhere near each other.
Juck had made that real fucking clear. The brand on my chest still fiercely hurt, and other more intimate parts of my body ached with pain, all of it a constant painful reminder of who I belonged to.
Vulture’s eyes met mine for a second, and then he turned to the several injured people in the tent.
“Everybody outside,” he ordered.
I stared at him, bewildered. I’d never seen Vulture order people around like this.
“Trust me, you don’t want to miss this,” he added with a cruel smile before vanishing outside.
I quickly tied off the bandage with shaking fingers as the Reapers began getting up to go outside. This couldn’t be anything good. What the fuck was Vulture doing? Did he want Juck to kill him?
When I followed everyone outside, Vulture stood on a pile of broken cement blocks.
His eyes found me immediately, and I knew this had something to do with me.
Oh fuck. My heart rate quickened until I felt lightheaded and sweat dripped down my back.
I quickly glanced around at the growing crowd but didn’t see Juck—yet.
“How many of our brethren did we lose to the fever?” Vulture shouted.
I blinked, taken aback. I’d never heard him speak like this before. He sounded like he was pretending to be someone else.
“Well, I come before you to share the truth!”
I tried to catch his eye, shaking my head desperately, but he ignored me.
“Bones has the power to heal wounds magically.”
Everyone turned and stared at me, and I shrank backward.
“But Juck only lets her heal himself! She could have saved everyone who fell ill, saved all the people who died in the raid last spring, and healed every horrible, painful injury you’ve ever had.
But Juck kept it all for himself! He forced her to keep this a secret from you because he doesn’t care if you live or die.
He only cares about himself! You are nothing but disposable game pieces! ”
I expected people to start jeering at him, to throw shit and laugh, but the energy in the crowd shifted to something dark. I’d seen the Reapers get riled up about things before, and it didn’t feel like this. Something was happening; something was wrong.
“You follow Juck because he claims to be a god, immortal and untouchable, but he is nothing more than a fraud!”
The people around me shifted restlessly, eying each other and muttering to themselves.
I slipped backward, to get away from the crowd.
This situation would get ugly quickly, and I had no idea what the Reapers would do.
I reached the crowd’s edge and ran but stopped as I passed a parked bike.
A holstered knife was discarded in the sand as though someone had just dropped it there and followed Vulture.
I snatched it up, shoving it under the band of my pants and pulling my shirt and jacket over the top.
I was almost to Juck’s tent when the first gunshot rang out.
It stopped me in my tracks, and I turned and glanced back toward the crowd, my heart in my throat.
There was a pause, but then multiple shots rang out, along with voices screaming and yelling.
Who were they fighting? Wasn’t Vulture trying to get them to turn against Juck?
Had Juck shown up? Did he shoot Vulture? Oh fuck, oh fuck.
I ducked quickly into the tent, expecting it to be empty, but stopped so fast I almost fell over. Juck was standing in the tent, quickly packing a bag. He’d turned toward me, drawing his gun, but he lowered it at the sight of me.
“Good girl,” he said as his eyes flashed with fury. “We’re gettin’ outta here. I shoulda put that pup down.”
I had to fight to keep from being sick. Fuck fuck fuck. I thought Juck would be out by the crowd, trying to threaten them into submission. The sound of the fighting seemed to be getting louder.
“You got one minute to grab what you want,” Juck snapped, startling me from my panicked thoughts. “Then we’re gettin’ on the bike.”
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go with Juck, but I was terrified the Reapers would tear me apart.
What the fuck was Vulture doing? The brief moment where I hesitated made something dark and ugly cross Juck’s face, and my heart leapt into overdrive.
I forced myself to move, to go to my small corner and grab a few things.
I wasn’t even paying attention to what I grabbed.
My brain was empty of everything except desperate terror.
“Get your coat,” Juck said as he approached the tent doorway. “We’re gonna ? —”
A gunshot echoed, and I jumped with a shriek.
Juck stumbled back, his upper arm bleeding, but he recovered quickly, darting around the bed to grab me by the arm, roughly jerking me in front of him.
The cold muzzle of a gun pressed against my head as I stared horrified at Vulture standing in the doorway, gun drawn. He looked furious.
“You’re done, old man,” Vulture said in a soft, menacing voice that didn’t sound like him at all.
“Like hell I am,” Juck sneered, still holding his gun to my temple. “You think I haven’t dealt with an uprisin’ or two? I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been alive, boy.”
“Let her go,” Vulture demanded.
“How stupid do you think I am?” Juck laughed. “I know what this is about, but you can’t have her.” His hand tightened painfully around my arm. “She’s mine—always has been and always will be. The gods delivered her to me. If I die, she dies with me.”
“The gods,” Vulture scoffed, a genuinely insane smile crossing his face that made my lungs stop working. “You think ? —”
That was as far as he got before a shot rang out right next to my ear, making it ring painfully.
For a terrible moment, I thought Juck had shot me, but before I could process it, I was on my hands and knees in the sand as Juck shoved me down.
He crossed the tent to kick Vulture’s gun out of his hand.
Vulture was lying on his back, his hand pressing against the wound in his shoulder where blood was quickly gushing out.
Juck stood over him, gun pointed at his head, and I braced for the shot that would end Vulture’s life, but then Juck just started laughing.
“Nah, I’m not gonna give you an easy death,” he said in a cruel voice. “You’re gonna lay there and watch me take Bones away as you bleed out in the sand like the trash you are.”
I slid the knife out of the holster and buried it in the sand beside me, my hand still tightly gripping the handle.
Vulture said something I couldn’t make out, but Juck laughed again, holstering his gun and striding toward me.
He bent and grabbed my arm, beginning to haul me to my feet, but I surged up, pulling the knife from the sand and stabbing it into his chest as hard as I could.
I aimed for his heart, and the feel of the blade going through his body made me want to be sick.
He stumbled backward, and I yanked the knife out and stabbed it in again. Blood started gushing out over my hand.
“Angel,” he choked out as he fell backward onto his bed, pulling me with him.
He seemed shocked, like he thought I’d never actually fight back, like he’d broken me completely, and a white-hot rage washed over me.
I pulled the knife out and stabbed it in again and again and again.
His eyes were wide, and he tried to speak, but he was choking, drowning in the blood that was pouring into his lungs.
There was blood everywhere, coating my hands, splattered across my face, and covering the bed sheets.
When my hands slipped off the bloody handle, I looked up at his face and realized he was dead.
My ears started ringing as I numbly pulled the knife out, but I still heard the horrible squelching sound. I clambered off of Juck’s dead body and looked at Vulture. He was staring at me from where he was lying in the sand, clutching his shoulder.
“Angel—” Vulture wheezed.
I dropped the bloody knife, and it fell into the sand with a soft thud.
Angel.
My hands were shaking violently. Vulture had never called me that before, and it was abruptly crystal clear that I hadn’t changed a damn thing. I’d just killed a man, and it hadn’t changed anything—I hadn’t escaped. Juck was dead, and now I was Vulture’s Angel.
“Angel, you did it.” Vulture was grinning despite the bullet wound in his shoulder. “You killed the bastard.”
I backed away, my breath coming in fast, panicked gasps.
“Angel?” Vulture was pulling himself up, his face twisted in pain. “It’s okay, baby, you did it. He ? —”
I backed further away toward the tent door, and I saw the moment he realized I was going to leave him there. I wasn’t expecting the hurt on his face to look so raw and real, but it quickly hardened into hatred.
I turned and ran, fleeing into the dim evening light.
I heard Vulture yelling in fury, but it was swallowed by the screams and cries of the injured and dying that littered the ground.
My feet slowed, and I stared at the bloody scene, horrified.
The Reapers had torn each other apart. The sand was stained red, and the smell of blood was thick.
A man put a gun to the head of his wounded partner and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
They were lovers, and he just… killed him.
He met my eyes for a second, and the emptiness in his face scared me worse than anything I’d seen so far.
He took a step toward me, but then another gunshot rang out, and his body jerked, blood spraying, and he fell to the side.
They were killing each other. Why were they killing each other?
Someone screamed, and it jerked me out of the daze I was in. I took off, my feet flying across the sand. I was panting and sobbing through my teeth, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. I just ran, leaving the bloody carnage behind me.