CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Nova
IWATCHED KOL THROUGH THE DARKNESS, HIS FLASHLIGHT moving over the ground in a nonsensical pattern. But I realized it was only a mystery to me. Kol read the ground like it was one of Orion’s maps. His flashlight beam swept over the gravel again, and then he was jogging toward the trees.
About halfway to the tree line, his light cut out altogether. I tried not to let anxiety win as a wave of dizziness overtook me. “Alive. Breathing.” I whispered the touchstones to myself as I forced my feet to move, away from the door, away from Kol.
Cora needed me. I had to call the sheriff’s department and Dex. He’d tell the rest of the brothers.
I moved through the entryway back to Cora, who was now sitting up, the towel pressed to her wound. Her face was more than a little pale, adrenaline likely being replaced by shock.
“It’s going to be okay,” I assured her. “Kol will find him, and I’m going to get help.”
I reached for my phone, but Cora’s hand snaked out and grabbed my arm. Her fingernails digging in. “Don’t.”
My brows pulled together, confusion washing over me. “I need to call the sheriff’s department, get you some EMTs.”
“You don’t, actually.” She moved faster than I’d ever seen her before, shooting to her feet, the towel slipping away. And then something else was in her hand.
A knife.
The blade glinted in the light of the living room, sparking another memory.
“You need to bleed.” The man’s voice cut through the dark, and then the light flashed on. The brightness hurt as I scrambled back toward the wall, pressing my back against the cold cinder blocks.
He hauled me up by my hair. The knife sliced across my ribs, and a scream tore from my throat as white-hot agony ripped through me. Then the blade jerked along my other side, and I doubled over, the movement ripping my hair from his grip.
So much pain. Everywhere.
“Better?” Travis asked.
The question was for someone else, I realized. Someone I couldn’t see.
The responder’s voice was garbled, or maybe I was too close to passing out to hear them exactly. “For now. She needs to suffer.”
And then the blackness claimed me.
I blinked against the memory. A little grainy like film that had been left out in the sun. But so damn real.
Cora surged forward, gripping my hair in a vicious tug, pointing the knife to the underside of my chin. “It’s time for you to finally pay, bitch. Because you cost me everything.”
My breaths came quicker now as my gaze darted around the room. I needed a weapon. A phone. Something to get me out.
There was a fireplace poker if I could get to it, a good dozen feet away. My phone was only a couple of feet away, too, but Cora was blocking the way and wielding a knife. Another wave of dizziness hit me.
I tried to fight it back. Breathe. I pictured Kol in my mind. I’d been learning about countless tools to help me in moments like these. But it was Kol who was truly my grounding stone. I conjured him now, leaning on the endless memories we were creating, the life we were building.
“Cora,” I croaked. “Whatever happened, we can deal with it together.”
“Oh, we can?” she mocked. “Can you bring the love of my life back from the dead?”
Another memory slammed into me.
The room was pitch-black. Water dripped from the only source in the room. My stomach cramped from lack of food. How long had it been since the man had given me something to eat?
I sat upon the thin mattress, hugging my knees to my chest. I missed Brae. Owen. How long had it been since I’d seen them? A month? Two? The passage of time had gotten so confusing.
Something rustled. Clothing? An animal?
I froze, panic digging in as a shape emerged from the shadows. But it wasn’t the one I was used to seeing. This figure was smaller. Feminine?
My breaths came in short, quick pants.
“You’re nothing,” the voice growled.
A woman. But one who had rage flowing through her veins.
“You’re stupid. Ugly. Fat. Not going to let you into the kitchen again. You’re worthless.”
An open palm connected with my cheek just as I saw a flash of someone. They wore some kind of goggles. Something that allowed them to see in the dark? The thought was gone in an instant as my head snapped back in a vicious crack.
It connected with the hard wall, and I fell to the mattress. Everything sounded like it was underwater then.
“Disgusting little slut. Fat whore. You’ll pay.”
Spit hit my cheek. But the world was swirling. And the darkness claimed me again.
I blinked rapidly, trying to blend the past with the present, trying to finally see. “You,” I rasped. “You were there.”
Cora started laughing. Like she was so damn amused with herself. “You know, I kept waiting for them to come for me after you were found. Don’t get me wrong, I knew your brain was fucked up, but I had no idea you remembered nothing.”
An invisible fist closed around my throat the same way Travis’s hands had so many times. It made breathing nearly impossible, like sucking in fiery air.
“But no one came. Such a weak little bitch. Couldn’t even handle living in the dark for a year. Do you know how long I was in the dark? Nearly all my life,” she snarled, gripping my hair tighter.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Shut up,” Cora snapped. “You don’t get to beg. You ruined everything.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
She shook me like a rag doll, so much stronger than I ever knew. This woman I thought was a friend. This woman I thought was a victim, just like me.
“You just couldn’t die like you were supposed to,” she clipped.
“Just had to get found. For a while, I thought you’d stay this fucked-up version of yourself.
And something about knowing you were so broken worked for me.
Helped. But then you had to start on your healing bullshit. You had to try to remember.”
It wasn’t my time in that dark hole I was trying to remember now; it was every interaction I had with Cora in the here and now. I tried to view it through this other lens, the one that would help me see things as they truly were.
“Who kept you in the dark?” My voice was raw, emotion clogging it, but I managed to get the words out.
Cora yanked my hair harder, taking me back several steps with her fury.
“You think you know the dark? You have no idea. My cunt of a mother would lock me in my room the second I got home from school and not let me out until it was time to leave again. She’d starve me.
Make me piss and shit in a bucket. If I hadn’t had Travis, I would’ve starved. ”
I sucked in another pained breath. Brokenness didn’t happen in a vacuum. It sprouted from abuse and torture and pain. It festered when one mind twisted another. And a part of me felt empathy for Cora. A young girl so abused.
But that wouldn’t stop me from doing what I had to do. And when she shoved me back, I’d gotten closer to the poker. Closer to a way to defend myself.
And I would fight. I might’ve given up before, back when Kol was the only person keeping me in the land of the living. But now, I wanted to live. And I wanted to live fully.
“I’m sorry.” I let the honesty bleed into my voice. “I’m sorry she hurt you.”
“You’re sorry?” Cora sneered, yanking my hair again as she pricked the underside of my chin with her knife. “You don’t get to be sorry. I don’t need your fucking sympathy because I had Travis.”
A light dawned as we moved a little closer to the poker. “What did Travis do?”
A smile stretched across Cora’s face. Not a twisted one like earlier but a sweet one.
A woman in love. “He helped me kill her.” The smile grew.
“He mixed her favorite drink with a few little additives. It only took thirty minutes for her to start convulsing. It was something to watch. And I didn’t take my eyes off her.
I made her see me when she died. Know I was the one who did it. ”
Cora’s green eyes danced with glee. “Then we took her high up into the mountains, off Three Creeks Canyon Trail, and we buried her. No one ever found the body; we buried her so deep. And everyone felt so bad for me. They were all, Oh, Cora, how can we help? Poor Cora, what do you need?”
She scoffed in derision. “I’d take their handouts.
Someone paying my rent through graduation.
Another keeping my water and power on. More dropping off food.
But Travis, he realized he liked the aftermath even more than the kill.
He wanted to be in the thick of it while all the morons didn’t have a clue that he’d caused it. ”
Everything started to come together, how abuse and cruelty had kicked off something in the two of them that could never be stopped once it was started.
I swallowed down the swirling panic. “Where’s Piper?”
“You’ll never find her. They’ll never find her. She’s going to rot,” Cora snarled.
No. She wasn’t. I’d never let Piper suffer my fate or worse.
I used that to spur me on. I threw myself to the side, yanking my hair free with a painful snap. I dove for the poker, but I wasn’t fast enough.
The blade plunged into my side, and I could only do one thing.
Scream.