Chapter 39
He wouldn’t look at me.
Dig arched forward as if the world sat too heavy on his shoulders and he supported the crippling weight of it.
His tousled black hair swept down his cheeks and across his forehead and he hid his face in the makeshift curtain.
He became a snail going into its shell. Funny to see such a man who stole lives with a natural ease to fold into his weaponed body.
At first, I assumed he was frightened, but I knew already Dig Graves did not feel such impotent fear. There was no tremble. He curled down and away, ripping his head to the side to keep his face detained from my sight.
“Dig,” I beckoned him.
“What’s wrong little brother?” Slash bent to catch Dig’s shameful hunch. “You don’t want to look up?”
“Little brother?” I repeated.
The two words coiled in my head, prodding questions, and I looked up to Slash for the answers. The asshole was far too transfixed on Dig to care about my presence and confusion, licking his lower lip.
“Brother?” I directed this to Dig. “He’s your brother?”
No answer came from him either.
“Dig,” I tore out his name, irritated. “Look at me.”
Finally, he replied, “I don’t want to scare you.”
“You’ve broken into my bedroom at 2am, held a knife at my throat, kidnapped me, tied me up… I think we’re past terrifying each other.”
His chest heaved up and down as if he had run a marathon.
“What’s the point of hiding Diggy?” Slash reached out and picked a strand of Dig’s hair, slipping it back. “You don’t want people to know who you are? Why not, Diggy? You scared they’re not going to like you… not going to love you? Guess what little brother, they don’t love you. None of them can.”
Dig flinched in response.
Slash snorted a laugh at the flinch. “But I love you, Diggy.” He splayed out his arms to his comrades. “All our followers love us. They are the only people who ever will. Now, come on Diggy Dig, look up, show us those pretty eyes.”
“Fuck off.”
“Look up Diggy or I’ll make you look up. You know I will.”
Dig twitched, his head jerked to my direction. “Delphine.”
Him speaking my actual name grew flowers in my chest.
“Delphine.” He whispered it this time. “Don’t look at me, okay?”
Slash twisted his focus on me. His smile, a splintered crescent of amusement, grew wider, showing all his teeth. Those predatory eyes of his were highlighted with tattooed arrows. “Hm…why don’t you want her to see?”
“Slash—” Dig lost some of his caution, restraightening his shoulders. “Leave her out of this. If you even think of touching—”
“I’m the eldest.” Each word punctured like a pause as if he were trying to push them into Dig’s head. “Daddy put me in charge which means you listen to me.”
“Slash, please—”
Slash plunged his hand into Dig’s black curtain of hair and seized his cheeks. “Now show us those pretty eyes that Daddy gave you.”
He pulled up Dig’s face.
Black hair brushed past his cheeks and over Dig’s ears.
Slash lifted Dig’s chin into the air and held his face high as if he were holding a trophy.
Veins in Dig’s neck popped as he tried to restrain, his teeth clenched and gritted, his nostrils flared with silent rage as he was shown off like a groomed horse.
His entire face was revealed and every piece of him locked into perfect unity, showing his full portrait.
A strong jaw, high cheek bones, a nose that sloped to a rounded tip, a set of heavy brows and his eyes…
“Dig Graves, everyone!” Slash let go of Dig’s face and splayed out his arms to his audience of followers. “Look at him! Look at my little brother! Look at those pretty eyes!”
They did.
The cult of Soulless followers impelled themselves forward, tripping over their own feet, pushing at shoulders to catch a glance at Dig Graves and the eyes that had been entombed upon him from a Soulless madman.
I looked at Dig Graves, I looked at the mastery of his face he had done his best to keep concealed. I looked until I no longer blinked, my eyes going dry.
My heart thumped quicker.
A flutter of furious beats.
My chest ached from some unhindered emotion… what was this? Fear? I was not afraid. Yet, my heart was hammering against my ribcage.
I groaned, hunching forward, breathing through the sudden pain that brought my organ to palpitate.
“Delphine.”
I looked up through my hunch, through the strands of my hair. Dig bent down, his tied hands outstretched to me.
“Are you okay?” he asked, pure panic laced in those eyes of his. “What’s wrong?”
As soon as the question fell out of his mouth, he answered it alone, catching a glimpse of himself in a shard of a disco ball fractured on the concrete floor. He glared at the distorted reflection of himself and battled there in the torment of his mind.
He tore his face away.
“Fine,” Dig spat out the single word to his older brother. “You won, Slash, I’m here, everyone can see me—now what? Leave me alone. Let us go.”
Slash hitched into a gaudy giggle, took out a blade from his back pocket and waved it in front of Dig’s nose. “Now that you look like Daddy, you’re going to show us how you act like Daddy.”
Dig lost his fury, falling into brief confusion and then alarm. “What do you mean?”
“Kill her,” Slash said with venom in his voice.
I did not appreciate the blade pointed at me, nor being sat on a filthy concrete floor when I was pant-less, or that this lunatic and his baby duckling lunatics were causing a great hinderance to my reaching Tommy.
Also, the air down here was muddy with too many body odours, and I was absolutely certain this air was not being filtered appropriately. Also, I needed to urinate.
“Excuse me,” I said to Slash, seeing as he was the one in charge. “I don’t much like being here, may I leave now?”
“You’ll leave soon.” Slash grinned, exposing all canines. “In pieces, right after Dig shows us his dismembering skills on a De Astor body.”
It was very difficult to feel intimidated by someone in a sequined pink crop top and tight leather pants. “This seems a like a family problem, I don’t want to get involved.”
“Slash!” Dig’s chest heaved as he looked up at his older brother, unadorned fury on his face. “I’m not killing her.”
“Why not?” Slash asked, a giggle spewing from his throat. “I’ve seen you in action, you’re pretty good and you certainly enjoy it.”
“I’ve only killed people in the Battle because I had to. I don’t want to be Soulless.”
“You’re Soulless.” Slash cut loose Dig’s restraints, setting his hands free and sitting the blade in Dig’s palm.
“You kill her, Dig.” Slash patted his younger brother’s head.
“And if you don’t show us your talents then I’m going to torture her in front of you and then you’ll be the bad guy for not ending her misery. ”
Slash stepped to the side to watch.
Dig glared down at the blade. His fathers’ eyes in his face, widened at the weapon he had been given to end my life.
I picked something out of my teeth. Apple, I think. Did I eat an apple today? Oh, yes, I did, for breakfast.
Dig felt the weight of the blade in his hand, he looked to me, but not to my eyes, his face half-hidden in his black hair.
“Delphine.” His voice a shallow whisper, his shoulders hunched down, soaking with an invisible pain. “I’m not going to kill you.”
“Don’t worry.” I winked at him, finally getting the piece of apple out of my teeth. “I have a plan.”
“I also have a plan.”
“Mine’s better.”
“But—”
“Excuse, Mr Slash.” I waved to him with my tied hands. “You can’t kill me.”
Slash snorted out a laugh. “Why not?”
“My sweet aunty Beatrice just died.”
“Huh?”
I choked on a sob. “My aunty Beatrice, she died tragically, just the other day.”
Slash’s face fell. “Oh, I’m sorry. That’s sad to hear.”
Shuddering out a breath, I nodded. “She used to make me ginger cookies.”
Sympathy splashed across Slash Artery’s face. “Ah, shit.” He rubbed the back of his head. “That’s not good. Maybe we shouldn’t— ”
Dig enacted his own plan without forewarning, he jumped to his feet with the blade Slash Artery—the dumbest name—had given him and lunged for his older brother. Dig apprehended Slash with ease, holding the blade under his brother’s throat, keeping him hostage.
“Don’t move.” Dig growled in Slash’s ear. “If you do, I’ll cut deep.”
Slash laughed. “If you kill me, brother, they’ll all kill you.”
A whiff of fierce hostility immediately floated through the air and the crowd of Slash lovers snatched for their weapons, training their eyes on Dig.
“No, they won’t.” Dig grinned. “They’re going to kill you.”
It seemed as if Slash were about to laugh again, until his face burrowed into fear. “Don’t you dare.”
“Slash isn’t Soulless,” Dig announced to the room full of Soulless. “Slash has never been Soulless.”
“Shut up!” Slash rocked himself in Dig’s arms, trying to escape. “I’m Soulless.”
“He’s got a Soulmate,” Dig made his voice clear and proud, holding the knife under Slash’s throat.
“She’s a nice girl. Sweet, shy. Totally and completely unlike this dickwad.
” He ripped Slash around as he showed off his brother to the rest of the crowd.
“Her name is Shay, and she visits him in prison, regularly.”
“That bitch is not my Soulmate!” Slash squabbled under Dig’s grasp. “I hate her. I’m going to kill her. I don’t want her.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dig chuckled and used the blade to cut across the pink sequined crop top, exposing Slash’s chest. “Then why did you tattoo her name over your heart?”
Dig threw Slash away from him.
Slash stood in the centre of his followers, his naked chest exposed for all to see. There upon his heart in gentle cursive ink scrawled the name of the woman that no longer made him Soulless.
The crowd around us turned their focus away from Dig and I, their eyes alit with betrayal.
Dig snatched my arm. “We need to get out of here.”
We ran out of the circle while everyone else ran in.