Chapter 16
Quill
Islam the door shut, taking in the decrepit box that Josh calls his car.
“What?” he says defensively, guessing at my thoughts. “It’s not like you could keep Logan’s car. Or your bike.”
“I agreed to switching those out. I didn’t agree to this motherfucking death trap.”
“They probably know your bike,” Josh insists. “You wouldn’t get very far with it. No one would suspect a Devil soldier who’s raking in the dinero to drive this beat-up contraption.”
“That’s for sure,” I agree, ignoring his cringy way with words. “Anyway, let’s go.”
I settle back in my seat, trying to show a confidence I’m far from feeling.
I didn’t follow Logan’s advice, because fuck him if he thinks I would stand idly by with my girl locked up in Devil Tower.
But a little worm of worry pricks at the back of my mind as I wonder if I’m not, after all, making a big mistake.
I force away the uncomfortable thought as Josh pushes the pedal to the floor and we drive away from his home in Carlton to Astley.
“We’ll stop by my apartment first,” I plan. “I have all my Devil gear, so we can figure out what to do next. Also, Liam and Dane may just be there.”
I don’t finish that thought, because I don’t want to upset Josh. But if they do happen to be around, well…
Torturing people always helps me think.
I’m already envisioning tying them upside down, nicking their skin in enough places that their blood slowly drips out into a pail below.
I’d carve bits of their flesh off every time I was struggling to come up with the next part of the plan.
But I wouldn’t kill them yet. I’d finish the job once I got Piper back.
I spend some time in my head, picturing the torture, before startling awake when I notice Josh staring at me quizzically.
“Eyes on the road,” I admonish. “Otherwise I’ll take the wheel.”
“You, uh…” He clears his throat. “You don’t know what they did, then?”
I don’t need to ask him for clarification. I know who he’s talking about, and I stare at him in utter surprise. “Do you?”
“Yeah.” He turns bright red. “Well, Piper told me.”
My stare has turned glowering. “Did she, now?”
Josh is looking a little nervous, dabbing at his forehead with his hand. I guess I still have it in me to scare people. I’d started to wonder, lately.
“Yeah, bro, if we’re talking about the same—”
Or not.
“Bro?”
“Right, sorry man—”
He shuts up when he sees my furious glare.
“When did she tell you?” I ask, going back to the main subject at hand. The subject of Josh apparently having learned about what happened to Piper before I did.
“When we saw them,” he answers feebly. “Are we… are we talking about the same thing?”
“I’m pretty sure we are,” I snap. “When the hell did you see them?”
“When we…” He blushes hard. “When we were at the sub-sub basement level. The Devil soldiers’ headquarters.”
He cringes in his seat as he takes in my expression, clearly regretting having ever brought it up.
“And how did you know where the Devil soldiers headquarters were?”
“I didn’t,” he explains, now sweating profusely. “Piper seemed to.”
I swallow the painful lump in my throat, remembering the details on that picture. It showed one of those small nooks that I know branch out from the main assembly room. The one where we all gather for meetings and training. And also where the soldiers have the orgies I’ve never once attended.
But it suddenly occurs to me she must have found her way there during an orgy. Those little nooks are only ever open then, each with a single bed and for a single purpose.
“Did Piper… say anything else?” I question, remembering my reaction to her trying to open up.
She’s not here to confide in me now, but somehow, it feels like I’m paying penance by questioning Josh. Though, as I lick my dry lips, I wonder if I can handle knowing more about the rape.
“We-e-ll…” Josh hesitates, glancing up at me. “I guess, since we’re in this together, we shouldn’t keep secrets. Right?”
I’m too anxious and sick to my stomach to even care about the fact that Josh is talking like we’re third-grade besties on the playground. It’s all I can do to grit out, “Right.”
“I’m not sure Piper is aware of… what exactly she told me when she was having her panic attack.” He makes a grimace, like he’s worried about betraying her.
It’s not possible to betray her to me, since I own her, body, soul and memories. But before I can say so, his full sentence registers. “She has panic attacks?”
He nods. “We were at the Devil soldiers headquarters when she had a panic attack after seeing your, uhm, friends. Liam and Dane. She was struggling to breathe, and crying and stuff. And mumbling your name. I felt so bad because I couldn’t do a thing to help.
My heart twists in my chest, as I realize everything she endured, and how she had to suffer through it all alone. I would do anything right now to have her back in my arms. To hold my baby to me and make it okay.
I manage to repress a small shiver. But my world feels very cold and desolate without her in it.
Josh must understand how I feel from my expression, because he doesn’t wait for me to ask more questions.
Instead, he volunteers, “Apart from, uh, your name, she said something else repeatedly. It was clear after that she had no idea she’d said anything, so I never mentioned it to her. But it kind of freaked me out.”
“What?” I hiss between my teeth as he pauses.
“She, uh…” He swallows. “She kept saying, ‘They saw. They all saw. Everyone saw.’”
I’m seized by a sudden, violent gagging fit. I keel over, clutching my stomach and gasping. Luckily, I didn’t eat a thing today, or I’d be painting the floor of Josh’s car with my vomit. I press my head between my legs, doubled over, shuddering with my need for oxygen.
“You okay, bro? I mean… uhm…”
“I’m fine,” I wheeze at last, sitting back, furiously rubbing my eyes with a hand.
They saw. Everyone saw.
I know exactly what that means.
I had my doubts before, but it’s like my mind has been doing mental gymnastics to try to keep myself from accepting what is impossible to deny.
Every single fucking Devil soldier saw what happened to her that night.
I’ve never been to one of their stupid orgies, but I’ve spent enough time down there to know how it’s all set up.
I’ve been down there the morning after, getting my contracts from Tragen while trying to keep my gaze turned away from the soldiers and the girls walking around in various states of undress.
The nooks are just that. Nooks, not rooms. Tragen once said they’d been set up to give some of the guys the illusion of privacy. But they don’t hide a fucking thing. You can still see it all from the main room.
Even if she didn’t make a sound—and I know my cricket enough to realize that as talkative as she usually is, in a traumatic moment like that, she probably wouldn’t—they would have seen her walk in.
They would have seen her get drugged. They would have known she was incapable of consenting to whatever happened to her.
And they would have seen her go back out, in what I can only assume to be a state of extreme shock.
They all knew. Every single one of those Devil soldiers. All eight-fucking-nine of them. None of them would stay away from an orgy.
In the best case scenario, they knew, and just didn’t care. In the worst… they were complicit.
And then there’s Tragen.
My heart twists anew. I can barely manage to wrap my head around this new level of betrayal. He must have known too. Even if he wasn’t there when it happened, he had the cameras set up. He saw the whole fucking thing.
And he captured a single, incriminating frame, to show me.
To trick me into blaming the woman who suffered through the worst thing imaginable, for her own rape.
To trick me into killing her for it.
I can’t even begin to understand it all.
I’m back to being hunched over, helplessly struggling to emerge from the stifling darkness that has descended on me.
“Hey,” says Josh uncertainly. “Are you, uhm… is there anything I can do?”
I shake my head, forcing myself to breathe slowly. I need to get to Piper. I need to hold her. I need to make it okay. If I even have the power to make it okay. I must have that power.
It’s not just about convincing her to stay anymore. Her pain rents its way through my heart. Suddenly, her suffering is more important than anything else. Far more important than needing her to forgive me. Far more important than needing her in my arms.
I sit back up abruptly, my body tense with resolve.
There’s literally nothing that could stop me now.
“Let’s find those fuckers. Let’s find them, and motherfucking kill them all. Every single last fucking one of them. They are dead. They just don’t know it yet.”
“But first, Piper,” cuts in Josh.
“Yes. Piper.” I clench my fists. “She comes first. She always comes first.”
Josh pulls up in front of my apartment building, and I’m out before the car is even parked. He rushes after me as I press the button to the elevator to the penthouse floor.
I unlock the door, ready to grab my gear and do… I have no fucking clue what.
But my head is throbbing with a desperate need for revenge.
They knew. They all fucking knew.
First, I’m going to get to Devil Tower. I’m going to find Piper and kill everyone who gets in my way. No, I’m going to kill everyone, period.
I don’t even know what I’ll do if it’s too late. It can’t be too late. I won’t allow myself to even think it could be.
Then, I’ll find Liam and Dane. I’ll invent new levels of pain. Pain the human body had never yet been capable of.
When I’ve left their quivering, pathetic piles of flesh, I will hunt for the others. Every single last fucking one of the eighty-nine Devil soldier. I will make them all beg for death.
And they will die, slowly and painfully. But it kills me to know that their pain could never rival my cricket’s, my Piper who was destroyed by two men who convinced her that the boy she loved was responsible.
And then, by the dozens of soldiers in the room who turned a blind eye to the defiling of an innocent girl. My innocent girl.
I’m so blinded by my anguished rage that I don’t even pay attention when I walk into my living room. A soldier always pays attention. It’s hammered into you from the day you start training.
On your guard, soldier!
But my eyes have been unfocused, unseeing, while I was spiraling in painful thoughts. Josh of all people is the first person who notices something is wrong.
“Shit,” he groans, and I know we’re fucked before I even look up.
There’s a gun cocked straight at me.
The living room is filled with soldiers. There must be at least twenty of them. Amongst them are Liam and Dane, and it takes all I have not to hurdle toward them, killing them on the spot.
What stops me is the gun in my face.
It’s being held by… Tragen.