Nocticadia

CHAPTER 68 #2

The blade trembled in his hands as he held it outstretched.

His eyes shifted with unseen images, as if memories came flooding in too fast to keep up.

The hard edge of his jaw loosened, at the same time his brows turned up.

Jaw trembling, he lowered his weapon and let out a pained growl that echoed over the clang of his fallen blade.

Palms clamped over his ears, he whispered the string of words again.

I lurched forward and wrangled him into a tight embrace.

A harsh blow struck my chest as he tried to push me off, and fuck, my shoulder felt like it was on fire, but I didn’t let go of him.

I held firm, while he snarled and growled like a cornered dog, pushing and clawing for escape.

A searing burn licked my flesh where he dug his fingers into me, both of our muscles locked and trembling in paralysis–a balance of two opposing forces.

Until, at last, he relented.

He let out a pained sound and gripped my arms. “Fuck! Fuck!”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He finally broke.

I fought tears as I held him, listening to the sounds of agony that broke from his chest. Whatever he’d been through had ravaged his mind, no differently than the parasites that infected my victims. It was clear to me that he’d somehow been brainwashed into thinking I was his enemy.

That I was somehow responsible for what he’d suffered.

Whoever had taken my brother had broken him into an animal. A cold and callous machine.

He quieted again, and when he lowered his hands from my arms on a shaky exhale, I released him.

I fell to the side, against the wall.

We stayed that way, in silence, for a minute or two, while I wrapped my head around what the fuck could’ve happened to him to make him this way.

He daubed the blood from his nose with the back of his hand, smearing it over his upper lip.

I yanked the sheet covering the console table next to me and slid it across to him, using the other end of it to daub some of the blood from my shoulder.

“D’you get shot?” he asked, wiping the blood from his lip with the corner of the sheet.

“Lippincott.”

“His trigger finger is pinned to the wall of his office, next to his ears.” He drew his knee up, resting his elbow there. “He held a gun to my head once. Told me he’d put a bullet between my ears.”

“Tell me what happened to you.”

Twitching again, he rubbed the top of his skull. “So much of that day, with you, is gone now. Things I remember come to me in flashes. Like flickering scenes of a movie.”

“Someone kept you imprisoned. Who was it?”

“Angelo had me chained up in some abandoned building somewhere.” His voice carried an aimless drawl, as if his mind were lost to memories. “Lippincott showed up. Told him our father refused to make the deal. So, Lippincott told him to get rid of me.”

Frowning, I tried to imagine the level of betrayal Caed must’ve felt. The hopelessness. “You should’ve let the parasites kill him slowly.”

He shook his head. “Couldn’t take a chance he’d live. I vowed to kill them all.” He swiped up his blade and pressed the tip of it into his palm, toying with it, which drew my attention to scars even there. His entire hand was riddled with them.

“No way Angelo let you walk. What happened?”

“I was sold to some rich prick out of Massachusetts.” He stared off, as if his mind had taken him back to that day. “He was part of a sadistic group. A society of rich and powerful men, like The Rooks. Only they weren’t academics. They made sport of torturing people.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, hesitating to ask more. But I needed to know. I needed to understand what he’d suffered. Even if I had to live it myself. “They tortured you.”

“It was him, mostly. But I didn’t break as easily. I had this crazy fucking notion that I was going to get out of it. That I’d escape.” He snorted and drew a bead of blood on his palm, where he continued to toy with the knife. “He saw that as a challenge.”

“He brainwashed you.”

He pressed his forehead against his bicep and breathed deeply, as though he needed a moment to collect himself before answering.

Something told me this was the part that’d messed him up.

The stretch of his history where everything had changed for him.

“He found out I had a twin,” he said, lifting his head again.

“At first, he told me he was going to find you and sell you to those sadist pricks. When that didn’t seem to work on my psyche, he began to feed me lies.

Not outright. It was a slow-drip feed.” Frantically rubbing the back of his neck, he inhaled hard through his nose.

He twitched and grunted, fighting some invisible force inside of him.

“He’d go for days without feeding me anything else.

I’d get delirious, seeing shit. He started invading my dreams with images of you siding with Lippincott.

Worse things than that, too.” His voice cracked, and he shook his head. “I can’t even think about that shit.”

Part of me wanted to know what could’ve been worse than betrayal, but the other part of me thought it better left alone. Fuck. No wonder he wanted to kill me. He must’ve thought I’d conspired against him all these years.

“When I finally gave up the idea of trying to escape, he began to reward me.” His voice held a tight clip of disgust. “Like a fucking dog. Little by little, he fed my loyalty to him. To them . It wasn’t long before I forgot who the hell I was.

That’s when he made me kill for him. I became his protector. His guard dog.”

I thought back to the report I’d been given, about him having murdered the businessman back in Massachusetts. “You killed him?”

The repulsion on his face faded for a gratified smile. “Killing sounds merciful for what I did to him.”

“Why now? After all these years?”

“A few weeks back, I attended a meeting with him. Some bigwig pharmaceutical CEO. Another member of Schadenfreude.”

Schadenfreude . I knew the word to mean something about pleasure from another’s suffering. Must’ve been the name of the society he’d mentioned earlier.

“He’d met with Lippincott about buying some research for a breakthrough treatment.

” Goddamn. The shady deal The Rooks had gotten wind of a while back.

The conniving bastard was behind that the whole time, and he’d let Darrows take the fall for it.

Eyes still spacey, Caed shook his head. “Soon as I heard that name, something snapped inside my head.” He rubbed his skull back and forth.

“It hooked my fucking guts, and I couldn’t let it go.

It brought to mind Angelo and the pricks who’d swiped me up.

I couldn’t fucking see past this blinding rage.

For the first time since I was seventeen, I wanted to kill them all. ”

“You pretended to be me to get close to Lippincott.”

“Imagine my surprise when I found Barletta in that cell, too. Then you delivered Angelo, and it was like Christmas fucking morning.”

“You planned to kill me, too,” I dared to say aloud.

Lips snarled and trembling, he lowered his gaze. “I don’t know what I would’ve done. That’s what scares me.”

“And now?”

“I’m trying to flush it down the mental fucking toilet over here, so let’s just move on, okay?”

I snorted at that. Then chuckled. My chuckle became laughter, and when I looked over at Caed, he was laughing, too.

The laughing became hysterical, a release of something I couldn’t even pinpoint exactly, but it felt good.

Purgative. I laughed until I was wiping tears across my arm, and it died down to quiet again.

Both of us stared off.

“Remember when we were kids, and dad would lock you in that closet? You’d hear voices talking to you?” he asked, his tone calmer than before, sounding more and more like my brother.

“Yeah.”

“What’d they tell you?”

I pulled my knee up, resting my elbow atop it. “They told me to run. To get as far away from our father as I could.”

“But you didn’t. You stayed, and you endured every punch he threw at you.” Sniffing, he thumbed at his nose. “When they threw me in that dank, cold fucking cell, I heard a voice, too.”

“What did it say to you?”

“It told me to stay alive and to kill them all. But it wasn’t the voice of dead people. It was your voice I heard.”

Brows pulled tight, I swallowed down the emotions constricting my throat.

“I wouldn’t have killed you. I wouldn’t have killed my own blood.” His throat bobbed, and he pushed to his feet, holstering his knife again, as I stood up from the floor.

“So, what happens now?” I asked, rubbing the muscles around the bullet wound that ached like a bitch. “You plan to stay here on Dracadia?”

Weary eyes held the vacancy of a man who’d fulfilled his vengeance and hadn’t thought what would come after. “This place, this life, isn’t for me. I never wanted it.” Those bleak words wrapped around my lungs and squeezed the breath out of me.

“You’re leaving, then.”

“Yes.”

I lowered my gaze to stave off the agony threatening to rip me apart all over again. “Where will you go?”

“Don’t know. Away.”

I shook my head, my jaw tightening with stubborn protest. “You can’t leave. Now that I know you’re alive …”

“I need to figure shit out, Dev. My head isn’t right.”

“There’s money. Plenty of it. I can set up an account.”

“I don’t need your money. I need to find a reason to live again.”

Gaze lowered, I rubbed my hands together and released an uneasy breath.

It troubled me that he needed to get away from me to set himself straight.

I didn’t want to think about what he might do at the end of that journey.

What he might find there. I hoped there’d be enough to keep him from deciding he was better off dead, but I knew that pain.

I’d clung to that rope once myself, feeling my grip loosen.

“If it’s time you need, then go. But for fucks sake, Caed, promise me you’ll come back if it gets too heavy for you.

Because …” Scowling, I blinked back tears. “I won’t lose you again.”

After a moment of stillness, he scratched the back of his head and strode toward the door, but came to a stop beside me. With what seemed like reluctance, he held out his hand.

I reached for him, and the moment his palm hit mine, I pulled him in for a tight hug, holding him against me. An image flashed through my mind: lying on the floor, bleeding out of my skull after my father had struck me too hard, and Caedmon’s arms wrapped tight around me, telling me I’ll be okay .

Impervious .

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “If you stay, I swear to Christ I’ll protect you this time.”

He gave one hard squeeze. “You let him convince you of his lies, Brother. You were never weak. Not to me.”

I gripped the back of his neck, not willing to let go.

At the sound of the door, I lifted my gaze to see Lilia standing there, her eyes wide as she took in the two of us. “Oh. God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …. You were taking a while, and I got worried–”

“I was just leaving.” Caed released me and, with determined strides, kept on toward her, grinding to a halt beside her. “You’re about the feistiest little fox I’ve ever met,” he said and leaned into her, whispering something in her ear that I couldn’t make out.

With a smile, she lowered her gaze and nodded.

A quick kiss to her cheek, and he glanced back at me.

While his comment earlier was likely nothing more than an attempt to piss me off, I still felt a wire of tension in my muscles having seen his lips on her.

“Give my best to Chairman Winthrop.” The tone of his voice carried a threat.

“If he even thinks to retaliate, I’ll have reason to return. ”

“I suspect he’s reeling from humiliation right now,” I said, as Lilia padded across the room to my side and slipped her arm in mine. “Take care of yourself. Maybe send some proof of life every now and then. And Caed … if you ever need me. I’m here.”

His brow flickered, but he said nothing in response.

And with the click of the door, he was gone.

“Are you okay?” Lilia asked, giving a squeeze of my hand.

“I will be.” I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed her knuckles. “What did he say to you?”

“He just said that I was too beautiful to fret over this scar. And that I should look out for you because you’re all he has left.”

Brows pinched, I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “He’s right. You’re far too beautiful.”

“Do you think you’ll ever see him again?”

“I don’t know.”