36. Chapter 36 #2
Rafe groans from the passenger seat as Adela keeps pressure against the wound near his neck and shoulder, blood staining the front of her jacket while snow melts across her hair from where she leaned out searching for Emma.
It isn’t long before we pull into the mansion’s driveway, skidding to a halt right in front of the massive front doors.
“We should get him inside,” Kieran says sharply, glancing down the road. “Now.”
Heather shakes her head. “Don’t touch him.”
Nico looks at her. “Heather—”
“I mean it.” Her voice turns frighteningly firm. “If we move him wrong right now, he’ll bleed out before the ambulance gets here.”
The word “ambulance” smacks us all in the face. Reality, consequences, police…everything we’ve been outrunning is finally catching up to us.
Heather looks up at me then, and despite the tears filling her eyes, her expression hardens. “Go do what you need to do. I’m sorry that it has to be quick.”
I nod once, understanding precisely what she means.
Emma reaches for me, her cold fingers wrapping around my wrist as I turn back toward the mansion looming through the snowfall.
Rafe leans back against the seat with a grimace, blood loss draining the color from his face. “Take care of it,” he says quietly. “We could take him to the cabin if you’d like to take your time.”
All I can do is shake my head. If he wasn’t injured so badly…then maybe. But honestly, I want to rip Alexei to fucking shreds. So a few minutes is really all I need.
Rafe smiles. “Wish I could join you in there, but this is yours.”
I don’t answer, because if I speak right now, I might lose control before I even get back inside. My entire body is vibrating with the rage of everything I’ve fucking lost.
Emma follows close behind me as we run through the snow toward the mansion again, while the cold air tears through my lungs.
Alexei is awake when we walk through the basement door. He lifts his head the second I step inside, chains rattling against the concrete wall behind him. Blood streaks down his face from where I beat him earlier, but his eyes are still sharp, still trying to calculate a way out of this.
“Where is Vlad?” he demands.
I stop a few feet away from him, breathing hard. “I don’t know.”
Something flickers across his face.
“But your men are dead,” I continue quietly. “Every single fucking one of them.”
His jaw tightens, and the confidence falters just enough for me to see the terrified man underneath the monster. And suddenly, he looks pathetic. Which is insane, considering he was once the most horrifying thing in the world to me.
“Where’s her photo?” I ask, my voice lethally calm.
He spits blood and saliva toward me, but I step aside before it can touch me. A slow smile pulls at my mouth as I reach inside my jacket. The moment I pull the item out, both of them go still.
The mask.
White marred with flecks of dried blood. A relic from the darkest months of my fucking life.
I lift it and slide it over my face, and the world narrows like it always did. For a moment, I glance at Emma, and she flinches.
This is the thing that almost took me from her. The demon Alexei carved from addiction, violence, and obedience. The version of me that learned how to bleed and kill for other people and call it fucking purpose.
I hate what this mask represents. I even hate how easily it still fits me. But tonight, it serves one final purpose.
“Make it fucking hurt,” the distorted voice whispers inside my head.
My lip twitches. I turn back to the bastard who created it, then I drive my fist into his face. “Where. The fuck. Is it?”
That gets him to nod toward a black leather jacket slung over a metal chair. So I dig through the pockets and find that beautiful photo.
Emma tenses again.
“It’s okay,” I say softly, brushing my fingers over her cheek. “I’m alright, Em.”
She nods, checking her phone. “Fifteen minutes, and we need to be out of here.”
Fifteen minutes isn’t nearly enough for what I want to do to this motherfucker. But my best friend is dying.
I glance toward the table beside him and spot the shock device resting exactly where it had been left. The second my hand closes around it, Alexei’s composure cracks completely.
He inhales sharply, portraying genuine fear.
I stop in front of him, holding Emma’s photo in front of his face. “Look.”
He avoids it; instead, he glares at me.
With a sudden movement, I snatch his chin, forcing his gaze to the photo. “Good boy.”
The first electric shock rips through him the moment he sees it. His raw scream ricochets off the basement walls. His body jerks hard against the chains, muscles seizing.
Just like mine did.
Emma stands silently behind me, one arm wrapped tightly around herself while she watches. But now her face is less scared and more…ready. She wants him to die just as much as I do. I electrocute him again. And again. Each scream sounds different than the last. Less…human.
Is that how I sounded?
The smell of burned skin begins to taint the air while blood drips steadily from Alexei’s mouth onto the concrete beneath him.
“You know what the funny part is?” I ask softly, crouching in front of him while he gasps for breath. “You spent months trying to turn me into your perfect weapon.” I grab his jaw and to force him to look at me. “And now look at you.”
His eyes blaze with hatred. “You are nothing without me.”
I laugh, a loud hysterical burst of sound. “What?” I tilt my head slightly. “I can’t hear you through the blood, motherfucker.”
Then I hit him again.
My fist collides with his jaw hard enough to split my knuckles. Blood sprays across the floor as his head snaps sideways before I grab him again and slam him back into the wall.
Rage surges upward too fast after that. For a second, I lose myself again. I’m barely even aware of the sounds coming out of me anymore as I keep hitting him, years of pain and humiliation and conditioning collapsing into the brutal and uncontrollable fucking thing on attack mode.
“Jude.” Emma’s voice cuts through it softly.
My bloody fist freezes midair.
I inhale sharply, chest heaving as reality slams back into place around me. The basement comes back into focus. I close my eyes briefly, dragging in one hard breath before looking back at Alexei.
He’s barely recognizable now. Blood pours from his mouth and nose, streaking down the front of his shirt while the chains hanging from the wall keep him upright more than his own body does. One of his eyes is already swelling shut, and every breath coming out of him sounds wet and broken.
But he’s still looking at me. Still trying to hold onto whatever power he thinks he has left. “You’ll never escape me,” he rasps, words barely audible through his partially broken jaw. “Even if I’m long dead. You will never enjoy a life where I don’t haunt your fucking dreams.”
The words would have destroyed me once. Now, they barely fucking touch me. I step closer slowly, my boots scraping against the concrete floor.
Emma stays near, watching me with exhausted eyes that still somehow manage to calm me.
I thought, perhaps a thousand goddamn times in this basement, that I’d lost her forever.
That I’d lost any chance for a real life again.
But looking at her now, I see everything I could ever want.
She’s…my home. The only thing that can calm whatever demon Alexei dragged out from the depths of me.
I stop directly in front of him. “You know what your problem was?” I ask quietly.
Alexei laughs weakly through blood, but he doesn’t offer an answer.
A faint smile pulls at my mouth, but there’s nothing warm in it. “Your problem is that you spent so much time turning people into weapons that you forgot weapons eventually stop giving a fuck who they’re pointed at.”
Something flickers across his face then, and I’m satisfied to see that there’s real fear in it. Because he finally understands that he won’t walk out of here alive.
I grab him by the front of his shirt and yank him forward hard enough to rattle the chains bolted into the wall behind him. His breath catches painfully as I lean closer, my voice dropping lower. “You took everything from me,” I say. “You almost killed Micah. You put your hands on Emma.”
Every word comes out sharper and more unhinged.
“And now you get to die knowing you failed.”
He tries to pull against the restraints, but there’s nowhere left for him to go. His breathing is picking up like they all do when they realize that their lives are about to fucking end. He spits blood at my feet. “You think killing me changes what you are, boy? What I fucking made you?”
I stare at him for a long moment. “No,” I admit softly. “But it means the last thing you ever created is the one that ends you. The demon is finally choosing who to sink its teeth into. Poetic, isn’t it? The creation killing its creator?”
The knife slides from the sheath at my side in one smooth motion, the blade catching the light as Alexei’s eyes widen in terror. I drive the blade into him hard enough to force a broken gasp from his lungs, burying it deep beneath his ribs while blood spills hot across my hand.
His body flinches against the chains. But I don’t stop. I fucking can’t. I rip the knife free and drive it back into him again. And again. Each impact forces another horrible sound out of him while blood spurts onto the floor.
I wish I had more time. I need him to feel pain. I need him to fucking suffer.
“You,” I snarl, slamming him back against the wall between strikes, “do not get to hurt me anymore.”
Alexei’s strength begins failing fast after that. His head tips forward.
But I’m not done yet.
I grab his jaw roughly, forcing him to look at me one final time. Blood runs down my hand now, dripping onto the floor between us.
“You lost,” I tell him quietly.