Chapter 33 #2
Now that I had a minimal amount of magic again, my body immediately began to heal. My swollen lids grew lighter, allowing me to peek them open. The light blinked in and out constantly, giving me glimpses of a girl across from me with light purple hair.
“I love you, big brother,” she whispered, her voice quivering in the flickering light. With a sniffle, she added through the tears sliding down her cheeks, “Go be free.”
I tilted my head, knitting my brows as I wracked my jumbled brain. Brother? I suddenly didn’t want to feed from her anymore, knowing on an intuitive level this was wrong.
Sensing my sudden aversion, my essence dug deeper into hers, needing more. The elation consumed me, sending me into a frenzy. I slipped away into the exhilaration as I absorbed her life force to sustain mine.
I groaned as I felt my Elemental magic begin to finally awaken, continuing to pull and pull from her aura.
She choked on a gasp, her eyes widening and clutching the center of her chest, her cheeks drenched in her tears. “I love you, Chrome,” she wept, crashing to her knees.
Unable to stop, I kept draining her aura, but my gut twisted in future regret.
The girl slumped to the side, sprawling to the floor.
Multiple hands wrapped around my throat and arms. The pain of a fist pummeling my cheek hardly fazed me. My only reaction to the slice of a blade driving into my gut was to snatch it free from my body with my element and plunge into my attacker’s throat.
Others rushed me, desperate to slap the bracelets back on my wrists to lock me down. Fuck that. Without slowing my replenishment, I used my Kinetic power to unleash pulses from my body, blasting my attackers several feet back. No way was I going back in chains.
I felt Grim’s Kinetic power try to restrain me, to cancel me out, but I was too strong. Untethered as I was, he stood no chance of stopping me.
I kept draining the girl until there was nothing left; her hair lay in a lavender puddle on the floor. Grim knelt at her side, screaming and shaking her lifeless form.
The girl’s essence embedded in my own, weaving in to strengthen my power. Blips of her memories rolled through my head like a reel.
A younger version of her as a child, tackling me to the floor, and in her excitement at the achievement, she lost focus. I flipped her on her back and pinned her down triumphantly. The little scowl and the pouty lips had a childlike chuckle coming from my chest.
“No!” I cried, my body going cold.
Another memory, this one seeming more recent, gutted me, sending my heart into freefall.
Peri looked to the ceiling. “It’s going to be okay, Brother.”
I chuckled, not amused. “You keep saying that…”
“It fucking will…” Determination hardened her voice as if she willed herself to believe it as well.
My ears buzzed, drowning out everything else in the room as the memories battered me like I’d just unleashed one of my own pulses on myself.
I shook my head in denial, her memories kick-starting the return of my own. The reality of what I’d just done, stealing my newfound air right from my lungs. My fingers curled around the roots of my hair as I gaped in horror at my lifeless sister before me, unable to blink away the sight.
Peri. No. No. No. No. It was just a horrible hallucination. A nightmare. No, there’s no way that I—
More hands tried to grasp me, but I released my Kinetic power again, sending bigger pulses from my body, tossing them all back against the wall.
I jumped to my feet, my body still injured and weak, only for a blast of heat to singe my skin.
I locked onto the aura that it came from, pulling and absorbing it.
Careful not to deplete it, I stumbled in the direction of the tragedy before me.
More attacks, physical and magical, flew at me in all directions. Unbothered, I slapped my enemies’ weapons away or stabbed their blade into their bodies, then fed from their auras. It would take a lot to fully replenish, but I felt like a cornered lion, ready to maul anyone who came near.
I needed to see for myself that this was real. Or maybe it wasn’t. Gods, I prayed it wasn’t real.
Staggering to Peri’s body on the floor, my legs gave out. I couldn’t breathe, my heart thrashing a vibrant beat in my chest.
“You fucking killed her!” Grim yelled from beside me. I didn’t even see him when I approached. “You weren’t supposed to kill her!”
I slowly tilted my head to face him. The vein in my forehead throbbed, my body flushing hot with a bottomless rage. I clenched my jaw, threatening to shatter my teeth. My nostrils flared and my hands shook with the need to be violent. So, I obliged.
I lashed my hand out to clutch his throat, yanking him close to my face. “I wish it’d been you,” I rasped out. “It will be you next.” Hot moisture burned a wake of fire down my cheeks.
I stood, taking Grim’s throat with me and bashed his head into the wall, just to watch him collapse at my feet.
King Forest was nowhere to be found. Of course not. He’d set a fire and watched it burn, only to abandon it when the flames raged into an inferno, leaving the destruction for others to deal with in the aftermath.
More guards charged me, but I continued to pulse blasts at them through the palm of my hand to ward them off, turning my attention to my sister. “Peri,” I whispered, sliding an arm under her limp body. “Wake up.”
Her skin burned my gilded fingers with its iciness.
“You can’t—no. We’re a team, remember?” I brushed a lock of hair from her face, and my throat clogged as sobs erupted, threatening to crush me.
Peri’s body shook in my arms; the shame and guilt of what I’d done consumed me into a black chasm.
I remembered Forest’s words from just before she walked in, “And you’re about to see for yourself just how much of a monster you truly are. ”
Oh, gods. “What have I done?” I sobbed to the ceiling, continuing to launch blasts at incoming guards trying to steal my moment with my sister.
A blade flew at me from behind; my element sensed it, knocking it off course and launching it back at the guard who’d thrown it. The thud that followed told me it landed true.
I continued to absorb fractions of the guards’ auras around me, fueling me while I pulled from the electricity for my Kinetic magic.
Bending over while clutching my baby sister’s lifeless body to my chest, I cried into her hair, breathing in her scent for the final time. No way could this be the last time I’d ever hug her again. “I was supposed to protect you!”
I remembered her walking into the room and her distraught voice screaming for someone to help me. Her face was still wet from her own tears. But it was the vague memory of her saying, “Take from me” that razed what remained of her brother.
Peri had sacrificed herself to save me. She knew I’d heal, giving me my best chance of escape. “Go be free.” Her ultimate act of protecting me, when it should’ve been the other way around.
A raw, guttural cry ripped from my throat, aimed at the sky.
My grief and rage erupted into the room—a blast exploding from my chest—this one much bigger than the last. The pulse rocked into the interrogation room’s cement walls, reverberations ricocheting against them.
The building rattled, causing bits of stone to crumble to the floor.
My chest seized, an unrelenting force driving dull spikes in my chest, suffocating me. I’d have taken an Elemental dagger to the heart instead of this pain. Those wounds healed. This one would be permanent.
I didn’t know how much time had passed as I stayed with Peri, holding her against me.
The icy air in the interrogation room chilled my tears, which had drenched her hair and the skin on her neck.
At last, I forced myself to lay her back down on the floor with care, as if she were the most precious, breakable glass.
“I will kill every last one of them,” I gritted out.
“I promise you.” Leaning forward, I pressed my trembling lips to the frosty skin on her forehead.
“I love you, Peri.” I sniffled. “Please know”—I swallowed, my throat cinched tight—“that the Chrome you loved died with you.” My voice broke at the end. “So please forgive me.”
Setting her down on the floor, I closed my eyes and focused on my body. Torture was much preferable to the internal beating I suffered from what I’d just done. What I’d done to one of two people I had sworn my life to protect at all costs. I’d failed her. I more than failed her.
I fucking killed her.
Closing my eyes, I went to that dark void within myself, snuffing out my thoughts and emotions like a flickering flame. I’d just killed my sister; I didn’t give a fuck about anyone else.
My lids raised, the lights in the interrogation room still winking in and out from my Kinetic essence feeding from it. I scanned the room for the first time since arriving. Guards littered the floor. Some lay unmoving while others stirred, preparing for another attack.
My body still hadn’t fully healed—some bones still needed to set, but I didn’t care. The pain was my only indication that I was alive, and this wasn’t some fucked-up dream or hallucination from the delirious states Grim and Forest induced me into.
I sensed the energies in the room, determining the strength of their magic. Ignoring the stab wounds and disfigured organs beneath my flesh, I scanned the area, assessing the threats.
A Kinetic guard with emerald hair met my empty stare, challenging me with terror quivering in his eyes.
I sneered and then turned my attention to the next guard, who rose from the floor. He seemed familiar, but I couldn’t care less who he was. Anyone remaining in this room meant me harm. Never again would I let myself be chained.
I was my own godsdamn weapon, owned by no one.