Chapter 42 Scarlett #2
But I had a job to do, a message to deliver, so lying in this small bed hooked up to all these IVs wasn’t an option.
I waited until Doctor Manson left the room before I ripped everything off and forced myself to a sit, only to pause when I saw four paper roses sitting on the table by my bed.
Each rose was done a little differently, each out of a different colored paper. Pink, red, neon green, and black.
They had made those for me.
I immediately grabbed them and my rabbit, which had been laying right beside me, and forced my way out of bed.
My legs shook, and I still had to use objects around me to guarantee that I wouldn’t fall, but it didn’t detour me from heading straight for the elevator at the end of the seemingly endless hall.
I managed to get into the elevator before the doctor ran out, his wide eyes terrified and worried. “Scarlett, come back. You need to rest.”
But even if the doors hadn’t already been closing, I would have left anyway. If he wanted to treat me, he could do so in the office.
I had been asleep since I got in the back seat of that car, and when I woke up twenty minutes ago, it had only been the doctor and me, but I didn’t mind.
I knew everyone else was working or gone, waiting for the go-ahead to attack their church.
I knew it would take some time for me to be well enough to go after ours, but not as much time as the doctor probably wanted.
But I wasn’t going to sit around and wait to go after them. I wasn’t going to wait to find Azrael. We needed to find him now. We needed to go now.
They didn’t deserve to wait, to feel comfortable, to relax. I wanted them all to suffer. I wanted them all to be terrified to close their damn eyes. I wanted their existence to hurt.
It was painful, pushing open the door with my bandaged hand.
Everything was bandaged. Everything had been cleaned, stitched, looked over, disinfected.
Both hands were wrapped, my arms, my legs.
I was sure Doctor Manson had checked on my privates because even they felt a little bit better. My hair had been braided too.
Braided.
Which meant that…
My eyes found Alaric’s desk, finding him sitting at his computer, watching me as if he had been waiting for me to show up.
It was the first time I had felt even a slight bit of emotion since I left that house, but I felt it. The slight burn behind my eyes, the sudden need to swallow.
At least I could still feel something other than hatred.
He gave me the slightest nod before returning his attention to the screen. He was a man of few words, but everything he did say, whether with his hands or eyes, held more weight than anything spoken ever could.
That small nod said so many things.
“Good to see you.”
“You did great.”
“We’ll hunt them down and gut them like the savage parasites they are.”
“Welcome home.”
I watched him for a second longer when the sound of a scraping chair found my ears.
Havoc had gotten up, his caramel eyes familiar and warm, a soft smile gracing his naturally curved lips. “Hey, doll.”
I inhaled sharply, my throat closing, but as he hurried his steps, I couldn’t help but take a step back, my spine straightening, my entire body bracing for the threat that didn’t exist here. That had never existed here.
Havoc slowed to a stop, not even an ounce of hurt in his eyes, his smile warming. “Until you say,” he told me softly. “Glad to have you home.”
Glad to be home.
My eyes shifted to Bishop’s empty desk and back to Havoc quickly. Where was he? Was he in trouble? Did we need to go get him?
“He’s looking over the school,” Havoc answered the unasked question, my irrational panic quickly dissipating, leaving me with only a pounding heart.
“The plans shifted a bit in the last week. Liv is still here,” he gestured to Azrael’s desk where she and Poppy were standing.
“Jack and Rae went to their church, Grey went to his, Bishop’s joining him tonight.
Emily is with him at the school right now, but she’ll head here when Bishop catches his plane.
Alaric is getting on a plane and meeting one of our trusted friends to head to another church in a couple of hours.
Everett, Jeremy, and one of their contacts in The Springs are heading for his church, and Liv, Pops, and I will go with you to this church.
Raine and his family are still waiting near theirs. ”
I counted each one off on my hand, my brows furrowing. “Evie and Zo?” I asked, my hands still shaking.
His face hardened. “Zo was the heir Azrael was talking about. She put Evie in a coma. We’ve been dealing with it,” he went on, that dark and chilling rage boiling under my skin again.
“As for the church, Olivia has been in contact with one of the new professors at the school. They’re willing to help, if only to prove themselves.
Uh,” he glanced to Olivia and back. “Signant.”
My hand tightened around the arm of my rabbit as I tried to breathe through the anger of yet another betrayal.
So long as they were trustworthy. Every church was accounted for.
I was shocked at the revelation of Zo, but we all knew it had to be one of the women Malachi had hired.
Poppy was here every step of the way, and Olivia had talked about Evie enough that I had had my own thoughts on the possibility of it being Zo.
It wasn’t shocking, to say the least, but the betrayal stung nonetheless.
I nodded and headed for Azrael’s desk, the limp difficult to navigate, along with the bandages wrapped around each foot. Lucy was there to greet me the moment I took a seat in his chair, straightening the nightgown I was wearing as Olivia and Poppy took their seats in the chairs across from me.
I set the paper roses down beside the keyboard and leaned back, pulling the rabbit close, finding comfort in the soft fur.
Looking over the screen, I immediately found a strange line that kept jumping up and down on his second screen.
“A heart monitor,” Olivia explained before I had the chance to ask. “Malachi took the trackers out of you, but we still had that. One of us, mostly Azrael, had our eyes on it every second since you were taken.”
My hand found my chest, but I couldn’t feel it. They had been watching the whole time? Every time my heart slammed, jumped, stopped, they had seen it. So they knew then, or they had some sort of idea of when the people at that house had hurt me.
I hadn’t been alone and there was some relief in that.
“We replaced all the ones he took out,” Poppy went on, our eyes locking. “Different places, and we added a fourth for good measure.”
I watched her for a long time, noticing something different about her, before looking over his desk, finding a small jar of paper roses sitting on the corner, all the same colors I had found on my stand, but also some purple as well.
“When Grey and Emily first met,” Olivia began, “it was his way of showing his love, but gently. She was…less than willing to let him in, so he made those. Since then, she’s adopted doing it to show hers. A physical way to gently love.”
They were beautiful.
I signed a very lazy, almost imperceptible ‘thank you’ before continuing to look around the desk, only to pause when I found something I had drawn.
It was a depiction of Azrael surrounded by his aura. I remember being so proud of it when I had given it to him. He had hung it up immediately.
I swallowed, feeling a slight hint of emotion threaten to close my throat again. It wasn’t the time.
“Your things are in his top drawer,” Olivia told me. “The ring, the necklace, the bracelet. Alaric took the knife to sharpen it. I’m sure he’ll give it back before he leaves.”
My heart skipped, but I didn’t reach for them. Azrael put them on me the first time, he would put them on me for the last time. Instead, I found Havoc’s eyes and lifted my still trembling hands. “There were eight men there, I only killed four. Azrael knew the woman who ran it. Lady Elise.”
His eyes hardened, a muscle in his jaw feathering. “He’s been searching for her for weeks. We suspected for a while. What happened to her?”
“I killed her.”
Something flashed through his eyes before his shoulders fell an inch, the hatred only growing. “She deserved it. We sent a few trusted people to the woods to search for the house. How long were you walking?”
“Seven days.”
He nodded. “It explains why they haven’t found it yet.”
“You were in the woods for seven days?” Poppy breathed out.
My eyes flicked towards hers before finding Havoc’s again. “He left because Malachi called his phone. He could track that. Malachi wasn’t there for long after—”
My hands tightened, my jaw following. I shook my head and rolled my shoulders, trying to force the memory away before it suffocated me.
“Wherever he is, that’s where Azrael is.
” But even as I said it, something inside of me whispered against it.
A slight twist in my gut, a pain in the back of my neck.
It couldn’t have been more than side-effects from what the doctor had done to me while fixing me up, still, it was difficult to ignore.
“Then we can only assume he’s dealing with it in the way he does,” Havoc responded. “Anything else that we need to know?”
“Rae left clues. Letters,” I explained. “I read them every day. She had a camera in there and took pictures. We slept in the same bed.”
Havoc nodded, unfazed. “I’ll make sure they know what to look for.”
“Rae can never see those,” Olivia immediately told him. “Ever. Jack and Azrael have done their due diligence trying to keep it from her. We need to honor that.”
Havoc nodded and turned back to me. “Anything else?”