Chapter 46 Scarlett #3
I threw another one and then another, hitting him both times, my anger boiling, every memory of him lashing me, threatening me, leaving me to Mr. Bastrom or the other Leaders, flooding through me.
Wave after wave of bad memories. Wave after wave of tar-filled people telling me that I was the impure one, that I could never be saved.
“Tick tock goes the clock, the rivers have filled with blood. Tick tock goes the clock, watch as the streets flood.”
I stepped closer and closer to him, throwing knife after knife after knife, his screams drowned out by the roaring in my ears, the hatred, the evil. I was not infected, they were infected. They were the sick ones, not me. Them. Not me.
Before I knew it, I was grabbing Thomas’ shirt and shoving him to the ground. I was on top of him, knives sticking out of his body, and I had my knife. I held it above him, humming my favorite tune with Azrael.
“The rivers will run red, and it all starts with you,” I heard Havoc say behind me.
I brought the knife down right into his throat before jerking it up and doing it again.
Over and over and over, I slammed it down, watching the light drain from his eyes, watching him gurgle and gasp for air that he would never get again. Begging me to stop. Begging me for mercy.
How many times had I silently begged him to stop?
How many times had I begged for mercy?
Who heard me?
No one. No one had ever heard me. Not until the sea came flooding through my church. Not until the snake slithered into the garden. Not until the ghost haunted my halls.
I had been dead, but now I was alive.
“Isn’t anyone going to stop her?”
I froze at the voice, my mind spinning, my heart racing, a feeling of endlessness filling me.
Without thinking, I was up and across the room, grabbing Zo’s jaw in my bloody hand, forcing her to look at me.
Havoc was there too. “Careful, sweetheart, the rivers will fill with your blood too,” he hummed.
Zo only glared, fighting against my hand, my nails digging into her skin.
“Fuck off, you don’t scare me, little girl.
Besides,” she jerked her face away, and I let her, curious to know what she had to say as my heart calmed, “it doesn’t matter if you kill me, Malachi will still win this.
Or did you forget who trained these assholes. ”
I could feel the warm blood slowly chilling my skin and clothes, matting my hair. I could taste it on my lips, feel it between my fingers. It was absolutely everywhere.
And it felt exhilarating.
I slid my knife into my thigh holster and stepped back so she could see me clearly. “He didn’t train Azrael or the Blackheart brothers.”
“Beckett?” she scoffed when Havoc repeated it back to her. “Beckett is fucking weak. He’s nothing compared to Malachi. Trust me, I went through that program with him. Azrael may act like he’s insane and unstoppable, but he’s not. It’s an act to hide how weak and pathetic he truly is.”
I didn’t know Beckett too well yet, but I did know that he was my family. My eyes found Havoc’s. “Is there any injectable acid here?”
He looked over the table. “A few syringes,” he decided.
I gestured to Zo and stepped back. “Put them in her. Hands and feet.”
He gave me a nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
I allowed him more room, looking over at the mess that was Thomas, his blood spreading slowly across the hardpacked soil, as Havoc injected Zo with the syringes. I never wanted to see another needle in my entire life. Even if it was my family holding it.
“What is that?” Zo asked, clearly unafraid.
Havoc didn’t reply. “Done,” he said when he finished.
I turned back to Zo, watching as she flexed her hands, her expression pinched. “What did he inject me with, Pops?”
Poppy didn’t answer.
I simply waited, watching her hands flex more, her feet move, as she became increasingly uncomfortable.
“What did you put in me?” she asked me, her eyes finding mine. “What the fuck did you put in me?”
I studied her carefully before turning back to Havoc. “Why did Azrael never use this?”
He shrugged. “Nobody can understand his mind.”
I turned back to Zo, taking her in. Azrael had taken a few fingernails from her, a few toes, he had burned her in places, cut chunks out of her in others. He had taken his time with her and got nothing.
Maybe the acid was going to be a last resort?
“Will it kill her?” I asked, watching her struggle more, pull at the barbed wire, snarl under her breath.
“I don’t think so, but it’ll work its way up her limbs. Kill her hands and feet first, her wrists and ankles, so on.”
Interesting.
I inhaled deeply and straightened. “Okay, where next?”
Havoc rose a brow. “Where?”
I nodded. “Where next? I want to kill more people, but we need information from Zo, so she should sit and watch herself rot away for a while before we come back. Where next?”
He glanced behind me and back. “We don’t have anywhere else to go, doll. We’re still waiting to hit the churches. Until you’re healed up enough to handle that, this is where we’re at.”
I frowned, turning back to Zo who was struggling a little harder, her eyes filling with tears, her teeth bared. “I want my husband,” I told him, finding his eyes again. “Where is Malachi?” I gestured to Zo.
He immediately grabbed a fistful of Zo’s hair and jerked her head back. “She wants to know where Malachi is.”
“What the fuck? How would I know that?”
I glared at her and reached for my knife only for Poppy to clear her throat. “We need her alive. That stuff won’t kill her, thankfully, but it’s about as far as we can go without stopping her heart.”
My hand tightened around the hilt as I glared daggers at her. Why did we need her alive? She was a problem. She didn’t have any useful information and if she did manage to escape, that would be a problem. We had no use for her.
“She’s a bargaining chip, Scarlett,” Olivia explained, coming up behind me.
“Eventually, Malachi’s going to wonder where she is, why she hasn’t checked in.
When that happens, either he’ll care enough to come get her or he won’t care at all and we can kill her.
She would die knowing that she was just a pawn, like the rest of us. ”
She was snarling now, frothing at the mouth from the pain the acid was causing. “I’m not like any of you,” she spat.
I held the glare for a few seconds longer before releasing my hilt and stepping back.
“No, you’re so much worse,” I told her, Havoc repeating the words in a chilling voice.
“You lack morality. You don’t care for the innocent.
You willingly stand back and allow Malachi to rape whoever he wants to,” I went on, my entire body vibrating from the rage I suddenly felt.
“You are worse than him. You are worse than everyone. It is you who belongs in Hell. You. And I will do everything in my power to make sure you two suffer so much more than everyone else so you understand just how terrible you really are.”
Her face twisted, her lips slowly curling up, her body shaking, and suddenly, she was laughing.
Laughing. “Oh my fucking god,” she cackled, Havoc’s hand tightening in her hair.
“You let him take you? God, how sick are you, Scarlett? Fucking Azrael wasn’t enough, being the Chosen One wasn’t enough, you had to fuck Malachi too?
You just can’t get enough dick can you? God, you’re disgusting. ”
I lunged, feeling arms wrap around my waist as I fought to get to her. I screamed and scratched, watching her laugh as if she had won.
She hadn’t won.
She would never win. Not against us. Not against me.
“Scarlett,” I heard Havoc say in my ear. “Fuck, doll. Doll.”
I snarled and fought, shoving away from him, trying to get to her; to punish her like they had punished me. I wanted her to suffer. I wanted her to know what my Hell felt like.
“Get her out of here,” Olivia said, appearing behind Zo. She jerked the chair back, letting Zo fall to her back, the barbed wire tearing at her wrists and ankles.
Havoc pulled me away and I screamed, clawing and fighting against him. No! She deserved to die. She deserved to die.
But he wouldn’t ease up. Rather, he carried me all the way up the stairs and into the cabin, slamming the door shut behind him before tossing me away from him.
I stumbled forward, catching myself, pain ricocheting up my legs and spine. But I ignored it and spun on him, my knife in hand, my heart pounding.
Havoc held up his hands, his eyes hard, blood dripping down his arms from the long gouges I had left there. “You can’t do that.”
I was panting through my teeth, feeling half feral, laughter on my lips, shaking with need. I wanted to slice her throat open. I wanted to cut every limb off. I wanted to inject the acid into her temple and watch her rot away from the inside out.
“You can’t let them get to you like that, no matter what they say, do you understand me? You are better than that, so fucking act like it,” he lectured.
I searched his eyes, remembering how much fun we had had training together. Laughing together. He was my friend.
I shook my head, trying to force the fog away, but the rage remained. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.
I turned away from him, flexing my hand around the hilt of my knife, Thomas’ blood sticky now, the stench of copper almost too much.
“Is it true?” he asked, his voice a little calmer, as I paced the room. “What she said. Is it true?”
I ignored him, not wanting to talk about it, acknowledge it, think about it. They didn’t need to know. They shouldn’t know.
But Havoc cursed under his breath anyway, my silence answer enough. “If Azrael wasn’t planning on it before, he sure as fuck is going to make him suffer now. Come on,” he told me. “You need fresh air.”
I turned on him. “I’m not done,” I stated coldly.
His expression hardened. “Yes, you are. You’re going to get fresh air and then we’re going home. You need the rest. You need a shower. You need to heal so we can stop this bullshit piddling and actually take care of this once and for all, do you understand me? Go. Now.”
I glared at him, my heart pounding against my ribs. “You have to be lying. There has to be something else we can do. Something we can do while we wait for Sunday to come back around.”
But he only shook his head. “If this was five years from now and it was two separate families going to war, then yes. We would take our army and slaughter them before they ever caught wind that we knew everything. But that’s just not what this is, doll,” he went on softly.
“We are a dozen to Malachi’s hundreds if not thousands.
We are already taking a risk splitting up to take all the churches at once.
We don’t have anyone to even hunt down those that are still loyal to him right now, we have to push that for later.
This is just…there’s too many things that can go wrong.
We can’t do it all, Scarlett, not even us,” he finished, placing a hand over his heart.
My eyes burned and I swallowed, shaking my head. “We can do something though. It’s almost Sunday afternoon. We have a week until we go to the church. We can do something.”
He studied me for a long time before he ran a hand through his hair and turned away from me, thinking hard.
I stared at his back, flexing my fingers, the feeling of dried blood only bringing up bad memories. A shower sounded really nice, actually, and I was really sore.
“The truth is,” Havoc began, pulling my attention back, “you’re not at 100%—”
“I’m—”
He held up a hand. “But you can still fight.” He looked me over carefully. “Sounds like you’ve decided to go next week.”
I straightened. “Don’t you?”
“I want to finish this, yes,” he agreed and then sighed.
“You need to think about using a gun for a while, if you do that…if you do that then yeah, I think I might have something we can do while we wait for Sunday to roll around. But today,” he went on when my excitement grew, “you need to rest, okay? Olivia and Poppy will come back and handle this. You and Emily need to go home, have a break. We can regroup in the morning and go from there.”
It wasn’t much, but it was something, and this world was nothing if it wasn’t a compromise.
So, with reluctancy, I gave him a small nod before spinning on my heel and heading for the door. He was right. I wanted to finish this. If I pushed, I could heal up enough by Sunday to finally head to the church.
If Azrael wasn’t back by then, fine. Either going to the church would lead to him or we would just have to capture those I knew he wanted to kill and keep them for him until he got back.
That pit in my stomach only grew.
God, where was my goddamn husband?