19. Cain
Cain
The drive back to the manor was a long, winding stretch of asphalt that gave me far too much time to think.
I’d spent the last week at the family cabin, giving Julian the “space” he’d demanded with his fists, but the silence from his end was no longer a sibling spat—it was becoming a liability.
I watched the skeletal fingers of the winter trees blur past the window, feeling the familiar, cold hum of the Blackburn legacy vibrating in my blood.
He had been avoiding me with a desperate, childish intensity, ignoring my calls, letting the landline ring until it died in my hand, likely stewing in that misplaced righteous anger he had developed somewhere along the way.
I knew he was furious, but fury was a luxury we couldn’t afford.
Not now. Not when we were so close to the finish line.
Julian had let his feelings for June bleed into the edges of our reality, and in doing so, he was putting the final ritual at risk. He was blurring the line between the predator and the prey, forgetting that we didn’t just own her—we were meant to end her.
I leaned back against the hand stitched leather seat, watching the headlights cut through the gathering fog.
I wasn’t blind; I knew they’d been fooling around.
I could see the way he looked at her, the way he lingered in her personal space like a parasite.
I used to trust his discipline. I used to believe he was as iron willed as I was.
But June… she was a different kind of temptation altogether.
She needed to stay preserved. She had to be pure in her devotion, her soul vibrating at a specific frequency of trust and surrender, untainted by the truth until the clock struck midnight on the final date.
If Julian broke that trust too early, or if he let his own heart get in the way, the ritual wouldn’t just fail—it would devour us.
I sighed, the sound loud in the quiet of the car.
I’d watched this coming for years, like a slow motion car wreck.
I’d seen Julian slowly lose sight of our purpose.
He’d started to look at her not as the key to our ascension, but as a person.
A woman. A partner. It was pathetic, really.
He was chasing a fairy tale in a house built on a foundation of ancient, rotting lies.
The situation was delicate. To lure her into the trap, she needed to feel loved.
She needed to be so blinded by her affection for us that she wouldn’t see the knife until it was already piercing her skin.
I lacked the temperament for that kind of performance.
I was the organiser, the one who saw the patterns and the requirements of the blood. Julian was the heart…the handler.
But if the heart beats too fast, it ruins the rhythm of the kill.
I pulled into the manor’s long driveway, the stone of the house looming through the mist. We had things to discuss, boundaries that needed to be drawn so he wouldn’t dare cross them again.
I killed the engine and let myself in, the house was already vibrating with sound.
Billie Holiday’s voice, scratchy and soulful on the vintage record player, drifted through the halls.
“I’m a fool to want you,” she sang, a perfect, mocking soundtrack for my twin.
I headed straight for the study. When I pushed the door open, Julian was slumped in a leather chair, a book in his lap that he clearly wasn’t reading. He kept his eyes fixed on his work, unbothered, knowing my step as well as he knew his own.
I walked over to the sideboard, the silence between us heavy enough to choke on.
I poured myself a generous glass of bourbon, watching the dark liquid gold glow in the lamplight.
I took my time lighting a cigar, watching the blue smoke curl towards the ceiling before I leaned back against the edge of the desk, staring him down.
His split lip was still an irritated red line; his black eye was nearly healed.
“What do you want, Cain?” he asked, his voice dry. “If ignoring your calls all week wasn’t a clear enough sign, let this be one. Fuck off.”
I didn’t move. I actually found myself smiling, the bruise on my own jaw giving a pleasant throb. “Are we still upset about those applications, Julian? Please. You’re losing sight of the bigger picture. You’re behaving like a teenager who just had his diary stolen.”
He slammed the book shut and stood up, his movements agitated. I could see the vein on the side of his head pulsing. It was almost amusing, and terrifying, to see how easily that girl had managed to unhinge him.
“If you want to hit me again, brother, go ahead,” I said, tilting my head. “We can do this all night. But we have a deadline and important matters to discuss.”
Julian’s eyes finally met mine, and they were hollowed out.
“We need to find someone else,” he whispered.
Then, louder: “We need to find someone else for the Ritual. I can’t do it to her, Cain.
I just can’t. She’s suffered her whole shitty life.
We’re offering her a glimmer of hope just to snuff it out.
I won’t do it. Find someone else. Anyone. ”
“Impossible, Julian,” I replied, my voice dropping into a cold, clinical tone that echoed off the bookshelves. I took a slow drag of my cigar, letting the smoke sit between us like a physical barrier. “Her first blood is already bound into the Ritual, Julian. Do you not remember?”
I watched him flinch, his face paling as the memory hit him.
I let the silence stretch, forcing him to look back at that afternoon all those years ago.
I remembered it vividly—the way he’d found her crying in the garden, confused and scared by the first sign of her body’s maturity.
He’d comforted her, acting the Saint even back then.
“She let you clean the blood away, thinking you were her protector. And you brought that stained cloth to me, Julian. You watched me burn the sigils into it. You helped me bury it beneath the manor’s foundation. You bound her to us yourself.”
Julian’s legs seemed to give out, and he sank back into the chair, his head in his hands. “I was a child. We were kids.”
I stepped closer, the smell of my cigar mingling with the scent of his sweat.
“Stop guilt-tripping yourself and pull yourself together,” I said, my voice hardening with frustration.
“We have an eternity to do whatever the fuck we want after this. An eternity to forget her name and her face. Don’t lose focus now.
Don’t let me down, Julian. Because if you do, the darkness won’t just take her, it’ll take us both.
And I have no intention of dying for a girl who was born to die for us. ”
Julian didn’t look up. He just sat there in the dark, the Billie Holiday record skipping at the end of the track, a rhythmic, scratching click-click-click that sounded like a grenade ticking down.
I turned and walked out of the study, leaving him in the dark with the ghosts of his conscience. As I climbed the stairs to my own room, I felt a sense of grim satisfaction.
Now, all we had to do was wait.