43. Cain
Cain
Istood over Julian, who was curled by the fireplace like a wounded animal.
He was rocking slightly, humming a mournful, tuneless song to himself—a low, buzzing vibration that grated against the silence of the parlour.
He was covered in his own dried tears and the filth from the floorboards, a pathetic display of the violence he’d inflicted upon himself repeatedly since we had completed the work.
“Why?” The word tore from his throat, a pleading sound that broke his morbid humming.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, his shoulders shaking with uncontrollable sobs.
“Why her, Cain? I was in love with her. I loved her more than I loved anything.” He looked up at me, his face smeared with blood and grief.
“I’ve been a good brother to you. I’ve done everything you ever asked of me.
Why couldn’t you have just picked someone else? ”
I stared down at him. For a fraction of a second, a sharp, cold ache pierced the centre of my chest—a phantom pang of something that felt dangerously like guilt. It was an uncomfortable pressure, a momentary rebellion of the human heart I had just sacrificed so much to transcend.
I crushed it instantly, burying it beneath a glacier of rationalisation.
I had bled for this family’s legacy. I had carried the burden of our survival while he played the innocent, tortured soul.
If I had to be the monster to secure our eternity, then he had to be strong enough to survive it.
Weakness was not an option. Not for me, and certainly not for him.
“You tried to betray me, Julian,” I said, my voice slipping into the quiet, lethal register that always made him flinch. “And betrayal has consequences. Did you think I was just going to let you both run off into the sunset and ruin my lifelong plan?”
He didn’t register the logic. He was already drowning in the magnificent despair I had predicted.
The shock of the act, combined with the realisation that there was nothing in existence to undo this finality, it had broken him beyond repair.
He wanted the release of a guilty conscience, he wanted to be shattered.
I, however, would not allow him the luxury of a breakdown.
“Get up, Julian,” I commanded. My voice was flat, a sharp contrast to the deep gasps of his breathing.
His madness was inconvenient, but manageable. He simply needed to learn that his choices now had consequences.
“Enough,” I said, my shadow stretching over his huddled form. “Time to learn to cope with your choices. You are no longer a child playing at romance.”
He stopped crying. Slowly, his hands fell from his face. His eyes were wide and utterly vacant, reflecting the dying embers of the hearth like two black mirrors.
“The taste,” he whispered, a sound of utter, crawling horror. “Cain, the blood… the taste will not leave my mouth. I can feel her sliding down my throat every time I swallow.”
“It is the taste of our future,” I replied, feeling nothing but a mild irritation at his theatrics.
I adjusted my cuffs, which were still damp from the washbasin.
“It is the price of the life we chose to keep. Carry it with you. Let it settle into your bones. It will remind you of the necessity of what we did tonight.”
The police were the least of my worries. I had already dealt with the physical evidence with a surgeon’s precision. And the fact that June’s parents couldn't care less whether she was alive or dead only played into my hands—they likely hadn't even noticed her grandmother was gone yet.
The true liability was Julian’s self destructive impulses. His physical body was now an impenetrable fortress, but his mind was a leaking vessel that could sink us both into a century of unnecessary grief and despair.
I walked to the sideboard and poured a stiff measure of bourbon, draining it in a single, burning swallow. It didn’t warm me, the fire in my veins was of a different sort now. But the clarity it provided was a tool I intended to use.
I walked back and stood over him. I let the full weight of my authority settle into my tone, the dark, controlling gravity that had always anchored his drifting spirit. I stepped into his personal space, forcing him to see the lack of pity in my gaze.
“You didn’t have the stomach to stop me when you had the chance, so don’t pretend to have the heart to mourn her now that she’s gone. You made your peace with this when you didn’t walk away years ago.”
I reached down and gripped his shoulder, my fingers exerting a pressure that would have bruised a mortal man.
“You will be silent. You will be compliant. You will be my shadow, and you will wait out the years in the dark. You will wait for her soul to return, or for the sun to burn out, or for whatever fairy tale you need to tell yourself to stay sane. But you will do it with your mouth shut.”
He looked at me then, and for a second, I saw the flicker of the man I used to know being extinguished, replaced by the eternal, hollow servant I required him to be.
“Wash yourself,” I said, turning my back on him. “The smell of her is still on you, and I find it… distracting.”