61. Julian
Julian
The heavy doors of my Land Rover slammed shut, sealing us inside a quiet, leather scented cocoon.
Sage had her knees pulled up slightly, her head resting against the cool tinted glass of the window, watching the city skyline fade into the rearview mirror.
She thought the nightmare was over. She thought she was just an overworked, paranoid student who had finally found a safe place to land.
The guilt of lying to her was a physical, sickening weight in my chest, tearing at my insides with every kilometre we drove.
I was a soldier. I was a man who had spent the last century drowning in bloodlust and destruction, throwing myself into every miserable, cruel fight I could find just to put an ocean of distance between myself and the suffocating pain of my past.
For years, my brother hadn’t even been a conscious thought in my head. I had convinced myself that if I stayed away, if I just let the memory of what we had done fade into ash, the universe would finally leave us alone.
But time doesn’t heal immortal wounds. It only lets them fester…
Cain hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t healed.
He had spent the last century totally consumed by his own sickness, his uncompromising need for total control and power mutating into something borderline apocalyptic.
And now, the very thing we had destroyed the world for all those years ago had been handed right back to us.
June. My jaw clenched so hard the bone ached.
Cain had killed her once. He had ripped her right out of my hands because he couldn’t have her.
And now that her soul had miraculously found its way back into this fragile, mortal body, my brother was already wrapping his suffocating, psychotic fingers around her throat.
He could have ended her in a heartbeat. Instead, he chose to play with his food.
Murder would be too merciful. For him, she was something much better: a toy.
The silence in the car was growing too heavy. My mind was spiralling into a feral panic, imagining him taking the Polaroid photo she had sobbed about, realising how effortlessly Cain had bypassed her locks whilst I was on the other side of the world.
The melancholic, cinematic melody of Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence began to play, the heavy, dark bass thrumming softly through the car.
I exhaled a slow, shaky breath, letting the music wash over the tension in the cab.
Next to me, Sage shifted. She turned her head away from the glass, her eyes staring blankly at the dashboard for a moment before she closed them.
And then, she started to sing.
Her voice was soft, barely a whisper over the track, but it was incredibly sweet.
“Reminded me of when we were kids.”
The tragic irony of the words stopped the breath in my lungs.
Little does she know, everything she does reminds me of when we were kids.
She was entirely unaware that the man driving the car had loved her before she was even born, had grieved her death for a century, and would gladly burn the world down to the bedrock to keep her breathing today.
I turned my head to look at her.
The afternoon sun broke through the overcast clouds, casting a warm, golden halo across her face. The exhaustion couldn’t hide how utterly, devastatingly beautiful she was.
The looming suffocating dread of my brother’s hunt—it all suddenly evaporated, melting away under the gentle, hypnotic sound of her voice.
I was completely, hopelessly infatuated with her. It was a terrifying, all-consuming devotion that eclipsed anything else I’d ever experienced.
I reached across the centre console, my hand gently wrapping around hers. She stopped singing for a second, her eyes fluttering open to look at me, a soft, tired smile finally touching her lips. She turned her hand over, lacing her small fingers perfectly through mine, holding on tight.
Hell was undoubtedly coming for us. Cain was a deranged psychopath who would never stop hunting her until he had broken her mind and chained her to his side.
But in this perfect moment, with the haunting music filling the car and her warm hand resting safely in mine, I felt like I was already in heaven. My angel was finally next to me again, and this time, I was never letting her go.