Hurt (The Hurt Series, #1)

by Lydia Michaels

  Her tears were a beautiful pity, but his ability to comfort the fairer sex had died with the rest of him. He gripped her wrist, feeling the fragile bones beneath the surface. “I want my fucking knives. And you’re going te bring them te me.”

  She yanked her arm back, breaking contact. Fire ignited in her eyes, drying up her tears. “Lay a hand on me again, Mr. MacGregor, and I’ll leave ye here te rot with yer deranged sister.”

  His entire body tensed. “Innis is here? Alive?”

  “Oh, Trinket’s alive, the twisted bitch tried te kill me! If you’re thinkin’ about takin’ her with us, ye can forget it.”

  Innis was alive? She lived?

  He’d mourned her, believing her dead—again. Why had she not come to see him? Only one thing could have kept her from him—Rory.

  Elspeth planned to steal Innis’s child. It would break her. He couldnae allow that to happen.

  “Where’s Rory?” He needed to prepare. If they were leaving, so was Innis.

  Elspeth’s eyes widened as she shook her head. Fear mangled her features. “He’s upstairs with Trinket.”

  He shoved off the bed, ignoring his body’s protests. “Dinnae leave this room.”

  “Where are ye goin’?”

  “Dinnae leave this room,” he repeated, eyes threatening.

  She’d cared for him, and he appreciated her kindness, but he wouldnae allow her to kidnap Uma from Innis. Their family needed to stay together.

  “You open this door, and I’ll hunt ye down and kill ye.”

  Her face paled as he shut her inside.

  The house seemed quiet. Too quiet.

  Gripping the banister, he peeked into the den. Furniture was flipped on end. Tables were shattered. Black smudges marked the carpet. His nose twitched. The air smelled cold, of bleach and emptiness, as if a fire hadnae been lit in days.

  He strained to listen through the muffled churning of his eardrums. Nothing.

  Sweat broke across his lips and nose at the sheer sight of the stairs. His fingers locked on the rail and he swallowed a growl, hoisting himself up the first step.

  Fuck. He’d never have the strength to get to the top.

  Again and again, he pulled his body upward. It took years to make it to the landing. His muscles shook, and dizziness stole through him. His body lowered on the top step, his back falling to the floor as he heaved for breath, his lungs protesting.

  Eventually, he found the strength to stand. Every bedroom door was open. The hinges whined as he pushed into Innis’s room. Empty. Where was Uma?

  Calming his agitated breath, he shut his eyes outside of Rory’s door. Hideous memories flooded him like a tsunami, visions of his last visit here knocking him off balance. He wasnae strong enough to beat him then, and he certainly wasnae strong enough now.

  A cold surrender blanketed him as he understood he’d be trading his life for theirs. It was the only weapon he had left.

  His ears searched for any sound, but all he heard was the hammering of his heart. Then he smelled it. Blood.

  Dear God, what would he have done to her? Why could he not just let her die? It might be too late for a trade. He might have to end this himself, delivering her the quick, merciful death she deserved. He swallowed hard.

  His soul trembled at the thought. Had this tragic journey always led to this end? Was this everything he’d fought for? To be the one to take her life, his sweet, fragile Innis?

  His stomach twisted with empty knots. The unavoidable wish to see her in a happy home shifted to a place of golden gates and mercy.

  If this was his only choice, he’d see it done. He’d bring her peace as she deserved.

  Letting out a long breath, he turned the knob and flung the door open. Innis stared back at him and relief impaled his heart with such force he staggered back. His sister paused, watched him through her eye, rocking on a wicker chair.

  “Innis,” he breathed.

  Her bare feet tucked under the billowing white of her nightgown. Her head tipped with curious caution.

  She watched him like a wee creature watches a predator. Or maybe she was the predator and he was the prey.

  “Innis, love, are ye all right?” He could see by her strange stare she wasnae.

  He scanned the room, seeing no sign of Rory. Was she alone? He held a misshapen finger to his lips, warning her to be silent.

  Her brow tightened and the chair rocked again. “Bobby Shafto's gone to sea.” The singsong tempo of her childlike voice pealed through the silence in a haunting tone. “Silver buckles at his knee...”

  The fringes of his mind ruffled as a sense of nostalgia stole through him. Bobby Shafto was a nursery rhyme Innis had loved as a child.

  Something glinted in her hand, hidden by the billowy sleeves of her gown, and he squinted.

  “What do ye have there, Innis?”

  Buried in a cloud of white gossamer, she swayed slowly, her disjointed state of mind feathering through the room like a lonely wind.

  She looked like a child. A broken doll entangled in a paradox of innocence and peril. Jumbled chaos swarmed around her like invisible bees, they protected her as much as they tortured her, forbidding anyone to come too close.

  “He'll come back and marry me, Bonny Bobby Shafto...” she sang, rolling her head back and smiling at the ceiling. It was the truest show of joy he’d seen from her since arriving at this house.

  What did she have to smile about? Her life had been nothing but tragic futility, a chain of unpardonable errors and unparalleled atrocities. She wasnae well.

  “Innis, love,” he spoke softly. “It’s time te leave.” He expected Rory to burst out from the closet at any second. “We have te go, now.”

  “Bobby Shafto’s bright and fair—”

  “Innis.” He needed her to focus. “Listen te me. We have te go, right now, before Rory comes back.”

  Her eye widened, casting her broken parts in a demoralizing light. The chandelier cast a soft golden glow over her antique nightgown and making her porcelain skin appear urbanely plastic.

  Her hand lifted from the billows of her gown, a slender finger tracing the empty socket of her missing eye. “Rory...”

  The oppression of this place brooded in the shadows. Pillaged treasures surrounded her. She belonged to them. Another overlooked toy.

  He couldnae fault her for the madness. “Yes, Innis. We need to go before he returns.”

  Her head rolled back, and a delicate laugh rang from her lips like a cracked bell. Her other hand lifted, revealing his kukri, the curved blade stained with blood.

  He took a jagged step forward, and she pointed her arm with surprising accuracy, her gaze sharpening with the scorching promise that if he moved another inch, she wouldnae hesitate to hurt him.

  He stood on thorns, waiting for her to lower the blade. His legs wobbled, and his hands stretched open in a show that he meant her no harm.

  “Please, Innis. I want te take ye away from here. You and Uma. Come with me, now.”

  Her gaze dropped to the floor and bounced back to him. Separated by the seating area, he worried what hid behind the couch.

  “Where’s Uma, Innis?”

  She frowned and lowered the knife. He crept forward. The wicker rocking chair moaned as it swayed over the creaking floor.

  “Bobby Shafto's gettin’ a bairn, to dangle on his arm...”

  Another creeping step forward and the scent of blood intensified. The closer he stepped, the more it saturated the air.

  “In his arm and on his knee, Bobby Shafto loves me...” Her disembodied words filled the silence as she stared at the wall, rocking in a mask of tranquility.

  Moving closer, he noticed the spotted smears of bloody fingerprints peppering the mantle. And the dark stains saturating the hem of her gown and the bottoms of her feet.

  A board creaked under his weight. Her words cut off, as did the rocking. He stilled.

  “Innis, do ye know who I am, love?”

  Her head tilte
d, ebony waves tumbling down her shoulder. “You’re Callan.”

  “Dae ye ken where Uma is?”

  She frowned again.

  “Dae ye ken where Rory is?”

  Her face lifted, her eye staring off as her lips pulled in a delicate smile. “I made him pretty.”

  Her palm dragged over her cheek, the lashes of her missing eye peeking through her fingers as she traced the hollow socket. “Just like me.”

  The blood rushed from his head as he rounded the sofa and stumbled, covering his mouth as he gagged on the sight and stench. He staggered back in horror.

  What was left of Rory lay on the floor, stapled to the carpet with multiple knives. Mirrors, spattered with blood, angled against the sofa and foot of the bed. Flesh rotted around the massacred corpse, flayed from still bleeding muscle and stark white bone.

  She’d made him watch—until she carved out his eyes.

  “Innis!” Disturbed by the sight and stench he had to look away. “You’re playin’ with a corpse.”

  He searched for something to cover the body, yanking the blankets off of the bed. Then, through the muffled mess of his ears, he heard the unmistakable wheeze of a masculine groan.

  The world stilled in a gruesome landscape of blood and tragedy. Rory was alive. She’d kept him alive because that was exactly what Rory would have done.

  Falling against the wall, Callan gaped in horror. The gurgling rise of Rory’s skinned chest pooled with blood like an overworked sponge. Flayed skin exposed pulpy, pink flesh, the rind of a wasted human.

  “Innis, what have ye done?” he breathed, drawing a jagged sign of the cross over his chest.

  He needed to kill him. They needed to leave this place.

  She was back to rocking. Back to her disembodied nursery rhyme.

  He couldnae think or breathe when the noises kept coming from the floor. Yes, Rory deserved to die. Callan fantasized of killing him since the day he learned his name. But this...

  The tormented, mutilated, mass of a human being bleeding into the ground was beyond his penchant for cruelty. Even he took mercy on his depleted, sadistic soul.

  His stare jolted to the table. Back to Rory. Crucified.

  His crusty fingers twitched. Could he hear them? Should he speak to him? End him? He couldnae leave him like this, nor could he offer comfort.

  She wasnae well. He needed to get her out of this room and away from here.

  “Innis, I need ye te put down the knife.”

  She shook her head. “Not until he tells me.”

  “Tells ye what, love?” He was losing his grip. The stench of rotting man had seeped into every swallow of air, and he fought hard not to retch.

  “Where he is.” She twisted the tip of the kukri against her fingertip.

  “Who?”

  Her head tilted, and she smiled. Her feet dropped off the edge of the chair onto the ground, pressing into sticky blood. The gown flowed over her legs as she crossed the room, one hand holding the knife.

  She snatched a small paper from the corner desk and brought it to Callan. “Him.”

  His eyes locked on the picture, a chill blooming over his skin. A teenage boy with a shaved head and a dark tattoo covering half his face glared at the camera. The eyes were unmistakably familiar. MacGregor eyes, but...

  No. It wasnae him. Gavin had a wee build and couldnae have grown so much in such a short time. “Where did ye get this?”

  Leaving him with the picture, she crept closer to the body and dragged the pointed tip of the blade down Rory’s battered thigh. His leg twitched, and the sound that escaped his bloodied face was pure suffering.

  “Innis, stop!”

  She spun and glared at him. “He did this to us!”

  He breathed fast, unsure of how to handle her. “He did a lot of things. He’s wicked in every way, but you’re not.”

  Her shoulders lowered. “I am what he made me.”

  Callan shook his head. “You don’t have te be. We can leave here.” He held up the photo. “We can find Gavin.”

  His stomach curdled at the lie. Gavin was dead. She watched him die, but now her mind had suffered too much torture, and she was confused, convinced the young boy in the picture was their deceased brother after all these years.

  Her lost mind had created a cold and dangerous, vacant place. He needed to get her help. “We can start over.”

  “I’m not finished,” she said, returning to her chair.

  He staggered to the desk and yanked out a drawer. Banknotes spilled onto the floor. Property deeds and letters fluttered to his feet. Finally, his hand closed around cold steel. He checked the chamber—fully loaded—and stuffed it in his pocket. “This has te end. Now. Where’s Uma?”

  The chair creaked as her voice fluttered through the room in that same eerie melody. “He'll come back and marry me, pretty Bobby Shaftoe...”

  “Innis! Where is yer daughter?”

  She drew in a long breath and sighed. Leaning forward, she plunged the blade into Rory’s leg, and a gurgling moan seeped from Rory as fresh blood flooded the sticky, twitching tendons.

  “Fuckin’ Christ! Enough!”

  The body convulsed in a spasm of pain. She was torturing him for the sheer, sick pleasure of it.

  “Enough, now,” he pleaded with a trembling voice. He leveled the gun and pointed it at the suffering body on the floor, no longer a man.

  The rocking chair stilled, and her haunted whisper pierced the silence like a hacksaw. “I’ll kill ye if ye kill him.”

  He stared at her incredulously. “We cannae leave him like this—”

  “I’m not leaving,” she snarled. “You go.”

  “Innis, this isnae right!”

  “Right? It’s my right te make him suffer! He stole everything from me! My independence. My family. My freedom. My will. My innocence. My love! I’ll never forgive ye if ye take away my vengeance.” She bared her teeth. “It’s all I have left, and I’ll murder anyone who thinks te take one more fuckin’ thing from me. Dae ye understand?”

  This was not his sister. Gone was his beautiful, innocent Innis, replaced with a sick minded woman who could only speak in violent pleas.

  She was a broken doll, wound too tight and abused too long to ever recover from the tragedy she’d become.

  His wasted vision blurred, the ache choking him as he forced his heart to let her go.

  But he couldnae leave the innocent baby behind—not with Innis. Not anymore.

  Swallowing against the fierce stabbing that gored his heart, he rasped, “What about Uma?”

  Her head shook slowly. “I cannae be what she needs anymore.”

  The last fractured bit of his heart broke. He lowered the gun. His breath tumbled out of him in a defeated gust.

  Face pinched, he looked at her with tears in his eyes, his voice scraping over the one truth he knew. “I dinnae ken how to walk away from ye, Innis.”

  He’d fought for her. Avenged her death. Hunted her tormentor. Stayed with her. Watched over her. Sacrificed all he had left for her. And in the end, none of it had been enough to save her. Why would she trust him with her daughter if he hadn’t been enough to protect her?

  “I’m no father.”

  Years of his life lost to vengeance and nothing but pain to show for it. He needed her to look at him, say something. But she just rocked and rambled on about Bobby Shafto.

  His head lowered, the last of his strength leaving him. This would be the last thing he ever did for her. He needed to do everything in his power to do it right, even if that meant protecting the wain from a lunatic mother.

  “I’ll take Uma. But once I do, she’s mine. I’ll not let ye come collectin’ her without gettin’ help for yourself first. She deserves better than...” He lifted his arm, encompassing all the degradation and rotting life between them. “Better than this.”

  Even the mention of her daughter failed to provoke a reaction. Her entire focus burned into the bleeding enemy at her feet.

&n
bsp; He spoke in hopes that if she ever got well, she might recall what he’d said, but he knew this would be the last time he’d ever see her. “I’ll take her someplace safe, Innis. And when I get there, I’ll send a postcard with only the address—adding three to every number so no one else can find us—me, you, and Gavin. Remember three by thinking of us. For the street name, I’ll replace all the vowels with M for MacGregor. You must remember that, so you’ll know what it is when it arrives. I’ll send one every year until she’s of age. Then the choice to find you will be hers.”

  She dinnae respond, and maybe that was for the best.

  “Dinnae think te try and steal her away from whatever home we find. I want te help you, Innis, but ye have te come te me first. You asked this of me, and I’ll do it as my last kindness te you. But from here on, the wain’s my priority.”

  The unfinished goodbye lacked any sort of affection. Any physical contact wouldnae be welcomed. All this time since discovering she’d been alive, and he never once got to hug her.

  The sentiment was lost anyway. He might never relearn how to touch another person without causing harm, so he kept his distance for both their sakes.

  “I love ye, Innis. I’ll never stop.”

  Turning, he hobbled to the door, shutting away the nightmare at his back, but knowing he’d never truly leave it behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Saratoga Springs, New York—America

  Present Day

  Emery’s belly turned and flipped like a tickling feather as Callan drove her down a street she’d never visited. They were near the hotel but off the beaten path. The charming Victorian homes mixed with Italian Renaissance architecture that dappled the historic town passed with increasing distance in between.

  Saratoga Springs was once a bath town. Tourists no longer only came for the springs, but also for the quaint escape and equestrian hobbies. She loved their little town and thought she knew all its secrets, but as Callan turned the car, she realized some secrets hid in plain sight.

  They approached a private road. Not a road. A driveway.

  She frowned at the expansive stone wall. She’d pictured him living in a house, but this was clearly some sort of estate occupied by multiple renters. It had to be. It was huge.