Moth to a Flame

by Cambria Hebert

  He didn’t touch me. Instead, he dragged me out of the elevator and across the floor like a dead animal on a leash. My fingers left a trail of blood as I tried to claw the ground.

  Giving the chain some kind of tug, I found myself on my back, staring up at a cocoon that was previously across the room. The body in this one was more decayed, but I could still make out the eyes staring at me from the bottom.

  I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t cry.

  All I could do was glower at those eyes.

  Another tug and he was standing over me, a shiny blade grasped in one hand. Without a word, he bent down and removed the shackle from my ankle. Without even considering why, I skittered back and shoved up to my feet.

  Teetering on unsteady legs, I stared at him.

  “Run,” he rasped.

  I did. I ran, not realizing at first this was all just part of his game. He stood and watched me weave through the bodies. The sounds of the chains squeaking as they swung would haunt me forever.

  I went for the elevator again, but before I got there, he grabbed me, spinning me around.

  I dodged the first swipe of the blade.

  The second caught my shoulder.

  The pain barely registered because I was so used to the feeling now. All I felt in that moment was adrenaline and the pure desire to escape.

  Suddenly, I changed direction. Instead of going for the elevator, I rushed him. Sinking low, I caught him around the waist, plowing him down. Landing on top of him, our eyes connected, and what I saw was terrifying.

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  He was completely empty. Void of life.

  Maybe that was why he wanted to take so many.

  It wouldn’t matter! I wanted to yell. You could kill a thousand people, and you would still be dead inside!

  He didn’t try to fight me off. Instead, he lay under me and stared. It was like he forgot the knife in his hand. He forgot he wanted me dead.

  I didn’t forget I wanted to live. Shoving up, I ran.

  The blow to the back of my head brought me down. Drowsy and barely lucid, I stared through unfocused eyes. Everything seemed upside down, sideways.

  I felt him drag me somewhere, but where, I didn’t know.

  In the distance, I heard sirens, and I started to cry. Sounds of splashing and splattering made me confused. The familiar putrid smell of something burned my nostrils.

  All I could focus on was the sound of those sirens.

  Not the strike of the match.

  Not the whoosh of the flame.

  “I’m The Moth, and you’re the flame,” he said from somewhere. “Bye-bye.”

  Orange and red became the only colors I saw. Heat unlike anything I felt before robbed me of breath.

  The sound of the sirens suddenly disappeared, and searing pain so vile took over. It was so wicked, fighting to live no longer mattered.

  This was the end.

  This was death.

  “I woke up in the hospital. An entire month had passed.” Her voice was hoarse and smoky, almost like her body remembered what it was like to almost be burned alive. “If the police had been just five minutes longer, I would have burned to death.”

  I reached for her.

  She pulled away.

  I didn’t try again.

  It was taking everything for her to relive this, for her to tell me her truth.

  “My left side suffered burns. A few of the scars are from other injuries while I was there.” Her eyes lifted to mine, and I felt like she was seeing me for the first time in a while. “You saw my back that day, right?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s from the fire. The scar is from the knife.”

  I opened my mouth, but she sat up, cutting me off. “Did you see the other mark?”

  I frowned. “Other mark?”

  Her hand slid around, holding herself. “On the back of my arm.”

  I shook my head. “I’d only been trying to cover you. I didn’t see.”

  A very faint smile tugged her lips, and I wanted to weep. She was still in there somewhere, my angel... my angel who literally walked through hell.

  Scooting forward, she put her back to me and tugged off her shirt.

  “Zoey, you don’t have—”

  “I want to.”

  I fell silent as she tossed the shirt aside. Turning more, she showed me her back. The left side indeed had scarring from burns. Lifting her arm out, she reached around and pointed.

  “There.”

  Cautiously, I reached out. “May I?”

  Her head bobbed. Grasping her arm, I held it up to see the mark she gestured to.

  A strangled sound ripped out of my throat. “H-he... did this to you?”

  “He branded me. He said I was his.”

  Now I knew. Now I knew what a murderous rage felt like. What it meant to be so angry it tainted your logical thought.

  Leaning in, I blinked, trying to gain enough composure to see. “Is that... a moth?”

  “He’s the moth, and I’m the flame...” Her voice trailed away. “Maybe that’s why he tried to burn me in the end.”

  Releasing her arm, I jumped up and began to pace. Overcome with rage and despair, I did the only thing I could.

  My fist plowed right through the drywall, giving way under my rage like butter against a hot knife. Burning pain seared my knuckles and was sickly satisfactory. Yanking my hand free of the wall, bits of drywall and debris rained around my feet. The slick sensation of blood dripping over my knuckles was also something I enjoyed.

  Zoey was on her feet when I turned back around, rocking from side to side as far away from me as she could get.

  “I won’t ever hurt you,” I told her. “But the rage...” My voice trailed away, and I lifted my bleeding fist. “I had to put it somewhere.”

  Her eyes were three sizes bigger than before. They were the wrong color. They should have been blue. I didn’t want to see her hidden face anymore. After hearing everything she survived, I wanted to see the real her.

  “You cover yourself up that way because you’re hiding,” I finally said, realizing it wasn’t only because of the scars themselves.

  “They told me he died in the fire. That he didn’t make it out. They said they found his burned body, but they never actually confirmed the corpse was his.”

  What the fuck did a man say? No words existed that could ever offer comfort, sorrow, or even understanding.

  She cleared her throat, still shifting from foot to foot. “While I was in a coma, they amputated my leg from the knee down. The damage from the shackle, the damage I inflicted on myself trying to get free, was all too much. Gangrene apparently set in. So while I was out, they took the leg.”

  The words “please stop” were on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to say them so desperately. I couldn’t hear anymore. I couldn’t listen to everything this woman survived without breaking down.

  I said nothing.

  I endured because if she could live through what she did, the very least I could do was listen to the harrowing tale. I knew she’d suffered trauma, and I knew she trusted no one.

  I knew, but damn, I hadn’t known.

  “Zoey.”

  The second I said her name, she moved. Going into the water-logged kitchen, she searched around. Not finding whatever it was she wanted, she came forward, hesitating for a moment when she drew close.

  I held still, afraid to even breathe. Her eyes strayed down to my bleeding hand, and then she moved past me without issue. Listening to the sounds she made in bathroom, I wondered what she was doing, but I didn’t dare ask. She reappeared a moment later, carrying a large white kit with a red cross on the front.

  Perching on the sofa, she turned toward me. “Come here.”

  I went but didn’t sit down. Zoey patted the cushion beside her.

  “You sure?”

  “I trust you.”

  I blew out a shaky breath. “I swear to God those words mean more to me than if you’d said
I love you.”

  Lifting the lid off the kit, she made herself busy, looking for what she wanted. “Those words are more important to me than I love you,” she told me as she searched.

  My ass hit the cushion.

  I felt like a weak son of a bitch, but this woman was robbing me of every ounce of strength I had.

  I loved her.

  She just told me the most heinous, tormenting tale of abuse I seriously had ever heard. But I loved her.

  “I love you,” I said, unable to keep in the words.

  Pausing, she glanced up. “Tell me that after the shock wears off.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I won’t hold you to it.”

  Her reaction didn’t offend me. It just made me love her more.

  “Give me your hand,” she said, holding out her palm.

  I surrendered my bloody, scraped-up fist.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her as she carefully cleaned the stinging cuts on my hand.

  “I cut myself off from everyone and everything,” she said quietly, ripping open a few bandages. “The PTSD was so severe it took me over a year just to function normally. I had to relearn how to walk, how to live with a prosthetic. The burns took so long to heal. I had a few skin grafts, but they were so painful I stopped. It seemed like he was causing me even more pain because I was trying to get rid of the pain he’d already caused, you know?”

  I made a sound, eyes still eating up her face.

  “After a few years, I was able to get back to some kind of life. Because of my background in makeup, I was able to teach myself how to cover up all my scars. It was good practice for movie sets, and eventually, I was able to get a job on a small crew.”

  “What about your family? Your friends?” I asked.

  “I never reached back out. Even though I hadn’t died... I kind of did. They were part of my old life, a life that no longer existed. I changed my name, the way I looked. I changed everything but the city I lived in.”

  “Why didn’t you move far away?”

  “Because working in Hollywood was basically the perfect cover. If he was still out there, he wouldn’t think I would stick around here. I like the security of the movie sets, the privacy they afford. And I traveled around for movie locations, which meant I was never in one place very long.”

  I didn’t want to ask. I had to. “Haven’t you been lonely?”

  “Every day,” she whispered. “All done,” she announced, sitting back and picking up the mess she made.

  I glanced down at my neatly bandaged hand.

  Closing the lid of the kit, she started to stand. My hand shot out, grabbing her, pulling her into my lap. She fell softly, her arms looping around my neck like she’d just been waiting for me to seize her.

  Saying nothing, I buried my face into the side of her neck. Her fingers delved into the hair at the base of my skull. Tightening my arms around her, breathing in the scent of her skin, I allowed just one tear leak out, letting the softness of her hair drink it in.

  After a while, the crushing weight on my chest loosened and I pulled back, still keeping my arms around her. “You’re never going to be lonely ever again.”

  “We need to call the police.”

  Once the call was made, I set aside the phone, looping my arms around her waist once more. “Aren’t I heavy?” she asked, starting to rise.

  “No.” I pulled her back down.

  “I can’t stop thinking about Callie,” she whispered.

  “Me either,” I confessed. If Zoey was right about this, then Callie was in the hands of a monster. “But why her?” I murmured. “If he came back for you... why her?”

  “He couldn’t get to me.” I felt her fingers in my hair, tugging so I would meet her gaze. “He couldn’t get to me because of you.”

  I wasn’t glad that deviant had Callie, but I also wasn’t regretful I’d managed to protect Zoey.

  My brow furrowed. “So he was angry at me, so he took my assistant?”

  Grabbing her phone, Zoey did a few things on the screen, then glanced up.

  “What is it?” I asked, wary of the look in her eye.

  Turning the phone around, she showed me an image.

  She had blond, shoulder-length hair, blue eyes, flawless skin, and a bright smile. Something was so familiar about her. Something...

  “This was me,” Zoey told me. “This is what I looked like... before.”

  It started to click into place. My gut started to scream. Grabbing the photo the note was taped to, I held the old pic of Zoey beside it.

  They looked similar. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Innocent...

  What am I missing here?

  “I think it was him that destroyed my makeup. He’s angry because I changed the way I look...”

  “He took Callie because she looks the way he wants you to,” I murmured.

  “I think so,” she hypothesized.

  I shook my head briefly. There was something else. Something...

  Flipping the note over, the photo of Callie, I stared down at the crudely cut out letters, at the way they were all taped together.

  Blond hair. Blue eyes. Moth to a Flame...

  A hundred images flashed behind my eyes. The past came roaring to the present. Puzzle pieces clicked into place, revealing a staggering, grisly realization.

  Holy shit.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, staring out the window of the Viper at a house that was easily the size of a small country.

  Nick shut off the engine. The interior lights went out.

  Turning in the shadowy interior, I sought out his face. “Why are we here? And why were you so anxious to get away from the cops?”

  “We told the cops everything we could to help Callie,” he answered, pocketing the keys.

  “There’s something more going on here.”

  “Yes, there is.”

  I stared at his vacated seat as he jogged around the sports car to wrench open my door.

  He called my name. I looked over my shoulder. Offering his hand, he asked, “Do you trust me?”

  “What is this, Aladdin?”

  He chuckled but pushed his hand closer. “Do you?”

  Smacking his hand away, I said, “You know I do.”

  Leaning in, he unbuckled my seat belt, pulling back only slightly. Despite the day and night we’d had, he still took my breath away. His presence was still enough to make me forget even for a moment that everything had gone to hell.

  He whispered. “Can I kiss you?”

  I closed my eyes.

  Sensation after sensation rolled over me as his lips nibbled mine before grasping the back of my head and settling firmly against my mouth. Parting my lips, his tongue danced with mine, and pleasure flushed my skin.

  Before pulling away completely, he kissed my forehead. The tenderness in the action made my heart thump unevenly.

  “You shocked the shit out of me earlier. You know that, right?” he asked, helping me out of the car.

  “You’re the first person I’ve ever told,” I confessed, shy. “Except the police, of course.”

  Taking me around the waist, he moved in front of me, blocking the giant mansion his parents called home.

  His forehead pressed against mine. “You can tell me anything. Can I tell you anything?”

  I made a sound of agreement.

  “Good,” he said, taking my hand and starting toward the house. “Because now it’s my turn to shock the shit out of you.”

  Shocking me was going to be pretty hard considering all the surprise I’d already lived through. “What is this about?” I asked as he pulled open the ultra-wide front door, guiding me inside a foyer that literally took my breath away.

  A double winding staircase, stairs that literally lit up from within. Iron railings, tile floor with intricate inlays, and a chandelier that would put a castle to shame.

  “Mom!” Nick yelled, pulling me inside like he didn’t even see the splendor in front of us. “Mom, I�
��m home!”

  Gaping, I stared at him. He was acting like a teenager home from school, the kind who would drop his bag and kick off his shoes while bellowing for attention.

  And... yep, he was kicking off his shoes, letting them litter the perfectly pristine floor.

  His hand slid over the small of my back, his lips brushing against my ear. “Relax, angel,” he whispered. “It’s just home.”

  Easy for him to say!

  A blond woman appeared at the top of one of the staircases, looking like she belonged on the big screen.

  “Nick!” she exclaimed, joy on her face. “I didn’t know you were coming tonight.”

  “Hey, Mom,” he said, sounding just like the kid I’d imagined before.

  His mom, who didn’t look old enough to have a son Nick’s age, floated down the stairs like her feet weighed nothing at all. She was wearing a white flowy top with sleeves that floated out behind her as she descended. Her bright-blond hair was cut into a stylish pixie, with long bangs falling over her forehead.

  I understood why Nick’s family was considered Hollywood royalty, because this woman looked like a queen.

  When her feet cleared the bottom step, she rushed over, and I nearly gaped because she was so much shorter than her very tall son. She just came to his shoulder. Nick smiled and wrapped her in a hug.

  Patting his back, she laughed, then pulled away to look at me. “Ah, the wonton makeup artist who cast a spell over my son and moved in with him?”

  My mouth fell open.

  “Mom!” Nick scolded, but then he laughed. “How the hell did you know we’re living together?”

  She didn’t even miss a beat. “Haven’t you checked the headlines today? It’s trending.”

  I gasped.

  Nick made a face.

  Fumbling around, I grabbed my cell and pulled up the latest gossip headlines... which we were once again dominating. Groaning, I lowered the phone and looked at Nick. “The press knows I’m staying at your house.”

  “Jessica,” he spat.

  My mouth fell open yet again. Strolling over, Nick snapped it shut.

  “Tell Zoey you were just kidding.”

  His mom stepped forward and took my hand. Reflexively, I almost snatched it away, but thankfully, I caught myself. The way Nick palmed my lower back told me he noticed.