by Ashley Black
I felt a wave of rage wash through me. “He lied.”
“He’s Thornton Darko, did you really trust him?” Clarissa took a long sip of her drink and appraised me with a critical eye. “Come on, you’ve heard about him right? The shit he’s into?”
“I prefer to form my own opinion about people,” I shot back acidly.
She laughed bitterly. “Your opinion sucks.”
“Yes,” I had to agree. “Clearly.” Then I shot her a look. “Why do you even care?”
“Because I care about Brett. He is a talented artist, and I worry about him. If you cared for him at all, you would leave him immediately. You would just go into hiding by yourself. The un-safest thing you can do for Brett right now when a man like Thorn has decided he must have you, is to be with him, you realize that?”
“Then I guess the media release Brett just distributed to our publicists about our engagement being well and truly back on is going to be pretty provocative,” I muttered.
Clarissa’s eyes widened and she groaned. “Brett may as well have made a declaration of war.”
I bit my lip, restraining myself from gulping down my vodka. “What the fuck do I do here?”
“You need to convince Thorn to take the necklace off you, for a start,” my new witch friend advised; as Billy passed by us, she held up two fingers, and nodded to him slightly.
Fuck that, new witch bestie, she had rightly anticipated my need to get annihilated after hearing her rather depressing news that I was, as I had suspected, fucked.
“And then?” I prompted, sucking down the rest of my drink.
“You will probably have to kill him,” she said.
My eyes widened. “Surely it won’t come to that!? Holy shit.”
“Do you love Thornton Darko?” she asked quietly. “This is important, Elena. Please don’t be evasive with me, as you probably have been with Brett. Be honest now.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Then maybe no one has to die.”
“What?”
“Can you love him not to want him … ever?” she pressed me.
I stared at her, not understanding. “Huh?”
Clarissa looked pointedly at my necklace again. “You are wearing Thorn’s promise of love to you, he has bound himself to be yours whenever you want and need him. He will be there. Have you thought that through? What that means?”
I blinked at her stupidly.
“You need to be very careful of your thoughts and feelings, but it’s probably too late, he is deep inside you now – the pull of him, you are like a fucking magnet. There is no running and hiding. If you want him, which your body will betray, he will come. He will show. He is going to be powerless to stop that pull. He could be anywhere, and he will just make his way to you.”
“He’s headed to Mexico soon,” I breathed.
Clarissa nodded. “That’s good, but I really think if you are to have a future with Brett, you need to get Thorn to remove the damned necklace. Imagine-” She pressed a hand to her mouth, flushing slightly.
“Imagine what?” I was terrified.
“Imagine you and Brett on your honeymoon, you’re making love, guess what happens?”
I groaned, my head falling into my hands. “This is a fucking nightmare.”
“You could always just … leave Brett, I would take good care of him for you I promise,” she smirked. “And you can go and enjoy the rest of your life with Thornton Darko and that beautiful little community he’s got going on in that castle of his. Hey! You could be their new Witch Queen!”
I glared at her. “Nice, and I wonder why I don’t have many girl friends!”
“Because you are a bit of a fucking bitch,” Clarissa said seriously, though her eyes were sparkling in amusement. “Seriously, though. You are my sister in magic, whether you have a clue of your powers or not. I will always be your unwitting friend. Here.” she grabbed my phone, and keyed her name and number into it. “Call me any time. I don’t know how much help I can be, but if you want to do that odd girl talk thing sometime, call me.”
I thought I might cry at her unexpected kindness.
“Thanks,” I sniffed. “I think.”
As our drinks arrived, she rose to her feet.
“What about your drink?” I objected.
She smirked. “For you. You need it more than me right now.” She fluttered her fingers. “Good luck convincing Thorn to remove the necklace. You are never ever going to be free of that man until that happens.” Her voice dropped. “Mind you, he is very persistent, things tend to get very fucked up when he doesn’t get what he wants, so necklace or no, if it is any consolation to you, you were probably always going to be fucked.”
I watched her go in silence, my shoulders shaking. I stared at the two drinks for a full ten minutes, and decided against getting annihilated after all. When I rose to my feet and promptly slammed into a wall of warmth and muscle, I was extremely grateful for that decision.
Shit. Oh fucking shit. Thorn.
Here in the bar in Ashby because… my stupid wanton body wanted it? Is that it?
He looked terrible. Shadows beneath red rimmed eyes, his hair had a rumpled, just got out of bed look; ordinarily that might have struck me as cute, but today it terrified me.
“So you know,” he breathed, dark eyes flaring, and before I knew what was happening his mouth was smashing against mine.
Twenty Three
“Stop!” I shouted against his lips and pushed him hard in the chest. “Please Thorn, you’re scaring me!”
His hand slid into my hair, and as he jerked me roughly against him, his fingers digging into my skull, his lips bruising mine.
I bit him.
He cried out and backed up a step, blood trailing down his strong chin.
“I don’t want you to touch me again!” I screamed in his face.
He stared at me in alarm. “I don’t understand. I just heard you say you loved me.”
I could not speak for my rage. He had been listening to our conversation. That entire fucking time? I was perfectly mortified.
“How can you treat me this way?” he went on, groaning, his hands gripped his head. “You said you loved me – remember that? And yet you told me yesterday you deliberately used me? That all that we shared was some kind of sick game to you. I refuse to believe that you would do that to someone you love.”
“How can I love you when I don’t even know who you are?” I whispered, tears filling my eyes. “You are cruel, manipulative, and clearly fucked in the head. You tried to kill Brett. You hurt my friend Daniel.”
“But I am empty of a soul,” Thorn attempted to reason with me. “You don’t think that fucks up a person? I am truly one of the Devil’s children. I wasn’t joking when I told you of this. I am not… a good person. Not at the core of me, you know this. You know exactly who I am,” he insisted.
“You clearly don’t know who I am!” I pushed past him, and headed for the door.
“If you really don’t want me,” Thorn called after me. “I meant what I said earlier to you despite my recent actions to the contrary. I will respect your wishes. If your wish is to never see me again, then never it shall be.”
I shivered a little when he said that. I heard some other, far more sinister, meaning in it.
“He means he is probably going to kill you,” Billy observed, picking up the two drinks I had abandoned; he cast Thorn a withering look. “Or himself. Or you both.”
“I think you should shut your fucking mouth,” Thorn glowered, and staggered toward the man. I realized he was still drunk. “And give me those.” He grabbed the two vodkas from Billy and knocked them back.
“I need them. I can’t get enough right now,” he laughed brokenly, and then reached over the bar and grabbed the bottle of vodka, lifting it to his lips and taking a swig of it. He raised it to me in a rather demented toast. “Here’s to your engagement,” he slurred. “That was fucking quick.” Then he smashed the bottle against a wall
, grabbed the bar owner, fisting his shirt and lifting him so they were nose to nose. “I need more.”
I screamed, and yanked out my phone to call the police, something I should have done earlier but the man had me stupefied. I couldn’t believe how undone he was right now. How unravelled and fucked? How had I not seen this? Had it always been a mask of control to conceal this from me? How exhausting. No wonder his sanity had fractured under all of that pressure. To be normal. To be… sane.
I heard his words come back to haunt me.
Always thinking.
And thinking.
And thinking
I think TOO MUCH
My head is full of ME
And YOU
Mostly YOU.
ALWAYS YOU.
Billy muttered something that sounded a little like ‘lunatic’ and cringed away from him. “All right. Calm down, buddy.”
“Put the man down, Thorn,” I asked him quietly.
He blinked dazedly at me, and did as he was told. Billy ran for the door. Then Thorn began smashing the shit out of the bar. I wished this were only the normal asshole antics of a rock star losing their shit a bit, the whole ‘trashing a fucking hotel’ thing. But this was far more fucked up than that. Glasses and alcohol rained down. He picked up barstools and threw them across the room. He was acting like a crazy person. Right… shit, he was that, a crazy person. He needed fucking help.
I should have followed Billy, but I was too mesmerized by him right now; my legs were shaking and gave out from beneath me, as I fell to my knees. I was crying, my beautiful muse, this man whom I had fantasized about, who I was so inspired by, who had given so much to my art, and who I thought I had even loved, had lost his damn mind.
It was all my fault. I buried my face in my shaking hands. “Please,” I begged no one in particular. “Make it all go away.”
Then mercifully I heard another voice in the bar, I had thought us alone. “Hey, it’s Cellrager!” Then others joined the voice. “What the fuck!? Cellrager in Ashby!”
I peeked through my fingers, and would have almost laughed at the scene if I wasn’t so terrified, a swarm of hyped up teenage boys and girls pressed in around Thorn who had stopped smashing up shit for a moment, he seemed frozen as he was accosted by his fans. Then behind me, I heard shouting and police stormed in. I felt them brush past me a rush of frantic energy, and an explosion of glass. When I looked up again I saw the teenage kids pressing excitedly around a broken window pointing out of it, and whooping. “That was fucking insane. He just jumped from the bar out the window,” they reported unhelpfully to the police.
Thornton Darko was gone.
Brett.
Oh shit.
Brett.
Twenty Four
I could not reach Brett. He did not answer my calls or text messages. I knew that it could be that he was in his little studio completely absorbed in his art. Like me, he blocked out the world with headphones in his ears, and death metal hammering his skull. When I saw the beautiful, peaceful paintings that fell from his mind as a result, it always made me laugh that such mayhem inspired such calm, unaffected bliss.
Brett. I bit my lip. I was terrified for him. For us. Images of Aaron’s dream kept flashing over and over again inside my mind. Brett strangled in his little studio, Thorn dragging me away by the hair.
I swung my car into the drive. I was so angry at myself that I had even contemplated getting annihilated today at the Revolver Bar. I couldn’t be senseless with someone like Thornton Darko around.
“Brett!” I braked and hurtled myself from the car; the studio was the first place I went. I burst in there and found him bobbing his head to music of course, a smile lighting his beautiful face as he outlined an idea for a new piece.
I nearly fell on my ass from the shock of my relief. I slid up behind him and put my arms around him and nuzzled his neck.
He whirled, pulled off his headphones, and gave me a fierce hug. “You all right, El? How did it go with Clarissa?” Then his gaze fell, disappointed, upon my neck. “Oh. That well, huh?”
“It was awful,” I fought back tears.
“You’re shaking,” he realized. “El, what happened?”
“Thorn turned up at the Revolver bar after Clarissa left,” I stammered. “He was really fucking scary, Brett. I don’t think we should stay here-”
Anger twisted his face for a moment, then he turned from me and hefted a picnic basket on top of his work station. “I’m not afraid of him Elena.”
You fucking should be.
“Besides,” he continued. “Our grounds are really beautiful. I wanted us to take a walk around them like old times; let’s walk to the old lighthouse, drink, eat and talk shit. If you really want to go after that, sure, all right, I’ll make reservations for us somewhere. I just want to say goodbye to this place.”
He shivered.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. My heart was breaking for his sentimentality, his thoughtfulness, but mostly for his stupidity. We needed to leave here NOW. But he was speaking to me in that tone I knew too well that invited no further discussion.
“I don’t think we’ll come back here for a while,” he muttered bitterly, his eyes flashed to mine. “Not until I kill that fucker anyway.”
My mouth fell open. “What?”
“If that is what it takes to protect you, then that is what I’m prepared to do.” Brett was shaking as he gripped the picnic basket, and took my hand. “That is what I have done for my country.”
I frowned, thinking back to the tear gas bombs, how expertly Brett had held his own against the Cellrager army. “You did what for your country?”
“Afghanistan,” Brett murmured softly. “I did a short stint there Elena in special forces. I didn’t last long. It was…” His voice fell away, he was breathing hard. “Something I have tried to forget.”
“Why have you never told me about this before?” I asked gently, awestruck at this different side to my artist fiancé - all this time, this whole other life, he had never shared with me.
“Because I wanted to forget,” he sighed. “And when I met you, you filled up my mind and heart. There was no space for any of that shit any more. You helped me forget.” Tears were glittering in his brown eyes. “But I haven’t forgotten how to kill. And I will kill Thornton Darko if I must. I don’t want to do that. Don’t get me wrong. Life is precious. I don’t take it lightly. But that fucker clearly needs to die. He is rotten to the core.”
I was speechless at his revelation. I had so many questions. All I said eventually after a long stretch of silence was, “If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here. I will listen.”
He brushed the top of my head with a kiss. “Thanks, El.”
There was so much I wanted to tell him, but this beautiful picnic he had planned for us, this bidding of goodbye to our home, to the mostly happy memories we had built here, I refused to ruin it just yet with the awful resolve I had come to in my panicked drive back to the house.
I had resolved to leave Brett, and go into hiding for a while. Apparently, I was a freaking lightning rod for attracting Thorn; better I was away from Brett at least until that shit got sorted out. I would also explain to Thorn that I was no longer with Brett. Hopefully that would spare him. He would freak the fuck out of course, and never let me go. But I owed him an explanation. Maybe a letter. Yes. I would do that. I would give it to Aaron to give to him later when I was well and truly hidden from him. Something told me with Brett’s specialist skill set I was really going to have to go off the grid to not be found by him. I was so delusional. Thorn had been right. I would go on feeding them wouldn’t I? My delusions.
It was the perfect blue sky afternoon. Not a fucking cloud in sight, and yet, I saw it so clearly because it was so startling against all that beautiful wash of blue. A raven, blacker than midnight, flew across the sky.
Twenty Five
“I have always wanted to paint you naked.”
I moaned against Bret
t’s lips as he covered my eyes with a blindfold. My voice had trembled over the word 'don’t’ but I didn’t speak it. He was too happy and playful. Our picnic at the lighthouse had been magical, full of wine, beautiful gourmet food, and insanely good conversation and kisses. Oh wow! Those kisses. We had slowly but surely maddened and worked ourselves up, but hadn’t resolved that insane tension… yet. I suspected that was to come. I was just pissed off that Brett had decided that had to be now. In his studio, I wanted to get the fuck out of this place. It was all I could do to not to run screaming when I had seen the lone raven flying across that beautiful sky hours ago.
“So you choose to paint a picture of me naked… now?” I asked. “When the cab will be here in, what, at least half an hour to collect us?”
Brett’s breath hushed over my lips; I felt his gaze on me, I couldn’t see it, but I could feel its fierce longing and admiration. “I am not painting a picture of you El, I am painting you,” he murmured, and I jolted with sudden pleasure as a brush tip skimmed over my nipple.
“Oh,” I breathed. “Wow. That is… I can hardly wait to see what you do with.” I ran my hands down my body in the way I knew drove him quietly insane. “This canvas.”
Brett groaned. “Do that again, please, it is helping my inspiration.”
“If you think it will help your focus, for sure,” I smirked, and walked my fingers down to my thigh and slid my hand ever so slowly up to meet my pussy and cupped it and bucked slightly against my palm, biting my lip and throwing my head back and groaning urgently.
I heard jeans unzipping.
I straightened. “What happened to the painting?”
“I will paint you,” I heard Brett say gruffly. “I just thought it was only fair I am naked as well when I do it.”
I shivered in excitement and anticipation. “Well, don’t poke my eye out with that thing ok?”
He laughed. “You tease me.”
