Among the Debris (Son of Rain #2)

by Michelle Irwin

  He assessed me with caution, as if he were studying a wild animal and trying to figure out how best to soothe the beast within. “You really care for her that much?”

  “I really do.” It seemed like he was actually starting to understand just how deeply her death would affect me.

  He sighed heavily. “I’ll talk to Dad. I’ll try to get him to see your side.”

  I beamed, and I wanted to hug him for being an ally. My first fucking ally in the whole situation.

  “But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

  Moving across the room as he left, I leaned against the table for support again.

  Why did I agree to come here? They’ve probably already taken her somewhere else.

  It was only Dad’s promise that he wouldn’t do anything until Eth and I had talked that gave me any confidence in Evie’s safety. Dad may have done many things wrong in his life, but he didn’t break his promises to us.

  Family is key, I reminded myself.

  It was Dad who introduced us to the concept—he wouldn’t destroy his family if there was any hope of saving it.

  A few minutes later, the silent loneliness of the room enveloped me. Dad’s news took the silence as an opportunity to seep into my heart. As it did, the horror of the loss stung at my eyes and I slumped to the floor.

  Pieces of my heart still felt numb to the news, but the rest began to mourn the fact that I’d never see Lou again. Even though she pissed me off sometimes—more than anyone else in the world ever could—there were positive memories too. She had my back at least as often as I had hers. Regardless of whether or not it was her own doing, I had lost my sister and once that reality hit, it hit hard and it fucking hurt.

  Part of me had always hoped we’d be able to find peace with each other again one day. That somewhere down the line she would see the good in Evie like I did and begin to understand why I’d fallen as hard as I had. I’d never have that now. I’d never have her sass me again or grate on my last nerve the way only she could.

  She’s gone.

  For the Rain, it would be nothing—the loss of a soldier and the death of one more Jacobs. The latest in a long line who’d given their lives for the “worthy” cause. For me though, it was a tragedy. It was the loss of the one family member I’d sworn I’d always do everything I could to protect. And by falling in love, I had failed her.

  “THOSE ARE our terms, take it or leave it.” Dad crossed his arms and stared at me with open disgust.

  I tried to figure out how exactly we’d reached this point. Eth had been able to convince Dad to spare Evie, but in exchange, I had to agree to do a one eighty on my recent stance about the Rain.

  Publicly, I had to stand up and repent, to tell everyone how wrong I’d been. I had to do that at Lou’s memorial, giving the speech of a loving brother and not a vengeful partner. I also had to agree to leave Evie.

  It killed me to do it, but once I learned exactly how many men Dad had positioned around the hospital watching for my return, it was clear I’d never be able to reach her again, let alone help her escape, before they would kill her. It broke my heart to even think it, but I nodded to agree to his terms.

  “I get to see Evie one more time though, to tell her what’s happening.”

  Dad gritted his teeth and looked like he was going to disagree, but finally he nodded.

  “You will be giving her up though.” It wasn’t a question or a statement, it was a directive, and I would disregard it at my—or more specifically, Evie’s—peril.

  “Yes, sir.” My gaze dropped to the desk as I said the words that would prove fatal to my happiness. Even as they left my mouth, a new emptiness clawed through me. I could only hope that Evie would understand why I’d had to do it, even though it killed me inside.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  FUCK YOU’RE A MESS.

  My hair stood up on end. The grease generated from running my fingers through it all day, combined with the gel I’d used that morning, caused the odd shape.

  Blood-shot and rimmed in red, my eyes looked like they belonged to something out of a horror movie and not a human—at least not a sober one.

  I turned on the tap and splashed my face with cold water before rinsing out my mouth.

  The echoes of the eulogy I’d had to stand up and deliver kept running through my head. Key phrases like “dedicated to a worthy cause” and “despite being haunted by the horrors of her past” passed through my mind again and again. My entire being kept twisting between the dread of having to give up the life I dreamed of having with Evie—the one we had been so close to forging in Detroit—and the guilt I felt over betraying my family, thereby causing my sister’s death.

  In the two days that had passed since I learned of Lou’s death, I’d somehow reached a strange acceptance that she wouldn’t be coming back. She was lost forever, and it was my fault. Just like Evie’s dad. My choices had led to another death, and soon I would have to accept my punishment and betray my heart.

  A knock on the bathroom door drew my attention away from the haunted man in the mirror. On top of everything else, I had to share a hotel room with both Eth and Dad. Apparently I couldn’t be trusted not to run otherwise. I flicked the lock to allow entry, but didn’t actually open the door.

  “How are you holding up?” Eth asked as he pushed his way in.

  I shrugged. I couldn’t even begin to make sense of the torrent of emotions in me; there was no way I could explain them to someone else.

  “You did good today.”

  His words weighed heavy on me. I leaned against the sink and sighed. We’d had a private memorial attended by some of the Rain hierarchy and any of the teams we’d worked with in the past who were able to come to Detroit under short notice. Lou’s body would soon been transported to Boston to be interred in our family plot. All of us had been assigned a plot the day we were born. It was almost expected that we would die young, and we were all supposed to understand that an early death was merely part of the life we led or some such shit.

  No doubt when her body arrived in Boston, another memorial would happen, and it would all start over again. It would be yet another opportunity for me to be paraded around like the puppet I’d become, forced to stand up and talk about how perfect she’d been. All the while I would still be suffering desperately from my other loss—the loss that Lou had caused. The loss of my happiness and the life I’d shared with Evie.

  Eth attempted conversation again. “You’re doing the right thing, you know.”

  Unable to listen to anymore of his platitudes, I grabbed a towel off the rack and patted my face dry before tossing the towel loosely back in place.

  I went to brush past him and leave the small room, but he placed his hand on my shoulder to stop me.

  “I know I’ve given you shit in the past about needing to talk about your feelings, but this is one of those times when it might help. And I’m here for you if you need me.”

  I closed my eyes and blew out a slow breath through my nose before shaking out of his hold and continuing past him. Talking with him would do nothing for me. My biggest concern was trying to figure out how I was going to tell Evie that I wouldn’t be able to stay. Especially when it would have to happen long before she’d fully recovered. Just like the last time, I’d shaken up her life and would leave before the sediment had settled back to the bottom.

  I’d thought about trying to run away with her again, but it was impossible. Even if I could find a way past the guards and into her room, and even if we could escape equally unnoticed, where could we go? Lou’s chase and subsequent death had proven that my decision to leave Evie the first time had been the right one. As much as I hated to admit it, there just wasn’t a safe place in the world for someone thought of as a monster and the man who loved her.

  Leaving Eth, I headed for my temporary bedroom to be alone to gather my thoughts. When I had called the hospital that morning, the doctors looking after Evie’s case had told me she still hadn’
t woken. They had said she was showing some promising signs, even though they’d been unable to break her fever. I didn’t waste my breath trying to explain that her fever would never come down—it was a part of her. Then they said they would be reducing the anesthetic to allow her to wake when her body was ready and deal with the fever then.

  Because it had been so long since I’d been allowed to visit her, I was determined to see her that night regardless of whether she was conscious or not. I just needed to be prepared for what I would tell her if she was awake.

  My mind had been turning over every possible way of saying goodbye ever since I’d agreed that I would leave her again, but it didn’t help me know the actual words to say. I’d broken her heart once before, and I wasn’t ready to do it again. I wasn’t even sure that I could.

  What other choice did I have though?

  Half an hour later, after running through a number of different ways to break the news to her, I went in search of Dad to demand I be allowed to go to visit Evie. When I neared the open door on his temporary office, I could hear him talking to Eth—arguing once more, like they always seemed to do lately. I never truly understood how soothing Lou’s presence had been on their tempers.

  “The doctors are happy with her progress. She’s healing as well as can be expected.”

  I slowed my steps. Those were words similar to what Evie’s doctors had told me. Were they talking about her?

  “Then what though?” Eth said. “Clay’s going to learn that you lied to him before long.”

  Lied?

  My heart pounded against my chest, and I stood completely still, not daring to make a single sound in case it stopped the truths spilling from the room.

  “As soon as she’s awake, we’ll transfer her to Bayview. It should be easy to keep her presence there a secret. There are certainly enough places to hide her while she’s observed day and night. We won’t leave her unattended.”

  “I still think that the risk is too high. What happens when Clay finds out?”

  “He won’t.”

  The air left my body in a rush, almost as if I’d received a physical blow to the stomach. The image of my beautiful Evie in the hands of Ben, the director’s son; Steven, the Assessor who’d been in charge of my retraining; or any of the other Assessors, in fact, burned itself into my mind.

  What would they do to her? Would they push her limits to see how she makes fire?

  They would torture her to draw out all of her secrets and then kill her the moment they had, of that much I was certain. Because they knew exactly what she was and that a child would result from the flame, they would keep on killing her descendants over and over until they discovered a permanent method of killing a phoenix. How many times would Evie and her legacy have to suffer the same fate?

  If the retraining process I’d been forced to endure was the way they treated people they cared about, I dreaded to think about what they might do to her—a perceived threat. The cries of the werewolf who’d been forced to drink molten silver filled my memory and bile rose in my throat. I pressed my fist against my mouth to stop from making any sound and revealing that I had heard the truth of what they planned to do to Evie. It took everything in me to not react.

  My stomach sunk to my feet even as my heart expanded to fill the space it left in its wake. I leaned against the wall, trying to gather my bearings. The room spun around me.

  What can I do?

  One thing was clear, if I let Dad suspect I knew his real plan, he’d either kill Evie or speed up the transfer. I needed to pretend I had no idea and then figure out a way to bust Evie out of the hospital—fuck the guards and the Rain. If I had to run to keep her safe, I would run all the way to fucking Australia.

  Dad’s cell phone rang, but I couldn’t listen to his conversation with the sound of my own panicked thoughts ringing in my head. I needed to find calm and center myself, but I had no idea how, not with the potential agony Evie might endure at the hands of the Rain swirling around my head.

  A moment later, Dad and Eth came storming out of the room and almost collided with me as I pushed away from the wall with a false calm and tried to pretend I was just then heading to see them and not listening at the door.

  “Well, it looks like we know how your pet really felt about you,” Dad said.

  “What?” I asked, not comprehending his words, or the meaning behind them.

  “She left.”

  “Left?” My voice was little more than a breath. If she’d left without waiting for me, was it because she finally understood what I had tried to tell her in Charlotte? That my very presence put her in danger. It had been my family that put her in hospital after all.

  Does she blame me for that? Or does she think I had something to do with Lou’s attack?

  “She broke out of the hospital tonight.” Dad turned to Eth who nodded at something.

  I leaned forward to rest my hands on my knees as I struggled to catch my breath.

  She’s really gone?

  “But not before slicing the throat of a nurse,” Dad added—possibly a little too gleefully given the news he was sharing.

  I shook my head emphatically. “No. Evie couldn’t . . . She would never . . .” The concept was so impossible, I couldn’t even voice it.

  “We need to get over to the hospital,” Eth said, twisting me around and pushing me down the hallway so that I would go with them.

  I couldn’t agree more because I was certain I would find some note or something there detailing some plan she’d laid out for her escape. Some information that would lead me back to her.

  THE SCENE was like something out of a nightmare. The pale fluorescent lights casting deep shadows in the dark night did nothing to dispel the terrible sight.

  On the bed where Evie had been the last time I’d seen her, there was nothing but a twisted pile of metal that had obviously once been the handcuffs chaining her in place.

  Worse, there was indeed a nurse that had been killed during the escape. As much as I wanted to deny it, the evidence against Evie was damning.

  There was video footage of Evie colliding with the woman in the hallway, before Evie captured the nurse in her arms and dragged the unsuspecting woman into a patient’s room. A few minutes later, Evie left wearing the woman’s scrubs. No one else entered or left the room before the police officer who’d discovered the body. Unfortunately for Evie, there was no footage from inside the room to prove her innocence.

  When I pointed out that there was no actual video of the death, Eth was quick to suggest that unless the comatose eighty-year-old man with arthritic hands in the room killed the woman after Evie left, there was only one suspect.

  “She can’t have gone very far on foot,” Eth said as he stood after watching the footage. “Let’s go.”

  “No!” My voice was firm, even though I hadn’t consciously decided to talk.

  “What do you mean, ‘No’?” Spittle pooled at the corner of Dad’s mouth and his eyes were wide and wild.

  “I mean no. You promised that you would leave her alone if I did as you asked and I have. I don’t care if your promise was bullshit and you planned to take her to Bayview. You owe this to me. Let her go.”

  “We n—” Eth started to argue.

  “I heard you talking about transferring her back to Bayview!” I shouted, cutting off whatever bullshit he was going to try. I didn’t care what the video showed. I knew Evie, and there was no way she could have slit someone’s throat.

  Eth cast Dad a worried look before scrubbing the back of his neck. It was a habit I was guilty of on occasion, but he rarely did it. It was only when he was truly concerned about something that his palm brushed that spot. I narrowed my eyes at him, and he looked away to avoid meeting my glare.

  I took it as confirmation of what I’d already known—they had planned on handing Evie over the first chance they could, and Eth only felt guilty now that they had been found out. As much as it killed me that she’d ran, I was almost glad she�
��d escaped. I could cope with the pain if it meant she was safe. At least . . . I hoped I could.

  “We have to do what’s right for everyone,” Dad said without remorse.

  “Fuck that. You have to do what’s right by me,” I demanded. “Just this once, you have to be there for me. I’m telling you that you are not going after her. I won’t see her be tortured at the hands of the Assessors. Even with that evidence, I refuse to believe Evie killed that woman. That’s just not the girl I know.”

  Eth looked like he was going to argue, but Dad nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

  I crossed my arms and stared defiantly at the two of them. “That’s what I want.”

  THE MORNING after I’d forced Dad and Eth to leave Evie alone, I went back to the hospital room to search for any clue of her thought process before she left. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to find, but I would’ve been happy with a note or something to indicate that she wanted me to find her, even though I wasn’t sure I could risk leaving again so soon. Dad and Eth were both watching me like hawks. Who knew how many other pairs of eyes were trained on my every move.

  Not that it mattered. All I found was an empty room.

  It caused an errant thought to come to mind. Maybe she had deliberately left no clues for me to follow because she didn’t want me with her. The departure was so absolute—her decision so final. I tried to find a reason why she wouldn’t want me with her and kept coming back to that one, glaringly obvious reason—she blamed me for her suffering.

  I fell forward against the bed with the weight of the thought, but once it had surfaced again, it was impossible to push away. The truth in it was undeniable. I clenched my fingers into fists to stop myself from showing any outward signs of my internal agony.

  Satisfied that there was nothing left for me at the hospital, I made myself get up and leave. After leaving the room, Eth and I traveled together to the apartment I had shared with Evie, but there was practically nothing left but a gutted shell. On one wall, I could see the very top of the Rain symbol spray painted in red. The rest of the wall was blackened beyond recognition, but the presence of the symbol was enough to satisfy me that Lou had indeed threatened Evie’s life—as if there had ever been any real doubt.