by KV Rose
Who lets someone they just met hit them?
He takes my fingers from his face, pins my hand against the door at my back. “If you want me to hurt you, say it. But don’t put your nails against my back again—”
I do it before he can finish his sentence. I drag one nail down his back, not searching for a wound, but it doesn’t take long to find one. Like a free fall through empty air, until you hit a rock jutting out of the side of a cliff.
I feel something warm against my finger, his blood under my nail.
His body is tightly wound, every muscle tense as he tries not to say a word. The hand pressing mine against the door circles my wrist, as if he’s holding on.
He’s not breathing.
As my finger comes to the waistband of his shorts, I realize I’m not either.
I can’t stop the smile pulling at the corners of my mouth, anticipation washing over me in waves.
But just as he exhales, just as he brings his hand to my throat and squeezes so hard my eyes water, something goes off.
Something shrill and loud that makes us both jump, his grip loosening on both my throat and my wrist.
I clamp my hands over my ears, jerking them away from his body.
What the fuck?
Then it hits me just as he says the words: “Fire alarm.”
“Shit,” he hisses, and before I can react, he picks me up, tossing me over his shoulder.
He flips on the light, and before I can hit him, I realize I’m staring down at his back.
It looks...horrible. My mouth falls open, taking in the mutilated flesh, flayed open and blooming with dried blood, as if he didn’t clean these wounds. There’s fresh blood, too, from my fingernail. A small drop in the ocean of lacerations, but it makes my stomach churn.
He walks with me back to the bed, pushing his feet into his boots. And then he drops me onto the bed and tosses me my own boots. As I quickly put them on, he swipes up a white t-shirt—stained with blood on the back, probably from when I scratched him last night—shoves it on then picks me up again. I’m staring at him, upside down in a daze, the piercing shrill making my stomach tighten into knots, the sight of his back making it worse.
“I can walk!” I manage to gasp out.
He ignores me, his hand tightening around my waist. He yanks open the door and I hear screaming. Laughter. The footsteps of people running.
“Get her out of here,” he barks to someone and I wonder if he’s talking about me, but he just heads down the hall, not pawning me off to anyone.
I can’t see who he was talking to, but I hear a raspy voice say, loudly, “Gee, thanks. If you wouldn’t have told me that, I’d have no idea what to fucking do!”
Maverick says nothing, just keeps heading toward the end of the hall.
We enter a stairwell, the rushing footsteps are louder, the screams shriller. I’m jostled over his shoulder as we come into a crowded corridor, but he easily shoves people out of the way, and no one touches me.
No one bumps into me.
Then we’re outside, the night pitch black and cold as he heads toward the parking lot.
He sets me down on my feet, and I clutch his shirt to steady myself. His arm is still around me, holding me close, and he examines the enormous stone building, tipping his head up to take it in. All around us, people are scattering to their cars, pouring out of the compound.
There’s no smoke. No fire that I can see, but the place is huge.
The alarm is loud here, too, but not nearly so piercing. I inhale, exhale, waiting.
He tilts his chin down, looking at the exit. I try to move away from him, but he just tightens his hold on me without looking my way.
I turn to see what he’s looking at, and then I watch Natalie stumble out in a daze, her boyfriend, Atlas, holding her hand. Then some of Atlas’s other friends that I don’t really know.
“Let’s go,” Maverick mutters, more to himself than to me. He steers us back toward the parking lot.
We’re just going to drive away? Doesn’t he want to know if there’s actually a fire? Is he going to take me home?
Do I want to go home anymore?
He pulls something out of his shorts. A key fob. He presses a button, and I see lights flashing, and a grey car that probably costs more money than my mother has ever made in her life starts...opening.
The doors open upward, like wings tilted up. A bird diving down.
My mouth drops open. He turns toward me as we keep walking toward the sleek car. In the bleating of the alarm, the sound of cars peeling out of here, people still shouting even though there’s no obvious signs of a fire, he smirks at me and everything else...disappears.
“You ever ridden in a McLaren before?”
I’m vaguely aware it’s a sports car. I don’t answer him, but I’m sure he sees the answer in the way I’m staring at the ridiculous car.
He grins at me. It’s boyish, giving his angled face a less sinister look.
He steers me around to the passenger side by my shoulders, then pushes me toward the orange trimmed leather seats.
He seems to have forgotten all about my nails down his back.
I think about not getting into the car. Yeah, we fucked but I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me. Despite his devilish appearance, he lives a strange life surrounded by shiny, pretty things...and I’m not one of those things. I just wanted an escape for the night. It’s not the first time I went to a party looking for one of those.
And I cannot get attached. Not again.
But he shoves me, hard, and I fall back into the seat. He reaches around me, does up my seatbelt. With a devious grin, he shuts the bird-like doors and comes around to his side.
When we’re in the car, he turns to glance at me. “I’m gonna pay you back for that, Ella.”
I hope you do.
Chapter Five
I pay her back for it, and then some. She took three shots when she got inside my house. If that’s what it was going to take for her to fuck me again, I didn’t care. I saw the mark on her face, the one I didn’t make, and I thought about asking her about it. I wondered if that’s what she wanted to forget.
I didn’t ask.
I have a feeling whenever she wakes up, she’s gonna be covered in more bruises. I think I should feel bad about that, but she begged for it. Not that I needed to be begged.
We didn’t talk much, and when it was all over, despite her feeble protest that she should leave, she fell asleep. I wonder if it hadn’t been close to five in the morning, still dark outside, if this would’ve happened so easily. If she would’ve let me carry her upstairs, dive my head between her legs, and then fuck her so hard she actually cried.
Monsters always get away with more in the dark.
Like whoever pulled that fucking fire alarm.
I got a report from the guards that there was not, in fact, a fire, which is another reason I don’t fucking like people. And tonight, I’ve got to deal with more of them. At Council.
But for now, Ella is asleep in my bed, and while I’m sexually satisfied, I’m not ever really satisfied.
Which is a good thing I got a text from an unsaved number in my phone just as I finished choking Ella, coming inside of her again, because I’m an idiot and believed her when she said she was on birth control.
It’s the same number that had taunted me about Poe’s The Premature Burial: “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
But this time, all the message said was, Ready for confession?
I lock a sleeping Ella in my room (this house is full of dark surprises).
I let Father Tomas into the garage, the sun not even out yet.
I purposefully parked the McLaren and pulled the Audi outside on the driveway for this reason.
The priest is dressed in his clerical clothing; black shirt and pants. Still, he’s got the Leviathan Cross around his neck hanging by a black cord, the infinity s
ign and double cross glinting silver in the garage light, reminding me just what kind of priest he is.
The garage is clean and tidy without my cars, nothing at all in here, which is how I like everything: empty.
I roll up my sleeves, get down on my knees on the cement floor.
Father Tomas sighs as he stands in front of me, his arms clasped behind his back. He’s in his mid-thirties, with thick brown hair that’s longer on top, stubble that he’s let grow since the last time I saw him, after the disaster at Sacrificium, a few weeks ago. He’s got brown eyes, thick brows narrowed on me as I look up at him, sitting back on my heels.
His hands are behind his back, but I can see the whip, nearly grazing the cement floor.
“Always with blood on your hands,” he murmurs to himself. And then, “You sure you want to do this?” But even though his words are kind, I can imagine him preaching fire and brimstone, telling everyone they’re going to hell and they should be thankful for it.
He’s the official priest of the 6, with no religious background whatsoever save for in Satanic studies. He has a church of sorts that’s his own little mashup of atheists and humanists. He’s a licensed therapist.
I trust him.
He used to take me from my parents’ house when I was a kid, when things got bad. After Malachi. After I earned my nickname, Mayhem, he’s the one that indulged me in my…desires.
He still does.
If any of the 6 knew he was here, and if they knew what he knows about my little basement debacle, they’d probably kill him for keeping my secrets. It’s how I know he’ll keep doing it, even though he’s tried to convince me to let Ria out. He’s kept my secrets for so long, it would be suicide to tell anyone about it now.
I pull my shirt over my head, drop it to the floor and kneel with my hands on my knees, my head bowed.
He was the one to suggest I bond with Sid over our mutual love of poetry.
No, thanks.
He was also the one to first find out Ria Cuevas was—is—living in my basement. He guessed as much when she “went missing”.
I don’t keep his number in my phone because I don’t keep anyone’s number in my phone. A way to keep my mind sharp, or maybe I’m just truly that masochistic. But I wasn’t surprised it was him that found out first.
He’s observant. It’s what’s kept him alive while dealing with a cult as volatile as mine all these years.
“Don’t ask me again,” I growl at him in answer to his question. I close my eyes, but I don’t squeeze them shut. I want to breathe through this. Feel every bit of it.
Before Sid, I hadn’t done this in a long, long time. And I’d never done it enough to scar. Never enough to draw blood.
But after her, and now with Ria and Brooklin, I can’t get enough.
“You know if you keep doing this, it’s going to fuck up your brand?”
I snort, shaking my head but otherwise ignoring him. My Unsaint’s tattoo—a skull with a U through one eye and smoke through another—is already a little fucked up. Scars from Lover’s Death, and now…this.
“How many?” he asks, adjusting his stance. I keep my eyes closed, but I can hear him move.
“As many as it takes.”
He blows out a breath. “Should’ve told me. I’d have cancelled my dinner plans,” he jokes.
I smile despite myself. “Should have.”
And then he’s done talking.
The first flick of the whip is like a shock to my system. Like stepping into a too-hot shower; something I also do. It startles me, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from crying out. But I don’t make a sound, and I taste iron in my mouth.
Father Tomas gives me five seconds before he flicks the whip again, right over the same spot he just hit.
He’s good, I’ll give him that.
I clench my hands on my knees, digging into my pants, but I still don’t make a sound. Even when I feel my flesh ripping in two, opening up the wounds that haven’t healed, I don’t let anything come out of my throat except my own breath.
Soon, he’s not waiting any amount of time at all, just flicking the whip over and over and over. I hear it whistle right before it hits my flesh, and he walks around me, so he’s standing at my back, watching it get destroyed as he hits me. I’ve stopped jumping, stopped flinching.
Stopped breathing.
Stopped feeling.
My back is numb with an undercurrent of fire. I have my eyes still closed, my hands still fisted against my pants, but I still don’t say a word. Make a single sound. He keeps going, back over where he started, and my stomach clenches as my body tries to brace me for the impact over the fresh wounds.
He pauses, and I know there must be quite a bit of blood. Through the numbness, I can feel the warmth of it, dripping down my back. I clench my fists, ready to scream while he waits, but I know why he’s doing it.
It’s a mental torture, having to keep my fucking mouth closed while I bleed inside and out, dying for him to keep going so this can really stop. But if I say a word, it’ll be over too soon. And I can still think of them: Sid, Brooklin, Ria. I can still imagine their lives in my head and my hands, what might happen to them if I don’t fix everything. Their fates rest on my shoulders. I’ve already fucked up Sid’s. I let my father fuck up Brooklin’s. And Ria? The others weren’t entirely my fault; I can acknowledge that. But Ria…she’s fully my responsibility.
And just before Father Tomas flicks the whip again, right over my spine, making my body convulse, arching backward, I think of her.
Ella.
My new plaything.
I want to get my fucking hands on her again and tear her apart, just so I can destroy something with no consequences. No guilt. Her life seems to already be fucked, and I had nothing to do with it.
I can’t save her, nor do I want to. But use her?
Yeah. I want to fucking do that.
Ten times in a row, Father Tomas hits my spine, and on the eleventh one, I press my fist to my mouth, but it doesn’t matter. It’s no use. A strangled sob comes out of my throat, my eyes watering.
He stops, immediately, and I hate it.
I hang my head, keep my eyes closed, drop both palms to the cold cement floor as I pant. I want to lie on it, on my back. Cool my aching wounds. But I know, logically, that’ll hurt worse. I don’t move, trying to catch my breath, trying to focus on anything but the pain.
“Maverick?” Father Tomas says quietly, and I hear him come to stand in front of me again.
When I open my eyes, I see blood dripping from the end of the leather whip, into a small puddle on the cement floor.
My lips curve up into a smile.
I pick my head up, meet the priest’s gaze. “All done, Father.”
He frowns, sighing. I see what I think is my blood flecked against his neck, just a few spots of crimson. It makes my chest tighten. My dick hard.
I want to cover Ella in that blood. And hers.
“I’m going to need to tend to those wounds, Maverick,” Father Tomas says in resignation.
I wonder about him sometimes. He always seems so sad to do this, but when I first wanted to be hurt, needed to be hurt…he’s the one that showed me images of self-flagellation. It was a concept that, as a child, after I started calling myself Mayhem, I had never heard of. The whips? Yeah, I’d seen that. But doing it to myself?
That was new.
It seemed incredible.
But I told him I would never be able to do it hard enough on my own. He had said nothing. A week later, he brought the whip. He didn’t force me, but he was twenty-two to my ten. Maybe I should see him as perverse and corrupt as the rest of us, but I guess when you’re raised with monsters, those with the dullest teeth seem the most angelic. It’s like the movies, where you put a bigger villain in so when you compare him to the other villain, that one seems like an upstanding kind of guy, even though he’s a rapist or murderer or whatever.
Now I’m two years older than Father To
mas was then, and I think about the things I could do to people. Things I have done.
Yeah, Father Tomas isn’t a bad guy. He just happened to cross paths with demons. To survive that, you gotta bleed, and you gotta make other people bleed. Otherwise, you’ll end up as carrion.
“Nah,” I tell him, refusing his offer. “I’ll clean it up myself.” A lie, of course. I’ll take a scalding hot shower and hope I don’t get an infection. But if I do? What better way to continue my punishment than with a near-death experience and a hospital visit.
“So, how do you know Natalie?” It’s as subtle as I can get to asking her what the fuck is wrong with her. And now that we’re sitting at my dining room table across from one another, mac-n-cheese in our bowls, it seems inappropriate to just ask it, like I did when we were about to fuck in the woods.
She shovels the orange noodles into her mouth, not looking at me. I’m not that hungry, because I’m not high. And my back is on fire, and pain suppresses my appetite. I’ve got a hoodie on, so she won’t see the wounds bleed through my t-shirt, and the extra fabric makes it hurt worse.
She hasn’t asked about it, even though she’s scratched the shit out of me.
Not like I would’ve told her anything.
I stare at her until she finally swallows and then looks up at me.
“From The Ark.” She goes back to eating, her eyes wandering around the dining room. I glance around, too, try to see it through her eyes. I’ve got no idea where or how she lives, but by anyone’s standards, this room is...opulent. Black walls. Fireplace with an abstract black and red painting above the mantel—gift from my mother. Light gold ceiling. Dark hardwoods and double doors that lead into the kitchen.
The curtains are drawn closed, because that’s how I like them.
“How do you afford all of this?” she asks, waving her fork around.
I arch a brow, but she doesn’t notice. She’s still shoveling food into her mouth.
I drop my fork and clasp my fingers together. “With money. Like most people.”
Mouth full, she looks up at me, and a grin spreads across her beautiful face. I catch sight of that red mark beneath her eye. It’s already fading. Maybe it was just a pimple or something. The marks I left on her from the forest are already gone.
