I wouldn’t give up now. I glanced over my shoulder as I walked away, and smirked at the three men behind me. They were afraid. They weren’t going to follow me to the finish line because they were afraid to die, to fall victim to the underground they thought they commanded. I laughed. It was mania and it was panic, but I laughed. I’d never been weak. I thought Elias had ruined me, but what he’d done was given me the strength to do this. Without him. I was a risk; there was a good chance I’d lose everything I’d ever known, and it gave me all the power. I had nothing left to lose. I had no reason to be afraid.
Therefore, I would win.
My heels clicked on the floor, the knee-length leather boots keeping my legs warm as my skirt rode higher with each step and the silk blouse caressed my bare nipples.
I wasn't afraid. I was prepared. The darkness swamped me, the eerie silence of the street consuming me as I scanned my surroundings for danger. I'd see them coming; I'd hear them and smell them and feel them. I had the instincts of a lioness, and I'd know when it was time to strike. My husband had taught me well, and my traitor of a father had given me ammunition only I could use.
I continued along the street, slipping the alien jacket off and tossing it behind me.
It was seduction of madness. It was provocation of the psychopaths of the underground. They'd come for me, and I'd let them; I’d let them take me; it was part of the plan.
I heard the whispers. I heard those who walked among us in the daylight bargaining over who would get to make sure I'd never see the sun again. I smiled. It was coming.
There was a scrape behind me, a high pitched squeal from my right, and a cackle sounded out from one of the roads ahead of me.
I heard the three monsters in the back of the truck laughing as they watched me walk to my death.
Someone grabbed my ankles and pulled me onto my back. My head hit the ground with a crack and I felt the blood seep from the wound. Stars danced in my vision as a knockout took over, two hands grabbed my arms, a set of teeth sank into my neck and two more calloused hands tore my legs apart...
I’d always imagined going out spectacularly. I’d die fighting. My life would end after I’d done everything I could to keep hold of it. I never expected I’d die slowly, alone, in the dark, worrying about someone else’s life more than my own.
My Ashford was out there. She was with him, at night, and I knew he’d put no value on her life. He’d already taken what he wanted; he had no reason to keep her.
The medication healed me slowly; I felt it stitching the frayed edges of my existence back together. But then came the pain.
Then came the war.
The hundreds of fucking Eli’s all battling inside me at once.
With nothing but silence and my own company in this prison cell, the demons moved in and brought the insanity I’d been battling my entire life with them.
I ceased to exist as one person, as a hundred souls swirled around me and begged me to side with them. To forget about the present and become someone who had already lived the past. I wanted to kill. I clenched my fists as tight as I could and prayed someone would step inside the cell so I could tear them to shreds. I swiped the sweat from my forehead, groaning as another shiver rippled through me. I was so hot. So fucking hot. But all I wanted was a blanket to curl up in and keep the cold away until I could figure this out.
I sat with my back against the wall, listening to the almost-silent drip of the fluid from the bag. My leg burned, but I could wiggle my toes. Soon I would be able to stand, and I’d rip the chain from the fucking wall and destroy this prison to find my way out. The room began to close in on me, and spots and bursts of colour danced on the opposite wall as it moved closer. They were my demons. They were my ancestors. They’d come to ridicule me with colours I’d never see in the outside world again. I watched blue blur to purple, and then purple separated to red. I was fixated on the kaleidoscope in front of me, and for a moment, it made me forget I wanted to kill. Instead, I felt the heartbreak of another Eli. The blood firework made me think of his whore of a wife, who had fucked three men and borne a fucking child. A child Eli had delivered from its dead mother. He’d cut her open, removed the baby, and determining it wasn’t his, he’d smothered it with the same pillow that killed its mother. I felt his pain, as my dream of ever being a father slipped into another scene. The blood fireworks turned to fire. Fire and flames that burst up over the wall and seeped out to lick my toes with an inferno I couldn’t escape. I was paralysed, trapped in hellish delirium.
“Leave me alone!” I growled, throwing my arms out to push the imaginary beings away.
We’d almost been wiped out, in the early 1800s…Blackwood Estate had been plagued by a fire that had begun in the kitchens. No, it had begun below the kitchens, but official records couldn’t document a dungeon beneath the house. Elijah had been there, Ruby’s great-grandfather. He’d taken a man and wife hostage. They’d been like the eighteenth-century Bonnie and Clyde, but we’d caught them, and Elijah had made them torture each other. The fight had escalated and one of the torches fell from the wall, into a puddle of oil, left over from boiling—one of the torture methods Elijah had insisted on. There was so much wood, so much material to feed the fire that broke out, and it ate up Sector 1 like Satan himself on a rampage. I felt the heat. I felt my skin melt, my clothes flare with flames. Elijah hadn’t made it out. He’d burned to death with his two criminals.
“No!”
I wouldn’t die. I couldn’t die. I couldn’t leave Trixie with them. I couldn’t leave the world like my ancestor, leaving behind so many questions and so much evil in a world my Ashford would have to survive in.
My head lolled. I was exhausted. The medicine became thick tar in my blood, patching up my leg, but leaving me hovering over a pointless existence. I could see myself, as if I’d become one of the demons. I was laughing at myself. I was ridiculing myself. I knew I’d failed.
“Trixie…” I called, reaching out to my angelic princess. She was standing in front of me in a white dress, like she’d worn on our wedding day. She was smiling at me. She tilted her head and a small smile graced her beautiful mouth. “Ashford. Baby…”
“Shh,” she murmured, crouching down to soothe my broken soul with her hand over the hole in my leg. “I’ve got you.”
Black hair turned white. Violet eyes turned into icebergs. A raspy husk of an English accent morphed into something foreign. Something unnatural. She wanted to speak another language.
“It’s okay, brother,” Annabella whispered. “I’m going to save you.”
I closed my eyes and let the world drown me in black sludge. I let my mind slip with my fight. I let my sickness swallow me whole...
I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. What was the point? The hands felt like claws, digging deep and tearing me open. The weight of guilt and defeat and loss pinned me to the ground as I lay in the road, groped and abused and squeezed until my body was no longer my own.
It belonged to the underground.
“Don’t you know never to walk in the dark, girl?”
“What are you, stupid?” the second voice said, the stench of alcohol whispering over my skin.
I turned my head, but it was no good. Another face was in my line of sight. He was so young, his face unmarred and really quite beautiful. His eyes were a sparkling green that begged for fascination and compliance. He smiled. I smiled back. At least I’d die to a nice image. I thought about Elias. I thought about my dying husband, and the fight returned.
“Get the fuck off me!”
I twisted my body, trying to shove them off. I kicked my legs out, but there was a heavy weight on top of them. I dug my nails into the hands pinning my wrists to the ground. Nothing. These fuckers felt nothing.
“There’s no escape, sweet girl.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, refusing to sacrifice my fight.
I lunged for him, ignoring the tear in my shoulders as I forced my head up beyond its natural limits
and struck him in the lip. He threw his head back and let go of my wrists. The second man hit me in the face, but he hit like a girl. My bruised eye swell closed and tears blurred my vision, but I refused to acknowledge the pain of dislocated shoulders, maimed face, and broken skin. My body was failing me, one puzzle piece at a time. It was worse than torture in the Sector. Everything that made me me was splitting at the seams.
“You’ll pay for that,” he said, wiping his lip with his thumb.
He was still straddling me, the guy behind him still pinning my legs so he could sit between them and rock into me with his disgusting tool. But Green Eyes had left my arms free. I swung, catching the first monster again, and I punched again and again and again. My legs became free, but I wouldn’t take the victory. I rolled to the side, twisting my body past its limits as I felt my hip pop. I screamed as I reached beneath the old burnt-out car next to us and grabbed the piece of splintered wood. The advantage of living in a city left to rot? Debris. I swung the wood, catching the man on top of me in the side of the head. He toppled to the side, but fought to right himself quickly. I struck again, each tense and swing and collision making my body scream in agony, but I was running on adrenaline. I had nothing left but the urge to fight. I didn’t know how I was going to beat three of them, but I had to try. Elias had to know I’d tried. He had to know that the training he’d tasked Christen with hadn’t been for nothing. I would try. I would die fighting.
I screamed again, my lungs almost tearing from my mouth as Green Eyes got to his feet, grabbed my arm and pulled me out from beneath the first monster. One more piece of my body splintered, my shoulder popping out of the socket. Sweat sprung to the surface of my skin and the crippling agony made me wail and close my eyes.
A gun shot.
I opened my eyes, battling through wet blackening vision to see Green Eyes with a gun in his hand and the monster closest to me, the one who had held my legs open and held me still while his leader molested me, was on the floor in a tangle of limbs and blood.
“He’s yours,” Green Eyes said, nodding towards the alpha.
“You’re a fucking traitor,” he said to Green Eyes. “I take you in, I keep you safe, and I make you one fucking offer. You’re a disgrace.”
A moment of remorse, of guilt for betraying this animal, flashed across his eyes, and he bowed his head. Fuck that.
“He’s just a child, you piece of shit. It’s your job as a human to protect him!”
“Oh, she barks, too,” he sneered. “Personally, I prefer the bite of a dog.”
“Fuck you.”
“So you’re going to fight me? You with your pert little tits and tight ass…you think you can fight a man who’s had to kill to survive?”
“To survive?” I laughed. “You kill for fun. Yes, I’ll fight you. I’ll fight every single one of you to make this city clean again.”
“You’re fighting an uphill battle, darling.” He took a step closer. So did I. I rolled my good shoulder, while my other arm hung loosely by my side. I’d learned to fight with one hand. “Even the good guys keep us in the gutter. There’s no one to save your precious city.”
I swung. I used the wood like a sword and lashed out. He hadn’t seen it coming and I hit him in the top of the arm. He shuffled to the side and righted his footing to glare at me. No more time for talking. I had a husband to return to. I stood, feet apart, back straight, my useless arm in the way as I crouched and prepared to hit him again. I kept Green Eyes in my line of sight. I didn’t trust him, but I had one barrier. If he intended to kill me himself, I’d let him give it his best shot before I killed him, too. I struck again, but he blocked. I tried again and again and again, but I was losing strength.
“I’m going to enjoy fucking that fight out of you,” he barked, taking another step as I took one back.
Elias. It was no good. Christen hadn’t taught me how to fight when I was broken.
“Do you want me to shoot him?” Green Eyes asked, raising his gun.
“No.”
I held my arm towards him, and channelled the authority my name gave me. The fucking destiny I hated to have been forced into suddenly offered me a hand. I wouldn’t shoot this man. No. Green Eyes deserved more than that.
“Capture him.”
I stepped back and nodded towards him. Green Eyes hesitated, leaning against the car with his gun still raised. I reached out and took it from him, keeping it pointed at the monster’s head. Once again I looked at the three monsters in the van. Every one of them had a sick sparkle in their eyes. They still didn’t think I would do this. I shot past the monster and lodged a bullet into the side of the van. Once, when I’d held a gun, I felt sick. I couldn’t have imagined shooting to kill. Shooting at all. Now…I had a steady hand and a fucking good aim. And the kind of sense of humour one needed when they lived in twenty-first century London. I laughed when they cried out and jumped away. I laughed at the white terror in their eyes. I would kill them and feel nothing, just like I had done when I killed my parents’ murderer.
I was a murderer. I ended lives.
I’d never felt more alive.
I shot at the ground, the bang echoing around the deserted streets as I plunged a bullet into the first monster’s foot. He jumped back and brought his knee to his chest. His foot had a hole in it and I smiled and thought about my husband when the blood gushed into a puddle beneath him.
“Now,” I snapped at Green Eyes.
Compliance became him when he jumped into character and closed the distance between him and the hoping prick of a criminal. He grabbed him, seizing his arms behind his back.
“On the ground.” He kicked the knee of the foot still on the ground and they fell to the floor in a tangle. “Now pin him down.”
The soft, innocent teenage hands gripped monstrous paws, and he tried to fight. I knew he wouldn’t last long. He was bleeding out, the hole in his foot matching the hole in my heart when I imagined the hole in my husband. So many fucking holes and I just wanted one of them to swallow me up, so I could wake and discover this had all been a nightmare.
Mae.
Every ounce of pain fought its way into my heart as I tried to push it away. I needed to remain strong. I needed to be empty. I couldn’t think of the catastrophe that would tear me apart when the sun rose. When the man gave up the fight, slipping in and out of consciousness as shock seized him, I stepped over him and placed my feet either side of his waist.
“You were supposed to kill me, you know,” I said, tipping the gun towards the van. “They wanted a good show, but all they’ve seen is how fucking weak the underground is.”
“Fuck you!” He spat at me. I laughed and wiped it off my bruised cheek.
“I’m married to a king, you know.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means I’m the queen.”
I pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger.
“It’s called Belladonna.”
Where had I heard that word before, and why was I trapped inside my own mind, while an accented voice lulled me into comfort? Why couldn’t I see? Why couldn’t I feel anything?
Why had the pain left me, with nothing but a sense of false delirium in its wake?
“It’s a poison. Women used it many moons ago to give their cheeks some colour and attract men.”
Why was she here? Where was Trixie? Who was this woman and why was her voice too close for her to not be touching me, although I couldn’t feel her? All I could feel was existence. I had no senses, I just existed.
“I won’t give you a fatal dose. Not like the others.” Others? What others? “I’ll just give you enough to help you relax while the antibiotics heal you. You have a job to do.”
I did? What fucking job? All I wanted to do was float on this cloud. I didn’t even care why she was here, what she wanted, or who the fuck she was.
“It’s a task only you can complete. They told me about you, my parents. I’m sorry I had to do this to you,
but you have to understand. This is the only way. They have to pay. We have to make it right. Together. You, Trixie, me, and Trace. Just the four of us…”
Trace.
Trace?
Why did I recognise that name? Who was he?
They’d killed my mother. Her brain splattered against the wall behind where she’d stood for the last time. We’d been through the entire house looking for her, searching for my mother after she’d been shot by her daughter. It was only when Lawson called my name from the front of the house, before bending over and throwing up in the bush besides where my mother had taken her last breath, that I realised what had happened.
The needle on the emotional compass I’d been forced to hold onto my entire life, span manically and as I stood over, glancing at her body and what remained of her head, I felt everything at once.
Everything.
Confusion.
Grief.
Hatred.
Betrayal.
Tragedy.
Agony.
I craved blood.
I longed for revenge.
I made friends with death.
I demanded torture.
I deserved retribution.
Days passed in a blur as the families—or what was left of them—gathered to make a plan to find the king and queen of GRIT.
Mae’s body was taken to Hamish and kept cold until Trixie returned. I saw the look in Ruby’s eyes that told me she hadn’t written off the idea of history repeating itself, but I knew Elias and Trixie hadn’t run away. I knew they’d had plans and were finally going to make a difference. They wouldn’t have left—not now.
Not ever.
They lived with the four principles swimming through their veins.
Glory.
Revenge.
Integrity.
Trust.
Mae.
Trixie.
The Uprising (GRIT Sector 1 Book 2) Page 34
