We Will Bleed

by Nicole Thorn

  Jasmine started dancing around the kitchen, using the sink hose as a microphone to her screech/singing. While she did that, I started getting Nemo’s food ready. We didn’t know what to feed a hydra, so we had taken to getting fish from the market, mixing it with chicken and beef, plus all kinds of vegetation. He seemed to enjoy it and hadn’t died yet, so I had to assume we did fine. While I filled the bucket with a truly disgusting mix of food, Jasmine finished with Lorenzo. She wrapped the cat in a towel and bounced over to me. “You should add Cheetos,” she said.

  I looked into the slop bucket. “This is already a disgusting enough job without adding cheesy treats to it.”

  Jasmine wrinkled her nose at the bucket, and then nodded her head. “You’re right. That’s why we have two buckets.” She pulled out the second one and started pouring four bags of Cheetos and cheese puffs into the thing.

  “So, you get to be the good guy, who gives him treats, while I make him eat his veggies?” I asked.

  Jasmine shrugged a shoulder. “What can I say, it’s a thankless job, but someone’s got to do it.”

  I grabbed my slop bucket, and took it outside, with Jasmine trailing me. Nemo had grown overnight, again. Now he looked about the size of a pony. When he saw us with the buckets, he swam right to the edge of the pool, and made a trilling sound. I put the slop bucket down, and Jasmine did the same thing with the Cheeto bucket. “I would’ve just given you Cheetos, but Jasper insists that you have a well-rounded diet.”

  “Wow, that bus you threw me under is heavy,” I said.

  She grinned.

  Nemo stuck one head into the slop bucket, and the other head into the Cheeto bucket. The sounds of a hydra eating were the stuff of nightmares, so we got the hell out of there. At least he would be happy for the rest of the day.

  We found Juniper bouncing down the stairs, a happy expression on her face. “It’ll take him forever to find those drumsticks, so mission accomplished. Now, I have to clean the kitchen, since I know that Jasmine didn’t do it.”

  My sister rolled her eyes. “I’ll clean the kitchen. I’m an adult, who can do adult things.”

  “Debatable,” Juniper said, and then smiled when Jasmine took a swing at her. “Love you, Jazzy,” Juniper sang, backing up. She ducked around me, using me as a shield against our sister. I felt this was unfair for several reasons, not the least of which being, I didn’t want a bruise either.

  “Oh, sure, hide behind the big dude!” Jasmine said.

  “Whatever works!” Juniper yelled.

  “That’s cheat—”

  The front door blew open, cutting her off. It smacked into the wall, leaving a dent there, and making Jasmine scream in surprise. She whipped around at the same time that I looked up. My adrenaline rushed throughout my entire body, and I started reaching for Jasmine, to pull her back. I’d make them run out to the backyard, where we’d have a better chance to escape. Then we’d call the demigods, and they’d get home as soon as they could. Once they got back, Zander would be an ass, but everything would be fine.

  All of that ran through my mind, as a large body filled the doorway. As it stepped out of the shadows, and into the house, my heart almost stopped. Argus, the giant that had killed Verin’s mother. His body appeared to be covered in tattoos. A hundred eyes, the myth said. They masqueraded as tattoos that would come to life when he needed them. A few of those eyes had scar tissue over them, from when we had last fought. He had a shaved head, and dark eyes that stared at us with hostility.

  I took that all in at a glance. It felt like everything had slowed down, giving me a chance to notice these things.

  My arms still reached for Jasmine, as she started to turn away.

  Argus rushed into the room and grabbed her. She started to scream, to pull back to hit him. His arm locked around her head, and I had a moment where I knew what would happen. My mind shot in a thousand directions, as if I could find a way to stop it if I thought fast enough.

  But I didn’t think fast enough, I didn’t move fast enough, I just wasn’t fast enough. All this week, we tried to avoid this realization, this knowledge of what approached us. My sisters and I had always been good at going into denial, and I wished that we hadn’t. I wished that we had gotten on a plane and left the second things started to go wrong. I wished that we had run.

  Because then I wouldn’t have had to watch Argus break Jasmine’s neck. He twisted his arm as Jasmine reached up. I didn’t know what she would have done, but she had been reaching up to fight him. The snap popped throughout the room, and I watched my sister leave her eyes. One gray and one blue. They had been filled with life moments before, and now they looked dull, they looked so dull, and the sound rang in my ears, over and over again.

  He had snapped her neck.

  Dead, she’s dead. He killed her. No more Jasmine. Dead, she’s dead.

  Argus let go of my sister’s corpse, and she slid to the ground, landing on her back. Her head cocked a little oddly, but Argus hadn’t twisted it. He had snapped it with his bare hands. Jasmine almost looked normal, lying here, if one didn’t look at her eyes. Her staring eyes, and the way her arms looked limp.

  My eyes moved up, landing on the man that approached me. The man who killed my sister. She had been alive only moments before. She had gotten up this morning in a cheerful mood, and we had all eaten breakfast together, like we always did. She had argued with Juniper over the goddamned cat, and we fed the hydra. We had been playing around seconds ago, and now she laid at my feet, dead. We would never have a morning like that again, she would never make a sex joke about Zander again, she would never talk to us again. Dead. Gone. I had lost one of the two people that knew everything about me. Every little detail, including all things that I had forgotten. One third of my soul had died, and she laid there, staring at nothing.

  Argus. Thinking his name reminded me that he stood there, and that Juniper would be just as easy to kill. My sluggish thoughts clung to that realization as the moment, the frozen moment, seemed to break.

  “Jasmine!” Juniper screamed so loud that her voice cracked. I could already hear the tears choking her throat, but I couldn’t give into the sound. I couldn’t give in to the feeling inside my chest, the pain that seized my lungs, and froze them. If I gave in, then I would stop breathing, I would stop thinking, I would just fall. What did it matter, anyway? I had failed to keep her safe. After all these years, after all these things that we had lived through, I had failed to keep her safe.

  I hooked an arm around Juniper before she could get past me, and ran. I lifted my remaining sister off her feet, and I ran. The two of us dashed into the kitchen, and Juniper screamed. “No! Let me go! We can’t leave her there, we can’t leave her with him. He could hurt her. We can’t let him hurt her!”

  She struggled hard enough that I lost my hold on Juniper. As her feet hit the ground, I reached back for her. My mind flashed images of another broken neck and staring eyes. Only this time, the eyes looked gray and brown.

  “Juniper!” I said, hauling her back to me. “We have to leave!”

  “No,” she begged. “We can’t go, we can’t leave her here. She’ll be hurt. I can’t let her get hurt. Please, please.”

  “She’s already hurt,” I said. “We can’t help her.” My voice sounded strained and rough as the words left my mouth. I didn’t want to say them. I couldn’t say what happened, because if ‘dead’ left my mouth, then I would cease to function. I had to get Juniper out of there before that happened.

  “No!” Juniper whispered. “She can’t be dead, because she belongs here. She’s supposed to be here when I wake up, and she’s supposed to keep me up at night by shouting. She’s supposed to be here, because if she’s not here, then everything is wrong. I can’t let things be wrong. If everything is just so, then things are all right. She can’t be dead, because she’s supposed to be here.” Tears streamed from Juniper’s eyes as she said the words.

  I felt my throat closing up, around the things that I ne
eded to say. The words that would make her leave but would also destroy me. I didn’t know what to do, how to make her listen to me. “Juniper, please,” I said, because I couldn’t make myself do it. How could I save both my sisters when the things I needed to say wouldn’t come out of my mouth?

  A sob left her, and my sister’s knees gave out. I grabbed her around the middle, hauled her up, and started for the backdoor again. I could get her out of there. I could get her away from Argus, and then I could break. I’d shatter into a thousand pieces, and it would hurt, but it wouldn’t hurt as much as if I didn’t get out of there.

  Juniper’s feet caught on the ground, and she straightened her legs. She stumbled after me, but I could hear the sobs still leaving her throat. The two of us got to the backdoor, and I fell against it. My hand fumbled with the latch, while Juniper sobbed behind me. She reached around, trying to help me open the damn thing up.

  A crack formed in the corner of the door, and I stared at it. The pulse of magic filled the kitchen. I knew that Argus didn’t have any magic, which meant that this was someone else. My heart started to pound as names flew through my mind. Juniper got the latch up, but I stared at that glass, and watched the crack grow. My sluggish brain finally filled in the blank, and I grabbed my sister.

  I turned us around, bowing my body over hers as the glass shattered. It rained down on us, slicing through my shirt, cutting into my back. The pain cleared my thoughts enough that I knew we still had to get into the backyard or go through the garage. We had to get out of the house.

  “Jasper!” Juniper yelled.

  I pulled back, feeling the blood leaving my body. “C’mon,” I said, grabbing her hand. From the backyard, I saw Nemo rising out of the water. His two heads watched us, and I could hear this urgent trilling sound coming from him. Almost like he begged us to hurry up, to reach him. We rushed forward.

  My feet hit the threshold into the backyard, and Juniper’s hand ripped free of mine so fast that I felt burned. I whipped around in time to see her hit the cabinets. They cracked, and Juniper tumbled to the ground. Her hip hit the counter, spinning her out. As she landed, she began to scramble.

  One of the cabinet doors came off its hinges and struck my sister in the head. It stunned her, and she thumped to the ground, dazed looking.

  Argus advanced on her, and I saw the knife he held in his hand. I stopped thinking. My brain just shut off and threw one image at me over and over again. Jasmine’s staring eyes. She must have felt so betrayed when I couldn’t save her, when we couldn’t stop it from happening.

  I couldn’t let that happen to Juniper, too. I couldn’t let both of my sisters die, even if that meant leaving Kezia alone. Oh gods, she would hate me for this. She would hate me for leaving her, for choosing my sisters, but I couldn’t do anything else. She had to know that. I couldn’t choose anything but them.

  My feet carried me forward, but I couldn’t feel my body moving. I couldn’t feel anything but the emptiness in my chest, and the need to stop this. I slammed into Argus from behind. I didn’t hope to take him down, because a giant had strength that I couldn’t hope to beat. I just wanted to distract him for long enough to get Juniper away. To give her a chance to save herself.

  Running into Argus felt like bashing myself against a brick wall. He moved a centimeter forward. Juniper looked up at us with those dazed eyes, blood leaking down her forehead. “No,” she slurred, pushing to her feet.

  Argus reached around and grabbed me by the arm. As casual as could be, he threw me. I sailed across the kitchen, hitting the wall. The plaster cracked around me, and I hit the tile by the garage door. My head swam, and I couldn’t breathe. I laid there, gasping, sucking down breath with all my effort. With shimmering vision, I looked up, trying to make my limbs work.

  Argus knelt in front of Juniper. It looked like she had tried crawling toward me, but she hadn’t made it more than a few feet. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled a knife from behind his back. I shoved to my feet and swayed as my vision disappeared. My legs tried to give out, but I forced them to stay strong. I forced it with every bit of power that I had.

  My vision returned in time for me to see Juniper kick back blindly. She almost hit Argus in the thigh but missed by an inch. If she had managed it, maybe I could have gotten in the giant’s way. Maybe I could have stopped this one from happening, just like maybe I could have stopped Jasmine’s.

  Argus didn’t slit her throat. He slammed the knife through her neck, down to the bone. Blood didn’t just pour from the wound, it gushed and sprayed, splattering everything in the kitchen. Juniper’s panicked eyes met mine for one bare second. Then they rolled up into her head, and she hit the ground, not moving. I stumbled back against the wall, and my vision started to go again.

  It only made sense, what with the pain in my chest, and how hard it became to breathe. Two thirds of my soul, gone. Vanished. Taken away from me. Ripped out of my very being. I couldn’t . . . breathe. I couldn’t . . . think. Both of them. They had been there every day of my life, for every second of it, and now I’d never have either of them.

  They’d never argue over stupid things again or joke around with each other. Juniper would never get overprotective, and Jasmine would never bounce around the house on a sugar high. They had both died.

  Dead. No longer around. Their faces floated around my head, blocking out my vision. I knew I had get out of the house, because I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save my sisters, but there was still Kezia. I could still save her from having to be alone. She could still look at me and know that her life had been a little better, because of me. I could still give her that, but I had to leave.

  I had to think about something other than my sisters, and this pain that had taken over my entire body. I had to think about getting out of the house. But gods, I had spent years wondering about this day. Years having nightmares about waking up, to find one of my sisters’ dead in the dog kennel. Too cold, or maybe they got sick. I had dreamed about it, and I always thought that it would be the worst day of my life. To lose a sister would be the worst thing to ever happen to me.

  But I had never dreamed that it would’ve felt like this. That it would have been this all-consuming black hole that ate away from my stomach out, making it hard to think about why I had to leave. Why I had to go on.

  Then I could almost see Kezia’s eyes, and the way they would cry when she saw this. The way she would mourn. For her, I had to get out of the house.

  I fumbled with the garage door and stumbled outside. My feet caught on the concrete, and I blindly hit the button. I managed two steps out into the garage before Argus caught up to me.

  His foot landed against my knee. I heard the bone shatter, and white filled my vision as I hit the ground. Everything in my body became pain, and I felt like screaming. My teeth ground together as I writhed on the ground. I tried to breathe past it, to move around despite the agony that wrenched through my entire being.

  My vision returned in time for me to see Argus hit the button to close the garage door. It rattled back to the ground with a mechanical whir, and I knew that I had lost. Despite everything that I tried to do, I had lost. My sisters lay dead in the house, and soon, Kezia would be on her own as well. I hoped she didn’t find me. Let Argus take our bodies, or even let Zander or Verin walk in first. I didn’t want her to be the one.

  Argue approached me and kicked my other knee. It added to the symphony of pain that my body had become. I couldn’t tell if that leg had broken as well, but I thought that it had. My vision went wavy, and the edges turned dark. I might’ve passed out then, but Argus grabbed my face, and turned me to stare at him.

  “You deserve worse than what you’ll get on the other side, but at least you’ll die with the image of your sisters in your mind.”

  He pulled a cord from his pocket and tossed it over the garage door trundle. Argus tied one end to my heaviest shelf, and then pinned it against the wall. With the other end, he made a noose. It looked so easy, li
ke he didn’t have to work at all. When he came back over to me, I pushed against him, trying to throw him off, even if all my strength had been sapped out of me, and I couldn’t work up the ability to make a fist.

  Argus hauled me up by the throat and looped the noose around my neck. As it tightened, my lungs started to burn already. He released my body, and I dropped, my feet not touching the ground. The cord bit into my throat, cutting off the air that had flowed to my lungs.

  The giant walked away then, leaving me there.

  I struggled against the cord, hoping to break it, or even make the shelf fall over. Nothing happened. My body grew weaker, and my vision darker. My thoughts scattered, giving me nothing but the dull, empty eyes of my sister, Jasmine, and the frightened, pained eyes of Juniper.

  Those eyes, those familiar eyes, followed me into the darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE:

  Don’t Leave Me Alone Here

  Kezia

  I LAUGHED SO hard I snorted, batting at Verin in the backseat. “You’re a pig. You know that?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But Juniper loves it. I’ll prove it when I walk through those doors. My girl will come runnin’, and then you’ll hear her chirps of glee as I carry her up the stairs.”

  “Be glad Jasper can’t hear this,” I said. “Or he would knock your lights out. My boy is a fighter.”

  “Good on ya.”

  We got back to the house, and Zander parked the car in the normal spot. I jumped a little, hearing the thunder crack above us. My hand went over my racing heart, and I glared up at the sky. It was supposed to be sunny for my date with Jasper. I promised it would be. I supposed if it didn’t let up, I could settle for a date in our room. Maybe something a little less . . . clothed.

  “What the hell?” Zander asked, drawing my attention before I had even unbuckled. I looked up to see what he’d noticed, but Verin was on the same page as I’d been. We saw where our front door should have been, but there wasn’t anything to see. Not anymore.