Page 27 of Cardinal House

The drive onto the property as we reach Cardinal House is long.

Thorne navigates the wet gravel perfectly, the grind of the tyres is a welcome sound as we get closer to my home. I stare out at the graveyard on our left as we pass it, the dirt road overgrown with grass and weeds. New potholes forming because of the cracked, dry earth suddenly being flooded with rain. More things for me to fix. I suddenly don’t see the point.

Eventually, the car pulls up to a stop outside my front door, and I stare at it for a long time before deciding where we need to be.

“Take us ‘round the back,” the words scratch on their way up my throat, my stomach convulsing as my vocal cords protest.

“Wolf,” Hunter says from beside me, his big body angled towards his door, giving me and Luna as much space as possible.

After a quiet moment without response, Thorne lifts the handbrake and takes us around the two connected buildings to the back door we use for disposal transfers.

They leave because I ask them to, once they help me out of the car, I watch my brothers drive away before heading inside.

The building is cold and dark as I carry Luna through passages and hallways, taking us down a few steps into the morgue.

Reluctantly, my arms protesting our separation, I lay her limp form down on the ancient, white tiled slab, positioning her so she’s lying flat on her back. Pushing my own hair out of my eyes, my hair tie having come loose somewhere, I take a deep breath, flick on the bright overhead lights, and finally take a proper look at her.

Her lips are violet, her skin pale, blue veins stark like lightning forks beneath her skin. Her blue eyes are closed, there’s a slice in her throat, just above her pulse point. A gash in her temple, stretching back into her hairline and bruises blooming across her delicate face. I study the side of her head, my thumb sweeping beneath the wound that looks like a bullet scrape. I track it into her thick hair, parting the inky strands to follow it all the way to the back of her skull. This would have bled a lot, but there’s no way this could have been the cause of death.

I’m suddenly wondering if she drowned, and I could have given her CPR had I not been in such a fucking state. But I picture her lying in that water, and bile rushes up the back of my throat. I spin around, heaving into the deep steel sink, my chest aching, throat burning as I empty my stomach into it.

What if I made her leave the hospital with me?

What if I’d snatched her up and chained her to me, forced her to come with me and my brothers?

Why did I try so fucking hard to be a good man, to want her to come to me?

She’s dead because of me.

Good men, heroes, they never fucking win.

The bad guy, the villains, the ones who stalk through shadows and bathe in blood, those are the men who win.

Pain swells in my chest, pounding in my temples, and tears drip down my face, but I don’t think of her as mine in this moment. I can’t, or I won’t be able to get this done.

Mechanically, I grab the scissors, cutting through her stained, wet clothes. I ignore the mottled black, purple and green bruises as I carefully lift her limbs, threading the clothing out from underneath her and dropping it into the black bag hanging open at the end of the table. Thorne’s card wet and crumpled, the corner just poking out of the breast pocket of her top.

The river water and rain has mostly cleaned away any blood, but I’m struggling to find an injury that could be the cause of death. Nothing is adding up, unless it’s internal damage, haemorrhaging, and from the bruising, it’s likely.

Carefully, I lift her upper half forward into a sitting position, using my forearm to band across her bare breasts, I scan her back, nothing but more bruising, one in the shape of a fucking boot. My teeth grind and I gently lay her back down, turning her onto her side, I step around the table to get a better look, my hand gently clasped over her shoulder.

The bruising that I find on the backs of her thighs, her buttocks, fingerprints and blunt blooms of purple has bile painting the back of my tongue. But I can’t not look, I can’t not know, whatever it is she had to go through, endure until death… Me only seeing the evidence shouldn’t be hard. She had to go through it, the least I can do is look, to know for sure. It’ll drive me insane, all the what ifs, the not knowing.

With trembling hands, I reach out, smoothing my rough hands over her soft skin, skating my palms over her soothingly, like I’m saying sorry for what I’m about to do, and I wish the bruising was enough for me, but I have to know. I part the flesh of her bruised cheeks gently and find the evidence I expected. And it doesn’t make me feel better knowing for sure that she was sodomised, probably until it killed her, or she was so near death anyway, maybe she begged for it.

Suddenly, I can’t feel the disconnection anymore.

This isn’t just another body in my mortuary.

I can’t just do this like she’s nothing to me.

Like she hasn’t infected my blood, wrapped herself around my heart and strangled me with that soft, clean scent of hers. The slow blinks, blank expressions, that tiny hidden smile she gave me, reluctantly, but she did it, and it was for me. It felt fucking amazing.

My soul fucking bleeds black for what it can’t have.

It isn’t fucking fair.

The sobs rip out of me like an exorcism. The pain in my heart is enough to kill me, and I wish it would. In this moment, as I slip to the floor, my fingers clinging onto the edge of the table. I know. I know that I’ll never be able to get the image of her cold, lifeless body out of my head for the rest of my life.

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