Page 82 of Grave Curse

“Glad you approve. What do you mean, you’re my old man’s enemy?”

Oy. God love them, but sometimes these bikers forgot women could do the same things as men. “I don’t have to have a dick in order to have an enemy, Red. If anything, I hate Hades even more than Tyr. You want to talk about dancing on graves? I swear, if I manage to live through this night, I’ll dance the cha-cha on his grave for all the things he’s done to me.”

“What did my old man do that was worse than all the shit Tyr’s done to you?” he demanded, wheeling to a stop in front of the cleaner’s glass front door to face me. “I’ve seen your scars. I know what Tyr made you do—he made you choose between hurting yourself or your mom. I heard all about what a bastard he was to you while you were growing up.”

“Wait. Hades told you… that it wasTyrwho made me cut myself? Oh my God, the fucking balls on that monster,” I said through what I thought would be a laugh, but it sounded more like a vicious animal’s scream. “Look at these scars, Red Flag. They’re old, at least ten years old. Where were we ten years ago? Not across the street, that’s for sure. Tyr’s Gravedigger chapter isn’t that old. Tyr and I were both still with the Chicago Gravediggers. That means we were under Hades’s rule. And as I’m sure you know, that bastard doesn’t allow anyone to be in charge of anything, because hehasto be king. So do you think Hades—great and benevolent guy that you seem to think he is—would have allowed Tyr to abuse me like that?Think, for God’s sake.”

His expression didn’t change. “So where did your scars come from?”

“Hades had my mother and me tied to chairs in the Rumpus Room when he brought Tyr in. Hades then freed me and gave me a razor, and introduced a new game—Obey Hades Or Else. The rest you seem to know, except it was Hades who made me hurt myself, not Tyr. And when your sick fuck of a father had me put the blade to my neck, I finally realized the only way out of being Hades’s toy was death. I would have killed myself then and there if Tyr hadn’t stopped me. I must’ve inspired my mom with that move, because the very next morning Audrey was dead from an OD.”

He blinked, then scowled. Clearly Hades hadn’t told him that part.

“Tyr and I found her, you know,” I went on, pushing the words out relentlessly so he could see how evil his own father was. It was awful to do that to a person, I knew. But I was fighting for my life, or to at least just stay on this property until Tyr found me, so I’d use every trick in the book to keep Red Flag preoccupied. “I’d spent the night with the Colgrave kids. They tried to bandage my wounds, and they poured orange juice into me because I’d lost so much blood. We didn’t know how to fix that, so… orange juice.”

“Why orange juice?”

“It’s what they give you when you donate blood.” I shrugged, and tried not to look around for a clock. Surely Tyr had to be missing me by now. “At the crack of dawn the next morning, Tyr escorted me back to Hades’s place so I could pick up some clothes, and there my mother was. Just… lying on my bed. At first I couldn’t understand why she was there. It was just… impossible.”

He scowled. “What do you mean, impossible?”

“When I was fourteen Hades nearly killed me with a fastball to the solar plexus. The pain of it, and the sensation of suffocating… it’s indescribable. At the time I’d begged my mom to take me to the hospital, but she refused because she didn’t want her heroin supplier to go to jail for child abuse. My mom chose heroin over me.”

“Jesus.” It was so faint I almost didn’t hear it.

“I survived, but ohGod, how I hated her after that. Every chance I got, I savaged Audrey right to her face until she did everything she could to avoid me. Ineededher to suffer, every bit as much as I had suffered. The names I called her, the poison I tried to drown her in—all of it was designed to shame her right out of existence. So you can imagine how she’d hide from me whenever I was home, and she certainly never would have entered my bedroom voluntarily. I’d become Hades’s cruelcreature, just as surely as that twisted woman who shot up the Chicago Gravediggers’ hangout became Hades’s creature.”

“At least you didn’t put a gun to your mother’s head and pull the trigger.”

Which was what had happened to Olive, I thought as I saw that horrific memory slide into his haunted eyes. “In the end, my mom did what I’d been set on doing the night before. But instead of slitting her throat, Audrey used the needle Hades had given her. It was still in her arm as she lay in the bed in my room. She had a note in her hand. It said… It said…” A sudden sob caught me unawares, and the force of it nearly broke me in two. Damn, I thought I couldn’t cry over Audrey, but here I was, struggling to hold back the long-ago ripples of grief and agony. “It said,I hope you’re happy now.”

He winced. “Shit. Ginger—”

“I killed her, Red. Just as much as Hades killed her with that junk, and just as much as she killed herself. The only person who had nothing to do with any of that was the only man who kept trying to save me from Hades’s hell. Tyr.”

“It always comes back to him, doesn’t it?” His face hardened as he took my arm once more and dragged me out the front door of the dry cleaners and quickly around the corner to the side of the building. At the other end of the strip mall, my birthday party was still going strong.Damn it. “Tyr, the heroic. Tyr, the innocent. You know who was really innocent? Like, the most gentle, innocent person I’ve ever known? Olive. From the sound of it, she had a mom just like yours—all screwed up on smack. For fuck’s sake, Olive was born addicted. That poor little girl came into this world with no one giving a shit about her. Except me. From the moment I met her a few months ago,Icared.”

And he thought he’d let her down, I could hear the anguish in his tone.Oh, Red, no… “Hades is using you, Red. He can see thatyou cared about Olive. Question is, canyousee that he never did?”

“That fucking mouth of yours. Does it ever stop?”

Not when I was trying to save my own life, it didn’t. “Who exactly fucked Olive’s mom up on smack, Red?” There was a heavy-duty black pickup truck parked beside the building, with a thick stand of trees and hedges on the other side of it. I put my hand once more on my belt over the straight razor, realizing no one could possibly see where we were. If I allowed him to get me in that truck, my life was over. “Did Olive ever tell you? I’m sure she knew who got her mom hooked on smack. It was Hades, wasn’t it? He likes to make his women zombies, so he has complete control over them. It’s the only way your old man can get it up.”

“For the love of God, shut it.”

“Why? I’m just telling you the truth. Olive told you it was Hades who got her mom hooked on heroin, didn’t she? Didn’t she?”

“All right, Jesus, yes.” He stopped at the front of the truck, looking like he wanted to shake me. “So what?”

“So, it proves I know what the hell I’m talking about. It proves that everything I’ve told you tonight makes a helluva lot more sense than whatever weird-ass fairy tale Hades fed you. And the way I explained how I got these old scars—scars I got during a time when Hades was in charge of my life, not Tyr—that makes sense to you too, doesn’t it? Hades always aimed forme, and not Tyr, because of two reasons. One, Tyr has shown since we were children that he loves me with everything he has, and he would be devastated if anything ever happened to me. And two, Hades is too much of a coward to target Tyr himself.”

His jaw locked, and his silence was damning for Hades.

“That’s why you and I are out here right now, isn’t it?” I pressed on, growing more desperate with every passingmoment. “Hades ordered you to grabmeinstead ofTyr, didn’t he? You were in the same damn room as Tyr, so you could’ve fought him then and there, Gravedigger against Chicago Gravedigger. But you didn’t. You took the pussy’s way out and went for the civilian woman instead of the enemy. Why? Because that’s how you roll, with no honor? Or because you were ordered to?”

He looked away, clearly uncomfortable.

I kept my mouth going while carefully slipping the straight razor into my hand. “Deep down in your biker’s soul, that must have felt wrong to you, Red. In the badass biker world, you know a real man would never target the women. Youknowthis. It’s a matter of honor. But here we are.” He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move me any closer to the truck’s passenger door. Just in case, I curled my hand around the sheathed razor, feeling the catch with my thumb. “Hades told you I was throwing a party to dance on people’s graves, knowing full well it’s just my birthday today. He’s twisted everything around so he could turn you into his puppet, Red Flag.”

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