Page 4 of Demise

He knows it’s me. Hehasto. It doesn’t matter. I know what to do. I pull it off.

“Wear this,” I tell him. “It’ll help rein you in if you decide to do something reckless.”

He laughs. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” He slides it on. “Does it really help you?” he asks.

I chuckle. “Well, you’re still alive.”

His smile falls.

“Stop right here,” I say, knowing we’re all clear from Sweep seeing us. We’re a good walk from the cabin, but I can’t risk Bones or Bexley seeing me somehow.

Plan ahead.

Bones always says plan ahead and be prepared. Well, this is me being prepared. I laugh to myself. Even now I’m listening to the dirty cocksucker.

I open my door. “You go on. It’s straight that way. I’ll cut through the woods and come around back. Wait for me there. Don’t you do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.”

Chapter Three

Trig

Stepping over fallen limbs and dead logs, I struggle through the thick, tangled vines. The snow is deeper than I anticipated. I’m only grateful this is the second big snow of this early winter, the first being when I brought Bexley and Bones here. How careless he was walking alone with her that night on the street. Hadn’t he felt me watching them? The Dark Prince they call him.

Ha.

What abilities does he have to possess such a name?

Birds flutter out of the trees in fright as a gunshot roars through the air. My feet halt.

“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, dodging the frozen tree branches, my lungs working harder.

What the hell has the idiot done? Thoughts of Bexley and Bones getting free has my blood boiling. I’ll kill the goddamn junkie myself if they haven’t already. He has no idea how long I’ve waited for this. The tolerance I’ve had.

His family proved harder to get to than I imagined they would be. Bones told me himself I wouldn’t be able to touch them. It fueled me to try harder, but his goddamn older brother upped the security and one person just isn’t enough to get through that kind of manpower.

I’m a lot of things, but suicidal is not one of them. My chest tightens when a second gunshot echoes through the forest. I feel the coldness from the snow soaking my jeans and the icy air whipping over my cheeks as I struggle for breath. My leg muscles tighten as I grow more anxious to arrive at the cabin to see for myself what damage has been done.

Chapter Four

Sweep

My ears quirk when I hear a gunshot through the Barrens. My brow furrows and I snatch my car in drive, spinning my tires.

Panic.

Fresh, hot panic consumes my chest, and I do something I haven’t done since my mom died. I pray. Growing up with the word of God being thrown at me, you’d think I’d be better committed to it.

My Pops was a religious man. Worshipped God on Sunday, and when he wasn’t pretending to be holy and a good part of society, he poured moonshine down his throat and beat me.

Then I was forced to attend church by the sick man who fostered me. I still recall the way my gut twisted when I went poking around his bedroom one evening. The ceiling tiles lifted up easily and the child pornography magazines fell like heavy bricks. Sick bastard, he was.

The only good thing about church was I got to see the O’Brien brothers and Ma. Other than that, it only made my stomach turn because I knew some of the devil’s finest angels liked to play dress-up and they were damn good at it.

After all, look at Bones and me. We should have ignited when we stepped into the house of the Almighty, but somehow, we didn’t. That’s the thing about good and evil. They both get their chance to sway the human mind and consume the soul of all that walk this earth.

There’s no such thing as a bad seed. No, I don’t believe that. We originate on equal ground. Uninfluenced, untouched. Unjaded by the ways of the world. Evil and good are not what we are made of but what we are shown. And sometimes, when we’re overexposed to one, it begins to penetrate our soul, infesting us and generating what we are to become.

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