Page 75 of We Are the Match
She helps me put the helmet on and tucks in the strands of my dark hair beneath it, and then we walk together, our strides matching, to the motorcycle that waits for me. There, she presses the key into my hand.
“Shall I send a guard behind you?” Erin asks.
I shake my head and swing my leg over the motorcycle. “I am going to find Tommy,” I tell her. And even to Erin, I do not tell the rest:I need to save Paris.
And then the motorcycle roars to life beneath my gloved hands, Erin opens the garage, and I am gone, speeding across the island as if I was born for this.
I do not stop the gods today.
I do not stop the carnage or the cruelty or the despair.
I do not arrive in time to save innocent staff, and I do not arrive in time to save Tommy.
I do not arrive in time to save anyone at all.
There is blood spilled across the gate, and a guard who looks like a boy impaled there, his blood still leaking out of him in slow, steady drops. His brown eyes are fixed on the sky, waiting for a rescue that never came. His stomach is open, and parts of him are spilling out that are supposed to remain inside.
I slow my motorcycle, and every muscle in my body aches to escape. I could just let go, could leave my body, could leave all this horror behind.
But the boy at the gate, his body bent back, his mouth open in one last gasp—the boy says I must stay.
That I must witness this, even if I still struggle to look upon it.
That I must let the blood flow beneath my feet as it always has.
The iron gates are bent inward, his youthful body arched over them. As if explosive force blew them in.
As if Marcus did not once try to negotiate or ask or knock. As if he came here only to do what he does best: to make them bleed.
I drive through the gates slowly, past two more guards laid out just inside the gates. There are weapons beside them, but there areknife wounds, slashes on their faces. As if Marcus had his fun before he killed them.
And then there are twin bullet holes, one in each of their foreheads.
They, too, are still bleeding.
And this I recognize as Tommy’s work.
Ending their pain without the torture Marcus would have asked of him, defying Marcus. I wonder if Marcus has made him pay for it yet, if he would dare. Fury and fear thread together through me, winding around my spine and reaching up to wrap cold fists around my throat.
Marcus.
The name is a destructive promise echoing in the back of my mind.
Farther I go, past more carnage.
Was it a mistake? To come here first?
There are no right moves, it seems. There is no path I take that does not end in blood and loss and horror.
Altea’s drive is long and winding and bloody, and I pass a guardhouse and a dead woman my age, gun still in her hands. I pass the inner gates, blown in like those at the road. Another guard, older, maybe Tommy’s age. The kind that has survived so long as a guard he was probably like family, at least to Altea.
This man has a hole through the center of his chest.
Shotgun blast, point-blank.
Marcus.
I round the last bend and, finally, there is Altea’s mansion, stark white against the bright sun, incongruously beautiful against this nightmare.
