Page 22 of Heresy
I lie in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling, the familiar weight of Abel’s betrayal pressing down on me. The rain. I can almost smell the wet asphalt, the metallic tang of blood. I hear his choked gasp.
Finally, exhaustion drags me under, but the nightmares are waiting. It’s always the same. The alley behind O’Malley’s. The glint of the knife. The rain washes the blood into the grimy street. Abel’s face, a mask of disbelief and pain.
But tonight, the dream twists.
When I look down at Abel, his lifeblood staining the concrete, his eyes still accusing, his face… it shifts. The familiar features melt away, replaced by the pale, sharp angles of Vera’s face. Her dark eyes stare up at me, not with Abel's betrayal, but with that same infuriating defiance I saw in the alley, the fire that refuses to be extinguished. The two images collide, Abel’s dying breath mingling with the silent scream in Vera’s unwavering gaze. Two ghosts. One torment. My fault.
I jolt awake with a guttural roar that tears itself from my throat, my body slick with cold sweat, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The room is dark, the silence pressing in, but it is not empty. The ghosts are here, swirling around me, suffocating me.
Control. It’s the only thing that keeps the beast leashed. And tonight, it’s gone, shattered by a dream.
I joltawake with a guttural roar, my body slick with cold sweat, my heart hammering against my ribs. The room is dark, but it is not empty. The ghosts are here, swirling, suffocating me. Control is the only thing that keeps the beast leashed, and tonight, it’s gone.
The dream fused them. Abel's dying betrayal now wears her defiant face.
I throw the sweat-soaked blankets off my body and stand. The four walls of my room are a cage, and the ghost in my head has two faces. The grainy image on the monitor isn't enough anymore. I need to replace the phantom that's clawing at my sanity with the real thing. I need to see the living woman to exorcise the dead man.
I don’t bother with a shirt or boots. I am acting, not thinking, driven by a storm of self-hatred and a desperate need to pry the two ghosts apart. I stalk from my apartment, my bare feet silent on the cold floor, a dead man’s march toward the last door at the end of the hall.
This is a mistake. Rook would call it a liability. Abel would call it a sin. I call it necessary.
I reach her door, the cold steel like a sheet of ice under my palm. I press my ear against it, listening. I expect silence. Maybe the soft sound of a woman crying.
Instead, I hear the soft, steady whisper of footsteps. Pacing.
Even now, in the dead of night, she is awake. She is enduring. The sound of her unbroken will is a final provocation against my shattered nerves. Good. I don't want a weeping victim. I need the defiant woman from the alley. I need her to look at me with those eyes, to prove she is real and Abel's ghost is not. I need to see her fire to burn the phantom out of my own head.
I reach into the pocket of my jeans and pull out the key. It is heavy and old-fashioned, the key to a tomb. It feels cold and final in my hand.
I slide the key into the lock, the sound of the metal scraping in the mechanism unnaturally loud in the sleeping house.
I turn it.
The bolt throws back with a loud, decisiveTHUD.
NINE
THE GHOST ON THE SCREEN
VERA
For six days, the world was a concrete box. On the seventh, the universe expanded. The bolt on my door was thrown back in the middle of the day, not by Hex, but by the cold, silent one, Zero. He didn't speak, just jerked his head in a silent command to follow. I thought this was the end, but he didn't lead me to a dark room or a waiting van. He led me down the four flights of stairs and deposited me at a small, isolated table in the corner of the main clubhouse. Then he walked away.
Now, my cage is larger. It has a scarred bar, a pool table that has witnessed a thousand drunken brawls, and about twenty apex predators. I’m not sure it’s an improvement.
I sit at my designated table, a pariah on public display. The room is aggressively, violently alive, a stark contrast to the tomb-like silence of my cell. The air is thick with the holy trinity of biker bar smells: stale beer, cigarette smoke, and old leather. A heavy, snarling rock song blasts from a jukebox, but it’s not loud enough to drown out the constant rumble of men’s voices and rough, barking laughter.
The members of Cain's Kin move through the space with a restless, coiled energy, a sea of black leather and tattooed skin. Weaving between them are the women. They aren't members;they're decorations, dressed in little more than string bikinis and frayed denim shorts. They work the bar, deliver drinks, and laugh a little too loudly at every joke, their bodies are currency in an economy I’m just beginning to understand. They are a different class of property, one with more freedom but perhaps less safety than I have.
And in this world, I am a ghost.
A lesson from my first day out of the cell proves the point. A younger member, a prospect with more bravado than sense, starts walking toward my table, a stupid, hopeful smirk on his face. He doesn't make it three steps. Rook, the calm, watchful VP, catches his eye from across the room and gives a barely perceptible shake of his head.
The prospect freezes, his face paling as if he’s just been shown his own gravestone. He immediately finds something urgent to do in the opposite direction.
The message was clear then, and it is clear now. I am invisible. I am untouchable.
The message was broadcast to the entire pack without a single word being spoken. I am not a person here. I am a proclamation of Hex’s power, a piece of his property so absolute that his control is demonstrated not by touching me, but by forbidding anyone else from doing so.
