Page 1 of Genesis
CHAPTER 1
I’M FATE. YOUR KARMA
ZADE
Anger burned me up.Anger at the world. Anger towards my brother. Anger at my fuck-up of a father and my bitch of a mother. But overwhelming fury ate my veins and turned me scorching and unhinged, and I aimed it all at Cadoc fucking Dire.
“How fucking dare you?” I seethed at him, my dead twin’s hand clasped in mine while Cadoc cried over his body.
Cadoc barely blinked, ready to take the blame he so rightly deserved. Death was all around us, but this one… this one turned me into a new person. No longer half of a whole, I had to carry the burden of two lives in my tainted soul, and Cadoc was at fault. He broke me because he failed, and I’d never forgive him for it.
Fury unleashed inside of me, and if my lungs didn’t scream their demand for air, I’d stop breathing just to join Zan in the afterlife.
Stripping a gun from Cadoc’s belt, I held it to his head as he cried over a loss that should never have happened. My finger twitched, itching to pull the trigger and scatter his brain over thedead body of my other half—my twin. I shook with the need for revenge, desperate to snuff out the life that took him from me.
If Cadoc never loved him. If Cadoc never helped him. If Cadoc never encouraged him. Fuck! Zan would still be here, standing at my side as my identical counterpart and the only tether to an emotion other than anger.
My jaw trembled and my eyes blurred with boiling tears, streaking paths down my bloody cheeks to drip onto Cadoc’s body like acid.Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.In my mind, I saw his head explode with the force of the gunshot. I saw his last breath through blood-stained lips, and I almost wept with satisfaction when I saw the light blink out of his deceiving blue eyes.
I hated him.
I fucking hated him.
Cadoc Dire was the single ruin of my life. He took Zan from me and healed him while I got worse. Helped him while no one helped me. Fed him love like he had a never-ending supply of it while I got left to rot in the darkness and fester in my anger. Anger was all I had, but with that anger came the sadistic need to end him and any future he had. To create balance. Something darker than justice. The rage-haze smouldered within me, threatening to make his fantastical death a reality.
I needed it.
His blond hair soaked up Zan’s blood, and even that pissed me off. That was my blood! If anyone were to absorb the remnants of my twin and carry him into the next phase of life, it should have been me. The gun shook in my hand, the bullet so close to piercing his skull and ending his miserable life.
Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.
“Kill me!” Cadoc screamed, his voice full of misery. “Do it! Fucking kill me, Zade!”
I clicked off the safety, ready to end him. He deserved to die for what he’d done. Zan’s death was on him, and he could rot atthe bottom of Synner’s Lake forever, taunted by an unpeaceful, guilt-laden afterlife. I wanted to do it. I wanted to be the fate that sent him to Hell. I was his Reaper, and nothing would satisfy me more than snuffing him out. I’d weigh him down and sink him in the lake as far away from Zan as I could get him. He didn’t deserve the pleasure of being tied to his lover after what he’d done.
Be hisPunisher.
Morality hit me. That’d hurt Zan as much as it would hurt Cadoc.
Fuck!
“Please,” Cadoc begged for death, snot mixing with drool and tears. “Please. I killed him, so kill me. Kill me, Zade. I know you want to. Fucking kill me!” His agonized screams forced my eyes closed in an assault of pain. “Fucking kill me! I killed your brother! I killed him! End me!”
“Ahhhhh!” I shoved the gun against his temple.
Stuck in perpetual anguish that would follow me for the rest of my days, I barely felt the bombs going off in the distance. I was aware of, but unfocused on, the armies taking over. Gunfire rang out nearby, and I craved the sound of a louder gunshot—maybe right next to my ear before I crumpled to the ground on top of my dead brother.
I wanted to die with him. He contained the only good parts of me, and without him, life would become nothing but anger and pain. Not become—continue. Anger and pain were all I knew, but the depths of their depravity just opened wide, willing and eager to swallow me whole until I was nothing but a black hole of self-degradation and loathing.
My father’s body bled out beside me, but I paid it no mind. “Stand up.” My voice wasn’t mine. It was a demon’s voice, and I should have known it would come from me. “Stand the fuck up, Dire.”
“I-I can’t.”
Coldness overwhelmed me, staunching the fury burning me alive. My heart closed off to feeling and iced over in thick shards. “Stand. The. Fuck. Up.” I stepped back, giving him room to rise for the final time. He hadn’t earned the right to weep over Zan’s chilling body.
With monumental effort and no will left to live, Cadoc pushed himself to his feet, shaking and unstable. His blue eyes met mine through tears, and he did nothing to wipe the snot and drool from his already blood-slicked face.
“He’s dead because of you.” I aimed the gun at him.
