Page 91 of Tear Me Down
“WHAT GIRL?”
His eyes widen, and he cowers into the chair, shaking his head again.
“Not your wife! This was weeks ago.”
“You better not be lying!” Zeke says as he stands and grips the man’s neck.
“I'm not, I swear!” Zeke releases him and steps back. “I don’t know what the picture means, I swear! I just remember the same tattoo on King!”
“Is there anywhere he could have taken her?” Alex looks over his shoulder and asks, still blocking me.
“The only places I know are the warehouses and King’s place.”
“Where are the warehouses?”
“There’s three we’re using in the old industrial park in the next town over. I doubt he would have taken her there. It’s loaded with other women and dealers, it’s too exposed. There are a few other ones we’ve been looking at, but we don’t have them yet.”
“He has a point, D. Hugo is too smart to have her so out and in the open,” Zeke says.
“We’re checking anyway! Get three groups ready to take out the warehouses. I want grenades, gasoline, all of it!” I walk up to the man, withdrawing my pistol again.
“NO, PLE…” I shoot him in the temple before he can even finish.
Black and grey smoke pours out of the windows and doors, billowing upward and ruining the mid-morning sky. She’s been gone ten hours, and it’s felt like a lifetime. Every moment without her is a moment too long, and I can feel myself start to slowly decay.
She’s not here or at the other two locations. I don’t know where she is, and I can’t fucking breathe. What if she’s already dead? No, no that can’t be right. I would know. The moment her soul parted from this world, I would feel it in my bones and followed her into the afterlife. He wanted her for something, and he expects me to sit and wait around for his demands, but I won’t do that. I willneverstop this carnage. Not until she’s safe in my arms again, and anyone who stands in my way will be slain with such malevolence that they will only be seen by the Gods as an offering.
How is there no trail? Not on paper, not on GPS or surveillance, and no one here seems to know anything about Hugo’s whereabouts. I'm on my fifth body, and while I can see the pure terror in the eyes of everyone remaining, it hasn’t changed the truth. No one knows anything.
Hugo is playing a very dangerous game. Probably one he would compare as cat and mouse, but it’s so much more than that. It’s more than a hunt. I am a worshipper left without his Goddess, a devotee who no longer has his scripture. Lost, broken, and vengeful; a man who’s willing to sell his soul for even a glimpse of hope. I will go town to town, city to city, and execute the whims of the darkest of entities to find her. This is no game. I am a reaper, and he is the ultimate soul to take.
I grab the tank of gasoline and begin pouring it over the other captives, admiring every drop as they fall. They start screaming and pleading for mercy, swearing that they don’t know anything, but it doesn’t matter to me. They might as well be whispering into the void, because their pleas mean nothing. I can hear my father pushing through my men to get to me, but his voice also falls on deaf ears. It’s as if my mind is so focused on hearing her voice again that the rest is white noise.
They catch fire the moment an ember falls from the scorching building behind them. Their screams manage to poke through the fog, and yet, I feel nothing. They yell and thrash as if they could stave off the flames, but they should know it’s pointless. Nothing escapes me, and until I smell her vanilla aura again, I will suffocate my senses with fire and soot.
From my peripheral, I see my father step beside me and witness the sacrifice before us. He doesn’t speak yet, but I can feel the weight of his concern around us, reminding me that I’m not as strong as he is.
My mother was gone for two months, and even though I was too young to remember, the stories never depicted him as feeling this lost. This unhinged. She hasn’t even been gone half a day, and I’ve already lost all sense of sanity. God, he lost his daughter, and I remember that day as clear as any other. He stayed strong for my mother and held her when her body betrayed her—shed a few tears, but then steeled his resolve because his family needed him to. My family needs me, and I can’t gather myself long enough to find them.
What does he think of me as he stands beside me? Knowing his only son is a failure? That the lesser of his children is the only one left alive. Emma would’ve been something. Everything. She’d probably be running this entire world by now with her beauty and brains, and instead of a better world with her in it, we were plunged into a depraved wasteland where I’ve deemed myself jury and executioner.
Ashia would’ve loved her. They would’ve been as close as her and Serena are, if not closer, and Emma and I would’ve fought over her infatuation. Thank God she’s not alive to see what I’ve become. She would be disgusted with me. Revolted. I was everything to her, and she to me. She always came to me with any problem, any excitement, any sorrow, she always wanted to share it with me first.
I ruined that, too.
I’m always too late—too oblivious and half-minded to see the signs. Her condition was so bad that she only lived a week after her diagnosis, and the love of my life has been pregnant for weeks and I missed it. I’m always tooengrossed in my own thoughts and emotions that I miss the things screaming at me, but I won’t allow Ashia to slip away like Emma did.
I can’t.
The smoke continues to taint the bright sky, like I tainted their lives. An unwelcome spirit in their heaven. I know it exists. A beautiful soul, like my sister, goes somewhere pure when they die. Ashia will too one day, but that day is not today, nor will it be in the next eighty years. Emma’s looking down at me right now, probably so disappointed—screaming at me to just look in the right place, and that the answers are right here somewhere.
The blue in the sky this morning mimics my favorite—the happy one I would always see in Emma’s eyes. A bright and innocent blue that doesn’t shine from mine anymore, even though we shared the polymorphism trait. That’s how I know she’s here, I can feel her as if she was actually standing between my father and I. It’s been so long since I talked to her or visited her grave. I never feel her there when I go—I feel her in moments that matter. Moments like this.
I never said her name enough, and now it sours on my tongue. We always had nicknames for each other, and I always regretted it. Especially as the years went on and her name was spoken less and less, it never sat right with me. That’s why I will never conform and shorten my little wolf’s name. Souls as ethereal as theirs should always be recognized in their perfect form, and I will always show them both that devotion.
As the screams in front of me dwindle, Ashia’s shriek plays through my mind again, making my chest tighten with fear, and the thought of her name disappearing on my tongue makes my breath hitch and my throat burn. That willneverhappen, and it wouldn’t matter if her name was the only thing I spoke for the next one hundred years, I would’ve said plenty. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, prepared to do something that I haven’t done in sixteen years.
Pray.
