Page 67 of Pray for Scars
I slam my fist against the doorway. “Why are we leaving, you asshole?”
He smirks at me. “I like you feisty.”
“I hate you alive.”
He frowns, sighs heavily, his shoulders sagging. “They know you’re here.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
He narrows his eyes. “The Unsaints. The 6, too.”
I shrug. “So what? They haven’t tried to steal me away yet. Maybe they don’t fucking care.”I hope they do.
“They like rituals, Sid,” Jeremiah growls. “They like doing things at the right time.”
I frown, quirk a brow. “They’re like…witches?”
Jeremiah doesn’t smile. “No. Witches have souls. Magic. The 6…they’ve just got a thing for murder and blood.”
“Right.” I shrug. “Cool. So, on the full moon, I get taken away, swept off my feet, fed to the 6 so they can use my blood to gain strength? Is that it? Kinda like Harry Potter being a Horcrux for Voldemort?”
Jeremiah grabs my chin, his eyes narrowed into slits. “This isn’t a game, Sid,” he hisses, leaning down so his mouth is close to mine. “You have no idea what they’ll do to you. No fucking clue what they’re capable of. I spent two weeks locked in a cage, eating my own fucking shit and sleeping with my face against a puddle full of my own piss at their hands. And that was when they thought I mightbesomething to them.”
My mouth falls open. He’s never told me this much about his past. About the time we were apart. His time with the 6.Ever.
I feel my heart crack at his words.
He lets go of my face, steps back from me and shakes his head, as if he regrets telling me. Regrets letting me in.
He looks down at the floor for a minute. “I don’t want them to get their hands on you, okay, Sid? You’re lucky Lucifer let you walk away from him in one piece.”
He didn’t, I want to say, but I don’t.
He meets my gaze again. “Even if you had to fuck your way out of his grasp.” He turns to go, but I don’t even feel his dig. I’m still thinking about what he said. What he endured. At the hands of the Forgues.
They fucking deserved to die.
“Get your shit packed. We’re leaving in ten.”
“Wait,” I call out after him, and he stills, his back to me. “What happens next?”
I see his shoulders tense. “We wait until Lazar Malikov loses his shit and comes for us.”
What happens then?I don’t ask. I don’t want to know.
“How do you know all this?” I ask instead.
He keeps walking past the living room, toward the balcony. I think he isn’t going to answer me. And then he says, “Brooklin.”
And all I can think of isMaverickMayhem Astor, wrapping a belt around my throat, and what he might do to Jeremiah if he knew he was still fucking his sister.
* * *
We’re not too farfrom Alexandria, although with the woods surrounding this place and the twisty dirt road we took to get here, it feels like we’re at the edge of civilization. Jeremiah lets me into the enormous metal and steel warehouse, typing in a code, pressing a button that activates one of the giant garage doors. It rumbles open, and I stare into the abyss of my new home.
I glance at Jeremiah.
The sun has risen at his back, casting a halo around his dark hair. He’s got his arms crossed, and Nicolas is getting out of his black SUV in the expansive makeshift parking lot made of dirt.
