Page 68 of Dark Ink

“Then?” Stewart asked, letting the question linger as he circled his hand impatiently, eyes twitching between the bag and the road.

“I want you to leave town,” I said.

This drew Stewart’s attention. His brows tugged together in a frown, his eyes struggled to focus.

I continued in a threatening monotone, “This right here, Stewart Brady, is your fresh new start. Congratulations. You have the once-in-a-lifetime chance to be a giant fuck-up in a whole new city. To find a brand-new host, sweet and kind and too generous, to leech off of like the parasite that you are. I am your angel of salvation. And if not salvation, damnation somewhere else. Consider this backpack of cash your down payment on a condo on the Lake of Fire, boyo. You’re being upgraded. Bumped. First class to anywhere but here. Isn’t that exciting?”

Stewart blinked stupidly. I wasn’t sure that even sober he had enough brain cells to comprehend what I was saying. Lord knows, he was far from sober. Catching him by surprise was simple enough. Grabbing him by the throat resulted in little resistance but a few dirty-nailed scratches. He’d been on a diet of cocaine, meth, and heroin for so long that I had no trouble walking him back till his scrawny shoulder blades collided roughly with the brick wall on the opposite side of the alley. I squeezed till Stewart started to gasp. I wanted to keep going for Eithne, to right this fucker’s wrongs. But a disappeared brother was a gift; a dead one, a tragedy.

Slightly lightening my grip so that Stewart didn’t pass out, I hissed, “Listen here, you human piece of shite. Let me put it in terms you understand. One, get out of Dublin. Two, never, ever come back. Three, break off all contact with Eithne. Forever. No birthday cards. No Christmas letters. No calls out of the blue for money or repentance or reconciliation. Four, tell not a goddamn soul where you are going. There will be no trace of you. I’d buy you a fucking magic carpet if I could, but seeing as life isn’t a fairy tale, you’re going to have to do without. And five—”

I wasn’t sure whether there was a five. Stewart clawed weakly at me as I pondered, head turned away to focus. His toes scraped noisily on the pavement where they could just barely reach.

Jamming Stewart’s head back against the brick once more, I said, “And five, you won’t ever, ever get your life together. You won’t join AA. You won’t try to get clean. You won’t get a job or find a hobby or ever fall in love. You’ll live out your life in the gutters and die in the gutters. Because you don’t deserve to turn things around. You don’t deserve to be a better man. That’s five.”

I only realised I’d started squeezing too tight again when Stewart began to choke.

“Do you understand?” I asked in an angry growl.

Stewart nodded his head. With gritted teeth, I released him. He fell to the filthy alleyway ground and gasped for air. I threw the backpack of cash, everything I’d had in my savings, down on him. It hit his ribs like it was filled with bricks. It should have frightened me how much the sound thrilled me. It should have been a warning that it was the reason I didn’t leave right away, despite the fact that my job was done. What I’d set out to do for Eithne, finished. But I was too busy trying to repeat that sound in my head, grasping at it like a receding tide.

I don’t know if I ever really made a decision to kick Stewart. Or if it was just instinct. If something stirred inside of me and I had no choice. My toe collided with his side. He fell into a moaning ball, curled around the backpack. I knew the distinction wouldn’t matter to Eithne. But I wasn’t thinking of Eithne in that moment in that grey, desolate alley with Stewart moaning at my feet. I was thinking of me.

And it felt good.

“How silly of me,” I said with a snarl, spittle at my lips like a wild dog, “I almost forgot all about the stick.”

I circled Stewart. Toed the backpack clutched in his arms like a shield. “You’ve got your carrot, there, Stewart, buddy,” I said, leaning over him. “Do you remember what your carrot felt like? Huh?”

I bent down and pressed my knee down on the backpack so it constricted his lungs. His fists felt like gnats against my leg. I almost laughed.

“I want you to remember what the carrot felt like, so you can have a good idea what the stick will look like,” I told him, pushing more of weight onto his most likely bruised rib.

He cried out in pain and I lapped up the sound like a wolf over a rabbit’s torn throat. Expect Stewart was no rabbit: he was a beast himself, preying on his sister, consuming her, destroying the very life of her. I wanted to hear that cry of pain again and again. But I didn’t. I held back. As much as I wanted to hurt him for what he’d done to Eithne, I wanted to scare him away more.

“The stick,” I hissed, circling again, “is that if you ever return, ever contact Eithne, ever even think that you are worthy of more than exactly what you’re feeling right now, I will come for you.”

Stewart was nodding, repeating again and again that he understood, clutching the bag of cash to his chest like a safety vest. It was clear he’d gotten the message. I could stop. I should stop. But I hadn’t yet gotten my fill.

“I will come for you and that little kick will feel like a love tap. I will make you feel such unimaginable pain that your death—and have no doubt, I will kill you—your death will be the greatest bliss of your fucked-up life,” I said. “Better than any hit of cocaine. Better than any high of meth. Better than all the heroin you can shove in your veins.”

I stopped. I hadn’t felt that in years. Sure I smoked enough weed for a dorm room of freshman, but I’d sworn off the really hard stuff. Learned my lesson and all that bullshite. I never fought cravings for it because I never craved it; life had filled me up, so to speak. But there it was again, that sneaky bastard. The little twitch in my pinkie. The tiny burning of my veins. The whispered temptation, “Isn’t forgetting, just for an hour or two, just so nice?”

“Eithne is going to be a great artist, do you hear me?” I screamed at him. “She’s going to be with me and nothing will get in the way of it. I’m going to love her. I’m going to be good for her. You won’t stop me. Do you fecking hear me, you piece of shite? You won’t goddamn stop us!”

I gave Stewart one more final shove and stormed off, tugging at my hair. I punched a brick wall; didn’t even feel the pain in my knuckles, the blood on my skin. It was me who felt panicked as I left the alleyway, eyes glancing around like a startled, frightened horse.

Because what was I going to do when Stewart was gone? When there was no one left to hate but me? No one left to blame for ruining Eithne’s life, but me?

Eithne

I was studying with Aurnia when I got the call from the dean’s office.

My father might have called it justice, retribution, my well-deserved punishment. He might have seen what happened next as his hand reaching out of the grave to make things right, to set me back in my place. I could hear him saying, in my darkest moment still yet out of sight, “That’s what you get, Eithne, you whore, that’s exactly what you get.”

I’d pushed things too far, my luck or karma or good fortune or whatever the feck you want to call it. Daring to spend an afternoon with a friendly face. Hoping to nurture a budding friendship. Sharing the workload with someone else of studying, homework, the stress of school. I should have stopped at Rian. At the pleasure of his tongue. Maybe Aurnia was a cherry on top I should have refrained from with my greedy, sticky fingers.

“Is everything okay?” she asked as I hung up the phone.

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