Page 113 of Madness Behind the Mask
Aren’t any twisted gifts from that fucking psycho.
He passes one house.
Two…
Three…
“Sau.” Caden entwines our fingers, but I don’t look at him, my eyes glued to that damn white topmonstrosity.
“Breathe,” he says, and myburninglungs start moving even though I wanted that pain.
Neededthat pain to get me through this.
“You promised me,” he murmurs.
Promised I wouldn’t kill myself. Wouldn’t hurt myself.That I wouldstay here with him despite all the pain life threw at me.
I tear my gaze away from the vanand look into my husband’s eyes. He’s been through all of this on his own. I had eight dead children before I woke. All of them might not have died tragically – perhaps sickness took them or they died during their ascension or maybe they just died in their sleep like Olivia, but some of them must have left this world at the end of the Blood Fangs. I should ask him one day, what happened to them all, but not today. Not when the grief is already so strong, I am struggling to keep that promise to him.
Squeezing his hand, I nod at him.
I promise.
Then my eyes are back on the van.
My breath frozenonce morein my throat.
He’s at the house next door.
He isn’t stopping.
My throat tightens as I’m torn between two desires.
Stop...don’t stop...stop...don’t stop.
He stops.
Walks around to the back of his van and reappears with a box.
I roll my lips into stop my scream.I squeeze Caden’s hand harder, and he squeezes mine. Together, we watch the man from the window. He lugs up one box. Then another. Then another…
By the fifth one he notices us staring at him like ghosts, and he jumps, nearly dropping the box.
I stare at him without moving.
He stares at me.
I can practically hear his heart thumping past the door. Then he places the box down on our doorstep, hurries to his van, and comes back with a sixth box. He sets it down, then straightens. He doesn’t go back to his van. Doesn’t retrieve another body part ofmyson.
With a trembling hand, I reach over to the door and pull it open.
“I just need a signature from a Sau Shadow,” he says.He can’t be much older than my boy.
But his eyes are so much softer, his face so less stern. He didn’t grow up in war. Too young to be drafted. Too lucky to be born or lured into one of the three gangs.
I take the pen from him, and for a moment, I want to stab him in the neck with it. Give Death him rather than Leon.
My fingers clench around the pen.
