Demetri is the purveyor of all of this misery, all of this grief. But I can no longer excuse Gage as the puppet. No, my brother stepped fully into his own less than twenty-four hours ago. He spread his dark wings, roared with new lungs, and exerted his wicked power over me, first.
Cost me Laken and I will drag my brother and every last Fem down to hell with me.
It will be my great, great pleasure.
5
The Scourge
Skyla
Bone-deep grief. Soul-soaked anger. Each moment of every day I vacillate between the abject grief of losing my husband and its darker twin, the disgusting desperation of wanting to do anything, to give up every soul on the planet to have him back—to the suffocating need to destroy him.
Ellis stopped by and let me know that he, Logan, and Coop paid the Transfer a visit. Logan wanted Gage on a spit—those were Ellis’ exact words and they warmed me, but I laughed, too, because Logan built this monster just as much as Demetri did. That’s another gift of being blindsided with grief. Blame. How I love to point the finger at my mother, Demetri, Logan, Gage, at the universe, fate, God.
Desperation mixed with fury, inextricably intertwined with blame is a trifecta of bondage. I want to beg, lash out, and kill all at the very same time. I can’t for the life of me keep my emotions in check. In fact, it is the very last thing I ever want to do. I want to roar. I want to riot against the Nephilim who have sided with the Steel Barricade and claw Wesley Edinger’s wicked eyes out for twisting their arms. I want to lacerate Demetri with Gage fashioned as a knife.
I don’t know what could possibly hurt that evil creature. Perhaps if Gage, his favorite son, his only son when you get down to celestial brass tacks, were to inflict a fatal wound, it would take.
But the fatal wound is mine at the moment. My wings proving immovable. And I am so fucking sick of likening myself to a butterfly pinned to a wax board—the victim of circumstance, the sickening whimpering damsel in distress.
I want to pin my mother down and watch her bleed. I want to know what she’s made of. Certainly, she’s made a sport of dissecting me, exposing my deepest desires and then profiting from them. So easily she upturned my world. She yanked the tablecloth from beneath me like some dime store magician. She has made me walk the tightrope she strung out high over this dismal rock long before I was born.
And perhaps she had my father killed. My father would never have wanted this for me. He would have stood in her way. God knows any opposition to my mother lands you in a very dangerous place.
Look where Gage is. Look where I am. Desperate grief, hellish anger, and the despondent need to direct blame squarely on other people’s shoulders.
Bone-deep grief. Soul-soaked anger. I need to pick an emotion and stick to it. I need to pick a horse so I can get back in the race. It all sounds right and just, but the truth is, I can’t even pick between my toothbrush or a comb.
I have gone feral both inside and out, unrecognizable to myself. A stranger passes me in the mirror, so very frightening I want to get away from her. It’s a miracle the boys regard me as anything at all.
But my own mother was there for me when I found my way back to my bed that night. Holding me, rocking me, kissing the wounds that she helped inflict.
It’s so hard to damn Gage to hell on his own entirely. No. He will definitely need an entourage to accompany him. It’s only fitting. They helped get him there to begin with.
“Earth to Messenger.” Bree slashes her hand over my eyes in a desperate attempt to revive me. “You’re like having a sack of potatoes around these days.”
My eyes dart her way, the quick frenetic movement of a lunatic. My body has been paralyzed with an insurmountable dark energy just waiting to unleash on anyone and, my God, Brielle Landon will do just fine.
Laken kicks Bree in the shin as we sit in lawn chairs, watching the kids in that bounce house Bree and Drake dragged into the Landon backyard. The oversized castle jerks and moves in jagged spasms as the kids scream with glee inside. Nathan, Barron, my little sister Mystery,Misty—the one who also happens to hold Demetri’s demented DNA, Brielle’s son, Beau—Emily’s daughter Ember, and, of course, Chloe’s poor castoff, Tobie are all enjoying the hell out of it. Enjoying the hell out of their youth, not caring that they live on a rock in the middle of nowhere. A place the sun chooses not to visit. We are wet with fog, the dew clinging to our skin like perspiration.
Emily Morgan is here with us with her pale as paper skin, that dark round bushel of hair that sits on top of her head like a tumbleweed. She’s the only one willing to walk to the bounce house periodically to make sure those screams do not equal any broken limbs. Em’s body is ripe with child at the moment, her belly distended nearly two feet in front of her. She could have a litter of three just as easily as she could have one. My stomach sours at the thought because I did have three in my own belly at one time.
Bree picks up a beer and swills it my way. That’s what Bree’s life has devolved to—day drinking.
Drake, my stepbrother, sucks them down as if it were a sport he took careful practice to master and now, so does she. That’s one thing I appreciated about Gage. He didn’t drink, and neither do I. Don’t like the smell. I don’t like feeling any more out of control than I have to. But I’ve seen Em have an occasional glass of wine, using her pregnant belly as a shelf to hold it. To each his own. She is having a Landon, after all, her second child with Brielle’s dimwit of a husband. Harsh words, I know. But I’ve been in one serious harsh mood for days now. I’m not safe to be around, not in body or in spirit.
“Guess what, bitches?” Bree gives a hearty wink my way. Most likely because I’ve been taking everything the wrong way these days—especially her moronic words to me—and I almost slaughtered her because of them.
Laken snarls over at her and pulls the blanket higher over sweet baby Charlie. She’s a toe-head. Coop showed Laken and me a baby picture of himself at that age and they could be twins. Coop tried to play it off in an isn’t-it-funny kind of way, but Laken rolled her eyes and countered that she, too, looked just like Charlie at her age. Point taken.
“What, Bree?” Em rolls her neck, her dark stiff curls never moving as she swings her head from side to side. Emily has always been pasty, but with each passing day of this new pregnancy, her skin grows paler to the point it’s impossible to believe she has a drop of blood in her.
“So”—Bree jumps in her seat, repositioning herself as her gaze ping-pongs to all three of us—“I’m thinking it’s time to have another kid.”
“No.” I don’t bother sugar coating it. “It’s bad enough Em is doing it. You don’t need another kid. You need to focus on the one you have and do something constructive with your life other than shoving malt liquor down your throat.”
Bree squawks and chirps, but not an intelligible sound emits from her.
