“Vi,” I muttered, trying to wake her up. But she wasn’t ready; she mumbled something and nestled into me further. But I needed a piss, so I climbed from the bed and wandered off, sorting myself out, washing the blood and mud from my skin under a burning hot shower, brushing my teeth and feeling a damn sight more human for it.
Violet didn’t wake up for two days. She didn’t get out of bed until I made her, unless I carried her. I stayed with her as much as I could, but energy buzzed through me. I cleaned the cabin, exercised with the shitty equipment I found in a hall closet, and walked room to room, restless. Waiting. Patiently and impatiently in tandem. She needed her time. She slept a lot when her body was trying to heal, when her mind was trying to catch up.
She ate when I made her, waddled to the toilet on occasion, but otherwise, her body switched off. It drove me crazy. The energy I had after what we’d done never slowed. I wished to get back out there. Find some other bastard who’d hurt her and make him sing in pain.
I felt bloody impotent, biding my time for Christian to call. Waiting for someone else to help me again when all I wanted to fucking do was fix it for her myself. But I waited, I drifted, hoping Christian would phone me with another asshole to kill or with news from Connor. Fucking anything. He’d said he’d try to contact my uncle, figure our shit out from the outside.
I hated it.
I was ninety minutes into lifting the shitty weights I’d found in the living room, two full nights after we got back from murdering Damon, when my phone rang out at last.
“Christian,” I said, no preamble, putting him on loudspeaker so I could keep lifting. My muscles burned, but I didn’t want to stop, letting the ache of them soothe my mind.
“Theo,” he said, his tone flat, low, and right away my hackles were up. Something was wrong.
“What is it?” I asked, slamming the weights down with a clang, straightening up and focusing.
Resigned, he spoke. “You’ve gotta re-enter the world now, bud.”
“And why would I do that?” I huffed, thinking of how good we had it here - even though I was bored fucking shitless right now. We could just sneak out every so often, kill a monster, then come back and fuck until we had no more energy. That’s all I wanted really, all I wanted for Vi. Wait on her, dote on her, kill with and for her. Fuck her raw.
“Rafael has your other sister now. Margaret?” he told me, resigned, shaky. “I check the cameras every so often. I don’t know why. But… There’s another girl in Violet’s old room now. She looks, she looks sad. I checked online. It’s Margaret Lewis.” Christian’s words tumbled from him in one breath. “She looks sad but not injured, Theo.”
“Fuck,” I said, shoving my hands into my scalp, dragging my fingers through my hair, scratching my skin to relieve the pressure building in me. What the hell did we do now? Violet wouldn’t let her remain there; she’d want to go storming in, guns raised and piles of feminine rage fueling her. “How long?” I asked, grabbing the phone and holding it closer.
This was not good. I hadn’t banked on them going for the others. In the darkest parts of me, I’d let her die. Let them all die. Only Violet. She was the only one I cared about. But she would care. Margaret and Amaryllis may be my sisters, but I always considered them extensions of my mother, with their stupid fucking names and haughty attitudes. They were nothing like my Violet.
“I don’t know. I checked it a few days ago, and she wasn’t there. Like I said, she looks okay—”
“Theo?” Violet’s voice came, of course she chose this damn moment to wake up. To actually venture from the bed. “What’s going on? You’re shouting.”
“Shit,” I sighed, turning to face her. My eyes landed on her, and I tried to not look tense and irritated, but as soon as our gazes connected, I could tell she knew something was wrong. “Morning,” I murmured, wishing this was a normal day, that I didn’t have bad news for her. If she’d been even a few minutes later, I might not have told her at all…
“Are you okay?” she asked, tentative, playing with the hem of my shirt she wore more often than not. That with a skimpy pair of underwear was all she had on, making her look vulnerable, small. Her cheek was still creased from the pillow she’d been rotting on for days.
“Hang on,” I told her with a slight smile, then spoke into the phone, not looking away from her. “Chris, can you tell Violet what you just told me?”
Christian agreed, his tone as low as my mood, and did as I asked, telling her as emotionlessly as possible that our sister was in the same hellish position she’d once been in. My chest ached as he spoke, as I lost any control of the situation. There was not a fucking chance in this life that Violet wasn’t already plotting her way back into that mansion.
Blood drained from her face as I watched her take it in; her arms went slack.
“She was delivered to him by your father. I don’t know when. I check up on that house every so often, and there they are,” Christian finished, and for a moment, nothing happened. Violet’s anguished face lost more color, but she did nothing for about ten full seconds.
Then she jolted, gasped and stiffened up. “We have to go,” she said frantically, turning on her heel, taking a step forward then retracting it, before whirling back to me, her hands flapping by her side. “We have to get her, Theo,” she said, brow furrowed. “I can’t… We have to get her.”
When I didn’t dive into action, throw the phone down and charge to the door, to the car, her demeanor shifted again. But we had to think this through. There was no way I was taking her to Rafe’s compound, no way she was getting near him ever again. Not with my consent, anyway. So I stayed on my knees, the weights discarded, my phone still live with Christian’s call.
“Now, Theo!” Violet shouted, her voice wobbling. “Right the fuck now.” In her t-shirt and nothing else, she suddenly barreled off, running to the bedroom with fire under her ass.
She knew where the gun was, where the weapons were.
Oh no. Fuck. I scrambled up, chasing her. “Vi, stop!”
I caught up to her with ease and wrapped my arms around her waist, lifting her off the ground while she fought and squirmed, yelled at me.
“Stop!” I shouted, hating that I had to manhandle her. But I couldn’t have her running into the chaos, unprepared and angry. That anger needed to be fed, managed, not let loose without care. I’d lose her to it if we weren’t careful.
I plonked her back down onto the bed as she wriggled, watching her bounce, rage and pigheadedness impeding reason. I opened my mouth to get her to calm the fuck down so we could come up with a better plan, when Christian spoke again, his crackly voice coming from the hall.
