I didn’t recognize who I was becoming. But I didn’t dislike her. I wasn’t afraid. She settled into my bones like an old friend.
“Leave him to rot. I don’t want to bring him with us,” I said, refusing to look over my shoulder as Theo finished patting me dry and helped me into my dirty clothes.
I put my hand on his head while he slipped my socks and shoes on, then he stood and got himself dressed with fast efficiency.
I watched his body, the shadows his muscles caused along the masculine lines of him, moonlight glinting off his limbs as he shoved himself back into his dark clothes. He was beautiful. Truly.
His hands cupping my cheeks pulled me out of the moment of ogling, and when I caught his eye, he smirked. “You’re insatiable, you know that?” he said, coming in for a chaste kiss. “I could devour you whole.”
“Same to you, big brother,” I shot back, leaning into his kiss. Always on fire for him.
He groaned, and for a second he deepened things, held me tighter, dragged our bodies closer together. Then he ripped away, standing right out of reach, looking very disgruntled.
“We can’t linger, baby,” he told me. “We have to get back. And you’re exhausted.”
I assented. There would be time later to hold him, to feel him.
“Leave him to rot,” Theo declared, repeating what I’d said earlier, his tone definite. “I can do that for you.” He nodded, walking past me to the head, picking up a large rock without breaking stride. I watched him yank the head from the bush and drop it on the ground. Then he raised his hand above his head and brought it down hard, smashing into bone and flesh. Coagulated blood splattered onto the bushes, the grass, almost black in the starlight. Theo used the rock until it was all fragments of bone and brain, featureless, food for the animals. No longer someone who could cause pain.
Theo took a few heaving breaths when he was done, kicking the remnants into a messy pile, burying the remains in a shallow grave, before turning back to me, his eyebrows down but his expression relaxed. It wasn’t hard to remember that he was a killer by trade. He wiped his hands together and nodded.
“Done,” Theo said, sturdy, resolved, striding away.
No one would mourn our father.
“We better get going.” Theo came back to me, tugging at his shirt and looking at the fresh stains with a frown. It was too dark to really see anyway. “I need to get Connor to find us. C’mon.” He took my hand in his and away we went, leaving the many piles of carnage in our wake. Let’s see if the church, or Connor, can cover this one up.
Connor picked us up on the side of the road a few hours’ walk from where we’d left Dad’s head. Margaret was with him, sitting in the backseat, her arms crossed, her scowl firm, her haughtiness familiar. It almost made me smile. Almost.
I sank in beside her, behind Theo, wincing when our eyes met. She didn’t want to be here. That was painfully clear. She wasn’t trying to escape, though, so maybe there was hope for her yet. She just sat there, nose turned up and huffy. Weird.
Theo told me she’d fought them a bit, but soon settled right down when she realized it was hopeless to fight. It would be unbecoming to argue, I guess. Not elegant or graceful to kick and flail.
“Violet,” she spat, in that usual mocking tone of hers. How a sixteen-year-old could be so full of hate was beyond me. We’d been raised by the same people but were so different. Same with Theo and Charlie, I supposed. Connor and Dad. Dead dad.Dad dead.
“What?” Margaret asked, scoffing at me. I bit my bottom lip to stop myself yelling out what I’d done, who lay mutilated in the woods. She must have known he’d been injured at least; the sight of the car crash was unavoidable, but that was all, she hadn’t seen inside. As far as she was concerned, he’d walked away from that healthy and whole.
“Vi,” Theo murmured from the front seat, his voice tense. “You said that out loud.”
I frowned.Dad dead?“Oh, oops.” Then smiled at Margaret, but she recoiled some more. Shit, I wasn’t making a good impression on the sister who already kind of hated me and I hadn’t seen for months. Had never had a full conversation with through our whole childhood. I blinked a few times to shove away the lingering darkness.
Maybe this was why it was so easy to be with Theo. Never any judgement from him, never.
“You’ve got red on you.” Margaret gestured to my hair.
I brought my hand up to where she pointed, but found nothing. “I fell.”
Connor looked at Theo in question, then at me, but kept his mouth shut.
Bloody hell, this was tense. All of us wanted to blurt out a barrage of words, but none of us would be first to break the seal, so we sat in silence. I ached to climb into the front passenger seat and curl up on Theo’s lap, have a little snooze, but I refrained. Company present and all.
The car started up, and we began our long drive to the safe house where Connor was keeping Amaryllis. All living siblings back together again. I picked at our father’s blood under my fingernails as the car trundled along in awkward silence, only the occasional muttering of Connor and Theo taking up any airtime. My eyelids were finally beginning to get heavy when the quiet was broken.
“I need the bathroom,” Margaret blurted a few hours into the drive.
“We’re not stopping,” Connor said without even turning his head.
Margaret squirmed and tensed. “I need the bathroom,” she repeated. “You have to stop.” She looked at me, expression imploring, like she was trying to tell me something. “Please,” she mouthed to me.
