7
ZARIA
Iswallow hard, my mouth dry after finally getting a few words out. My vision swims for a second, then focuses.
He’s sitting in front of me.
One leg stretched out, the other bent, leaning forward. He seems relaxed, like he has all the time in the world. Like he’s not sitting in a basement at three in the morning with a terrified, bound girl in front of him.
Callum Killaney.
The pictures don’t do him justice.
Cormac liked to show images. Mostly grainy security shots, newspaper clippings, and screenshots from events the Killaneys attended. Always with some disgusting commentary about monsters in suits and devils pretending to be human.
But up close, he’s too good looking to be bad. Or maybe that’s the prerequisite for his kind of bad.
He’s taller than I expected. Broad through the shoulders but lean. Built like a man who doesn’t waste energy, all clean linesand coiled power. Dark hair, shorter than in half the photos Cormac used. Jaw shadowed with stubble, eyes a cool green color like mine. But he has this stare, like he possesses some ability to see straight through me, know all my secrets.
"What did you say?" he asks.
His words cause every story I was ever told about him to explode in my head at once.
He’ll carve you open and watch you bleed.
If he catches you, he’ll send what’s left back to me in pieces.
He'll defile you, make you suffer.
My heart is beating so hard I think I might throw up.
I don’t know what made me say it. Desperation, maybe. The knowledge that I’m dead anyway, so it doesn’t matter if I break the rules.
I clear my throat and try again.
“Probably because I know who killed your father," I say, looking and shaking my head. The drug they pumped into me is still pulling at the edges of my consciousness, making everything feel slow and fast at the same time. "And what’s about to happen to you.”
I can’t seem to look away from him now.
Fear roots me in place. Fear and something else. Something that feels like acceptance.
He’s going to kill me.
I knew it the moment I heard his name. The moment Matei said the Killaneys name. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s better than going back to Cormac.
"Was it you?"
The question hits me like a slap. The Order may have made me do a lot of things, but I never personally killed anyone.
I shake my head quickly, bile burning my throat. “No. No, it wasn’t me, but I was there, well not…” The words stumble out, falling over each other. "I didn’t go in the room. I was supposed to, but I couldn’t. I waited in the hall."
The memory of that night crashes over me and I can’t stop it. The hospital corridor. The lights. Brother George.
I choke on a sob. "I didn’t want to be around those things anymore."
He shifts in his chair. The scrape of metal on the concrete floor is loud in the small room. His face doesn’t change much, but I see the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers flex once, then still.
“How did they do it?” he asks.
