I sit on the cold, metal floor of the van, pulling Thayer’s head onto my lap. He is shivering violently now, the shock and theexhaustion finally taking their toll. I wrap my arms around him, pulling him close, trying to protect him from the world.
The van moves through the night, a silent, invisible ghost in the storm.
We are heading deeper into the dark. Deeper into the unknown.
And as I look down at the monster sleeping in my arms, I realize that the cage is gone. There are no walls left. There is only us.
And the fire that is coming.
CHAPTER 21 THE HAUNTED MANSION POV: THAYER
The white delivery van is a rolling metal coffin, smelling of old cardboard, engine grease, and the sharp, antiseptic sting of the medical supplies Sybil used to sew my flesh back together.
I am lying on the cold ribbed floor, my head pillowed on Sybil’s lap. The vibration of the tires against the neglected Indiana backroads travels through my skull, each bump sending a fresh, white-hot jagged blade of agony through my left shoulder. The fever has not broken; it has settled into a low, smoldering burn that turns my thoughts into viscous, dark ink.
But I am awake. I am always awake when she is this close.
I can feel the frantic, rhythmic drumming of her heart through the thin fabric of my t-shirt. Her small hands are resting on my temples, her fingers cold and trembling, periodically brushing the sweat-soaked hair from my forehead. She is looking down at me, her midnight-blue eyes wide and fractured, searching my face in the dim, flickering light of the van's interior.
She isn't looking for a way out. She is looking for me.
Mine.The word is a low-frequency growl in my soul, a possessive anchor that keeps me tethered to the living world while my body tries to surrender to the darkness.
"Boss," Miller’s voice calls out from the front. The driver is a ghost, a man who has cleaned up Syndicate messes for two decades. He knows how to disappear. "The drone lost us at the salvage yard when the storm spiked. We’re clear for now, but Dante says the Feds are setting up a radius block on all major arteries into Ohio and Michigan. We can’t keep moving east."
I force my eyes to stay open, the ceiling of the van spinning in slow, dizzying circles. I drag a ragged breath into my lungs, the stitches in my shoulder pulling tight.
"The Lake County property," I rasp, my voice a ruined, hollow sound.
I feel Sybil stiffen beneath me. Her fingers freeze against my skin.
"Boss?" Miller hesitates. "The old estate? No one has been there since your father... since the incident. It’s not on any active Syndicate registry, but it’s a ruin."
"Exactly," I grind out, my jaw clenching as a wave of nausea rolls through my stomach. "The Feds are looking for active safehouses. They’re looking for modern footprints. They aren't looking for a Thorne graveyard."
"Understood," Miller says.
The van executes a sharp, violent turn, throwing my body against the metal wall. I bite back a roar of pain, my knuckles turning bone-white as I grip the hem of Sybil’s sweater. She gasps, her arms wrapping tightly around my head, shielding me from the impact.
"I’ve got you," she whispers, her voice a fragile wisp that cuts through the roar of the rain on the roof. "Just hold on, Thayer."
The journey turns into a blur of sensory torture. The smell of her vanilla-laced sweat, the heat of her thighs, the rhythmic thud of the van's suspension. I drift in and out of a dark, delirious haze. I see my father’s face, laughing as he orders the hit on a thirteen-year-old girl. I see the flash of the muzzle when I put the bullet through his heart. I see Sybil standing in the cabin, aiming a Glock at my underboss with the dead eyes of a killer I created.
The van finally slows. The tires crunch over heavy gravel and thick, overgrown weeds. The engine cuts out, leaving an absolute, ringing silence that is instantly filled by the mournful, distant howling of the wind through ancient trees.
The back doors of the van swing open.
The air that rushes in is freezing, smelling of stagnant water, rotting leaves, and the heavy, oppressive scent of a house that has been dead for six years.
Miller and another man—a silent enforcer I don't recognize—reach in. They lift me with clinical, rough efficiency. I wince, the world tilting violently as they haul me out of the van and onto my feet. My legs are leaden, my balance entirely gone, but I lock my knees. I refuse to be carried into this house. Not in front of her.
"Sybil," I mutter, reaching back blindly.
She is there instantly, her hand slipping into mine, her grip an iron manacle of devotion.
The Lake County estate looms out of the gray morning mist like a jagged tooth. It is a Victorian monstrosity of dark stone and peeling black wood, perched on a cliff overlooking a desolate stretch of the Lake Michigan shoreline. The windows are boarded up, the wraparound porch sagging under the weight of decades of neglect.
This was my father's private sanctuary. The place where he brought the people he wanted the world to forget.
