“Sick,” Fallon’s tone wasn’t disgusted; it was appreciative. “It’s too bad she’ll see this without knowing how accurate your blades fly, brother.”
“Oh, I’ll give her a taste,” I said, voice pitched low with heady promise.A taste of sharp edges. A taste of blood. A taste of what it means to be worthless and discarded.
An unwanted memory seeped in from that shadowy place in my mind, the one I willfully ignored. It housed every bit of my life before I met my pack. Then, my existence came down to the very thing I planned to inflict on this Omega. Sharpness. Bleeding. Trash only kept around because of money. For me, it was the check the different foster parents got for mistreating me. For the Omega, it was the money we didn’t want to forfeit by flat-out rejecting her.
The image of my younger self struck with brutal clarity. Years after I got taken from my mom, who was always too deep in a bottle to care for me. Was I six in this memory? Huddled in the back of a dark closet, staying the fuck away from the Alpha fostering me. I was pretty sure my right arm was broken. I was positive the cut on my eyebrow would need stitches. I remember that wound. It had been the one that made me want to grab a kitchen knife and return the favor.
“Nitro,” Fallon’s voice pushed in, “You broke the marker.”
I glanced down, registering the dampness. The crimson ink slicked the fist that had crushed its vessel. Suddenly, I wondered if hurting this Omega was the answer.
FALLON.
I put a hand on Nitro’s shoulder. “It’s the markers fault.”
“Obviously,” Nitro bit out, stomping away towards the kitchen.
Turning away from the target, I surveyed the monstrous transformation of our sanctuary. The chaos felt pointless, an absurd performance which fell flat. I tried to imagine everything through strange eyes.What would she see?
The fiery crashes.
The brutal fights.
The moments death almost won.
This was the worst of us to the world.
To us? It was normal life. It was home.
My gaze traveled down Nitro’s target, now transformed into art some uppity nouveau riche would buy for several thousand at a bloated auction. If he ever gave up knives, he’d make a great tortured artist. Banksy meets Warhol.
Walking back to the seating area, I grabbed the empty recycling bin from the coffee table and headed to the attached garage. After tossing bin beside the trash can, I made my way toward the massive black shelving unit against the far wall.
“What else,” I mused, reading labels. Yellow topped bins lined the shelves neatly. This wasn’t important memorabilia.This was shit we probably should toss but didn’t for whatever reason.
“No,” I murmured, eyes drifting over the label ‘medication’. Half-filled bottles of antibiotics we didn’t finish. Never used bottles of anti-psychotics prescribed by court-mandated psychiatrists. Shit for high blood pressure. John forced that on us. We told him that high blood pressure came with the job.
There was a tub of antiquated CDs. A tub of Blu-rays. A heavy as hell tub filled to the top with car cleaning supplies.
My eyes landed and locked on messy scrawl, Asher’s handwriting. “Shame box.” I reached up, grabbing the lip of the tub and pulling it off the shelf. It was feather light, stuffed to the gills with trophies from past exploits. Lingerie. Harnesses. Handcuffs. Thigh high stockings. Stilettos. The works. The faces faded away, but the fuck remained.
Back in the house, I spread the proof of our sordid sexual past.
A white babydoll tossed onto the sofa. A purple thong draped on a lampshade. Fuzzy handcuffs hanging from a doorknob. Boyshorts. G-strings. Hipsters. French cuts. Push-ups. Demis. Balconettes. All different shapes, sizes, scenarios.
The slow rotations of the oversized fan caught my attention. I moved beneath it and tossed up a teal bra. One of the long, blunt blades caught it. I watched the undergarment spin around and around, getting nowhere, and felt odd familiarity flood my senses. It was just like us. Just like me. Rotating in the same spot, doing the same things, living the same life we’d settled into as emancipated teens.
I wanted to tear the bra down yet also keep watching it.Was this who I really wanted to be?
KANE.
“Come on, you fucker,” I cursed under my breath.
The ‘saw a person in half’ prop was heavier than I remembered.
As I hauled it through the musty, outside storage building, every step I managed took monumental effort. The coffin-sized box had been an absolute terror to extract from the piles of forgotten shit in what had become our DemonX museum slash graveyard. I probably should have given up before I started when I saw it was buried beneath broken targets, mangled bike frames, and a giant Smokey the Bear statue Asher had to have ten years ago.
But I’d pushed and pulled and shoved shit out of the way until I could get at it. I’d won. And now I was dragging my win across the yard towards the house.
