And I hated that my body responded to the danger.
Hated that some broken part of me wanted to see what happenedifI pushed him.
“No.” I threw my hand up between us. My palm surely was a barrier that meant nothing against his strength but I didn’t care. "Kenji. What thefuckis going on?"
He stopped. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
Even though he wasn’t near me, I could still feel the ghost of his body against mine. The imprint of his arm across my waist. The phantom heat of his chest against my spine. My skin remembered him even as my mind recoiled.
The bite marks on my neck throbbed in time with my heartbeat.
"That’s not an answer. Why are there people burning outside our window?" My voice cracked. I hated it. "What is this? Is this. . .normal? Does this happen all the time?"
"No." His jaw tightened. "It's not normal. Reo wasn't supposed to put the pyre on this side of the house. He was supposed to position it where you couldn't see."
Pyre.
The word echoed around me, settling in the pit of my stomach. Pyre. A funeral beacon. A heap for burning the dead. It was a monstrous word, a word of death and despair.
My throat grew dry, but at least I wasn’t vomiting.
"It’s the traitors," he said it like it was obvious. Like I should have known. "This is what I decided to do with the rest of them. Everyone Sako gave up during interrogation and connected to the betrayal."
The floor tilted beneath me.
Last night, I’d gone off with Hiro and the twins on a Scooby-Doo mission to find the snakes. We’d discovered a whole nest. And then when Kenji tortured Sako, he found out that there were even more.
Now. . .I felt like I'd struck the match myself, watched it flare, and fed these people to the flames one by one with my own hands.
Their screams belonged to me.
Their charring flesh was my doing.
And the worst part?
Somewhere beneath the horror, beneath the nausea and the shaking and the ash in my throat—there was a whisper. A terrible, treasonous whisper that said:At least they can't betray him now.
I hated myself for thinking it.
But I thought it anyway, and I knew I wouldn't be innocent of the traitors’ deaths but this? This was beyond sin.
Beyond redemption.
Beyond anything human.
A void opened inside me, black and ravenous, threatening to devour whatever was left of my soul.
I swallowed. “You said it was around fifty people.”
“I did.”
“That looks like over a hundred.”
He pursed his lips.
What? Did he lie or is there more horrible shit for him to confess?
I shivered. “Kenji. . .why are there more than fifty? Did it end up being more traitors?”
