Twenty-Nine
HALLOW
The sub groans as we level out in the deep trench, a pressurised bubble of sin and blood buried under a thousand tons of saltwater. The emergency lights have shifted from a frantic strobe to a steady, bleeding crimson.
I’m standing in the centre of the cabin, my legs still vibrating, watching Jex wipe his father’s life off his jaw with the back of a gloved hand. He looks at the smear of red on his knuckles like it’s a prize.
“The thermal seals are holding,” Ryker says, his voice flat and professional as he turns away from the monitors. He looks at me—really looks at me—standing there in the ruins of my tactical gear, my chest still stained with the copper-smelling map of our father’s agony.
Ryker walks toward me. Every step he takes is a slow, predatory calculation. He stops inches away, his silver mask reflecting my own wrecked, wide-eyed expression.He reaches out and grabs a handful of my hair, tilting my head back until I’m forced to look up at him.
“You’re shaking, Hallow,” he murmurs. “Is it the cold, or are you finally realising that there’s no way back from this?”
“I don’t want a way back,” I hiss, my voice a jagged glass edge. I lean into his touch, my skin screaming for more of the violence that just shattered me. “I want to watch the surface burn. I want to feel the heat from here.”
Jex moves behind me, his heavy boots echoing on the metal grate. He wraps his arms around my waist, pulling my back flush against his chest, his chin resting on my shoulder. His skin is hot, a feverish contrast to the chilling metal of the sub.
“She’s not shaking from fear, Ryker,” Jex growls, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw. “She’s shaking because she’s hungry. We’ve been starving for a decade. A few fingers and a tongue aren’t going to fill the void.”
Jex’s hand slides down, his fingers hooking into the waistband of what’s left of my pants, pulling me back against his thickening heat. He’s not done. Neither of them are.
“The city thinks they’re mourning a martyr,” Ryker says, his fingers dancing along the column of my throat,tracing the bruises he and Jex left there. “They’re holding vigils in the square. The ‘Choir’ is currently positioning the thermite charges under the cathedral and the city hall. By dawn, Oakhaven won’t have a history. It will only have a future written in ash.”
He leans down, his mask clinking softly against my forehead.
“But before we go up,” Ryker whispers, “we need to finish the baptism. The Father hasn’t seen the Holy Trinity in full bloom yet.”
He turns his head toward the chair. Dad is still breathing—a wet, rattling suction through the hole where his tongue used to be. His eyes are fixed on us, wide and glassy with the chemical cocktail Ryker pumped into his veins to keep him conscious.
Jex spins me around in his arms so I’m facing the wreck of the man who created us. He sinks to his knees in front of me, his hands sliding up my thighs, prying me open while Ryker steps up behind me.
I am suspended between the two monsters I share blood with, a living altar in the dark.
“Look at him, Hallow,” Jex rasps, his tongue darting out to lick a stray drop of blood off my knee. “Watch the light go out of his world while we light ours.”
Ryker’s hands find my breasts, his grip brutal and possessive, as he prepares to drive us all deeper into the abyss. The old man’s muffled scream is the only choir we need.
Jex’s hands are rough, his palms sandpaper-dry and hot as he slides them up the insides of my legs. He doesn’t stop at my hips; he digs his fingers into the soft meat of my waist, anchoring me as he buries his face inthe crook of my thighs. The vibration of his low, hungry growl hums through my bones, a dark frequency that makes my core pulse in a desperate, weeping rhythm.
Ryker is a cold weight at my back, his chest a solid wall of tactical armor and malice. He reaches around, his gloved hands slick with the drying gore of our father, and grips my jaw, forcing my mouth open. He leans over my shoulder, his silver mask cold against my cheek, and watches the old man’s eyes.
“He’s trying to pray, Hallow,” Ryker whispers, his breath a ghost of ozone against my ear. “I can see it in his pupils. He’s begging a god who hasn’t lived here in a long time.”
Jex pulls back just enough to look up at me, his face smeared with the red map of our lineage. He reaches for his belt, freeing himself with a slow, deliberate snap of leather. He is thick, angry, and pulsing with a need that looks like war. He doesn’t wait for a signal. He grabs my hips and hauls me forward, impaling me in one fluid, brutal upward thrust.
I scream, the sound echoing off the curved metal hull, a jagged peal of agony and ecstasy that breaks over our father like a wave.
“Feel that, Dad?” Jex snarls, his rhythm fast and uncompromising, hammering into me with a force that makes the medical chair rattle. “That’s the sound of your legacy being unmade.”
Ryker doesn’t let me collapse. He keeps his grip on my jaw, his other hand moving down to find the seam where Jex is disappearing into me. He uses his fingers to widen the path, his touch a localised electricalstorm against my clit, doubling the friction until my vision starts to fray at the edges.
The old man’s chest is heaving, a frantic, shallow rattling. He’s drowning in the air of this room, his eyes rolling back as he watches the rhythmic, blood-slicked friction of his children. We are a three-headed beast, a knot of limbs and shared DNA, vibrating with a hunger that would turn the sun cold.
“I can feel him fading,” Ryker murmurs, his tone almost disappointed. He lets go of my jaw and reaches for the cauterising iron again, the orange glow casting long, demonic shadows against the bulkhead. “He needs one last spark to keep the lights on.”
He doesn’t press the iron to the old man. He presses it to the steel base of the chair, the heat radiating off it close enough to singe the hair on our father’s legs. The smell of scorched metal and ozone fills the tiny space, sharp and violent.
Jex roars, his hands sliding up to my throat, his thumbs pressing into the pulse points as he delivers one final, shattering thrust. He pours himself into me, a hot, heavy flood that makes my internal muscles seize in a permanent, agonising clench.
