Page 131 of Shattered In Darkness

“Don’t look,” he says. Voice flat, lethal, barely above a whisper. “Just stay with me.”

But I see everything. I can’t not see. It’s everywhere.

My shoes slide in blood, my foot almost skidding on a chunk of meat. I don’t want to know what it was. Brody’s grip tightens, steadying me, moving us forward. He never hesitates. Never sidesteps the bodies. He walks straight through the horror, taking me with him.

Another corner. Something moves, a guard, gun raised, hand shaking. He’s yelling, but I can’t hear the words. It’s all static in my skull.

Brody lunges, faster than the gun. He tackles the man, drives his knife into the guy’s stomach, over and over. The guard screams, then gargles. Brody’s blade slices up, then across the throat. Blood explodes, spattering my shirt, my arms, flecking my lips. Warm and viscous.

I stagger back, bile scorching my tongue. My hands tremble in Brody’s.

Another guard tries to run, yelling for help. Brody draws a pistol and puts a bullet in him. The man drops, twitching. Brody’s boot comes down on his skull, hard enough to split it open. Wet crack, then nothing. Bits of hair and bone spatter the floor.

I want to scream, to hide from Brody, from all of this, but I meet his eyes and there’s nothing but love in them. Something obsessive and consuming. The kind that kills. The kind that would set the world on fire just to make space for me.

Every corpse on the ground—every torn throat, caved-in eye socket, gut leaking filth—he did that for me. For me.

My knees lock. My stomach caves in. I can barely breathe, but I don’t let go of his hand.

He leads me through the next checkpoint, where another man waits, gun leveled. Brody grabs him by the back of the head, shoves his face into the concrete wall so hard the skull cracks, like stepping on a rotten melon. The man goes limp, leaving a smear of blood and hair behind.

Brody turns to me, eyes black and shining, “Nobody will ever touch you again. I swear to you. I’ll kill anyone who tries.”

Something in me shudders. I believe him.

Brody’s already dragging me faster, down another hall, through a steel door that opens up into the freezing dark.

The air hits me like a shock. Brody doesn’t slow down. He keeps me tucked under his arm, hauling me through a wreckage of corpses, trailing footprints and blood all the way out. My mind is static. All I see is red.

We reach a parking lot. Vans line up like blank-faced sentries. Every one probably belongs to the men who wanted to keep me locked away and broken. Brody fishes a ring of keys from his pocket, could be off one of the dead. He picks a van, wrenches open the door, and shoves me into the passenger seat.

He’s breathing hard, shaking. Blood is everywhere. All over him, all over me. His hands tremble when they touch the wheel.

He looks at me—one split second—and it’s worship, it’s hunger, it’s everything at once. “We’re almost out. Just a little further.”

The engine throbs to life. Behind us, the nightmare blares and howls, alarms etched into the bone of this place forever.

In front of us: night. Cold. Freedom, maybe, if we can make it.

As we peel away from the scene, my mind stutters and trips. I glance down at my blood-soaked shirt, the smear on my arm, the mutilated bodies sprawled behind us.

I glance at Brody, at the monster—the angel—who ripped the world apart just to reach me.

This is love. This is violence. This is what it means to matter to a man with nothing left to lose. I don’t know if I want to cry, or kiss him, or jump out of the moving car.

Instead I just grip the edge of the seat until my knuckles turn white, and let him drive us into the dark.

Blood dries sticky on my skin. Brody’s hand never leaves mine; I stare at our tangled fingers. I will never be the same. I am grateful, and horrified, and I don’t know how to let go of either. Brody saved me. He killed for me. He loves me so much it could burn me alive.

I sit in the freezing van, the engine roaring, my heart a dead thing and a new thing in my chest, and I wonder if this is what it means to finally belong to someone.

Not sure if I hate it. Not sure if I love it. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s always been both. Or maybe it’s my body being in shock from all the trauma, and reality hasn’t caught up to me yet.

45

LOLA

Brody drags me faster, faster, through the snow. The wind is shoving ice down the back of my neck, the world is white and black and red. I don’t feel my fingers. I don’t feel my feet. Only the panic.