Page 72 of Ricochet

I’d never told anyone what’d happened. Not even Alec.

“Michael … did this to you, didn’t he? His men murdered your family?” Aubree’s soft voice broke through the white noise inside my skull.

“I awoke to hear one of them take a call. He told the others that Culling had given the order to get rid of us. Burn it down.” I lifted my head and dragged my face against my bicep to wipe the tears. “So they did. They burned it all. Including my wife and son.”

“Ah, God! Why?” Agony carries on Lena’s voice, overpowering the constant high-pitched ringing inside my head.

The taste of metal coats my tongue and smoke stings my nose— so much smoke, it fills my lungs, as though a fire burns somewhere inside the house. I lift my head from the blood pooled beneath me. Mine? I don’t know. I can’t remember anything. So many blackouts dot the nightmare still playing out before my eyes.

The room is painted in blood, and I zero in on a long trail that leads to the hallway, where my wife has somehow crawled toward our son and curled her body around his, clutching him tightly. Her leg flinches, and that’s all it takes for me to push up onto my elbows and drag myself toward the two of them. I can’t even keep my head upright and there’s that fucking ringing in my ear that won’t go away, but I claw at the blood stained wood to reach them. I have no other choice.

Except for the surrounding pool of blood, they seem peaceful. As though sleeping curled into one another. Motionless. Tears have streamed down Lena’s cheek, the glisten reflecting the light in the room, as she buried her face in our son’s hair in a permanent kiss.

My heart bellows inside my chest, but as I lay beside them, the fear disappears. I’m not afraid to burn alive together, because I’ll never survive this.

With my head resting on my son’s back, I concentrate through the ringing for a heartbeat. Any sign that he might still be alive. Angry tears fill my eyes as his body remains still, so still, beneath me. My body trembles with the fury trapped deep inside my bones, fury I want to unleash on the world, on those rotten cocksuckers.

With an unsteady, heavy hand, I stroke his back and catch the wetness that slides between my finger and the fuzz of his pajamas. Lifting my hand reveals a thick coating of blood dripping down my fingertips. A sob rips through my chest, and I close my hand to a fist, wanting to pound the walls, the floor where his blood lies pooled, the faces of the men who did this to him. Every fucking one of them.

Across from me, Lena’s eyes almost seem to shift with the tears flooding them, but they’re vacant. Unfocused. She looks like she’s trapped inside a nightmare and can’t break free.

I watch the last spark of life slip from her eyes. The beautiful brightness I’ve loved for so long fading into a dull permanence of emptiness. Like a home once filled with mirth and childhood suddenly abandoned and left to decay.

I drag my hand across our son and clutch her wrist, and when she doesn’t so much as flinch, a howl of sorrow crushes my chest.

Closing my eyes, I kiss my son on the cheek, squeeze Lena’s hand in mine, and wait for the flames to pull me into eternal sleep alongside them.

Laughter—evil, wicked laughter—echoes from somewhere below. It reaches me in the blackness, over my sobs and the ringing in my ears. It pokes holes behind my eyelids and scrapes along my spine like a knife chipping at my bones.

My eyes flip open. They’re still inside the house. From across the room, I eye the fallen knife.

An urgency pulls at my muscles, and before my mind catches up, I’m already halfway across the floor, pulling myself along toward it. I don’t know how many there are, but I’ll die trying to take as many as I can with me. The knife fumbles in my hand that feels too heavy, too big for my wrists. I drop it and pick it up again. Bracing my palm on the wall beside me, I push while drawing my weakened legs to a stand, stumbling across the floor towards the door.

The room is blurry, out of focus. The ringing intensifies. I’m on autopilot, sliding across the walls to the staircase.

Over crackles and pops, the mumbling of voices precedes the echo of laughter.

I know now. I heard her voice. She stayed with our son and brought me to life for one reason—to avenge them.

“I’m haunted by fire.” As the memory faded away, I stared off, watching the beams of moonlight through the window cut across the darkness of the room. “Couldn’t watch a flame without feeling the scorching heat on my face and tasting the blood on my tongue, without the smell of burning flesh suffocating my lungs.”

Tears fell down Aubree’s cheeks. Lifting up onto her knees, she shot straight for my chest without saying a word and wrapped her arms around my neck.

Part of me wanted to throw her across the room. To push her away. To claw at her skin that touched mine. Instead, I wrapped my arms around her and dragged her into my body. I took in the feel of her warmth, the pulse of her breath at my neck, the tremble in her muscles that coincided with my own, like two bolts of electricity joining in one powerful surge.

My muscles tightened around her, as though I could squeeze the very life right out of her, as the shadowed side of my brain grasped an urge to snap her into the thousand tiny broken fragments that made up my insides. Forcing those thoughts away, I merely held her. Gently. Quietly. Selfishly. Burying my face in her hair filled my senses with her sweet, clean scent, until, at last, I calmed. Through long easy breaths, the tension in my muscles softened. The rage slipped back into its dark corner of my mind.

I finally breathed.

Aubree pulled away, and immediately my body cried out for her, craved the warmth once more. I wanted to grab her and take her to my bed, stealing every ounce of heat inside her body for my own—but I didn’t.

“I’m your retribution,” she said, in a solemn voice.

“Yes.”

“Are you planning to kill me for revenge?”

“No.” It was the truth. I couldn’t kill such an angel of mercy. She’d given me the power to control the one thing that made me lose control.