Page 105 of Boneyard HEA

“These assholes have fucked up my day!”

Who is th… Oh.

Alden. My brain remembers to remember.

He’s still going on about it. I smirk at the asshole behavior. Typical of him. I touch my throbbing forehead, wincing as I scrape the abrasion. I jerked forward and cut myself. It’s nothing major. I’ve had far worse, like at the⁠—

The House.

A grinning Shawn and Zasha surface from my memories, advancing on me, silently, with chains and a giant spear. Step, step, step. I swallow.

Anger cracks in and through me, a hot crowbar wedged hard into my ribcage. Shame and horror and terror are all mixed together. I cover my mouth, try to remember to breathe and feel the solid ground under my feet.

Fuck them. They’re dead too.

Today is a walk in the park, a stroll in a carnival. Today is fun times compared to them. I find I’m curling my lip, sneering cruelly. I saw them both die.

Nothing could be as bad as what they did to me.

Live life in the here and the now.

I recheck my surrounds. A zigzag of white roofs peaks above the treetops, hinting at a large manor house a mile or so ahead.

Gingerly, I take a few strides. My black gym shoes seem to find every hollow under the grass, but I keep my balance.

As I pass a corpse with a bloody head, I squint and come to a halt, considering my options. Spitting seems pointless. He’s dead. So I kick him instead. The physical, solid thud of my boot sinking into his flesh is so fucking satisfying in a way that spitting could never accomplish.

These men are connected, somehow, to what was done to me. Yet that last night of my normal existence, the night of the party on the yacht a month ago? That is a muddle of dislocated memories.

This body is the symbol of all my enemies, of all those who wanted me defiled and killed.

So I spit anyway. I land a spray on his still face and I move on.

The Porsche-carved gap in the hedgerow calls to me. After glancing back at the car, I step partway through to peer around the edges of what is left of the tattered vegetation, and as I do so, I remember my plan. I remember what I wanted to do once I arrived in London.

Escape.

Escape from Rafael. That man watches everything I do, has done so ever since he first laid eyes on me. Should I be happy about that since it came in tandem with the deaths of Shawn and Zasha, and my freedom from their tortures?

Is it attraction this devotion he shows, or is it that he’s been instructed not to let me do anything rash? He’s hot, experienced with weapons, and probably fucks like a champion.

Except I do not need a desirable, dangerous John Wick type. I do not.

The CNC Fraternity is insanely wrong, that I do know. Juniper filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge before I left Australia. They are kinky as fuck, organized, and capable of mustering enormous power and wealth due to their sprawling manifesto of members.

Billionaires, government heads, investors, company CEOs, and for all I know, half of the lords and ladies in the UK are members. At least Australia is free of those posh types. We just have a ton of dickheads in power, who also have more money and power than they should. Capitalism sucks when you’re on the wrong side of it.

Alden and Rafael are walking away from me, along the side of the road, with Rafe at the front carrying his gun. I step backward, carefully, retreating into the field. He’s making sure no one else is here. Sensible. Although Alden is tagging along behind him, I doubt he’d be of much use in a fight.

Maybe I can get far enough away in the opposite direction that he won’t find me. At least I’m wearing sensible shoes. I don’t want to feel like I’m merely an object to be surveilled. I need more. Warmth, companionship, and true friendship would be the minimum. Once upon a time I had that.

I don’t know why Rafael sticks to me like glue, but a glimpse of gray metal ahead, through a grove of trees, solidifies my intent. Escape. I think it’s a van, and it’s been parked off the road in a niche, where trees shield it from passing traffic.

Looking over my shoulder reveals only the hedgerow with the leaves shuddering in a light breeze coming across the field. Alden the joker and Rafe are still preoccupied. The corpses show as mounds above the grass stalks. And the Porsche keeps smoking, ticking as the metal heats or cools.

If the grass catches fire will this be a signal that Hell is coming?

I eye my finger stump where it ends with neat suture scars, and my heart pounds into overdrive. I hear the snick-snack of the secateurs again. Feel the grind on my bone as the blades crunch shut.