Page 135 of Juniper Unraveling

The look on his face is vacant, the way he appears sometimes when he wakes from nightmares with his pupils dilated. There’s no discernible expression, just a blankness, as though he’s sleep walking.

“I told … you everything.” Ivan’s voice carries a nasally rasp, like his nose is filled with fluids.

Silently, Rhys reaches down, gripping Ivan by his neck, and I’m struck at how small the soldier looks beside him. He always seemed so much bigger in my nightmares. The terror in Ivan’s eyes is unfitting for the ruthless creature I’ve made him out to be inside my head.

“I … order … you to stop!” A wet barking cough shoots a spray of blood up into Rhys’s face, but fails to interrupt him, as he straightens Ivan’s body. Once he seems satisfied with his position, Rhys draws back his fist.

This is when I should open the door. I should scream at what he’s about to do, to make him stop. I should run back down the hall and alert the others. I’m certain if I told him to stop, he would, but I’m paralyzed.

Mute.

I open my mouth and watch in horror, as Rhys punches Ivan in the chest, and the crack that echoes is a sound I’ve never heard before. Of brutal destruction. Only he doesn’t draw back again.

A cry more animal than human reverberates off the walls, and as I slap my hand to my mouth to trap the scream pushing at the back of my throat, unbidden flashes of memory pass through my mind in rapid succession.

Rattling chains. A dark room. Ivan’s laughter. The tickle of bugs scampering across my skin. Agonizing pain, tearing me open from the inside out. Screams. My screams. Loud and terrible screams ripping through my chest.

I squeeze my eyes so tight, bursts of jagged light drift behind my eyelids with the grinding of my teeth, and as I open them, Ivan’s cries die to a gurgle.

When Rhys finally lifts his hand, a bloody mass sits in his palm, still pulsing with the last beats of Ivan’s life. Rhys tips his head and leans toward where Ivan’s eyes bulge like two saucers, his muscles trembling with the shock.

My body mirrors his, as if it’s my heart sitting in Rhys’s palm. Every muscle beneath my skin quivers like a rubber band about to snap.

It’s neither fear, nor disbelief, that’s claimed my voice and commandeered my body, though. I’ve seen torture and its gruesome aftermath, and have felt the genuine ache of sympathy for those victims—innocents who didn’t deserve to die in such cruel and meaningless ways. The strange hum beneath my skin, as I peer through the keyhole, isn’t my body’s plea for compassion, or mercy, but a deep level of satisfaction. Atonement.

Vindication.

A wicked excitement that spurs nausea in my stomach.

I focus on Rhys, still kneeling beside Ivan, chin to his chest, which rises and falls with easy breaths, while he examines the flesh in his hand. As if taking life is no more exerting than wiping the blood from his blade.

He is vengeance incarnate. The devil. My dark messenger of pain and retribution.

I should fear him, but I don’t.

And I know why.

Reality’s cold whisper springs goosebumps across my skin, as the truth settles inside my head. I enjoyed watching Ivan’s pain. His suffering. A confession so chilling I can scarcely acknowledge it in my head, let alone say it aloud. The sounds of agony that once bled from my own chest now crash inside my head with sadistic pleasure. And from the darkest depths of my soul, I yearn for more of it.

Not just for me, but for every life he’s taken. Every child he’s murdered.

He doesn’t deserve his heart. It never served him, anyway.

A second scream echoes the first, and Rhys snaps his head to the right, where I’m guessing Damian sits out of view. He tosses Ivan’s heart toward the voice, and the scream heightens to terror. Returning his attention back to Ivan, Rhys pulls the long grisly blade from his holster and sets the edge of it to Ivan’s throat.

My thoughts drift to the words in Papa’s journal, stories I’m certain he left behind as a cautionary tale of hate and its unfulfilling destruction. Yet, here I sit, reveling in another man’s brutal torture.

Shame gnaws at my conscience. I can’t watch.

Falling backward onto the ground, I peel my gaze from the horror of what comes next. Just like in my dream. Another skull to add to Rhys’s morbid collection.

Perhaps I did make him this way. Maybe I’m the monster, and he’s just the capable henchman.

I crawl across the gravel, stumbling to push to my feet, and run blindly through the tunnel, back toward the light.

Away from the darkness.

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