Page 107 of Despair

“Liar.”

“Sad little girl,” he crooned. “Where are your loved ones now? Or have they deserted you like I did?”

“Shut up.” She booted him across the shoulder, rolling him back. He splashed and hit the fallen suit behind him. She wanted to smash his face into the water, to watch him struggle and drown beneath her, but his words were hitting too close to home. They were reaching into her heart and squeezing, reminding her of decades of failure.

“No one wants you,” he laughed through a cough. “From the day you were born.”

“I hate you,” she screamed, and kicked him again. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he accept defeat? Her attack only knocked him into the mech suit again. He groaned as he rolled to face it, head down, buttocks in the air. Dirty water soaked into his underwear, and all she could think was how pitiful he looked. Half clothed, half cut up, dirty.

He had always been half a man, but he’d hidden it behind a godlike visage.

She couldn’t believe she’d let him bait her. She forced herself to take a few deep breaths and gather her composure. Fear and despair caused mistakes. She reminded herself of what happened last time she decided to go it alone. She’d almost died and her family was angry. Because they’d cared. Axel, in particular. They wanted to be included, to make mistakes together with Daisy.

The very thought of her mate brought a rush of warmth to her body and she smiled. She had something Julius never did. True love. His was only ever an illusion. It wasn’t strong enough to bring his wife and daughter back. They were happy in their other place. Daisy knew she’d never be happy without Axel.

“You can’t hurt me anymore, Julius.” She lifted her chin. “You might have broken me, but I was not destroyed. My family helped put my pieces back together, and now I am stronger. And do you know what the best part of all this is? Knowing that if you had simply been half the father I needed, loved me instead of manipulated me, then none of this would have happened. Can’t you see that you brought this on yourself? You are the very filth you want eradicated from this world, and you—” She laughed at the irony of it. “You are the reason your wife’s and daughter’s eternal souls no longer live in an afterlife filled with joy. They don’t exist at all. Because of your greedy actions.”

When he refused to speak, she pointed the tip of her blade at his throat, but hesitated. Again. Something held her back and she thought, maybe she was weak like he’d said. But maybe she was okay with that. Because the alternative was becoming like him.

Her hesitation cost her. Julius found what he was hunting for. A syringe. He aimed the needle point at his neck, depressed and filled himself with what she guessed was the greed serum, but froze before he finished. Petrified as though locked in time.

The presence she’d felt earlier made itself known. Black vines slithered up Julius’s legs from the water. They writhed around his body, amassing like bandages on a mummy. The paralytic agent in the plant had petrified him, despite the power enhancing serum feeding into his veins. His mouth moved as he tried to unleash a shout for help. But it was too late. Eyes filled with terror were the last part of him to disappear as the plant swallowed him whole.

All that stood before her was a tall, writhing mass of vines reaching for the ceiling. The plant kept feeding from the sewer. Water drained as it grew and swelled. Vines shot out from the humanoid mummy and embedded into the concrete and brick around them, like a spider making its web… or cocoon. It didn’t come for Daisy. It simply became Julius’s prison.

And then something strange happened. Parts of his face became visible again. It was as though the plant wanted him to see, too. As though it wanted to flaunt that hope of escape before its eyes like Julius had relentlessly done to his victims. When the writhing vines finally slowed, creaking and stress cracking filled the air, Daisy heard the faint sound of a heartbeat coming from within. His eyes blinked open.

“Julius?” she whispered, unsteady.

A flicker of hope emanated from his core. She supposed she could cut him out, but somehow, knowing he would be locked in that plant with only his misery for company felt fitting. Maybe the plant wanted him to suffer, so she should leave them to it. The plant Tony had destroyed felt despair and sadness. It had asked Tony to end its life. Maybe this one had feelings too. Who was she to take its vengeance from it?

But unlike her siblings, she wasn’t concerned for redemption. Julius had his chance. This was his own doing.

She turned her back and walked away, happy in the knowledge that he’d be down here, possibly for days, and had no one to blame but himself… at least until the plant finished feeding on him. But that was a problem for future Daisy. Right now, all she wanted to do was get out of there, shower, and find Axel and feel his arms around her until the sun came up. Maybe she’d even—

Danger.

Something hit her back, knocking her forward to the concrete culvert, now muddy from loss of fluid. Her katana skidded from her hands and wedged in sludge. Tentacles slid along her back, searching, trying to get to her skin so it could paralyze her, too.

She scrambled on her hands and knees to pick up her sword, twisted, and sliced. Limb after limb of vine severed as it came for her. But more came.

She’d been wrong. The plant hadn’t wanted to make Julius suffer. It had only been evolving, and it had done it at warp speed thanks to the greed serum in his system. Every cut she made in the dark, more came at her. The sword grew heavy in her arms. Her lungs burned and her legs turned to lead. She barely had enough energy left. She spotted a manhole ladder, ten feet away.

If she could get to it and climb out, she could get to safety. She could get to her family. She made a run for it, but the moment her fingers closed around the first ladder rung, a vine wrapped around her ankle. Julius’s sickening cackle echoed through the tunnel as he dragged her to him.

Her fingers clawed the muddy ground. I can’t believe this is how it ends. As the slimy vines slithered up her legs and wrapped around her body, as its tendrils hunted for her flesh, she knew there was one last thing she could do. She’d been reluctant to use Tony’s gift because of her fear of fire. But if the plant fed on her, and evolved to take on her traits—it would become unstoppable.

She had to stop it, no matter the cost.

A Lazarus never quits.

Parker’s voice rang clear and loud in her mind. She’d heard her other siblings say that more than once. And then she heard Axel’s voice, So long as you’re alive, there is hope.

“Are you a Lazarus?” she growled at herself.

Yes, goddammit, she was.

“So, don’t quit.”

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