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She used the baseball bat like a hammer to pulverize white-masked faces, giving them anger and hate until the masks cracked. Until her anger lessoned and relief oozed in.
“Don’t stop,” Julius growled in her ear as she fought her martial arts instructor. She was fifteen. Her instructor was forty. She had him on the ground, face bloody beneath her fist. “Keep going until he’s finished. Or he’ll finish you. Is that what you want, my darling? Do you want him to take you away from me?”
Her roar came from her gut as she raised the bat a final time—
“Stop.” Axel gripped the bloody bat mid swing.
Daisy wheezed in air like she’d forgotten to breathe.
“Daisy, that’s enough.”
“But…” With wide eyes, she darted a glance between him and her quarry on the floor. Red had splashed over the white. Her face was sticky. “They were going to hurt you and Elena.”
Axel nodded calmly. “Now they’re not.”
Elena hugged her backpack, her eyes as wide as Daisy’s. But where Daisy was full of adrenaline, Elena looked full of fear.
Daisy let go of the bat. “I’m sorry. I… I don’t know how to be good. I told you.”
“It’s fine, Daze.”
“It’s not fine!”
Her vision closed in and all she could hear was Julius’s words taunting her on the day Mary left Daisy behind. His evil voice was always there, waiting to test her and push her. She punched her temples.
“Bad people do bad things,” Julius said. “You were created to stop those bad people. The others couldn’t handle that, so they left.”
“But if I stop them… doesn’t that mean I’m doing a bad thing?” And if she was doing bad things, then she was a bad person.
“You’re my darling.”
Axel pulled Daisy into his arms and crushed her with his embrace, still looking down at her with something decidedly not hate.
“How can you look at me like that?” she blurted through the burn in her throat.
“Like you’re the most incredible woman in the world?” he asked. “Because you are. You saved our lives.”
“But…” The Faithful were a bloody, pulverized mess. “I don’t know how to…”
“Be good?” He surveyed the destruction with a grave look, but then landed on his sister, trembling and shaking. She offered them a hesitant smile, and Daisy didn’t see hate there either. She would have at least expected that fear to transfer to Daisy. But the two Alvares siblings looked a little shell-shocked, but grateful. Relieved. Axel shifted his hands to Daisy’s waist. “Yeah, you keep saying that. I don’t buy it.”
“You don’t know anything,” she whispered, but her words had lost their power as they locked eyes and held.
Elena gave a shaky laugh then groaned dramatically. “Are you guys going to kiss? Because, ew. There are still bloody, masked fanatics on the floor. And… maybe I want to go home now.”
“Search the bodies first,” Daisy said.
“We can go home.” Axel shot Daisy an unabashed wink and then went to assist his sister. As if none of this ruffled his feathers. As if this was just an ordinary Tuesday for him. Heat flushed Daisy’s cheeks. When the heat didn’t leave, she realized she was blushing. Because Axel had winked at her.
She supposed he had seen a lot of violence as one of the Faithful himself… even in his job as a firefighter he’d seen this kind of gore. And Elena, Daisy’s gaze shifted to them as Axel lifted her up and steadied her on her feet. Elena was okay. Daisy was glad she could protect the girl. She cleared her throat and then helped Axel with the search before covering the bodies with some canvas they found. She didn’t want a poor staff member discovering the mess the next time they were in.
These Faithful wouldn’t be the last Daisy crossed paths with. If Julius’s madness abated for long enough to put the word out about her defection, then she’d have a whole horde of fanatics after her.
Unless she got to him first.
