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As I flung the cord that’d bound my wrists aside, I swung around so my leg collided with her calves. My mother tumbled onto her ass, the knife slipping from her grasp. She threw herself after it, her fingers grasping frantically for the handle.
I leapt for it at the same moment. She caught hold of the handle and jabbed the blade toward me, but I wrenched her hand around. Any lingering guilt I might have felt over ending her life fled at the vicious snarl she aimed at me in the instant before the knife plunged into her own chest.
Ruby shrieked. I whipped around in time to meet her onward charge, a small machete I hadn’t known she had within reach clutched in her hands. I dodged to the side and slammed my elbow into her back, sending her stumbling into the desk.
She shoved herself back toward me with a wild swing of the blade. I snatched the knife from my mother’s chest and parried the desperate blow. She heaved it through the air again, and before I could duck, a fist pummeled my shoulder from behind.
My brother had joined the skirmish. I kicked back at him, sending him crashing to the floor, and spun out of the way in time to escape with just a shallow cut across my arm. Ruby hurtled toward me, and I caught her wrist in my hand. A flash of panic showed in her eyes in the instant before I flipped the machete around and let her fall on it throat first.
As my grandmother slumped with a gurgle and a splatter of blood across the floor, I whirled around. Carter was hauling himself to his feet, his movements shaky. He groped around him, probably searching for anything he could use as a weapon. Before he had the chance to catch hold of anything, I knocked him to the ground.
He started to wriggle away, but I knelt over him, pinning him down with Iris’s knife still clenched in my hand. My brother stared up at me, horror and fury and fear all rippling through his expression.
I could have cut him down too, right now, and ended every part of the Malik family line except me. But as I scowled down at Carter, taking in the twitch of his jaw and the pallor of his face, I remembered the hesitation I’d seen in him earlier. The momentary nausea I thought I’d caught when I’d talked about the family’s crimes.
He was only eighteen. Just out of high school, basically a kid himself. He’d been brought up his whole life hearing the Maliks’ delusional garbage spewed at him from all sides, never knowing anything else.
I knew another kid who’d grown up similarly. Who’d had her mind and her morals warped by the people who’d wanted to use her for their own ends. But I’d carved my own path when I’d gotten the freedom to break from their grasp.
Didn’t my brother deserve the same chance?
“Think about the ‘sacrifices’ you watched or maybe even joined in with,” I said, low and steady. “Think about the kids you all cut up and beat and burned before you killed them. Think about the way they must have cried and whimpered in pain. Do you really believe that was okay? That it was somethinggood? That it was right for them to die that way?”
Carter opened his mouth and closed it again. His jaw hardened, but at the same time, he stared at me like he was one of those kids himself, frightened and confused.
He wasn’t completely committed to the party line. Some part of him still had doubts. I had to give that part the opportunity to turn his life around.
He sucked in a breath, his eyes narrowing as if he was going to make some snappy remark as his previous anger returned. I didn’t want to hear it. I rammed my fist into his temple in just the right spot to knock him out, sending his head snapping to the side.
His body slackened. I hefted him up into a fireman’s hold and turned toward the secret staircase.
I’d mademychoice. Now we’d have to figure out what to do with him from here on.
