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“We don’t know that.”
“I know it,” he says bitterly. “I saw it in her eyes at the party. Why didn’t she let me help her?”
Why couldn’t I save her? The wildness in his eyes keens. Why does everyone I love have to leave me?
“You did help her,” I say, thinking of Grace’s hand on Noah’s arm at the party last night, the fire in her eyes as she watched him. “You gave her a reason to fight, to be braver than a person should ever have to be. So let’s get him, for Grace. For your mother.”
Noah’s fingers crush my arm. His eyes are no longer two dark coals, but fathomless black orbs – windows into the coldness of space. “I don’t want to kill him. Not yet. I want him paraded in the media as an example of corruption. I want him to have to stand before his peers in court and get fucked in the ass in jail by the criminals he put there. I will kill him, but first, I want him to suffer.”
“You sure that’s what you want?” Eli asks. I know what he’s thinking – that every day Noah will have to see his father’s face on the news. It will be like living through Howard Malloy’s trial all over again – a daily reminder of what had been stolen from him.
“It’s what I fucking want,” Noah growls. I know him, my mirror. I know that it’ll be hard, but he will endure it. He’ll be strong, for Grace, for his mother, for Felix. He wants to watch his father’s downfall. He wants to revel in the punishment that will never, ever bring back his mother or brother or stepmother, but will drive a hot poker into the gaping wound in his heart.
His father’s suffering will make Noah strong. That’s how we are, him and me. Only when we are utterly broken can our true potential be unleashed.
Eli frowns. “But your future—”
“My future was dead to me the moment Felix died,” Noah whispers. He shoves Eli toward the door. “Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but get the fuck out.”
Eli looks at me with concern, but they’ve been friends for too long for him to speak his fears aloud. He knows that the dangerous look in Noah’s eyes will never be directed at me. He ushers Galen and George and the others out of the lab, leaving the two most dangerous animals behind, their cages unlocked, their malice unchecked.
“Don’t wreck anything,” Galen yells as he slams the door behind him.
I’m alone with Noah.
And his stepmother’s corpse.
I back away from the mess of sharp objects on the ground, into the morgue. Noah stalks across the clinic, shoving a rack of implements out of the way in his haste to get to me. He slams me against the glass and crushes my mouth with his.
The kiss sucks every last piece of humanity from me. I drown in Noah’s grief, his rage. I taste the blood and tears that pour from the hole where his heart should be. He demands, he takes, his hot mouth all over me as his wounds split open, as he bleeds his anguish into me.
There’s no kiss deep enough to fix us. We’re both beyond saving, beyond redemption.
We’ll have to drown together.
We tear at our clothes, shredding my beautiful dress and ripping the seams of Noah’s suit. I wrap my legs around him as he grinds me into the glass. Noah’s eyes flicker to a spot over my shoulder, to the freezers in the morgue where his stepmother’s body lies. I claw at his skin as if my own talons might somehow mend his unseen wounds, as if two broken people can somehow put each other back together.
Noah breaks the kiss with a ragged gasp. He staggers back, his lip puffy and red where I bit him. His jaw hardens as he grabs a scalpel from the tray.
“Noah,” I say. My tongue darts out to lick the speck of his blood from my lip.
Noah’s eyes narrow, his shoulders tense. He takes the scalpel and draws it across his chest. I bite my lip as the blade cuts his flesh. Blood trickles over his skin, then flows steadily as he draws the scalpel in a circle. He grunts as his hand trembles; the blade slips, but he doesn’t put it down.
When he’s done, he throws aside the blade. He doesn’t look down, but at that spot over my shoulder, where he can see his handiwork reflected in the glass.
My heart stills as I see what he’s done.
“I’ve been baptized in bloodshed,” he says, his throat catching on the words. “I’m born anew, born to be your disciple, your servant, your blade.”
It’s a little lopsided and hard to make out through the blood dripping from the cuts. I swallow the lump of emotion in my throat.
He’s carved the August symbol, the sword and the wreath, into his chest.
A symbol that he’s leaving his old life. He has nothing left but his hate, and he lays that at my feet – the greatest gift he can possibly give.
Nothing has ever turned me on like this.
I throw myself at him. I’m not human any longer. We’re frantic, crashing through the lab in our need to crawl inside each other. Scalpels and forceps and other medical shit topple from racks and scatter across the floor. I’m covered in Noah’s blood, and he tastes of copper and rage and it’s so fucking hot.
