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Her anger was a powerful thing to see. A carefully wielded weapon she wouldn’t use twice to prove her words, but even that one time was enough to make me see her feelings for me.
“You do love me.” I chuckled, pushing into her hand, and wrapping my own behind her neck, pulling her closer to me.
“Now’s not the time for jokes, Lazarus,” she grunted, trying to get free from me, but there was no use.
We held each other on a level that transcended the physical one. I didn’t need to hear the words from her, or to feel her touch, to know that our souls operated as one. To know that no matter what happened, we would always belong to each other, in this life and in the next one.
One of theessays I did when I had just started university was under the theme ofWhat is your biggest fear?
Mine?
Mine was being forgotten, and not just by name or face, but by my actions. It kept me up at night, this knowledge that one day no one would know who I was. There wouldn’t be a single living person who would remember Danika Eleara Ascelin, and every time I remembered that teeny tiny fact, panic like no other settled in my gut, making it so much harder to breathe.
I didn’t want to end up like my mother, or my father. I didn’t want to end up like ninety percent of people in this shitty little town and seeing Lazarus standing above that girl with that familiar look on his face… Yeah, that wasn’t something I needed to see, especially not after the cryptic words from Gabriel, who, by the way, completely disappeared.
I had no idea where he or Judah went, but after spending one hour trying to find this place where Lazarus was, I got crankier than before. I knew that something bad was coming. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach, this horrible, horrible fear that there was something I was missing.
I came here tonight with two goals in mind—to get Lazarus back and to finally do something I would be remembered by, to finally leave a mark on this world. But a couple of words from Gabriel shattered that second plan, and the rest of my night was spent planning how to figure out what was happening.
“I would give everything I have, Danika, if it could erase the painful things that have happened to you,” Lazarus said, playing with my hair. “But I can’t. I can only show you how much you mean to me. I will spend every waking moment reassuring you that this is it. You’re my forever.”
“Well isn’t this lovely,” the voice that always grated on my nerves sounded behind us, the clanking of his shoes echoing around the room. I turned around, releasing Lazarus, and my eyes met with the poisonous eyes of Judah. “You guys look like such a couple.” He chuckled, irritating me even more.
The girl we all but forgot about screamed again, moaning and crying the moment she saw Judah, thinking he would save her. But there was no saving her. I doubted that there was saving any of us.
The lantern in the corner of the room flickered, casting a shadow on the floor as Judah walked, coming right in front of the girl.
“Is this the prospect?” he asked, as if he was talking about a cow he was about to buy and not an actual girl. Maybe I didn’t care about her, but I cared about the fact that this man had everything handed to him on a plate, yet he still deemed it necessary to take and take and take, until there was nothing left for taking. “She’s pretty, I guess.”
The girl only cried harder, probably slowly realizing that she wouldn’t come out of this unscathed.
As much as I felt sorry for her, I knew that I couldn’t allow Judah to have her, even if that meant having to kill her.
Slowly, carefully not to alert Judah, I inched toward the table, toward the knife I left next to her head in the moment of insanity, looking at the man who shouldn’t exist. His blond hair was styled perfectly, his eyes shone brightly when he looked at me, and I couldn’t shake off this feeling that no matter what I did, while he breathed, I would never be free.
The gleam in his eyes wasn’t anywhere near close to the one Lazarus had. This one was filled with something much darker, much more sinister, and I didn’t need to be clairvoyant to know that he would never let me go. The more I stood here, listening to him talk about this girl as if she wasn’t in the room, the more I started thinking that whatever Gabriel had to tell me, had something to do with Judah and me.
My hand wrapped around the handle of the knife just as Judah looked at me, his eyes widening at the action. I could see his lips moving, but the white noise ringing in my ears stopped me from hearing anything.
With one last look at the girl, at her fearful eyes and the years she would never get to live, I pulled out the knife above her head, releasing it from the table, and stabbed it back down.
Right into the center of her chest.
“No!” The inhuman roar that came from Judah would’ve scared a lesser person, but bullies like him never really learned until you took what they wanted the most from them. He wanted this girl. He wanted to destroy her life in ways unimaginable, and I had to stop him.
I had to stop all of them.
“What have you done?” His thunderous voice bounced off of the walls, but his feet stayed cemented to the ground.
The gurgling sound pulled my attention back to the girl. Blood soaked the cloth she had in her mouth, the tears that were slowly falling were now mixing with the crimson substance coming out from between her lips. The white shirt she had on was becoming saturated with her blood pouring out of the wound where the knife stood still in the center of her chest.
“You fool!” Judah continued his rant, and just as I was about to turn toward him, someone wrapped an arm around my chest, pulling me back.
“That’s enough, Judah,” Lazarus said, shielding me with his body.
“Oh, no, no, no.” Judah laughed maniacally. “She’s going to pay now. She’s going to be mine to do whatever I want to do to her. She belongs to me!”
“She doesn’t belong to you!” Lazarus thundered, his muscles straining from the force coming through his lips. “She will never belong to you.”
