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Her face caves, and she looks away.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what.”
“Like I’m dirty,” she chokes, sucking in another shaky breath. “Like I’m tainted somehow.”
“I don’t see dirty. I don’t see tainted,” I hiss, twisting her chin and yanking her gaze back to mine. “I see a slayer of demons. I see courage in the face of—”
She barks a laugh. “If you see that, then you’re even fucking crazier than I thought you were.”
She flinches.
“Sorry,” she mumbles quietly, dropping her gaze. “I’m sorry, I…I know you want to help, but you can’t possible know—”
“I was twelve.”
She stiffens. So do I, and I can hear my voice floating somewhere outside my body as I tell her what I’ve never told a single person in my life. None of my siblings. Not even Ya-ya.
My father knew most of it, though not all. The only ones who truly knew were the monsters themselves.
And I killed every single one of them.
“Our father was embroiled in a Cold War of sorts with the Turkish mafia. Greeks and Turks…let’s just say that past isn’t exactly roses and sunshine. And the disagreement over turf and who could move what product where got real ugly real fast. Especially since my father was content to throw gasoline at the fire instead of actually putting it out in the best interests of everyone involved. But he wasn’t smart enough to do that.”
I look away, a thudding sensation roaring in my ears.
“I was being driven home from school when they ambushed the SUV I was in. Killed the driver, killed the two guards riding with us. Me, they took.”
I keep staring out the windows at the glittering city I fucking hate so much I can taste it, but I can feel her eyes are still right on me. She’s out of her hole, and she’s focused on me.
So I keep going.
“They took me to a house out in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and threw me in this basement room.” My jaw clenches. “No lights, no windows, one door, and one bucket. It smelled like rat shit and mildew.”
Her breath chokes. Her hand clenches almost involuntarily on my chest.
“I was there for a while: almost two weeks. It felt like…” I grit my molars, glaring at the city lights. “It felt like forever. At first, they were just assholes to me. You know, not feeding me very often, yelling at me, kicking me when I was trying to sleep. But then it got worse. They went longer between feedings. Kicking me turned into beating me, and then beating me turned into beating thefuckout of me—with bike chains, a stick…”
I can feel her body shaking and hitching against me as she starts to cry softly.
“There was this one guy…this one fucking…”
My eyes squeeze shut.
“He enjoyed it. I mean he really,reallyenjoyed it. Hitting me, torturing me. He waterboarded me a couple of times down there and laughed through the whole thing. And then one night—or maybe day, time had lost all meaning—he woke me up by kicking me. He was piss drunk, and he reeked of beer.”
I sort of fade outside my body, watching myself tell her about the darkest time in my life.
“That was the first night he put his hands on me. He had these fucking fingernails…” I swallow thickly, my blood turning to ice as Dahlia cries against me. “These dirty, sharp fucking fingernails…”
“Deimos…”
I inhale and exhale slowly.
“It just kept happening, over and over, until I could feel something in my soul just…giving up,” I hiss. “Something in me wanted to die and never wake up again. But another part of me refused to die and let the monsters win. So one time, when I was near exhaustion and falling asleep, I curled my hand around that fucking shit bucket and used the raw edge of it to cut myself. The pain kept me awake and conscious, until I could hear and smell him come in. He’d gotten lazy the last few times he came for me, and it was the same this time. He left the door unlocked, no guard, and I waited until he shuffled over and I could hear his breath wheezing.”
Slowly, I turn to let my eyes stab right into hers.
