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For the longest time, Finch observed her. She worried he’d grown tired of answering her questions when he flicked his wrist, and the two goons stepped out of the room, closing the door behind them. Ellie didn’t know if she should feel relieved or scared to death.
“Sam is a tortured soul. You must have realized that by now. He has been all his life.”
A slow tide of indignation and fury started to rise within her as he spoke. “Could it be because his father is a psychopath?” She couldn’t believe she uttered those words to his face but didn’t regret saying them.
Such an insult could have warranted her a hit, but Finch only smiled. “Oh, I admire people who hold dear to their ideals, but let me remind you that Sam is half a psychopath. I would think about that if you survive long enough, of course.”
Finch walked around her small enclosure, touching the curtains with disgust. “Society sees good and bad in very stark and definite ways. I think the human beast is much more complex. In a pack, they fuck their same gender and are not labeled as gay. They kill and are not tagged as murderers. They experience life and live it, following their instincts and desires which humans tend to forget how to do. All that animalistic fight has gone from them, and as soon someone wants to get to the top of the food chain, they fear them.”
“So that’s what turns you on, power and killing?”
“Oh, Ms. McLaren, my desires and goals are much darker.” The silver of his eyes bubbled into a dark shade of charcoal she’d never seen in her life as he approached her. Her heart thumping with anticipation, Ellie was afraid, and apprehension of what was to come closed her throat as she tried to remain still.
Now toe to toe with her, Finch towered over her. His face descended so close to hers she almost thought he’d kiss her. “In my sons, I see a little bit of myself. Until he turned against me, Lazarus was my heir apparent, but Sam...”
This close, she felt him shiver, an expression close to contentment showing on his face. “Sam was everything a father could desire. What I always wanted. And so I took him.”
In the course of her career as an emergency operator, Ellie had heard screams of pain, stories of violence, pleas for help, all the atrocities this city could ever spew, and was convinced her soul had wrapped around each of them to better offer her help. It was the victims she sided with, but at this very instant, she was on the other end of the spectrum, and was fighting hard to understand what his words implied. “Took him?”
Finch looked down at her with such a smile, one a father would give to a foolish child. “I didn’t have a real interest in my children before the age of reason, and seldom returned, but I had an opportunity to check on Sam. When I saw him, so young and innocent, part of me flooding his veins and his mind, the animal in me wanted him. Over and over again.”
The whisper in her ear, the revelation he was sharing with her turned her into a complete mess. Her stomach wanted to revolt, her hands to tear at the monster until he was no more, but Ellie remained unmoving, like a puppet with cut strings.
“I knew that if I broke him, I could make him become like me. If spilled inside him enough times to erase what his beautiful but silly mother had instilled in him, I’d make him see what I see. Follow in my footsteps in a way none of his brothers would ever be capable of. I almost succeeded, but his mother found out and made him disappear. For the longest time, he was under my radar, until he joined the Army. I didn’t act at that time. Structure is always good for a man, and I approved. I followed him from afar, waiting for the right moment. I’ve been distracted by my other, stupid offspring over the last few years, but maybe it was a blessing. They’ve stripped me of all the artifice I’d adorned over the years. I’d put aside the animal in me, but I think it’s time it returns. Only the animal will allow me to kill my runts and turn Sam to me again. He’s the only one who has ever encountered the beast in me, who can understand it, and that’s why he’ll return to my side.”
The mix of sensible fatherly thoughts and monstrous insanity coming from Finch made Ellie want to block her ears to stop the flow, but she had to hear it out. Sam had lived with that secret burden all his life, and she understood a little better now why that shadow of pain followed him. If anything, she had to bear witness, for Sam. “I doubt he’d allow you to rape him again.”
Booming laughter was his immediate answer. “He’s too old for my tastes now. And his returning to me would indeed require a lot of work and reconditioning, but I have no doubt I could make him see the light.” Mirth vanished and intensity returned when his hand touched her neck, making her skin crawl with disgust. “I find my pleasures elsewhere now, child. They are wide and varied.”
Close to spitting in his face, his large hand closed around Ellie’s neck and pushed until she stumbled back a few feet and ended up against the wall. With his fingers tightening around her windpipe, Ellie started to thrash, trying to free herself, but she couldn’t get in a good enough hit as he was all but plastered against her body, his disgusting breath fanning her face. “Did you know that you can find intense pleasure in suffocating your lover? I think I may experience it with you, try to explore what Sam finds so interesting about you.”
Gasping for air, Ellie wiggled as panic seized her.
“Or maybe I could use you to turn Sam.”
With what little breath she had, she wheezed at him, “He’d hate you even more. Kill you.”
The fingers slacked just enough that she could draw a full breath.
“But I want him to hate me. The line between love and hate is so thin, my dear. I could work that line until my dear son is brought over it without even knowing.” His hand left her, and he stepped back, the cloak of civility back in place, but this time, Ellie knew better.
As he stepped toward the door, he turned one last time. “My intention was to kill you right now, actually. But I see that it will be more valuable to spare you. I’m curious to taste what Sam likes. It is unexpected, but I’m starting to think you’ll be an interesting tool to use. Over and over again.”
When the door finally closed behind him, Ellie slid down the wall until she was huddled in a ball on the floor, certain she’d see that evil smile haunting her nightmares for the rest of her life.
Chapter Ten
“Hey,hey, hey! Easy, brother! Don’t crash my car into a building. That wouldn’t help Ellie at all, and us even less. With your reckless driving, I can’t even see straight. Unless you have a connection from your brain to my phone, I need to tell you where we’re going.”
Sam heard his brother but only grumbled in return. “If your little gadget had worked right away, I wouldn’t be rushing to rescue Ellie. Now there’s too much distance between her and us.”
Lazarus mumbled something unintelligible, his eyes riveted to his screen, but if he were honest, Sam was overwhelmed by guilt. Everything that had happened the moment Ellie had walked out of the kitchen was on him. It wasn’t logical to take the attack on his brother’s home on himself, but if she’d been by his side the entire time, he could have prevented her capture, or at least defended her.
What had he accomplished by antagonizing Ellie, belittling what they’d shared on the roof? Maybe he’d wanted to put some distance between them, force her to see the logic in his decision, not that it worked. Apart from being a complete bastard, nothing good came out of his screwy idea which only added to the burn in his gut.
Ellie had tried to reach him, bring him back to the land of the living even if it was clear she was teetering on the edge herself. On the roof? It had been bliss and agony. With her big, blue eyes and kind smile, she’d beckoned him like a siren, and after years of pain and loneliness, how could he deny his soul? Not in a million years, not when he’d wanted the strange woman with such force.
Sam remembered his mother’s words about a thing called fate. All around them, the desert, the moon, the sun, and the wind existed and evolved on their own accord, by a scripted law from the heavens that regulated all living beings. When he’d left the tribe behind, he’d never thought much about his mother’s words afterward, but maybe it was that same fate that brought the black-haired fairy on his path.
