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Guilt makes me nauseated. I’ve never felt guilt before. It tastes like vomit and dirt stuffed into my mouth. “I thought you were dead. I checked your pulse. You weren’t breathing.”
The whip cracks again, and Tamara’s answering scream is weaker this time.She’s dying.
“Lying sack of shit.” His eyes are crazed. “You took Elizabeth and leftme?I was your brother!”
Something smashes, and I’m falling, falling…
And I land with a thud on the floor of my bedroom. My heart is jack-hammering against my ribs. I scramble to my feet, crouching low, instinctively scanning the room for threats.
I’m alone in the dark, with the faint glow of a nightlight on the far wall.
I’m next to my bed. I was in bed. When did I get into bed? I thought I was sitting at my desk.
I’ve shattered my bedside lamp into pieces, and my hand is bleeding. I struggle to slow down my heart rate as I walk into the bathroom to rinse off the blood.
I’ve had this dream every night for more than a month now.
It’s been happening ever since I found Tamara. I did what I had to do while I was searching for her. I maintained an iron grip on my feelings, but the moment she was safe, I lost control.
All of those dammed up feelings came flooding out, just as I’d known they would. Every feeling that I’ve repressed for my entire life is raging through my mind. And the worst of it is, I need my focus more than ever. I’m trying to build a normal relationship with Tamara, and search for my brother, and maintain my mask of civilization, while every nightmare from my past is tearing into me the minute I close my eyes.
I shouldn’t have brought Astrid and her children here. It’s hard for me to maintain that veneer of normalcy in a crowd like this. I wasn’t lying when I told Tamara that, with the exception of her, being around people for any length of time is physically painful for me.
The old voice whispers in my ears, the cruel, calm voice that has guided me through the world for years.
These people are nothing to me. If they all die, I will feel nothing. Their presence here is not helpful. They’re nothing but noise. When I see Fletcher and Paul, in particular, I keep flashing back to my childhood. I see weakness, and I want to beat them until they’re strong. So they have to go.
But Tamara is right. I do actually care about them. Not as much as Tamara, of course. If they died, I’d feel mild sadness. If Tamara died, I’d burn down the world.
But as angry as I am with Paul and Fletcher for being weak little boys who don’t even seem as if they’re trying to be fierce, I also feel a strange protectiveness toward them.
I should send them all away. They are a distraction, so having them here doesn’t benefit me.
But I can’t send them out into danger. I won’t.
I’m changing, and it should be a good thing because I was a monster before. The problem is that I don’t know what I’m changing into. I’ve shattered and am trying to put the sharp, broken pieces back together, but they don’t fit together right.
With a sudden start, I realize I’ve washed my cut hand and put a bandage on it and picked up all the shards of the lamp, all without even noticing. I’m standing in the middle of my bedroom That’s another thing that’s happening to me these days; I find myself doing things without even noticing. And considering what I’m capable of doing at my worst, that is very bad.
Clenching my fists, I hurry to Tamara’s room to make sure she’s all right. She’s sleeping on her side, curled up, and I see faint lines creasing her forehead. She doesn’t sleep easy these days either. Maybe she’d sleep easier if I was lying next to her, holding her in my arms, but I’m afraid that if I do that, I’ll end up killing her the next time I have a nightmare.
Watching her breathe, my anger and panic fade. She’s here. She’s alive. The hell I lived in for those eight days that felt like eighty years is over. This place is crawling with security, locked up like Fort Knox. Nobody can hurt her.
The demons of my past will not defeat me. I am stronger than my demons. I killed my father, the devil in human form. If he couldn’t best me, nothing can. I draw strength from my Tamara.
I fetch a broom and dustpan and sweep up the lamp’s shattered lightbulb. When I’m done, I stand in the middle of the room and close my eyes and take deep breaths, drawing them in slowly and then releasing them.
Since the day I killed my father, I have never been defeated by anyone or anything. I will force the dark parts of me down into the depths where they belong, and I will not let Tamara slip through my fingers.
* * *
Tamara
Joshua doesn’t join us at breakfast, and he doesn’t bathe me, so I shower by myself and wonder if I did something wrong.
When it’s time for us to spar, though, he shows up. His hand is bandaged, and he still has circles under his eyes, but he seems perfectly cheerful—so cheerful that I ask him if he’s made any progress with the search for Micah.
“Not yet,” he says. “But he can’t hide forever.”
