Page 92 of Her Blood Revenge

‘Is she here?’

He shakes his head and stutters an incoherent stream of sentences with no beginning, middle or end. The stench of fear oozes from him. But not dishonesty.

‘This ceremony of yours. Where does it take place?’ I ask. ‘The fire pit in the woods?’

He nods.

‘If anything is to happen, it would be during that,’ Archie murmurs. ‘We should stay.’

I agree.

‘You will take me to the former home of Ashe Nectan,’ I tell Bensen. ‘And you will tell no one else that we are here.’

‘She is dead, My Lord. Ashe Nectan is dead. She is not there!’

‘And I require the following men to be brought to me at her residence. Gates. Yarling. Kressiter. Langly. And Holt. The elder males of each. Not the young men. Am I understood?’

I drop him,leaving him to scramble to his feet and straighten his cloak.

Pathetic little man.

‘Am I understood?’ I repeat. ‘Or should I come to your house instead?’

Bensen hastily nods and issues his orders to retrieve the men.

‘Lead the way,’ I command.

Pixie’s bed is so small. I feel huge in her room. The ceilings are low. The furniture battered and held together with dust and prayers. I was here in her dreams once. That first night, when I walked with her. That strange and wild girl who I expected to be terrified as I appeared in her room. I wanted to scare her. To make her plead for the mercy her kind never showed anyone, or to prove that her nature was precisely what I expected. That she would try to kill me before I killed her.

But she didn’t.

She leant into my depravity and violence. She welcomed it wholeheartedly and found comfort there. She was the perfect fit for my twisted desires.

And now I have lost her.

I sniff, catching a familiar yet repugnant scent. When I make my way towards the bed, I crouch down and see the source of the smell.

Dried blood soaked into the floorboards.

It’s old and smells putrid compared to her fresh scent.

Hanging over a chair are three leather belts. Each is placed precisely three inches apart and with the buckles visible. Her blood and skin cling to the buckles and the leather. Her father left them there to taunt and warn her. I find myself wishing that we had dragged out his suffering longer than we did.

The dirty dress she wore when we first laid eyes on her lies abandoned across the bottom of her bed, and when I walk towards the window, I see how they’ve been nailed shut. There are chunks of fingernails embedded into the wood where she’s tried to pull them out.

‘Pixie…’

I whisper her name without intention.

As if I’m speaking to the ghost of the girl who lived here. As if she may hear me and know that in the future, there will be someone who gives a shit about her. That she won’t be alone here forever.

There’s a full-length mirror to the side. A dark grey cloak has been thrown over it. It smells of her.

This whole room does.

‘Shaw!’ Archie calls from inside the house. ‘I need you.’

I leave her old room and join him downstairs.

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