Page 32 of Feed Your Fiends

The same bat I’d replaced ten times over because it’d never managed to make a dent in her icy prison. The thick wood would only shatter with my energy upon the final blow. And still, I grab it and swing it at the display with a satisfying bang.

“Answers,” I hiss. “Where is he? Who is he? What country?”

Of course, she doesn’t speak. She just stares straight through me until my palms are raw and I’m out of breath. Until the bat splinters and snaps, yet the reflective glass remains as pristine as the day it was installed.

A whimper to my left alerts me to Jarett crawling up the theatre’s ramp and back to the comfort of his newspaper-lined cage.

The whininess of the inhuman sound sends another bolt of adrenaline rushing through me as I grab his ankle and wrench him back down into this dark hellhole they both created and trapped me in.

“You can fucking answer me, but you won’t,” I bark over him. “All you do is sit in your own shit. It doesn’t matter that Bart’s idled your brain; you’ve always been nothing, and yet she let you into the deepest parts of her.Why? The only special thing about you is Elle, and you tried to ruin her. You treated the only precious gift you’ve ever been given, like fucking rubbish.Mypretty baby.Mylittle dove.”

Jarett’s eyes grow wide, and still, he doesn’t speak.

Hatred, blinding hatred, bleeds into my vision. “Can’t you be fucking useful for once?” I hiss. “Be a good fucking boy and tell me! Tell me where he is! Tell me why she picked you! You,fucking, you. What the fuck is it about you?”

More whimpers. More trembles.More nothingness.

“I’ve always loathed my father, but I could respect his business savvy. My mother? For a second, I thought I hated her too because she’d lied to me my entire life. I’m not her special prince. I’m her spare. Even with all of that, with my father making me dance with her corpse, and her utter betrayal, nothing tops the sheer despisal, the revulsion that snakes through my veins every time I look into those pitiful eyes offucking springshe loved so much.”

He merely cowers, pulling himself into a tighter ball.

“Such a pretty baby doll…” I pound on the ramp’s railing, and the metallic reverberations cut through the deafening silence that falls between us. “My dove… I don’t just hate you and that bitch you bred, Jaime. I abhor you.”

Inhuman strength ripples through me as I tear him off the floor and slam him into the railing. I use the smooth metal to drag his ass up the ramp as those crystal pools widen to the size of saucers.

“Why don’t we have some tea,hmm?” I ask when we reach halfway to the living room above. At that, Jarett grows a spine and resists our ascent, falling off the rail and onto all fours with a sickening thud. I fist the back of his shirt and pull until he gags and chokes, a trail of spit dangling from his lips. “Oh, that scares you? Don’t you think that scared my baby,your baby, when you shoved her into that pool? You didn’t care about her screams, so why do you think I’ll care about yours when they're music to my ears?”

He screams like a fucking kettle as I drag him into the dim lighting of the living room.

Fuck the plan and Bae’s positive reinforcements. Fuck Bart and fuck this whiny, bitch.

I tug him so hard, his front paws leave the glossy grey tiles as I pull him halfway over the tank’s entrance.

“Gant?” A feminine voice calls behind me.

It cuts through my brain fog and brings me into the present, back to the fact that I’m dangling Elle’s father like a tea bag over a whirlpool of water. Back to the fact that those eyes looking at me and pleading for mercy aren’t beastly. They’re human.

Still, even with all my senses, it changes nothing, because I still don’t give a fuck. I shove Jarett face-first into the swirling tank and turn in time to see Aria coming through the foyer.

She and Eti are the only ones who visit me because the corpse portrait doesn’t disturb them. She’s used to it. Used to me.

She takes in the broken cricket bat still clutched in my left fist, the shredded pieces of paper still littering the floor since last night, and the massive dog cage behind me. She doesn’t ask a singular question as she settles on the couch in front of the fireplace with eyes as dead as my mother’s.

“Can I stay the night?” she asks calmly amongst the chaos.

“Where’s Etienne?”

“Gone.”

I stalk toward the couch and plunk down beside her, suddenly exhausted.

“So you’re all alone.”

I don’t need her to tell me that she and Stassi aren’t on good terms. They haven’t been all year.

She doesn’t look at me with bloodshot eyes identical to mine. We stare straight ahead at nothing in particular, and suddenly, the silence is bearable.

“I figured we could be alone,” she whispers. “Together.”

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