Page 88 of Cole: Bloodlines
“Why would Cole feel guilty?” Max asked, glancing uncertainly at Horatio.
Devlin raised his head and looked at the two men. “You don’t know?” he whispered hollowly.
“Know what?” Horatio frowned.
Devlin swallowed thickly, his throat working nervously. “The serial killer who took Abel and the kids…” Quiet horror resonated in his watery eyes. “… he was Cole’s father.”
Gabe fell silent, and Cole's chest ached with hollow gratitude; his husband was desperately trying to comfort him, to make the unbearable bearable, but Cole couldn't bring himself to tell him it was only making everything worse. The weight of responsibility for Ezra crushed down on Cole, making each breath a struggle. It wasn't just guilt—it was a visceral certainty that he had failed the person who needed him most in the world.
Lying still, Cole's fingers worked the bracelet, the leather still tacky with Byrne's blood. The sensation sent revulsion crawling up his spine like insects beneath his skin. His stomach lurched suddenly, bile rising as a violent tremor shook him from the inside out, and he lurched from the bed as if fleeing from his own thoughts.
“Cole…?” Gabe sat forward, concerned. “Where are you going?”
“I have to...” Cole trembled, his words catching in his throat as he stumbled into the bathroom on unsteady legs. He pushed through the door with his shoulder, the hinges protesting with a metallic whine as it slammed shut behind him. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting his reflection in sickly tones as he lurched toward the sink. His hands shook so violently he could barely control his fingers, cold sweat beading along his hairline as he fumbled with the bracelet. The leather felt slick and wrong against his skin—contaminated.
He yanked it free and dropped it into the porcelain basin with a dull thud, then cranked the faucet handle until water gushed out in a steaming rush. Cole slammed his palm againstthe soap dispenser once, twice, three times until cool blue liquid pooled in his trembling hand. He seized the bracelet and began to scrub frantically, watching pink-tinged soap bubbles swirl down the drain, his fingernails digging into the leather as if trying to excavate the blood from its very fibers.
“Cole?” Gabe opened the bathroom door and shuffled inside. “What’re you doing?”
Cole's entire body convulsed as he obsessively scrubbed the bracelet, each breath catching in his chest. Tears blurred his vision and streaked down his cheeks. “The blood… it won’t come out…” His voice cracked, raw with despair that clawed up from deep inside his chest. “I-I don’t want his blood… on the bracelet… but it won’t come out.” Each word seemed torn from him, his thumbs working against the leather until his skin was raw, repeatedly slamming the soap dispenser with such force that his knuckles whitened.
“Hey. Hey.” Gabe's fingers dug into Cole's shoulders, his touch both an anchor and a reminder of the unbridgeable gap between Cole's pain and anyone else's understanding. “Babe, it's okay—”
“No, it isn't!” Cole's cry was a sound of pure anguish that seemed to echo from every dark corner of his soul. His hands trembled violently beneath the scalding water, steam rising around his face like the physical manifestation of his grief. “I have to get it out! I don't want his fucking blood on it! I don't...” His body folded in on itself as though physically crushed by the weight of his emotions, sobs wracking his frame until he could barely breathe, doubled over the sink like a man mortally wounded.
Gabe pressed against his back, the solid warmth of his chest a stark contrast to the cold porcelain edge digging into Cole's hip. His arms wrapped around Cole like a lifeline, lips brushing the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck where fine hairs stoodon end. “I know, baby,” he whispered, his voice trembling with a quiver that vibrated against Cole's spine. Gabe shifted beside him, his fingers gently prying the soaked bracelet from Cole's raw, reddened fingers. “Let me help.”
Cole's hands shook violently, knuckles white as he gripped the porcelain edge of the sink, shoulders hunched as if bearing an invisible burden. Tears streamed down his cheeks, dripping from his jaw to splatter against the white basin. “It-It won't come out...” he choked through lips that had gone bloodless, his voice breaking. “It won't...”
He was right; Gabe's thumbs worked the leather with steady, deliberate force, but the rusty bloodstain had soaked deep into the fibers, making the once-smooth surface rough and mottled. Gabe finally grabbed a handful of paper towels, the sharp tearing sound echoing in the small bathroom. He dabbed away the excess water, then pressed the damp bracelet into Cole's palm, folding his trembling fingers over it one by one. “This is the blood of an enemy that you defeated,” Gabe murmured, his eyes shining with a fierce, protective light as he held Cole's hands between his own. “This stain on the bracelet is proof that you fought and you won. And I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but...” his voice lowered to barely more than a whisper, “Ezra won, too. He'salive.”
Cole stared blankly at the bracelet, the leather now darkened and swollen with water, his tears flowing freely. “He's breathing,” Cole whispered, each word fragmenting in his throat. “But he isn'talive. Theystolehis life...hurt him until...” his chin trembled, the muscle beneath his jaw pulsing visibly as fresh tears welled and spilled over. “...until he lost his mind.” His shoulders caved inward, spine curving as if his chest were collapsing under the weight of an invisible anvil, each sob tearing from him with such force his ribs ached. “The Ezra I knew… mybest friend… isdead.” His knees finally buckled,and he wilted against Gabe's solid frame, fingers clutching desperately at his husband's hospital gown, twisting the fabric as tremors wracked his body. “They tookeverythingfrom him… they took himfrom me…” The words emerged as barely more than exhaled pain, his voice raw and threadbare. “And he’s not coming back.”
Gabe held him tightly, his strong arms forming a fortress around his shuddering body, cradling Cole's head in the hollow between his neck and collarbone. “Baby, you don't know that,” he murmured, his breath stirring the fine hairs at Cole's temple. “He's in a bad way right now, but with help, with therapy, maybe he will come back. For him to survive this long...” Gabe's voice cracked, and he took a deep breath, his chest expanding against Cole's. “He had to be fighting inside. There had to be something he was holding onto, something that gave him the strength not to give up.” His lips brushed against Cole's hairline, lingering there as his fingers traced slow, soothing circles between his shoulder blades. “And I can't help but believe thatsomethingwas you. From the things Dane told me, that you told him... you were all he had in the world. If anything was keeping him alive...” His arms tightened, as if he could physically shield Cole from his own thoughts, “...it wasyou.”
Although Gabe's words were meant to soothe him, they burned against Cole's raw nerves like salt on an open wound. His chest constricted as if caught in a vise, lungs struggling against the crushing weight of realization. A wave of nausea rolled through his body as images flashed behind his eyes—Ezra suffering, bleeding, screaming—all while picturing Cole's face as some distant salvation that would never truly come. The thought hollowed him out, leaving nothing but a cavernous ache where his heart should be, guilt crystallizing in his veins like ice. This wasn't comfort; it was a sentence Cole couldn't bear to serve… yet couldn't escape.
CHAPTER 41: BLOODY VENGEANCE
Cruz and Sanchezworked methodically, yanking blood-stiffened fabric from limp limbs, their fingers leaving white impressions on blue-tinged skin. The killers' exposed flesh pebbled in the biting cold—pathetic, shriveled, and vulnerable against the slate-gray morning.
“Put them in the pen.” Clint and Cochise grabbed the men's broken bodies by their armpits, skin slick with sweat despite the frost. The Spaniards took their ankles, and together they hoisted the naked men over the splintered fence, dropping them with unceremonious splashes into the steaming cesspool of mud, piss, and shit. The stench hit like a physical force—ammonia sharp enough to water their eyes.
The gangsters climbed over the fence, boots squelching in the filth as they propped the killers against the rough-hewn posts. When Cochise yanked the tourniquet free from the deputy's thigh with a savage twist, dark arterial blood surged forth in rhythmic pulses, spreading in crimson tendrils through the black muck.
Clint unsheathed his knife with a soft metallic whisper, the blade catching the gray dawn light. The Egyptian mirrored his actions, his larger weapon emerging with predatory grace. Squatting in the mud before the killers, Clint ran his calloused thumb along the razor edge, feeling the cold bite of steel against skin. “How do you like playing the victim? Fun, isn't it?” he mused, his voice flat and merciless. “Helpless. No one around with a fuck to give.” His gaze dropped to the man's shriveled genitals, blue-tinged and pathetic in the biting cold. “Not hard? What's wrong? Not as exciting from this side?”
Clint's eyes scanned the large pen where dark, hulking shapes shifted in the swirling fog, their wet snouts and bristledbacks appearing and disappearing like ghosts, accompanied by hungry grunts and the squelch of hooves in filth.
The cowboy turned to the Egyptian, whose face had settled into the impassive mask of an executioner. “How about we liven up the party for these boys?”
The Egyptian's blade flashed silver in the gray light, then crimson as it sliced through flesh, gristle, and nerve endings in one savage arc. The Mangler's scream started human but rose to something animal as his cock separated from his body, pelvis thrusting upward as if still trying to escape the blade, his spine arching so violently that mud-slicked vertebrae threatened to rupture through skin. Blood didn't just spurt—it geysered in rhythmic pulses that painted his pale thighs and splashed back against Cochise's boots, steaming briefly in the frigid air before freezing into ruby crystals.
“You see?” Clint growled, his voice dropping to a register barely human as he locked eyes with the deputy. “You're not the only ones who like to play with knives.” The blade plunged into the man's inner thigh with a wet sucking sound, parting flesh like butter as Clint dragged it downward, opening a chasm that fountained dark arterial blood.
The deputy's scream shattered the morning stillness, a guttural sound that tore his vocal cords raw. Before the echo died, Clint's hand moved again—a blur of calculated savagery—as he carved the man's dick from his body with three precise strokes. The severed organ pulsed once in the cowboy’s grip before he flung it contemptuously into the mist. The air erupted with feral squeals and the wet sounds of tearing flesh.
Cochise reached down, seized the Mangler by his sweat-drenched hair, and wrenched his head back until vertebrae cracked. The Egyptian's blade—eighteen inches of Damascus steel—sliced through the flesh on both sides of the man's neck in one fluid motion, deliberately missing the carotids but severingevery nerve ending. Blood vessels burst beneath the skin, painting purple-black bruises in real time. Dropping to a crouch, Cochise dug the tip of his knife into the screaming man's navel and dragged upward with surgical precision, parting skin and yellow fat.
