Page 14 of Our Vicious Descent
Layla met Julius’s eyes with a cold stare of her own. “I already told you—”
Fire lit Julius’s eyes and his voice lifted, conviction seeping into his words. “Saint sympathizer.”
Ignoring the rise of angry shouts from her clan mates calling for her banishment, Layla pressed on. She faced Julius with her teeth gritted against the commotion. “It’s better to have Saints with us rather than against us. If I find Josephine Saint and return her to the Saints—return her to Elise—we will have allies in the Saint empire—”
“They have had too many chances. If you find that girl, you will kill her. We do not need any more Saints running around Harlem, no matter how small they are. You better hope you’re the first one to find her. If it’s me, her death won’t be so pretty, and I will start a war against the Saints in your name.” He backed away and turned to face the crowd, though his words still addressed her. “The next time you come here reeking of a Saint, it better be their blood, or I will turn this entire clan on you,” he hissed.
At this, several reapers cried out in anger. The room seemed to swell with their heated emotions and shouted curses. Layla rose to her feet, still shaky from the effects of Julius’s tainted blood. She gave him a lethal scowl and allowed her hands to close into fists. “You fight dirty, Julius. Poisoning me just before you intend to challenge me before our clan. Did you not think you could win a fight against me at my full strength?”
Julius scoffed. “Please. I will, however, accept your agreement to fight for the role of leader if that’s what you’re insinuating here. Is it?” He held his hand out, as if to shake hers.
Layla stared down at his backward offering. She knew if she shook his hand, it would be an agreement to bare their worst selves,and once blood had been spilled, there would be no coming back from that. There would be no winner, no matter who was left standing over the other’s dead body at the end. Such displays of violence claimed everyone involved. Or so Layla thought.
Whatever choice she made, it would haunt the Harlem reapers for an eternity.
***
It was barely dawn, but enough light spilled into the Saint garden to expose the truly horrific circumstances Elise and her father stood in. Blood stained Tobias’s suit and fine white shirt; dried blood flaked away by his collarbone and jaw, where he had cradled his wife to his chest and cried into her hair just hours earlier.
It had been another sleepless night for Elise, who had yet to change out of her bloodied clothes as well. Part of her felt an instinctual urge to keep them on if it meant holding a piece of her mother close to her for a little while longer.
The more she tried to convince herself that her actions were not cursed, the more she believed they were. Every step of the previous night played in her head over and over and over again. Had she not picked up the ribbon, her mother would have never run into danger. Had Elise not cowered under her father’s gaze, they never would have walked into the ribbon. Had she not shown up back home at all, her mother would probably still be alive. The whole incident had been a blur, but more than anything, it was perplexing in a waythat not even Elise’s tortured mind could rationalize. A reaper—the biggest and most damning one she had ever seen—had entered Saint property and killed her mother.
Everything that went wrong, as simply put by Elise’s overactive brain, was her fault. She had not done enough to prevent the harm that occurred.
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Her father’s voice pulled her from her endless reflection.
She glanced up from her hands, where her nails had picked so many previously healing wounds into bloody oblivion. “Excuse me?”
Tobias gestured to the giant bloody lotus flower that had been hastily drawn on the far wall of the garden post-attack. What had once been a symbol of prosperity and protection now turned into a macabre display of violence. “You do not believe that the Saints can be mocked, do you?”
“No,” Elise said firmly, surprising herself with her own strength. She could hardly focus on him over the chants of protesters in the distance outside the Saint estate. Cries of “Make Harlem safe again” rang out through the air over and over.
Her father turned to one of the Saint associates, who stood by a police officer. “So why have you suggested such a thing? We are not a business that can be ridiculed, so surely this lotus flower means something else.”
“Sir, while I understand your sentiment, we have reason to believe this was a planned attack specifically against your family. The symbol only supports that claim, whether you want to believeit or not,” the officer chimed in. Several of his comrades circled the scene, some with cameras flashing every few minutes to document various angles of the evidence left behind. What happened to be left was her mother, in two parts, and the blood that spilled from her body. “We are to assume this was another reaper attack. It is fair to assume rogue reapers in this area would have animosities toward your family. We will have to take your wife in for a full autopsy. As soon as the coroner arrives—”
“No,” Tobias said sharply. Red lined his eyes, which had gone dark with a despair Elise had not seen since her own attack five years prior. He stepped closer to the officer and lifted a shaking hand.
“Sir?” the officer asked, frowning.
Tobias closed his shaking hand into a fist, then stretched his fingers out, his thumb twisting his wedding band. “You will not take my wife away from me. If you have to do the examination here, then so be it,” he snapped.
“Mr. Saint,” one of his associates said in a low voice. As Tobias fought to settle down, his shoulders heaving with his heavy breaths, the associate spoke quietly to the officer.
Elise stared at the white sheets dotted with crimson stains that covered her mother. Her hand slid into her pocket, feeling for the bloody ribbon she had yet to let go of since nearly tripping on it. All she could think about was just how much blood there had been when the attack happened and how much remained on the ground now.
Before she could consider her father’s reaction, Elise was openingher mouth to speak. “If it was a reaper, why is there still so much blood?”
The officer in conversation with the Saint associate blinked down at her. “Plenty of reaper attacks can be quite violent without the need to feed. This one appears to have been more of a demonstration to make a statement.”
“My mother was a Saint. Her blood would be considered valuable among reapers; this is too much waste, even for a cruel mastermind,” Elise said. Her fingers twisted around the ribbon as she watched the man’s expression go from doubtful to agitated.
The officer’s brows knitted together, and he sighed. “Do you believe we should risk lengthening this investigation because you want to believe reapers are smart and, God forbid, capable of making sound business decisions?”
The condescension in his tone only made Elise’s quietly simmering anger burn hotter in her chest. It had been four long hours of waiting and pretending to be okay while everyone else did their jobs. Now she had no more energy to maintain a mask for his comfort. Especially knowing how little he truly cared. “I believe you should consider every angle to ensure you build the best case and find what killed my mother,” Elise said sharply. To speak to an officer like this would have been a death sentence if her father were not the one responsible for the weapon that kept him safe every day of his job. His hand brushed over it now, despite Elise not having moved an inch in his direction. Her words, she’d found, were enough to make the right people uncomfortable.
A cold hand closed around her arm, and Tobias pressed into her side. “You will have to excuse her, Officer. I am afraid she has been taught to think like a reaper as of late.”
