Page 100 of Pray for Scars
My brother’s hand caresses my face and I flinch.
“Don’t be scared of me, Sid. No one will hurt you again.” His finger grazes my lips and I feel him pull away. He blows out a breath. “The Forgues thought they’d make me into their son. Baptize me with a new name. Lazar didn’t want me, so it was nothing to him. But they couldn’t break me. They couldn’t mold me into what they wanted in that cage.” He laughs, and it sounds so strange in this car with my eyes closed. “I broke them instead. Then I joined the Unsaints.” His voice turns bitter and he pauses a moment, as if the words taste bad on his tongue. “I infected them. And when Lazar Malikov promised me I could go free, no repercussions, I was dumb enough to believe it.”
I don’t open my eyes. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear this.
“So when he told me to keep my eyes open on Unsaint’s Night and take the girl Lucifer got for Lover’s Death, well,” he laughs, “that sounded like play to me.”
No.
“He gave me the drug. The instructions. And all I had to do was deliver you to him, and I was done with them. For good.”
My eyes fly open, and he’s staring at me.
“But you…you weren’t a random girl I could just throw away.” He presses his knuckles to his mouth. “If you were anyone else, Sid Rain…” He shakes his head, runs his hand over his hair, then rests it back on the gearshift. “But you weren’t. You were mine.” That eerie smile is back. “You’ve always been mine. And I saved you that night, Sid.” He leans closer to me again, eyes narrowed into pale green slits. “You thought I fucked you up, but I saved you then.” He grabs my wrist, not letting me pull away. “And I’ll save you now.”
“But on the altar,” I finally manage to find my voice, even though my words shake. “You were…”
He smiles at me. “Lazar Malikov has two sons, Sid Rain. And the difference between us isLuciferonly wanted to save you.” He shakes his head, almost sadly. “But me? I wanted to own you, too. And that’s what the 6 need.” He snorts. “So I took Lazar’s drugs, I let him rough me up while he told me the truth about us. About how we were used. And I have no doubt Lazar would have killed me, would have chosen Lucifer, even still. But I could believe his lies again. Lie still for him, while another betrayed child of the 6 got to Sanctum to help us out.”Brooklin.
He licks his lips, pausing a moment. And then, “Come inside,” he says, hand tightening on my wrist as he nods his head toward the warehouse. “There’re so many things I want to do to you.”
* * *
Jeremiah backsme against the wall, his eyes blank. There’s no anger, no grief, not even madness. Just...emptiness. One hand comes to the wall by my head, but the other...he has a knife he must have grabbed from his car, and I hear the snick of the blade as he opens it.
I see it’s already covered in blood.
He dragged me in here, past the makeshift kitchen, the hallway that led to our rooms. The memory of Brooklin tossing me that black leather skirt played through my mind, my bare feet on the cement floor. He took me to the back, an open space that looks like it’s straight out of a torture porn set, and I’m not so sure it isn’t. Not now that Jeremiah has me against the wall.
“Give me your hand,” he says quietly. His tone isn’t cold. It isn’t full of rage or even sadness. It’s just steady, confident. Calm.
“Jeremiah,” I whisper. I glance behind him and my legs tense as I think about running. “You don’t want to do this.”
Whateverthisis.
He’s scaring me, more than usual, which is saying something. And I’m trying to focus, to think about getting out of this alive. To not let the memories flood back in. Reverend Wilson. Maddox Astor.
Take care of it.
They passed me around as bad men paid good money for a little girl. I was one of their own, and they sold me, over and over again. And I fought back, over and over again, becoming a problem for them.
Lazar’s words come back to me:A shame you couldn’t have let it happen. Then this would all be over with. You would be forgotten. Tossed aside.
But I became a liability when Ididn’tlet it happen. When I became their worst nightmare. And Lazar sent his own son to hand me over to him, and he sent Jeremiah, too, just in case.
But it didn’t work.
Take care of it.
Maddox Astor. My own fucking father.
And the dark angel.
Mayhem Maverick Astor. My brother. He couldn’t have saved me, but maybe he tried. Maybe he knew, as a child, that we were connected. Maybe he didn’t. But I felt him, either way.
I blink, scrubbing a hand over my face. Jeremiah is smiling at me, and my knees tremble. I’m not even sure I could take a step right now, let alone run fast enough to get away from him. My time for running has passed. I should’ve done it when I had the chance.
“Give me your hand,” he says again.
