Page 9 of Like Grim Death: Part One
I think of Rain Valentin Malikov.Myson. I think of the day he was born. August seventh. Of the message given to me by the 6.“If anyone in your family betrays us, his blood will spill at your feet.”
I tighten my grip on the handle of the knife. My pulse is still even.
No one moves around me, not even the initiate. I think I hear something, like a strangled sound to my left, where I know Atlas stands in the circle. But the moment passes, and I could’ve imagined the noise.
Then a voice speaks from behind me, and I know it’s my brother’s; he was tasked with this to prove just how far we’d go for one another.Would he push me if I was standing on the edge of a cliff and the 6 told him to? How far does our loyalty go?
But he doesn’t have to push me. Not right now. All he has to say is,“Incipe.”
Begin.
And, with no more hesitation, I do.
Pammie. Jeremiah in a cage. My dad’s brutality. The ring on his finger. The red rope around my throat. Being reborn. A pounding inside my head. It hurts, it hurts,it hurts.
I need my dad, I need my dad, I need you, I needyou.
Lilith leaving. Maverick telling me. Imagining her being raped by Jeremiah, our child suffering at his hands.
The scar on her hip.
He took a knife to her skin.
He fucking made her bleed for him.
Something warm sprays across my face.
My lips part, and I taste iron on my tongue, over my teeth. My arm is aching, but I lift it again, bringing it down over the body on the ground before me, my other palm flat on the cold concrete, one knee grinding into the cement. A whimper leaves the initiate’s lips as I drive the blade into his shoulder, but I know I don’t cut through muscle because the knife doesn’t stick inside of him. I’m familiar with the way it feels when it does. It’s satisfying lodging sharp steel into a human body.
But this time, the downward arc of my movement only brings the blade’s tip to the concrete, through the plastic of the bag, jarring my own shoulder.
I’m breathing hard, and I don’t know how many times I’ve cut him when I go to lift the weapon again, eager to drive it into his fucking skull—just like I did at Sacrificium with my useless fucking father—when fingers wrap around my upper arm, and a forearm is barred over my chest. Someone is saying my name, dragging me backward. I stumble on my feet.
I want to fight.
I want to silence my dad’s voice inside my head, the look in his eyes, the way we are nearly carbon copies of one another, in more than just the physical. He is everything I cannot escape. But Maverick pries the knife from my trembling fingers and drops it to the ground, and Irefuseto fall apart again.
I don’t do that anymore. My family depends on me.
I take a breath as Mav’s hand comes to my shoulder, massaging me.
“It’s over, Luce, you’re done—”
I throw his arm off, twisting around to stare into his eyes. “Fuck.Off.”The copper taste of blood is sharper when I speak, but I ignore it as I get my balance again, turning my back to Maverick and wiping my hand over my mouth.
The figure on the floor is slumped over, rips in the plastic revealing nothing but torn black fabric and crimson, dripping along pale skin.
I lift my gaze, directly across the circle, to Elijah Carter van Damme.Dominus.
His dark hazel eyes appear black, and he stares back at me.
“Am I fucking done here?” My wife. My son.Home.My pulse is still calm inside my chest. None of those memories assaulting me a second ago are there anymore.
There’s only silence, in my head, and inside this room.
Elijah glances at the man on the floor. Then he opens his mouth, but before he can get a word out, another, colder voice cuts him off.
“Now take him home.”
