Page 121 of Fallen Thorns
“Casper.” I tried to shake him awake. I tugged on his body a further two times before—
I’m back in the light, my arms pulling my body up out of the hole. At the last moment, something grips my ankle and I turn back around into the abyss. What looks back up at me is a mirror, or more, my reflection. That thing inside me, lying dormant until once again it can swallow me whole. It has no real form, but it is part of me now. Forever.
And consume me it does. Pulling my body back down until I am falling, falling, falling, into an endless pit of darkness, as if thrown into an icy ocean, the rippling light growing smaller and smaller until I run out of breath and my consciousness fades, once again.
Welcome home.
ChapterTwenty-Nine
Marianne
All my life I had done what I believed to be the right thing. I lived whilst everyone around me moved on or died. I watched the very world fall apart, but I had always done what my gut told me to. Protect people, no matter who or what they were. We all deserved a chance at redemption and freedom, but some just never listened.
The minute the church came into view, it was twelve years ago again. Beaten and bloody and high from his death, I rattled the door open to see his sinister work. Bodies upon bodies buried in plain sight. Hispride.
I hadn’t even suspected it. He’d been doing this right under my nose and I’d been blind to it.You didn’t see me coming.
Sometimes, they say evil wins. Sometimes, no matter how hard you may try, there is just no stopping such cruelty, and this world stands testament to that. But I thought I’d won that time. I thought he was the worst threat we’d have to face.
I was naïve, even with all those years behind me. I let my guard down and started a war from my own stupidity.
Maybe I let my personal rage get in the way, this wasmylapse in judgement, after all. Ever since I found Isiah in Carmen’s house, my world tipped itself on its head. Learning to trust again after something like that is something I admit maybe I’ve never been able to do.
And of course Lucy knew about my life before. That name,Jerome.I had not heard that name in decades. He was all but a ghost story to me now, but she knew how to push me over the edge. She knew I had faltered time and time again. That I was weak.
And now, once again, I led my Thorns into hell and all I could think to say wassorry.Sorry for not being who I believed I could be. Who I always used to be.
She thrashed at my neck,a swift blade of nails. How did I never know of her existence? And whynow.Had they been planning this together all along? Killing and killing forever and ever until they were the only ones left? What had they been doing before, together? How many people had suffered because of them?
“Surrender,” she hissed her demand as I managed to trip her, causing her to stagger back, eyes never leaving my face.
“Never.” I lunged forward again, and her teeth latched onto my arm. Foul play, just like her brother. I grimaced and released my wounded arm, throwing it behind me, defending with the other.
She was behind me now, and I turned to block another bloody bite.
It was at that moment when I spotted Carmen, staggering up stealthily from behind Lucy.She shouldn’t be here,I thought. I would never forgive myself for putting her in danger after all I did to protect her. But she would not have it. She never would. It was out of my control.
Part of me wanted to Manipulate her to turn back, but then what would that make me?
So I distracted Lucy as best as I could and prepared myself to be ready for what was to come.
“You will never win this,” I spat as we sparred around, waiting for one of us to strike next. I kept her in line with Carmen as best I could. “I’ve killed your brother, you will be no different.”
“Oh, but my brother was always the weakest of us — begged me to turn him in the end. He was never like me.”
“That means nothing.” I was lying, but I just regurgitated whatever words first came to mind, as the next second, Carmen pounded up onto Lucy’s back and with all her might, plunged a blade into her chest, screaming out every piece of anger she’d saved up.
But she missed the heart; it did not go in deep enough, and in the next instant, Carmen was thrown to the ground.
I saw my chance to strike, leaping up and pushing a wounded Lucy to the sludge of the earth and I pushed down, watching the blade sink deeper and deeper as the blood oozed out from her sternum. It was nowhere near her heart, but I did what I could. Her eyes grew wide in pain and she lashed out with her arms andmind.
I worked quick; barricading Carmen’s open gates as best as I could. Keeping her down on the ground and semi-unconscious.
‘Protect her.’Alvin Wood’s final words to me as he lay a mangled corpse on the floor next to his dead wife. His daughter clung onto the arm of the sofa, nails biting down and eyes as wide as headlights. Protect her — a promise I could never break.
“Oh, you’re no fun,” Lucy gargled up at me as blood pooled in her throat and began to seep through her teeth and flow out onto her face.
You will never win.
