“Did you, now.”
“Yes. He thought there was some potential in you. He had big plans for you. He blames me for losing you.” He shrugged. “Malokin thought he was smarter than me, but I knew you better. I saw what you were, and he only saw his plans. You were never going to bend. Break, yes. Bend, never. You would’ve ended up a shell of yourself but never would have been useful to him. I didn’t care though, because I enjoyed breaking you. I almost had you, too. Broken, that is. The cracks had started to show.”
I wanted to deny it, but he was right. I’d started to break. And even though my physical form might not show the marks after I healed, I’d have the scars forever. And right now, I really didn’t believe I’d be the stronger for it in the long run. I felt like I was barely holding the pieces together.
All of my anger was wrapped up in one target at the moment. Luke—standing in front of me, smug as ever—was the inflictor of so much hurt, and it taunted me.
I looked in his eyes, the way he was staring at me, and couldn’t get past the degradation. His very existence was a reminder of what I’d become. What I’d let him take from me. And that was how it felt. I’d allowed him do this to me, even though I knew it wasn’t true in a logical sense.
“Before I’m done, I’ll hear you beg,” I said.
He cracked his knuckles. “Like your friend Kitty did? I understand. It’s quite enjoyable.”
Rage burst inside of me and I lunged at him, knife fisted in my hand. I caught the flesh on his chest but was deflected by his ribs. He, in turn, caught me with a slice to my forearm.
The new pain focused me. I spun around, out of reach of him now. No more stupid moves made in anger. I could feel Fate’s eyes on me. He was close by, even if I couldn’t see him. If this got messy, I knew he’d step in, and I couldn’t have that.
“You’ll see. Malokin will win, in the end. You have no idea what’s coming,” Luke said, trying to throw me off my game again.
“No, I might not know what’s coming, but I know where you’re going.”
I swung my leg back and kicked him in the head. I heard the crack of his neck breaking. It wasn’t the tortured death I’d longed for, but it was still by my hand.
He fell instantly. I stared down at him, but I felt nothing but numbness. I should’ve felt better. This was supposed to make me whole. This was going to make me okay, or something closer to it than I felt right now.
It didn’t.
He was dead, and so was part of me, still.
Fate walked up and stood beside me, to where Luke lay dead at my feet.
I stared down, wondering if I could somehow breathe life into him and kill him again. If I did it slower this time, would I feel better? If I had dragged it out, would that have made a difference?
“Doesn’t feel like you hoped.” He wasn’t gloating.
I looked at Fate. “No. That obvious?”
“It’s all over your face.”
I looked at Luke’s body. My kick had been so strong, so filled with rage, it hadn’t just broken his neck but ripped it partially from his body. Still, as my hands lay by my side, stained with some of his blood, I felt he’d been lucky. He’d died quickly. He’d deserved much worse. “I must be a monster, because I wish I could do it again.”
“No. You aren’t.” Fate sighed loudly, as if he were as weary as I felt. “I doubt that’s an option anyway, but it wouldn’t matter. Sometimes people take things from you that you can’t get back, no matter how hard you try.”
When he spoke, he sounded like he was intimately acquainted with loss. I waited to see if he’d expand on it, but he didn’t. I wasn’t going to press for details just to ease my own pain.
I stared at my dead nemesis. Even if this did make me a monster, so be it. I might have regrets in life, but not about this. Not even a speck.
This hadn’t made me feel better, but perhaps it had helped in other ways. “Did today change anything else? Do you know if I’ll still die like you saw?” When he didn’t answer immediately, I bit my lip and looked at him.
He turned his head toward me, and all I saw in his face were the words he didn’t want to speak. Nothing had changed.
“I wish I hadn’t asked.”
“We’ll figure something out,” he said, and his arm wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me in to him.
I replied with the obligatory, “I know,” but we were both full of it.
When Cutty walked in it was a welcome distraction. I wasn’t surprised to see him, either. I would’ve been more shocked if some of the guys weren’t lingering around.
“Whoa!” He said as he came to stand on my other side. “Dude, that’s some fucked up shit. Who did the honors?” Cutty made a circular motion over the killing wound with his finger.
“That would be me.”
“Hardcore.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
Chapter 37
Reorganizing
Kitty’s desk sat in the corner of the office, papers still scattered about, bags of cat treats piled up along the perimeter. No one had touched it, not even Harold.
As people walked in and out, their eyes would dart over to it, pause a moment and look away. Everyone knew she wasn’t retired anymore. That something bad had happened, but no one openly discussed it. A lot of things were being whispered lately, almost all of them true.
“Karma!” Harold yelled from the door of his office.
I closed the manual I was still working on and left it on the table. It was there, out in the open, for anyone to see, as I moseyed over to his office. Things needed to change here, and the manual was my shot across the bow. Either get on board or it would be a hostile takeover. With what might be coming, things were going to have to come out into the open.
Harold was already seated behind his desk again by time I walked in. He motioned for me to shut the door. I obliged.
His eyes perused me. He sensed it. Everyone did. There was something different about me, and it went beyond just the regular transfer stuff. But like Paddy had guessed, they couldn’t quite figure out what exactly it was they were picking up on.
“What’s different about you now?” Most didn’t come right out and ask, though.
“Didn’t we cover this stuff like a week or two ago?” Messing with Harold was becoming one of my favorite pastimes.
“Just because I don’t know, doesn’t mean I won’t figure it out. When I do…” he waved a pencil in my face.
“You’re going to stab me in the eye with the tiniest stake ever?” I made a fake gasp and put my hand over my mouth.
“You think this is a joke?”
“No. I’m sure it would be quite painful.”
His face became almost as red as his hair, and I stood and walked to the door. I knew Harold well enough to know when the interrogation was complete.
“And stop working on that manual!” he yelled as I walked out.
“Sure, I will,” I shouted back, though we both knew I was full of it.
Grabbing the manual from the table I’d been sitting at, I walked out of the office. I passed some of the gardeners on my way out and could feel their eyes on my back. It had been like this all week, and I didn’t think it was going to be changing anytime soon. No one said anything, but they all sensed it, not just Harold.
Something was different about me, but no one asked. I was glad; I had no explanation for them. Whatever Paddy had done was changing me, but I didn’t know how. Neither did he, for that matter; I’d asked him.
But it was happening. Sometimes at night, when I was very still, I thought I could feel it churning and spreading within me. Whatever it was—whatever he’d done—it was slowly growing, reaching out its tendrils within me. Every day it wound itself a bit deeper, weaving a little tighter into the very essence of what I was. Soon, it might be so much a part of me I might not feel it at all.