Harley Merlin and the Cult of Eris (Harley Merlin, #6)

Since my mother’s failed attempt to murder me, these goons had been all over me like a rash. I’d almost been killed, yet I was the one under twenty-four seven watch. Ah, the logic of the judicial system. The stupid woman couldn’t even be bothered to do it herself. But the solution was simple, really: watch the damned cameras and give a hoot if someone they didn’t recognize waltzed in, or if someone they did recognize was acting shifty as heck. Why was I being punished for their idiotic mistake?

Walking along the ridiculous steel walkways, I contemplated jumping over the edge. Not seriously, of course, but it’d be five seconds of fun before I went splat at the bottom. Instead, I focused on the route ahead. So very familiar to me now. I’d lost track of the number of times I’d made this trip. Back and forth, always in chains. With no parole on my sentence, I was looking at a lifetime of this. Yeah, not if I can help it.

Soon enough, we arrived at the private shower block. Nobody else was allowed in while I was showering, aside from a bunch of burly guys in Kevlar. Any boy’s dream, right? I stripped and stepped under the surprisingly hot water. There was something about showers that made me thoughtful. No idea why. The running water cascading over your face, blocking out the noise when it got in your ears. Only, I didn’t like it when my brain took over. I had a problem with overthinking. Especially these days, when I had nothing to do but think.

Sliding down the wall, I sat under the hot torrent. It reminded me of being a kid at the Anker house. That really was a lifetime ago. I used to sit in the shower to forget about my day—the kids calling me “freak” and stuff. I didn’t know, back then, that my mother had made me like this.

Why’d you do it, Katherine? Why’d you make me this way? “Nurture” definitely hadn’t been in her vocabulary. I felt stupid, now, when I thought of how intently I’d hung on her every word. True abandoned-kid syndrome. I’d done so many things for her, and for what? To get a knife in the throat? I’d never been a son to her, just an object she could use. It had taken Adley to make me see that, but I hadn’t been able to save her any more than I’d been able to save myself. I kept thinking, Hey, at least I’m not dead. But maybe I’d have been better off six feet under.

Weirdly, Harley seemed to understand. She didn’t forgive what I’d done with the gargoyles, but she saw that I didn’t forgive myself, either. Even when Katherine had asked me to release those beasts, I’d had doubts about it. I’d wondered what Adley would think. If I had told her at the time, she’d probably have given me a pitying look and said something like, “That’s not who you are, love. You don’t have to prove anything to anybody.” Something stupidly empathetic like that, because for some reason she never saw me as the monster I was. It didn’t matter now, though. What was done was done, and any respect I’d had for my mother had died along with Adley.

“What are you doing in there?” Chalmers’s voice split the calm sound of running water.

“Singing showtunes, what do you think?” I taunted.

“Well, pack it in and get yourself washed. We’ve got other things to attend to.”

I got up and reached for the standard-issue shampoo-slash-bodywash-slash-paint-thinner. A nice bag of chemicals in a soap dispenser. It was no wonder my dye had washed out. This stuff was stronger than bleach. Grabbing a handful, I ran it through my hair until the suds stung my eyes. A little pain reminded me why I was here. Why I was still breathing. I wouldn’t stop until Katherine was dead. I’d make her pay for what she’d done, with Harley’s help. That was still strange for me to get my head around.

After so many years of lapping up everything my mother had told me and sipping her poison, Harley had appeared out of nowhere and thrown my entire world for a loop. She’d held a mirror up to me, and I didn’t like what I saw. Typical family business. It amused me to picture us all around the table at Christmas—me, Harley, Katherine, Hester, Hiram. I doubted we’d even get through the entrees before someone wound up dead in their soup.

I glanced down at the dappled pattern of bruises across my skin. I’d healed well after the attempted assassination, but my ego would take a bit more work. Washing away the suds, I grabbed a towel and dried myself off. My sexy prison uniform lay on the bench opposite. I dressed quickly and headed out to the guards. They scowled at me like I’d smeared dog crap on the walls, before hauling me back to my cell.

“That’s your last one for a week, Shipton,” Grimshaw hissed.

I shrugged. “It’s your funeral. You’ve got to smell me.”

Heading back, I peered into the cells we were passing. I didn’t do it very often. All around me, the cells were filled with serial killers, terrorists, every kind of “-phile,” the worst types imaginable. And I was among them. Some looked like celebrities or ordinary people—femme fatales, good-looking jocks, and hunched retirees. Others looked exactly like you’d expect a killer to look, with missing teeth, weird tattoos, black eyes, jacked arms. Compared to them, what I’d done was nothing. Yeah, but you got a lot of people killed. You did what they did. You just went about it a different way.

I shuddered at the thought. I didn’t want to spend my life here. I didn’t want to be labeled the same way as these creeps. Katherine had been my general, and I’d been her soldier. I was only following orders.

The Nazis said the same thing. My brain had a habit of pulling me up like that. I called it my split personality, but there was more than one inside me. Anyway, after everything that had happened, my personalities were sort of blurring into one. A better me, I hoped. One that Adley would have kept loving, if she were still here. One that she could have forgiven.

I jolted as Grimshaw pushed me back into my cell, sending me sprawling to the floor. I shot him a dirty look over my shoulder, but he just laughed. Assholes, the lot of them. If it’d still been legal to beat us with batons, they would’ve. There were good officers, sure, but they hadn’t been stationed to watch me. I’d gotten the barrel-scrapings.

“You want me to end up back in the ICU?” I snarled through the glass.

“Ideally,” Chalmers replied. “Or the morgue, preferably with your mother.”

My hackles rose, but I had to play nice if I wanted to get these Atomic Cuffs off. They liked to taunt me by leaving them on after my shower, purely to piss me off. I'd be lucky if I wasn’t still wearing them in the morning.

“How about you take these things off, and I stay nice and quiet for you?” I walked to the grate and put my arms through.

Grimshaw and Chalmers exchanged a weary look. “Saves me doing it in the morning,” Grimshaw finally muttered as he took the Cuffs off.

As the grate closed and the two guards returned to ignoring me, I walked over to the bed and lay down, staring at the stupid chrome ceiling. Alone again, I wondered why it had taken me so freaking long to betray Katherine. I guessed it wasn’t an easy bond to break, and I’d been in the land of the brainwashed. For years, she was all I’d known in terms of family. Even after they threw me in here, I’d still been a loyal dog to her. Waiting like a fool. Thinking she was coming to get me out. Thinking that she cared.

When Garrett had come to the prison and told me about Adley, I’d still been resolute. Even hearing with my own two ears that Katherine didn’t give a crap about my feelings, I’d stayed loyal because I thought there’d been a good reason for everything she did. But then she’d tried to have me killed. It had been a blessing in disguise, turning my mindset 180. That was the deal-breaker. The no-go zone. Now I knew I meant nothing to her. And, if she kept going with her plans, she’d kill me and everyone else, too, as easily as tossing out the trash. Which, in her mind, was probably what she thought she was doing.