Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

With my chest agape and bloody, I’d torn the key to my magical cuffs from the pocket of a weaselly looking nurse then bit his ear off for good measure before releasing myself along with my magic. Now I was thick in the fray, bringing down a world of carnage upon the unfortunate souls who were close enough to taste my wrath. But they had caused this, they were sinners of the stars, their essences nothing but soot and cinders. I’d reduce them to less than that when I was done here.

Casting a chain of fire, I swung it around my head like a lasso and caught a fleeing little nursey around the shoulders. A sharp tug of my magic sent him skidding across the room to land at my feet. And what a place to be when your death was written in the sky.

“Time to go to sleep,” I growled, casting more lashes of fire around his limbs, ripping him apart with them until his screams stopped screaming.

Two more nursesy-pies came at me at once, magic and fury crashing against my air shield, but I was not just any Fae. I couldn’t be caught by the weak and these two looked as fragile as toothpicks. My air magic dealt with the first, bursting his lungs with a pop and a hiss, the next went out more spectacularly. Blood splashed and screams painted the inside of my skull as I took his head from his shoulders in a way that could only be described as extravagant. But that was me. No one could make a disco out of death like I could.

“Sin!” Max yelled for the hundredth time, and I finally turned from my blood bath, the nurse’s severed head swinging from my fist as I gave my brother the attention he desired.

“Yes, ma boy?” I called, tossing the head away and watching the arc of blood paint the walls in a red, red rainbow.

“The cuff key,” he demanded and I threw him the slippery thing, ripping his restraints off of him too before turning to hunt down my next victim.

Vard had scarpered from the room already, Lion jar in tow most-likely, but he wouldn’t get far before I caught up with him. However, the time for chasing Rolands into the night hadn’t yet come, because I wouldn’t be leaving until I was done making a pretty mess of this room. As I grabbed a scalpel from a nurse’s hand and stuck it in her eye, I set her hair ablaze and whirled around, seeking out the one I needed to kill most of all.

Jerome was by the door, stepping over Hastings who was slumped on the floor looking as sad as a sack of lemons and making a bid for escape, tossing a fearful glance over his shoulder at me. I grinned, my teeth still tasting of blood since my ear-ripping escapade and the sight of that got Jeromeo looking all kinds of terrified.

“This is what you wanted, brother!” I hollered as he sprinted out into the hall. “Deep down, you knew what would happen if you crossed me!”

Max sat up as he got his magical-blocking cuffs off, healing himself and aiming his hands at a male nurse, taking the asshole to the ground with a blast of water.

I gave him nod, leaving him to finish off the last of the minions and prowling after Jerome. The time had come for vengeance. The slow kind. The take-my-time over it kind. It was a show, this was, the warm-up act had finished and now it was time for the main event. The crowd were holding their breath in anticipation, the curtain was rising and the one they had all come to see perform stood centre stage in his costume of destruction.

I felt Max being pulled after me by the spell our father had cast on us and the fight followed him into the hall at my back.

Jerome raced down the corridor, tossing a wall of earth out behind him to slow my pursuit. I punched a hole in it with air, barely missing a step as I continued after him, a predator in the night, taking my sweet, sweet time.

Jerome met a dead end, raising his hands to blast a hole into the wall that blocked his exit, but I whipped out a finger and barred his way with a powerful air shield.

I boxed him in, enclosing him in a cube of air and watching as he struggled within it, trying to break out like a fly caught in a greenhouse.

He turned to me, his eyes frantic, that usual coolness about him lost to terror. I had that effect on people. Maybe it was the way I did my hair, or how I dressed. Something about me unsettled folk for sure, but I’d never thought I’d see the day when I unsettled Jerome.

I cocked my head to one side, regarding him with a sharp tug in my heart, like a small duck was living in there, pecking at the insides. Glenda, I’d call it. Or perhaps its cousin was Glenda and mine was called Eduardo. Either way, my heart duck was unhappy and it had everything to do with the man in my box.

“Jeromeo,” I sighed. “Why?”

Such a simple little question, but oh how many sorrows it held.

He shook his head, a little breathless as he searched around him for a way out, but his gaze only landed on me again. His throat bobbed then he hitched on a smile, one that made me frown and think. I couldn’t place the emotion, it was eluding me, just a mosquito dancing in the air, buzzing around my ears, but I missed every time I swatted at it.

“Sin,” he laughed, though it sounded a little tight. “You won the game!”

“The game?” My frown grew frownier.

“This. All of it. It was a game, just like you said. I wanted to see how far I could take it. Hasn’t it been fun?” He laughed again, though it was thick, shaky.

“It has been fun,” I admitted. “Those chains holding me down tickled a bit. That was good. And the bit where I killed all those screamers, I liked that.”

“Yes,” he said keenly. “I knew you wanted them all dead. I led you right here to them. It was all part of the plan. For you. I did it for you. My brother.”

“Brother,” I exhaled, a smile to my voice, but my frown inched in again. Something wasn’t adding up. Two plus two equalled five, everyone knew that. But this? I wasn’t coming out with the right answer. Like all the numbers were jumbled, giggling as they pranced out of reach. “You did this…for me?”

“Yes, Sin. Of course I did,” he said fervently, moving to the edge of my air box and pressing a hand to it. “Now come on, let’s get out of here. We’ll go together. We’ll never look back. We can start afresh, it’ll be just like before. We can head to the woods, we’ll find Mrs Piggles.”

I liked that thought. Me, him and Mrs Piggles. But it was missing some people now. I needed more than my brother and a pig in a nice scarf to keep me happy, and that was telling of how much I’d grown. “What about Rosalie? And Roary, and Ethan, and Cain, and our pet Hasslington?”

“They can all come too. But we’ll go together now and find them later.”

“Maximus can’t stay here alone.” I looked back over my shoulder where my brother was still thick in the fight, the screams pitching through the air and splash of blood telling me he was doing a fine, fine job of murdering our foes. We really were of the same blood. And I wasn’t going to abandon him here.

“Well he…he’s too wrapped up with the law. You can see him another time. He’ll be fine here, he’s the strongest Siren in the kingdom, Sin. But you and me, we gotta get out of here before the FIB show up.”

He offered me his hand and I reached for it, dropping my air shield and taking hold of his palm. His fingers tightened on mine and he tugged to draw me closer, but I resisted, the creases on my brow getting deeper.

“I was on that table with my chest open…”

Jerome’s throat bobbed.

“They were about to extract my Incubus. Take it out and not give it back. Was that part of the game?”

“Course not,” he blurted. “I was about to step in.”

My fingers locked tighter around his, crushing them in my grip. “The numbers in my head are balancing on top of each other, and they’re giving me an answer I don’t want to see, but I think I can’t unsee it. It’s looking me right in the eye.”

“What are you talking about?” Jerome tried to pull his hand from mine, but I didn’t let go.

“They’re stacked up and chirruping the truth at me, Jeromeo. Why’d you do this? Why?”

He snatched his hand away, a blade appearing in it as he used his earth power and with a swipe of his arm he stabbed it right in my neck.

The betrayal stung me like a wasp, the truth a monster that had been there all along, living in his eyes, always staring out at me. I’d been used. Used like an old rag to scrub a filthy window. And Jerome knew how I felt about being used. He knew I hated being the Incubus everyone needed, everyone except myself. And all along, he’d been the worst of all.

I ripped the knife from my neck and he backed away, preparing to cast again, but I was upon him like a wraith, latching his limbs to his sides with air while driving his own knife into his chest.

We hit the ground and his pleas and cries for help punctuated every stab of the blade into his body, his death a cruel thing layered in pain. I dragged it on for as long as I could before silencing him with a final swipe across his throat. A ragged noise of pain left me as I leaned down and kissed his forehead, hating him, loving him, my brain just a casket full of lamenting souls, all wailing their grief and bidding Jerome goodbye.

I was confused as I sat beside him, his body twitching and blood bubbling at his lips, his death coming slow but with a certainty there was no avoiding.

I tossed the blade beside him, a traitor’s weapon ensuring a traitor’s grave. “That’s how the cookie crumbles, I suppose. You betray and lie, then you get what’s coming in the end. Either that or the bad guy wins, and I don’t let them do that, Jerome. You became bad to the bone, and I put Fae like you in deserving graves. It’s what I’m best at, what the stars made me for, I think. It’s why I’m cracked, because only someone shattered inside could do the things I have to do. But so long as I’m still here walking this earth, I’ll keep putting them in the ground, planting them like daisies. It keeps worse from happening. Kiddies shaking in their beds at night, worrying when the mean man will come home to hurt them. I make sure they don’t come home, and if the world fears me for delivering justice to monsters, so be it.”

A hand pressed to my shoulder and healing magic flowed through me, stealing away the sharp pain in my neck. Looking up, I found Maximus there, taking in the tears on my cheeks and the hurt in my eyes.

“He got what he deserved,” Max said darkly. “True brothers don’t use each other. They don’t sell each other out.”

“Even if their brother is death in Fae form?” I rasped.

Max took my hand, drawing me to my feet and cupping my cheek in his hand. “Even then. I think I’m starting to understand why you do the things you do, Sin. I see why they want you locked up, and I see exactly why you shouldn’t be.”

I leaned into him and his arms came around me, his embrace firm and bracing. Trust was a little bird placed in the hands of a goliath, and when that trust was broken, I need only remember I had the wings to fly away.

A clash of fighting rang out further down the corridor and we took off towards it, a whoop leaving me as I found Ethan there. Of course he’d come. And that meant Rosalie and the rest of her pack were here too.

Ethan was fighting with a group of guards, their numbers forcing him backwards. We raced in to join the fight at his side, his eyes brightening at the sight of us. The guards were fierce, driving us back and back until we were forced to blast a wall apart and retreat outside into the snow.

A bellow made my heart skip and leap, and from the depths of the shadows from whence we’d come, a beastie or five came racing into the battle, some of Vard’s twisted creations with all their teeth and claws and ugly glory. The true fight was just beginning, it seemed, and I was alive with the promise of death upon the air.