“Sully Sinclair, you listen to me. Whatever you’re doing. Whatever you see or hear or feel...stop it! I love you. That’s all you need to focus on. I. love. You. I love you, and I’m not leaving, but if you leave me, you son of a bitch, I will never think about you again. I will erase all memory of you. I will sell myself to the nearest bastard and let him hurt me until the day I die because no one could ever hurt me as much as you are right now.”
I slapped him. “So fight. Fight for me, you bastard. Otherwise, you kill both of us. Do you hear me? You die, I die. Is that what you want? Because if it is, keep going. Die for all I fucking care. Give up after everything we’ve done for you. Go on. Take my fucking heart and—”
“He’s in a tachyarrhythmia. Three fifty BPM.” Louise lost her calm bedside manner.
Pika took wing.
Skittles scurried away.
And I went fucking wild.
Chapter Twenty-Four
SOMETHING STRUCK ME.
Over and over.
Pain on top of pain.
But the external pain was nothing, fucking nothing, to the hellfire I now existed in.
I remembered.
All of it.
Thanks to Eleanor, she’d unlocked my broken mind.
Her stories of our beginning.
Her murmurings of love at first sight and belonging.
Fuck!
It unlocked the gates.
It granted back my sins.
It poured them down a chute until I drowned beneath them.
Memory after memory.
Realisation after realisation.
Of what I was.
Of what I am.
I couldn’t escape.
It wouldn’t stop.
I thought my love was pure. I believed I was a simple man who loved a simple girl. That we’d found each other through simple measures and lived a simple life.
Fuck!
I was the antichrist.
Diabolus.
A demon’s brother, devil’s protégé, and Prince of Fucking Darkness.
That was why I couldn’t wake up.
Why the blackness refused to let me go.
This was where I belonged.
In the shadows and the inky shade where only filth survived.
Every despicable thing I’d done.
Every girl I’d purchased.
Every guest I’d indulged.
Every vial of elixir.
Every program of Euphoria.
Every bite of Drake’s torture.
FUCK!
Flames of absolute damnation obliterated the darkness I’d been living in.
A fire struck into full catastrophe, ready to burn me alive.
Truth became my pyre.
This was my cremation.
My systematic incineration.
Every disgusting act.
Every murder.
Every life.
I’d skinned a woman for her refusal to leave the fur trade.
Bludgeoned a man for his role in slaughterhouses.
Poisoned and watched my parents drown.
Trapped my brother in a VR world and had animals tear him limb from limb.
I’d used people for my own gains and failed all the creatures I’d tried to save.
I was worthless.
Less than worthless...I was scum.
Who the hell could love me?
Who the fuck could even look at me after what I’d done?
Flames licked around my non-existent legs.
My legs might not exist, but the pain did.
Pain was my punishment.
It chewed through me until my bones turned to char. Flames snarled over my skin, turning my corpse into dust.
My organs popped and sizzled.
My heart shrivelled up and vanished in an inferno.
And I recalled why I couldn’t trust.
Why I couldn’t get close.
Why I couldn’t be happy.
Because it was all my fucking fault.
I was the product of my end.
I’d chosen my path.
I’d stolen every drop of happiness from others because I would never experience such joy.
Until her.
Until the dream turned nightmare.
Until I purchased a figment of my imagination.
A speck of fucking hope.
That was how I’d come to know Eleanor.
I’d bought her.
I’d requested men to grab her, steal her, and send her to my shores.
What a fucking monster.
I’d torn her from her friends and family.
I’d trapped her and molested her.
I’d stolen her heart and left her for vengeance and now...
Now, I wanted to fucking die.
I intended to keep my promise.
I didn’t deserve to live.
Two brothers who were the epitome of evil would be gone, and the world would be a safer place.
My body seized.
I gasped as the flames crept higher, burning my cock, my stomach, my lungs.
It took everything.
It scorched me, blackened me, destroyed me.
Something sharp struck my face.
A parrot squawk ripped through my ears.
Pika.
Even the parrot that I’d loved for half of my life couldn’t absolve me.
I’d killed on his behalf.
I’d arranged for the deaths of so many men who still used animals as their test subjects.
Blood suddenly poured into my prison.
A tsunami of crimson life force, hissing with hate as it met the flames of my cremation.
It painted my flame-riddled corpse.
It clung to me.
The blood of my past.
The blood of my truth.
It poured down my throat.
It struck a match on my soul.
Fire howled.
Pain exploded.
And I burned out.
My invisible form collapsed into a pile of bone charcoal.
Traffickers.
Purchases.
Girls.
Goddesses.
Teeth.
How fucking wrong I’d been.
How stupid I was to believe I could be redeemed.
This was burnout.
Not mental. Not symbolic.
Real.
Literal and legitimate, it didn’t just wipe out my power or my pain.
It burned me alive.
It sacrificed me.
Removed me.
It chewed through everything I had left, flames and fire, pain and promises.
It burned me until there was nothing left to burn.
Until there was nothing left of
Lust.
Love.
Life.
Me...
Chapter Twenty-Five
HE DIED.
He died while I pounded on his heart and begged into his ears.
He died as his pulse blazed past survivable.
He died as the monitor switched from chaotic chirps into flat line screaming.
And I lost a piece of myself.
He died to hurt me, to spite me.
He died because of me.
And I lost another piece.
He died because he’d come after me.
Because he’d saved me.
Because he’d loved me.
And I lost another piece.
His islands weren’t enough to bring him back.
Pika wasn’t enough.
Skittles wasn’t enough.
I wasn’t enough.
And I lost another piece.
Grief came swift.
Tears brewed heavy.
Terror was absolute.
And I lost another piece.
The flat line screech of his dead heart broke me.
The slack lips and closed eyes broke me.
The loss of such perfect possibilities broke me.
And I lost a final piece.
I spiralled.
I sobbed.
My grief mutated from pathetic to furious.