Blood to Dust

“We need to run,” I mouth urgently.

“Padded walls,” Nate grunts. “No one heard. Be back in a second.”

Then he disappears between the building’s doors once again.

I hate that he is not next to me, paranoid by the prospect of being taken by Godfrey’s men again, snatched in the middle of the night, nothing more than a daily newspaper your neighbor can grab from your front porch. My fears, however, don’t materialize. A few minutes later, Nate jumps into the driver’s seat and speeds away from the crime scene after tossing something into the trunk. The gun is still clutched in my hand. I release it slowly, without even realizing that it drops to the floor of the car, still deep in trauma.

He drives to an office block I don’t recognize, but the minute I see the name Royal Realty glittering in gold over a big sign next to the names of the other corporations, I throw up on my knees. The Archers’ company. Why’s he doing this?

“Shit,” Nate mutters, and I hurry to clean my mess with paper towels I grab from my backpack. “You okay, Baby-Cakes?”

I nod, but it’s only so I won’t have to utter a lie. I’m not okay. I killed a man, and I’m not Nate. I’m angrier and more vocal about my hatred—I’m madness driven by revenge—but I’m not like him. He’s a dark, quiet killer. A peace. His abnormally beautiful face was given to him, and not by accident. It’s to disguise all the ugly things he is capable of doing without batting a pretty eyelash.

He’s not a bad man, but he is fair. Even when justice means doing something terrible. He turns to look at me, and my heart swells before shattering in my chest. I’m not going to survive parting ways with this guy, but do I really have a choice? Can he accept and love something so broken?

“I don’t think you should see what happens next. But if you do, wear your mask. This place is wired like the f*cking Pentagon.”

He kisses the corner of my lips softly before slapping on his Guy Fawkes mask and jumping out, opening the trunk and taking something dark and round with him. I sit and watch him disappear into the underground parking lot of the building, jogging down the wide concrete road and sliding under the automatic barrier.

I think back to the first time I saw Beat’s Guy Fawkes mask. He said he chose it because it was the easiest mask to find, but I know the truth. Guy Fawkes represents chaos, anarchy, and dark deeds that are done behind closed doors.

He represents the part of our relationship I didn’t even know I craved before, but awakened a part of me that I didn’t know existed.

I can be a ruthless. I can kill. I can take from those who deserve to be punished.

The strength in knowing that, in some ways, he’s already fixed my soul is what makes me slide my mask on and push my door open. I walk into the parking lot. My small feet make very little sound, but this is Nate. He’s aware of my presence.

There’s something cinematic about the vision of his huge, muscular back as his fist clutches Sebastian’s short hair. I don’t know when he had time to decapitate my archenemy, but his pasty skin transformed from white to bluish in the short time he’s been dead. Blood drips from what’s left of his throat, but it’s more of an annoying trickle, like a broken faucet that drip, drip, drips.

The sound of Nate’s steps in his army boots echo off the walls of the empty parking lot. When he gets to a parking space that’s painted with Royal Realty’s title, he drops the head, letting it fall to the ground. Going down on one knee, he produces something small from his back pocket and arranges it neatly next to Seb’s head. I take a few breathless steps forward to see what he’s done.

It’s a small hourglass. Something he must’ve bought when we were in Los Angeles, while he was getting us some food.

Time.

Godfrey Archer is running out of it.

I open my mouth for the first time since I killed Sebastian.

“I’m sorry I used the gun. I know guns are for pussies.”

Not sparing me a glance, his back still to me, he shakes his head.

“You’re brave. Too brave. You did what you had to do, and I respect the shit out of you. Got it?”

The need for him to tell me that he still loves me is devastating and sucks the oxygen right out of me. Sebastian’s death is the least of my worries right now. It’s what’s been revealed in this visit that makes tears chase each other down my cheeks.

I had a violent abortion at the hands of Sebastian and Godfrey when they found out about the thing.

“My world ended that day.” My voice is small and sad.

“I know. But you’re building a better one. A stronger one. You’ve got this, Baby-Cakes.”



Nate marshals me into another dingy motel room—all of them are starting to mold into one another in my head—while I stumble to keep up with him.

The thing about trauma is, you don’t really know the extent of it when you’re looking from the inside. On the outside, though, Nate must see something incredibly alarming, because he pulls me into his arms and hugs me so hard my bones scream in pain.

“I loved it,” I say quietly into Nate’s chest. His heart beats against my ear in a slow, steady rhythm. He’s got the heartbeat of an athlete. Just one more thing that makes him my peace. He exhales hot, peachy air into my hair.

“Promise me you won’t break. You did so well today. So well.”