A Portrait of Pain Page 8

  “I know how to use a HK416. That puts me two rungs above a nerd.”

  “No, you’re right.” He sounded amused, his arm shifting so that one of his eyes was bared, peering out at me. “That makes you a nerd with a gun.”

  I rolled my eyes, turning the lights on when we reached the base of Le Chateau. “A nerd with a gun is a thirteen-year-old on a video game shouting headshot, headshot, headshot!”

  “I’ve heard you shout that before.” Miro was chuckling now, lowering his arm back over his eye.

  “Doesn’t count if it’s real life. If I kick a person in the head and say headshot, it’s considered cool.”

  “Or illegal.”

  “It’s barely illegal. It’s just a little kick to the head.”

  “If the little kick to the head lands them in hospital, it’s voluntary manslaughter, and that happens to be illegal.”

  I switched hands on the steering wheel, sending my right fist into his stomach. A rush of breath escaped him, but he knew better than to fight back. He didn’t even bother lifting his arm from his eyes again. I considered the argument settled. We drove the rest of the way in silence, not because we didn’t have anything to talk about—we had too many words hanging between us, waiting to be spoken—but because Miro had fallen almost immediately back to sleep. I allowed him his grandpa nap, since it would take us at least two hours to reach the institution we had hidden Amber away in. It was close to Seattle, as most official Zev institutions were. The reason their main school and university had been moved to Maple Falls had been to protect the students. To remove them, in some way, from the politics of the Zev world.

  Not that it worked.

  Maple Falls was only a couple of hours away, and the Komnata was halfway between the two. The main base of the Voda, Le Chateau, was on the Maple Falls side of the halfway point, shortening the bridge even further. It made it seem that they’d simply been spreading, expanding, instead of separating themselves.

  When we started to draw close, the sharp-edged curiosity that was sawing at my mind became too much, and I took the next corner too abruptly, almost tossing Miro against the window.

  “You could have just nudged me,” he groused, pulling his chair back up to a sitting position and running his hands over his face. “You know, like any normal goddamn person.”

  “Oh, hey, you woke up.” I feigned innocence—something that mostly happened on the inside, because my usual expression was pretty neutral anyway.

  Miro snorted. “Yeah. Ask what you need to ask me.”

  “You were sleeping on top of her.”

  “She didn’t have a mattress.” He turned to look out of the window.

  “So naturally you decided to sleep on top of her.”

  “Wouldn’t you have?” His mouth hooked up at the corner, and I was torn between wanting to punch the smile off his face, and the answering smile that wanted to tug at my own mouth. He sighed. “Just ask me already, Si.”

  “You didn’t want another Atmá. You told me you’d rather die. Those were your words. Have you changed your mind?”

  “I wasn’t the only one who said that.” He was avoiding answering, and that told me everything I needed to know.

  “So …” I worked to keep my voice even, to keep my focus on the road, to keep from snapping. “The four of us.”

  “The four of us,” he repeated, sounding far away.

  “And her.”

  “She loved you first,” he admitted. “You know that.”

  I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know that. Seraph was an internal person. She hid her pain; she hid her love. She didn’t cling to us and she didn’t come running to us every single time something went wrong. More often than not, she was running away from us. If she didn’t react the way she did when one of us touched her, I wouldn’t have had an inkling of her feelings at all. But she did react. That was when the truth made itself known. She needed us, whether she admitted it or not.

  “How do you know that?” I finally asked, my fists tightening around the leather of the steering wheel, making the material creak.

  He laughed bitterly. “You’d have to be the only person who doesn’t know that. That girl has a saviour complex and if I’ve ever seen a man that needed saving …”

  My tension melted away, annoyance creeping in. He was just messing with me. Wasn’t he?

  “So how is this going to work?” I asked, surprised at how even my tone was. “Because I’m not going to promise something that I can’t deliver on.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as … a smooth ride into the future chasing rainbows. Riding unicorns. Holding hands.”

  “I get it.” He snorted, finally turning away from the window to face me. “We take it day by day. We don’t push each other off bridges. We respect boundaries and we respect her. If she really wants to make it work with the four of us, if she comes around to that decision, then she’ll start to distribute her time and attention evenly. She’ll want to because she’s that kind of person. She won’t want anyone feeling left out of the relationship …” He paused, and we both winced, but then he continued. “She might not decide that she wants all four of us, though. She might decide that she only wants them. She’s always been close to them. They’re inseparable.”

  “Not going to happen,” I snapped.

  He half-grunted. “Not going to happen,” he agreed quietly.

  “Then do something about it.” I shocked even myself with the command. “You’re clearly in love with her. You tried your best not to be, so now there’s nothing left but to … give in.”

  “We’re not in competition with them,” he returned, his tone remaining quiet.

  “No. You’re in competition with yourself, and I’m sick of it. I didn’t tell you that Annie was our Atmá until she wasn’t anymore, and then—just like now—you acted out of guilt. Annie always loved us, but you didn’t start loving her back until you felt like you’d let her down. It didn’t matter that you weren’t the one to change her mark. It didn’t matter that she had a whole new mark and potentially a whole new pair out there. None of that shit mattered to you, because you felt guilty that her bond with us had been broken before it was even formed. You wanted to do the right thing, because you’re an idiot. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, you actually thought that I believed you when you said you loved her. You thought I stepped aside and handed her to you, and that’s why you feel guilty now, because you think I stood back and protected Annie by never showing any interest in her. Everything you do is because of guilt—”

  “We don’t have to talk about this—” he started to say, his voice rising in frustration, but I cut across him the same way he had cut across me.

  “We do. We never talk about it. There’s a lot we don’t talk about. Annie isn’t Seraph; that’s why you can’t stand aside for me, or the others. You can’t return the favour you think I did for you with Annie—even though I wasn’t doing you any goddamn favours, I just didn’t like her. Not as a person, or as a friend. Nothing. But I’ve been letting you struggle all this time because I’m selfish, because it hurts. I tried so hard to keep Seraph safe and hidden, but she wasn’t ever mine to keep safe and hidden in the first place. She was Weston’s secret weapon. Dominic’s little science project. The greatest threat to the human world that we have posed since the Original Atmás. If we can’t stop the information about her from slipping into the mainstream, we’re in big trouble. The general population won’t believe it, but there are people that already know far too much about our society, and they’ll see a girl like her for exactly what she is. A weapon capable of destruction on a significant scale. A weapon that has proved to be invincible on more than one occasion. So, she was doomed from the start, and there was never anything I could have done. Just like there was no way that she could have known about what she was doing when she stole us—”

  “Let’s not pretend that this is about the bond,” he interrupted again. “Annie was our Atmá once too—an
d you never once tried to claim her. She was around for years, falling over her feet in love with both of us, but nothing ever happened. The only reason you didn’t ship her far away from Weston was because I wanted her around. But even I … even for me … it wasn’t the same with Annie. It wasn’t anything like this. Not when she had our mark, and not afterwards, when her mark changed and I started dating her.”

  We both fell quiet, the words weighing heavily on us. There, the silence seemed to taunt, you’ve finally acknowledged it.

  The truth.

  The bond could be ignored. Rejecting it would be like cutting off an addict from their drug of choice: it would be messy, and there would be an immense amount of suffering … but it was doable. And afterwards … well, there was a reason people shouldn’t do drugs.

  At any moment, Seraph could wake up and decide that she didn’t want to be with us. And the four of us didn’t need to be with her—not in the way we had been leading her to believe. We had tried our best to keep her separated from Zevghéri society for so many reasons, but I was only now realising that one of those reasons had been purely selfish. We could have taken her to talk to other Atmás and pairs, but then she would have discovered that not all Atmás and pairs chose to live the way Jack and the Sophies lived. In fact … most of them ended up living separate lives, once the bond became settled. It wasn’t a conscious decision, and yet, we had all shielded her from that one, simple fact. From that one, damning reality. We had all wanted her to suffer through uninformed experience, so that she would form her own opinions, and guide herself by her own set of values.

  “They’re better than we’ll ever be,” Miro groaned, the pain in his voice unmistakable. “Noah and Cabe. They love her too much to fight us, even when she tried keeping them at arms-length. They never tried to take her away from us, and they never will. They’ll do what’s best for her every single time.”

  I shook my head, fighting the chill that ran the length of my spine. He was right, but I was never going to acknowledge it out loud. Noah and Cabe were constantly doing what was best for her, while me and Miro were busy fighting our own demons. Miro was terrified of how deep his feelings ran, because he knew that the feelings were entirely his own. He knew that the bond hadn’t forced him to fall in love with his student. He knew that the bond hadn’t forced him to blur the lines he had solidly laid down between himself and Seraph. He knew that the bond hadn’t forced him to betray his own memory of Annie: the woman he had thought himself in love with. The woman he had grieved for years. The woman who had paled in comparison to the seventeen-year-old, dark-haired angel who had stumbled into our lives. And me? I was a selfish, possessive bastard. I wanted her for myself, plain and simple. It felt like a knee in the gut every single time someone touched her.

  “It doesn’t matter.” I pulled the car into a spot between two other vehicles, glancing at the front of the building we needed to break into. “Whether they’re better for her than we are. It doesn’t matter that the bond won’t force us all together and stop her from leaving. One day, she’ll make a decision, and that is what will matter.”

  “I wish the bond let us read her mind.”

  I didn’t answer, because my mind was now focussed on the task at hand. Share-our-feelings time was over. I was already itching to hurt someone again, and I just so happened to have an available target, only a few brick walls away. I wound down my window and reached into the glove-box for my gun. I attached the silencer to the end of it and shot out the streetlamp up ahead. We were too far back for any of the institution cameras to catch us, but that light was preventing us from getting any closer. At the small explosion of sparks and glass, I pulled my arm back into the car, and we both stayed motionless, waiting. The car was off, everything was quiet.

  A light flicked on in one of the houses immediately across from the streetlamp, and a curtain twitched to the side. We watched the small, illuminated face of an older man peering out, sweeping his eyes down the street, staring at the streetlamp, and then pulling back. The curtain fell back into place, and the house became dark once again. We waited ten more minutes, and then Miro opened his door, exiting the car.

  I pulled out my jacket from behind the front seat and closed my door as quietly as Miro had closed his, before pulling the jacket around my shoulders and the hood up around my face. We walked around to the back of the car and popped the trunk, pulling up the lining to reveal our weapons cache. Bypassing the big guns, Miro pulled out a handgun. I attached my own gun to the harness over my shirt, but beneath my jacket. We pulled on gloves, tied black bandannas around the lower halves of our faces, and then closed the trunk again, making our way toward the building across the street.

  There were other streetlamps on, further away from us, so we weren’t completely shrouded in darkness—but it was enough. It was enough for us to slip over the spired fence, and it was enough for us to make it beneath the first balcony, which led into Amber’s room.

  “Ready, grandpa?” I asked him, kneeling beneath the balcony and making a foothold with my hands linked together.

  “Ready, nerd,” he replied, backing up and running at me.

  He notched his foot into my hands and I heaved him up as he jumped, propelling him toward the balcony above. As soon as his hand was around one of the railings, I dropped him.

  “That was for calling me a nerd.” I sniffed, watching him swing to one side.

  He grunted quietly, pulling himself up properly, and then he hooked an arm around two of the railings and reached down. I backed up and ran at him, gripping his forearm as he gripped mine, allowing me to kick my feet out against the brick wall beneath the balcony, half supporting my weight as I used his arm to pull myself up the rest of the way.

  “You’re heavier than you were two weeks ago,” he whispered. “Been eating your feelings again, Si?”

  I contemplated pushing him off the balcony, but he was already at the sliding door, pulling it silently to the side. We slipped into the room like smoke and both approached the bed, where the form of a sleeping girl was just visible. Miro was ahead of me, and when he stiffened, I had to move to his side to see her properly.

  “Get the light,” I said, as soon as my eyes fell upon her face.

  Amber Kingsling was staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.

  Miro reached her bedside and hit a button on the wall above her headboard. A dim reading light flicked on.

  “Did she kill herself?” he asked, confusion in his words. He glanced around the room, and I did the same.

  There was nothing within reach. No weapon, no blade, no gun. I reached out, gripping the blanket in my gloved hand and drawing it away from her. She was completely naked, with cuts all over her torso. I frowned, stepping closer, my attention on the cuts.

  “It can’t have been Danny,” I noted. “He has the whole death-by-touch thing going on.”

  Miro made a disgusted sound, and I whipped my head up. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he muttered. “You’re looking at it from the wrong angle.”

  I rounded the bed, standing beside him.

  He was right: the cuts weren’t just cuts. They were words.

  Every morsel. Snap snap snap.

  I stared at the bloodied etchings. They obviously weren’t enough to kill her. Amber had been killed with Danny’s power—but he hadn’t stopped there. He had wanted to decorate her corpse, it seemed.

  “Why?” I asked. “She was on his side.”

  “He doesn’t have a side,” Miro snarled, pulling out his phone. He typed something in, and a minute later, he was shoving the phone beneath my face.

  I found myself staring at a nursery rhyme, and the first line skittered trepidation across the length of my shoulders.

  Baby, baby, naughty baby …

  The rhyme went on for several stanzas, but I didn’t want to read it all. I wanted as little of Danny’s voice echoing inside my head as possible. Already, my blood was starting to boil and that silky voice was whispering against my consc
ience, urging me to go dark. Urging me to end this whole mess my way.

  I skipped down to the end of the rhyme, finding the words that had been scratched into Amber’s stomach.

  Baby, baby, if he hears you

  As he gallops past the house,

  Limb from limb at once he’ll tear you,

  Just as a pussy tears a mouse.

  And he’ll beat you, beat you, beat you,

  And he’ll beat you into pap,

  And he’ll eat you, eat you, eat you,

  Every morsel snap, snap, snap.

  “I’ve heard this before,” I said, exiting the search and using the phone to take pictures of Amber’s cuts. I would have to show Jack as soon as possible—before one of the Klovoda’s other agents found her and they all assumed that this was my work.

  “Yeah.” Miro was shaking his head, moving back from the body, drawing a hand over his face. “Seraph told us about this rhyme. She heard it in the vision she had of Danny—the vision that helped her discover who he was.”

  “But she didn’t see this?” I indicated the body before tossing the blanket back over the markings.

  Miro didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Seraph would have told us if she had seen this. She would have tried to save the other girl, even though Amber didn’t deserve to be saved. We did a cursory sweep of the room before returning to the car and driving back to Le Chateau. The journey was long and quiet—both of us turning the events of the night over in our minds.

  “Are we going to tell her?” Miro asked, as I pulled into the parking gallery.

  I unclipped my belt and tapped my fingers against the steering wheel. “I don’t know. She’s not coping very well. She swings between numbness and delusion. One minute she’s laughing with Poison and Clarin like she doesn’t have a dangerous psycho out there trying to destroy her life, and the next minute she’s staring at a wall with no expression, not even hearing what we’re saying to her.”

  He nodded. “We don’t tell her. And … we need to watch her a little more closely. Something’s going on with her. Maybe she doesn’t even know what it is.”