“We’ve been through nothing together,” I begin quietly. “You forced this life on me. On Eloy. On Vaughn. We didn’t have a choice in any of this, and because your love is so weak that you chose only one of us to care for instead of all of us, I can’t say that I want anything with you, much less forever.”
He puts his hands on his hips and looks away. I can see it now, the monster inside of him coming to the surface, but I don’t stop. After all, he offered me honesty, and I feel it’s only fair to offer him honesty in return.
“This will come to an end someday soon, and one of us won’t survive. The only question left to answer between us is who.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t make idle fucking threats when you know I can snap your neck any time I want to,” he warns, shaking his head vehemently.
“But you won’t. You want another child, and I refuse to give you one, knowing what you’re going to put it through,” I spit back stubbornly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to that fucking hell in the ground you’re so keen on keeping us in, and retrieve Vaughn. Dead or alive, he deserves to be with Eloy, and that’s exactly where I’m going to put him.”
As I spin on my heel with fire in my veins, I can hear Pater call my name out, but I don’t stop or turn toward him.
He’s had too many chances to make this right again, and he’s always chosen the path that best suited his needs. His disregard for us, the death of Eloy, the possibility of finding Vaughn dead in the pit will be his downfall. His reckoning is coming, and I will be the hand that delivers it, so help me God.
Chapter Seventeen
I don’t go directly to the oubliette. Instead, I walk back into the house,making my way down the entire length until I reach the front door.
A-ha! It’s still there.
I gather up the rope ladder that Vaughn had used to rescue me, and open the front door. I can hear Pater calling my name as he makes his way toward me. He sounds damn angry at being disregarded, but it’s time he knows what that feels like for once.
Pater’s taller and much faster than me, so I know he’ll catch up to me if I don’t quicken my steps. I throw the rope over my shoulder and begin to jog toward my destination. If he won’t tell me what’s really happened to Vaughn, I’ll climb down into the abyss and find out myself. Besides, seeing it with my own eyes will serve my intentions much better than hearing a story venomously packed with sweetened lies.
“JOCELYN!”
Pater’s booming voice as he exits the front of the house almost stops me, but I need to know what happened to Vaughn, and I need to know now.
I break into a run. As fast as my legs will carry me, I fucking run. I reach the top of the dungeon in no time and flip the door open. I quickly wrap a large part of the rope ladder around the cylindrical stone and pray that it holds as I toss the rest of the ladder over the side. I give it one hard tug and I’m over the side, descending into the darkness.
“Goddamn it!” Pater yells angrily.
I glance up momentarily to see him leaning down into the oubliette, attempting to reach for me, but I’m already too far down for him to snatch me back up.
“Fucking kids,” he shouts, slapping his hand against the door before he disappears from sight.
Good.
He’s angry and he knows he can’t reach me, because there’s no way in hell he’ll crawl in here to retrieve me.
Pater is afraid of the things he can’t control, and the darkness is my home, not his.
There’s not a lot of room to move down at the bottom, but what little space there is I know like the back of my hand.
“Vaughn?” I call out as I come closer to the bottom.
Please be okay, I will desperately.
I’m nothing like Pater; I can’t think of things and make them happen. I can’t read minds, and I can’t take control of people’s lives, but what I can do that he can’t or won’t do is help those who need it the most.
I don’t deserve help, because I should have been able to save us from this, but I was too blinded by his deceptions for so long that I welcomed everything he did to us.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to leave Pater. My world would crumble without him and I know it, but if I can just save one of these boys, then I’ll be okay with being left behind.
The ladder is too short to get me all the way to the bottom, since I wrapped a good portion of it around the opening, so I hop down the last couple of feet and hope that if Vaughn is alive, he’ll either be capable of pulling himself up, or give me enough help to get us both out of here.
“Vaughn?” I ask into the darkness. I rub my hands together before wiping them on my thighs and narrow my eyes.
I’m not a nocturnal animal, but it’s easy for my eyes to adjust to the darkness they know so well, and from what I can tell, he’s not standing if he’s down here. Dropping to my knees, I begin to crawl in a small circle, following the pattern of the constructed abyss, and it finally dawns on me.