I can feel their fury, their need for justice, directed at Isaac. The air around us crackles with anger and bad intentions.
“For how long, Isaac?” I ask, accepting I won’t be able to protect him for much longer unless a miracle happens.
Not from the others, and certainly not from myself.
The need to protect him is cracking under the weight of the need to punish him for betraying my trust.
For so long, he was the only one keeping me together, keeping me moving on. Encouraging me to be stronger, to survive. Convincing me there was a light at the end of the tunnel on my darkest days.
All the while he was secretly drinking my blood.
Was it all a lie? Was it all because he was using me?
“For four years,” Isaac says, and I stop in my tracks.
I’m so shocked I spin around to face him, giving Asher my back.
“Four years?” I repeat incredulously.
I must have heard that wrong.
“Yes, four years,” Isaac confirms in a hoarse rasp.
“How do you get her blood?” Asher asks from behind me.
Instead of trying to take advantage of my distraction, his heat meets my spine.
Isaac and I answer at the same time. “From the sacrament.”
“What the fuck is the sacrament?” Asher asks, gently grabbing my chin and forcing me to look at him.
Unable to find the words to explain it, the red haze in front of my eyes making it more difficult to function, I chose to remember it, showing him the images. The whips… the knives… the purging of the taint in my veins in the hope that it would one day cure me.
“Fucking hell…” Asher chokes out and shudders against me. “They did this to you for four years?”
“Yes,” I snarl, ripping my chin out of Asher’s grasp to stare at Isaac. “Why my blood, Isaac? Why mine? Why didn’t you choose someone else?”
“I requested your blood at first because… because I care for you… And then… then we discovered your blood was the strongest… your blood gave the most powers and protections…”
The betrayal boils inside me like acid, eating up the last vestiges of my self-control. Destroying the last bit I was holding onto that makes me human.
Everything was a lie. Everything.
No one truly cared for me, they only cared about what they could get out of me.
And I was the fool who believed them. Who trusted them. Who let them steal her life from her.
I bought every fucking thing they were selling, and what did it get me?
Suffering and misery.
No one should be forced to live the way they forced me to live. Locking me up behind four walls and convincing me it was in my best interest. Moving me around so much I never had a friend.
There were no friends to be found in the clergy who kept me at arm’s length. No friends in my countless roommates. Girls who treated me as if I was a leper, a freak, and a burden on their own lives.
Except for Isaac.
Sweet Isaac who texted me every morning. Sweet Isaac who was always reminding me to eat and take care of myself.
How did I not see it? It was staring me in the face the entire time. I thought he was texting me because he truly cared, but he was probably only worried about the strength of my blood.
“Did you really care for me, Isaac?” I demand, caught somewhere between a roar and a sob.
Dropping his hands from his shredded cheeks, Isaac looks as if he’s been crying tears of blood. Messy, smeared tears that echo my heartbreak.
“Yes, I cared for you, Chloe,” he says, and I know he’s telling the truth. I’ve compelled him and he can’t lie.
It should be a relief. One person cared for me. At least one person…
But he still used me.
If anything, the truth only makes it worse.
He cared for me, and he still hurt me for his own gain.
Isaac’s eyes meet my eyes. I watch his true feelings, feelings he’s swallowed back, rise to the surface.
He’s been gored. The flesh of his cheeks sliced open to the bone. The meat glistening and oozing. His nose only held on by a tiny flap of skin.
But I’ve never truly known his new face anyway. The man is foreign to me. A stranger.
His eyes, though… I know I’ve thought it a million times, but his eyes will forever be the eyes of the boy who stood by me, tall and strong. A haven protecting me from the monsters until we were torn apart.
“I love you,” he admits, and my entire being revolts. “I’ve loved you since—”
I lash out at him, not wanting him to finish. Only hoping to shut him up.
I can’t bear to hear those words spoken from his lips.
Not now.
Not ever.
My claws slice across his throat, splitting open his jugular.
And still, for a second more, he looks at me with all the love in his body and soul.