Blood to Dust

Once we get on the plane, I release a huge breath and close my eyes. It isn’t until our plane is in the air that Nate visibly looks well again. From erect and alert, he returns to his normal self. The hardness is gone, replaced with the charmer look he was born with. When we cross California’s border and the little screen on the headrest shows that we’re above Nevada, I let loose a little smile. His lips find my ear, and he doesn’t care that a flight attendant is passing by us with her cart, offering drinks.

“The minute we land in the UK, we’re checking into a hotel and fucking the shit out of each other. I still owe you a punishment for going all G.I. Jane on those Aryan Brothers’ asses.”

I lick my lips and turn around, my teeth grazing his chin lightly.

“You like ‘em dangerous, don’t you, Delaware?”

“Yes, I do. And what’s more dangerous than a Cockburn?”

He falls asleep in the tiny, narrow chair, and I spend hours just staring at him. I love him so much, I can feel the weight of this love on my body. I swear it’s like I’m pregnant with feelings.

In a lot of ways, he’s the only thing that’s kept me sane. In the past three weeks, I’ve been kidnapped, thrown into a basement, seduced my captor, ran away with him, fell in love with him and killed two people. And I know Nate killed at least six more at Godfrey’s house.

This is not a joke. It is a blood bath. Godfrey said Camden holds the answer to Preston’s disappearance. The burning question is—does he actually hold Preston? The old Prescott wouldn’t take any chances. She’d go to Vallejo before boarding a plane, consequences be damned, to do whatever she could to find her brother. But I’m not the old Prescott anymore. Nathaniel Vela changed me. He changed my priorities. He changed my heart.

What’s keeping me sane is the knowledge that what we’re doing is right.

I killed Sebastian, Godfrey, and now I’m going to kill Camden, because they don’t deserve to live. They took life from me. Not just in the spiritual sense. They literally ripped me open with a hanger, shoved it deep inside of me and plucked out the life I was growing. The life they themselves put inside me.

An eye for an eye. A life for a life.

We land at Heathrow, greeted by a slight London chill. It’s enough to make me shudder in my ragged red mini dress. Nate, who woke up after eight hours of sleep, notices and pulls his hoodie—filthy from everything we’ve been through—over his head and offers it to me, then proceeds to wrap his arm around me.

We stand in customs for forty minutes before they let us out, but when they do—when we walk through those sliding glass doors, pass the Duty Free shops, pass the meeting point where dozens of people wait behind barriers, clutching balloons and flowers and signs with names we don’t know—we laugh. Happy, joyous laughter. We made it. Hand in hand, our chests rattle. A symphony of bliss. We’re free.

No longer on US soil.

No more Aryan Brotherhood.

No more FBI.

No more Sebastian Goddard.

No more Godfrey Archer.

My fingers dig their way into his back for another grateful hug. Amid all the chaos of the airport happening all around us, he stops, faces me, pulls my hands into his, and levels those honey browns on mine.

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control over them,” he says, repeating the words from his diary. The words to his first ever tattoo. The words he so badly wanted to relate to. “Thank you for helping me find my passion, Cockburn. My passion, as it turns out, is you.”

Camden Archer wasn’t difficult to find.

He’s been all over the news, giving interviews about the death of his father. He said he died in his sleep, probably because he didn’t want to tell the world the horrid, revolting truth. Camden’s now officially the heir to his father’s businesses, and the last thing he wants is for people to find out just what happened at his father’s place the night Pea took his life.

Archer’s long awaited wedding to Lady Hilary Thompson (can you believe that shit? The guy who raped my girlfriend continuously is marrying a lady) is off. I’d say I feel sorry for him, but the truth is, I can’t wait to meet him so he can get to know my fist.

One thing’s for sure—Camden Archer knows that we killed his old man, and that we’re coming for him. His death won’t be as easy as Sebastian’s, or as lucky as Godfrey’s. We’ll need more. More resources, more planning, more luck. More fucking everything.

According to the news, Camden flew to California to deal with his father’s funeral arrangements, and will be back next Friday. We’ve got a plan mapped out for him. He’ll go back to his father’s house in Kent, thinking we’ll be waiting on him near his Marble Arch apartment in London.