Descent (Kissed by Death) - Tara Fuller Page 0,71

Emma alone when you were just trying to keep her safe,” I said, hating the words coming out of my mouth. Hating knowing how true they were. I hadn’t understood then. What it was like to love someone. Live for them. To be willing to die for them. “I’ve been an asshole.”

Finn laughed. “You’ve always been an asshole. It’s why you’re my best friend. Sometimes I need an asshole to keep me in line.”

I thought about Gwen. How much she reminded me of Finn. How two people who had so much goodness running through their veins could ever love me, I’d never know. Dark spots bloomed across my vision, and for the first time since they’d dragged me down through the bone-littered catacombs of Hell, I fought to stay in the present.

“You love her,” Finn said. It wasn’t a question, because this Finn was in my head. He knew. Who was I kidding? The real Finn would have known, too. The fact that I was here by choice, all bleeding skin and twisted bones, just to keep her safe was proof of that. I answered anyway.

“Yeah.” I swallowed hard, forcing the painful sensation coating my throat down. “I love her.”

“You know I always hoped you’d find someone,” he said. “I just never thought you’d pick the boss’s daughter. Pretty ballsy, don’t you think?”

I grinned, but I don’t think my lips cooperated. Finn shook his head, jaw clenching as he looked over my broken body. “I used to think I’d be happy to see you like this, getting a taste of what you gave me.”

If I hadn’t known it wasn’t the real Finn before, I would have known now. The Finn I knew, that thought never would have crossed his mind. Nah. That was my shit. My insecurities spewing from the mouth of an imitation. I played along, starting to wonder if I’d projected this Finn, or if this was another special gift from Hell.

“Are you?” I asked.

“No.”

Behind Finn, the door creaked open, and a shadowy figure walked into the cave-like room. His footsteps were slow, heavy, purposeful. Against my will, my heart kicked to life in my chest, pounding out a terrified rhythm. The temperature in the room seemed to rise at least twenty degrees, and even as the sweat poured off me, a cold, steely chill ran down my spine.

Finn stood, keeping his eyes on me, arms at his sides, waiting. The shadowy figure stepped up behind him and placed a blade to his throat.

“Is this how you did it when you slaughtered my men, Easton?” a gravelly voice asked.

I jerked in my chair as the eerily familiar sound reached me. I pulled at the chain, but it didn’t budge an inch.

“No?” he asked. “How about like this?”

The blade slid through Finn’s neck, and a thin line of blood appeared. He choked and his eyes turned empty and black. I fought back the nausea punishing me for watching. My best friend’s body collapsed to the floor, and I looked up at the man waiting on the other side. Dietrich’s yellowed smile beamed down at me as if he’d been waiting a millennium for this moment.

“You’ve got the technique all wrong,” I gritted out. “I started at their belly button and cut through to their chins. Slower that way.”

Dietrich’s eyes flared with anger, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He waltzed a slow circle around the chair I was chained to, stopping behind me. Putrid breath danced over my ear when he leaned down.

“My brother was among the men you slaughtered,” he growled. “Is that how you killed him as well?”

“Yes.” I tilted my head, wincing. “But if I’d known he was your brother I would have done things differently.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“If I’d have known he was your blood, I would have given him the death you gave my sisters.”

A cold, bony fist grabbed my hair and jerked my head back. I stared up into a pair of vengeful, cruel eyes. This wasn’t a hallucination. This was real. All these years later and at last I was facing him again.

“Do you remember what I said to you, just before I killed you?”

I swallowed the bile coming up my throat. His grip tightened, and a black, simmering pain shot down my spine. I shut my eyes and allowed my mind to be flooded with thoughts of Gwen. I wanted to see her face one last time. Remind myself this was worth it. She was worth it.

“I said one