“I want to go home.” She hadn’t meant to say the words. They seemed such a travesty. But maybe, there she could find a way to make it better.
She wanted to find a way to make this night not exist and to bring her brother’s laughter back.
She wanted to just go to sleep and not have to ever wake up again. Maybe then, she could just dream. She could dream of what life was like before she’d slipped out of the house to go to a party that didn’t really matter.
Distantly, in some unfocused part of her mind, she wondered if that was how these Breeds had felt when they were held captive? Tortured?
God, how had they kept fighting? Kept trying to survive?
Had they just found a place in their heads where the pain hadn’t happened yet? Could she do that too?
“You can go home soon, Gypsy. A heli-jet’s picking your parents up now,” Jonas assured her.
The news jerked her out of her numbness for a moment. She flinched at the surge of agony that pierced her soul.
Oh God, how was she going to face her parents?
The fact that they were coming wasn’t of any comfort to her. They would come here to get her.
They would see Mark’s body in the dirt outside the cavern.
They would see the blood that had soaked into the ground and stained the hands of the huge Coyote Breed who had killed him.
The blood that had been smeared over her face and br**sts as the Coyote’s laughter shredded her soul.
Those Coyotes were all dead now, she reminded herself desperately. They couldn’t come back. They couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.
It wasn’t enough compensation for the loss of her brother, though.
Nothing she could ever do would make up for the mistake she had made.
She heard Jonas’s heavy sigh a few seconds before he picked up the file she’d been focused on, then sat on the box and stared at where she sat—where the Coyote had been killed.
Turning her head away from him, she tried to ignore him.
She tried, tried so hard to just wish it all away.
Tightening her arms around her knees, she huddled closer to the wall, wishing she could cry.
If she could cry, maybe her chest would stop hurting so bad.
Mark always told her that sometimes, only tears could heal the heart and soul. He would tell her to cry whenever she needed to; that way, she would always be sweet and innocent and he would always try to find a way to make the tears all better.
Maybe if she started screaming and crying, if she begged God hard enough, loud enough, then it would all just be some horrible nightmare.
Oh God, she just wanted it to stop hurting. It was like an iron band tightening around her heart and her ribs, constricting her breathing and making it hard for her heart to beat.
Maybe her heart would just stop beating. Hope flared inside her for a second.
Maybe someone would have mercy on her and kill her as well.
She was trying so hard to be brave, as Mark had told her to be, even though he’d told her for so many years that it was his job to be brave, and her job to cry and be sweet.
But now he wanted her to be brave. He’d told her not to cry.
It was the last thing he’d asked her to do.
“Gypsy, I need to ask you some questions,” Jonas told her gently, watching her with a heavy sympathy that sickened her.