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“How are we going to clean this shit up?” Romero asked in a cold, detached voice that gave me the fucking creeps.
All of Rain’s people were fucking insane and I couldn’t wrap my head around how someone could be cold and detached about this level of slaughter.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Mason whispered as he stepped up to my side. “It feels wrong.”
“This whole place feels evil and wrong,” Liam said as he joined us.
“They deserve respect and a proper burial,” Gunner murmured.
Scout eyed Finn warily. “We deserve some fucking answers.”
I rubbed at my eyes tiredly. “Who would do something like this to these poor people? All the children. All these poor fucking people.”
And where were the people responsible for it?
“Poor people?” Finn snorted in disgust as he stood up and roughly shook off Rain’s hold on his arm. “Most of these people were fucking monsters and fucked up individuals. They hurt innocent children and raised them all like savages. The only poor people were the children and they’re probably better off dead than they were being raised here in this tragic shithole.”
I turned on Finn, now shaking because I was so fucking angry. His carelessly harsh words were too much for me. “How the hell could you say those things about children? What the actual fuck is the matter with you?”
“Raven,” Rain said in a gentle voice as he raised his hands to me in a placating manner. “Calm down, brother. You don’t know what’s really going on here.”
Yeah, that’s right, I didn’t fucking know because he hadn’t told me. He’d let us walk in here and now my people were involved in this mess and they were likely going to carry the memory of this with them for the rest of their days.
This shit didn’t just wash away.
“I’m not your fucking brother,” I snapped at him. “And you better explain this shit to me right the fuck now because I am done being kept in the dark. Explain yourself. Now.”
“Just calm down, Raven. I’ll explain everything to you later. Now is not the time.”
I didn’t give a shit if he thought now wasn’t the time or that he was probably even right. He had asked for my help and I had brought my people here on good faith because I trusted him.
That good faith no longer existed.
“Fuck that,” Gunner spat on the ground and pointed to the burning bodies. “Explain why we walked into this. Explain why every time we’ve walked into these woods there have been people…”
He trailed off and choked on his words as a little old woman stumbled out of a burning tent and collapsed to the ground. She held her hands up in front of her and they were so badly burned it looked like the skin had melted clean off.
I swallowed down the bile as I stared at her in horror. I stood there frozen, unable to move no matter how hard I tried to get my feet to run towards her.
She needed help and I just stood there, stupidly unable to help her.
Rain didn’t have the same problem. He rushed to her side and dropped down to his knees beside her. “What happened here, can you tell me? I’m going to get you some help, I promise, but I’m going to need you to tell me what happened. Please.”
I didn’t think there’d be any helping the poor old woman. It wasn’t just her hands that had been badly burned but the rest of her looked frail and near death.
She coughed as she curled up into a little ball. “They turned on us all. It happened after the girl disappeared. I tried to tell them to leave her alone because she’s special but no one would listen to me. That poor girl. I don’t know what’s happened to her but I fear she must be dead like all the rest of them. She must be dead if it’s come to this. They did something horrible to her to set this in motion. She was a curse to us all because of her markings. Should have drowned her in the river when she was born but everyone was too afraid of what would befall us if we did. But it’s too late now. It’s all too late and everyone’s dead now.”
My heart dropped down to my stomach. She had to be talking about Autumn. No one else here had any markings on their face.
I had never met anyone before with anything like it. She was one of a kind.
The woman coughed and wheezed. Her body shuddered violently as she drew in her last breath and died right before our eyes.
I was only sad to see her go because I felt like my answers died along with her.
I couldn’t dwell on how her death made me feel when the people responsible for this death were still on the loose and could very well be in these woods with us.
Maybe even watching us this very moment.
