Page 66 of Dead Vengeance

Jem.

Jem standing right in front of me. Not in the stone room. Not in Archer’s house. We’re somewhere else now. Someone’s house? Someone’s kitchen?

But the look on his face…

He looks so fucking scared.

There’s a loud bang, a shot like… like a gun firing.

And Jem goes down. Down onto the dirty floor of some house.

Jem with that bullet hole in his head, blood and brains everywhere, as his body spasms, as the light fades out of his terrified eyes.

My insides crumple. Everything falls away. Everything turns black, and it’s Jem. My big brother. Just us.

He reaches out for me—his hand coming for me in this void, just the two of us and nothing else.

And he’s dead. My brother is dead, broken and bloody. And he’s reaching out for me.

A hand curls sharp about my wrist, wrenches me. My shoulder slams into the wall, and I’m back in the hall. In Archer’s hallway. Back in the relative light of that light-dark twilight hall.

“Jem!” My knees hit the floor hard, my temple colliding with the wall as I fall.

I’m only vaguely aware of the rustle of red silk, of Helena down on the floor next to me. “You’re out. You’re free. Are you all right?”

“My brother. Did you see him?” The tears are pouring out of me, falling on my hands, on Archer’s floorboards, as I try to get my bearings. I drop back, landing against the wall, searching for him. But he’s gone. He’s gone again. And why do I keep seeing him? “Why is this happening?”

“It’s all right,” she tries to soothe me. “You just need to… You need to go. Downstairs. Back to Archer.”

“Where is Archer?” Why did he leave me here?

Hurt mingles with the fear, that he’d bring me up here, close the door on me. Leave me alone with that thing.

Then I’m hit with the realisation that I’ve come to expect him to take care of me. When I’m the one he’s paying to take care of him.

Then shame. Shame that sinks into the fear and mingles with all the sadness for my brother, all the horror for what I’ve just seen.

And I feel so awful.

I bury my head in my hands. I want to give in. I want to sit here on the floor and sob.

But I fucking can’t. I can’t.

I’ve got to get up. I’ve got to do this job. I’ve got to stop this awful thing that keeps attacking me like this, and I’ve got to get home to my mum.

“Where is Archer?”

When she doesn’t answer for the second time, I look up, and for the first time in my life, I have the experience of seeing a ghost, fully corporeal, looking… guilty?

Or at the very least, like she’s trying to hide something.

She says, “He’s had… rather a pressing emergency.”

twenty

Unmurder

Archer