Undone: The Complete Duology, page 33
Gracie had killed Amelia, but it was in self-defense.
Gracie had dug up a grave, but the occupant had already been dead.
Gracie had swung a branch at me, but she’d—what? What had she been doing?
I gripped the handle of the knife tighter, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut the rope. Something held me back.
Was this a trap? Was this man actually one of the shadow demons? Could they mimic to deceive?
But why would it pretend to be helplessly bound? If this was a demon, he’d had plenty of time to throw off his fake restraints and devour me.
None of this made sense.
“Are you…Are sure it was Gracie?” I asked tentatively.
Robert scoffed. “Yeah, man. It was Gracie. She’s fuckin insane. She’s been psycho for years. The whole town knows it.”
That wasn’t true. Gracie wasn’t psycho. She was out for revenge.
Wasn’t she?
I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
If Gracie was wrong, then did that make the town right? I’d seen for myself their twisted, bizarre ways. I’d seen the fire in the Reverend’s hand.
Had I been in deeper than I’d realized? Were there no good people in this war?
I knew Gracie would go to great lengths, but not that she would lie about holding my brother captive. Lie that she didn’t know where he was.
Why had she lied to me? Why had she ambushed him?
What purpose did she think he served? Was it to trick me? Trap me?
Hurt me?
My thoughts spun faster.
“Mac, we need to get moving.”
Robert sounded far away, in another lifetime.
My heart ached with a pain that wouldn’t let go.
Why would Gracie do this to my brother?
Her voice came back to me, inside my head:
Everything I did, it was because they deserved it. Everything I’m going to do, it’s because they have it coming.
Everything she’d done. That night in her kitchen hadn’t been a plea. It had been a confession.
An apology.
My heart tore in two, and it would never be the same again.
I would never be the same again.
Slowly, I lowered the blade from the rope. My chest ached as I stepped back from Robert, from my brother, and stared down at him.
Robert lifted his gaze to me, expectant.
Then reality draped over him, flattening his expression. I saw the world yanked from under him.
“Robert,” I said, carefully, breathing brittle life into each word, “what did you do to Gracie?”
16
GRACE
When I opened my eyes, the world was on fire.
I lay on my back, arms at my sides, along a hard surface. Nausea rolled through me in time with the throbbing of my head.
My last memory was of Bethany looming over me. She’d smashed a rock into my skull, and everything had gone black.
Pulling up my magic, I attempted to touch my temple. My arm wouldn’t budge. I tugged harder, but there was no slack.
Panic welled in my chest. I tried to bend my knee, but my feet were caught as tightly as my arms. In the inferno, I could not see what restrained me.
“Here, let me get that for you.”
Through the flames, the Reverend appeared at my side. He stared down at me with a gentle smile.
It was anything but kind.
I held my breath, my chest constricting as he placed his palm across my forehead. Heat more intense than my burning surroundings radiated through my head. I willed my headache to remain. I did not want his help.
All pain vanished from my body. He beamed down at me, fully aware of his abilities.
“What is it going to take, Gracie, to make you understand?”
He sounded patiently exasperated, as if I were a disobedient child.
To him, I always had been.
“I understand just fine,” I said through gritted teeth.
I attempted to discreetly tug at my restraints. His gaze dropped to my arm closest to where he stood at my side. I ceased my struggle.
“Do you understand that you cannot escape?” he asked, measured and unperturbed.
He did not mean the bonds.
I tried to stare up at him with defiance, but I could not meet his eyes.
“Do you understand,” he said, “that I will take everything you care about? And when they’re gone, I will give you more to love so I can crush them too?”
Despite being fully clothed, I felt naked under his gaze, as if he could see through my clothes, my intentions, and right into my very essence. I could not hide from him, never had been able to no matter how much I had told myself I’d concealed away.
“I care for nothing,” I said with the slightest toss of my head, the little I could manage strapped to this stone platform.
It reminded me of my altar that demons had destroyed. I needed to build another one.
He leered down at me. “Nothing?”
“Not a single fuckin’ thing,” I spat.
“Malachi too?”
I wanted to deny the accusation, but we both would know it was a lie. My love for Mac was a nearly tangible blossom of everything I had hoped would be waiting at the end of this nightmare. It was delicate and beautiful.
In the shadows of the flickering flames, silhouettes prowled, their restlessness an undercurrent to the heat billowing through the room. Sweat formed on my forehead and pooled in my armpits and under my lower back.
“You have no right to hurt Malachi,” I said through gritted teeth.
The Reverend smiled down at me. “Oh, Gracie, I have the right to do anything I want in this town.”
“By whose decree?” I snapped, keeping an eye on the shadows circling closer.
They were the same shadows that roamed the graveyards, that slunk around the roof of the church.
“You were always a clever girl,” he said. He brushed the wet strands of hair from my face. “You must have figured it out by now.”
I hadn’t. Not entirely. The pieces were there, but I hadn’t fit them all together into a seamless picture.
“You’re…you’re not human.” My words came out hoarse. I found myself looking to him for confirmation that I hadn’t imagined this madness all along.
Way to let your guard down.
He traced his thumb down my cheek. “But where am I?”
I opened my mouth to reply but halted.
Where am I? How did that make sense? Didn’t he mean to ask me what he was?
I couldn’t conceal the confusion that flickered across my face. He grinned down at me, enjoying his play far too much.
He’s lying. He has to be.
With that, I no longer cared about answers. I no longer wanted confirmation or validation or even a shred of fuckin’ sanity.
I just wanted out of here. Out of this town. Out of this life.
Given the first opportunity, I would run and nothing, not even the pit of hell itself, would be able to stop me.
I tugged at the restraints, but they barely budged. “Just let me go!”
When he made no move to do so, just continued to stare down at me, rage boiled up through me. I shrieked, straining against the bounds, my neck taut, my jaw jutted forward as I yanked and pulled. A muscle in my shoulder twinged, but I kept struggling, my throat stripped by the shrill scream that I couldn’t seem to stop.
He clamped my head, a hand on each cheek, and brought his face so close to mine, our noses touched. “Your surrender will be delicious.”
“I’ll never surrender!” My spit flicked against his face, but he didn’t seem to notice, and I didn’t care.
“They all do,” he said, tightening his grip on my head. “You will too. You cannot withstand eternity.”
How had I been so deceived? Once, his face had seemed kind. Fatherly. Now I could not look past the evil that shifted like shadows just under his skin.
Around us, the silhouettes paced in slow circles.
The Reverend released my head, standing upright. “What’s your answer, Gracie?”
“What’s the fuckin’ question?”
“Do I have your obedience, or do I need Malachi too?”
I stared at the Reverend, terrified to reply, to make a move, to take a breath. What sort of favor had Beth earned by hauling me in here to him? Strange when he could have snatched me up at any point.
But that didn’t do him any good, did it? He led the town into acting in his best interest. In some way I couldn’t fully understand, he needed us to do the dirty work. Whatever he was up to, it wouldn’t be successful unless we scurried and bowed to his will.
He bided his time. He swayed the decisions, led them to their conclusions, but they—we—had to act on it.
You cannot withstand eternity. That was what he’d said.
He had all the time in the world.
“I’ll lure him in,” the Reverend said. “They all come to me eventually. The broken, injured, lost. Once they have been taken to the brink and pushed, they have no choice but to come around. It’s a matter of survival, now isn’t it, Gracie? You know that you cannot run forever. And when Malachi comes to me—and he will come to me—I will bring him into my fold, comfort him, release him of his hardships.”
He leered at me. “And then, Gracie, I will tear him limb from limb while you watch.”
“Never!”
Around us, the silhouettes launched from the shadows. I screamed as the demons pounced. They ripped me from the restraints, the bonds tearing at my skin. Blood streamed down my arms, legs, and chest as they hoisted me into their fold.
I was consumed in darkness.
17
MAC
Robert stared up at me, disbelief on his splotchy face
Guilt roiled through me. I wasn’t even sure what I was accusing my brother of, but I understood Gracie. She had a reason for everything she had done.
Even holding my brother hostage.
Even lying to me.
I tamped down the hurt and focused my attention back on Robert. He didn’t seem inclined to divulge his secrets.
“I can just leave you out here to freeze,” I said, doing my best to sound like I meant every word.
I wasn’t sure I did.
Robert slouched, shame covering his features. He looked at a near spot on the ground.
I must have been convincing enough.
“I let Gracie take the fall,” he said quietly.
An icy breeze snaked around us, and he gave a small shudder. I pulled my jacket tighter, looming over him.
“I panicked and was trying to cover my tracks. They let me. They accepted my answer so easily. I didn’t think about what the damage would be.” He shook his head slightly. “Now it’s too late.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“It’s never too late. You’re still breathing, aren’t you?” I hesitated, unable to get a read on the honesty behind his words. Then again, he hadn’t told me much yet. “What did you do?”
“Everything got so out of hand,” he said, awkwardly dancing around answering my question. “My mom thought it was best I leave, pulled some strings to make it happen.”
“String isn’t what your mom pulls.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “The town had targeted Gracie, but we couldn’t be sure at the time if they would turn on me too. I didn’t understand the rules of the game, ya know? No one had ever resisted the town quite like she did.”
“But you came back.”
“Yeah, everyone has been so caught up in Gracie since then, they never gave me another thought.” He dared a glance at me with a small, sad smile. “I understand it now. It made no difference to them if I came or went. They just wanted her to…comply.”
A sick feeling grew in my stomach.
“It’s like that here, Mac. They become obsessed. Nothing but getting their way will make them stop.” He shifted in his spot, then winced. “I don’t know why she just didn’t give them what they wanted.”
“Take the blame for you?”
I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with my brother. The fact he was beaten and on the cusp of unconsciousness was surreal enough. Now, he wanted someone to take the fall for him. I’d always considered my little brother an all-around good guy—I’d never had evidence to the contrary after all—but I no longer knew what to think.
Was this who he had been all along?
“It just would have been easier,” he said, “for everyone. For her. They put her through so much just because she resisted. It could have gone a different way.”
Simmering anger mingled with the nauseous feeling bubbling up from my stomach.
I didn’t like where any of this was going. Mainly because he was so painstakingly avoiding admitting to his crime.
“You still haven’t told me what you did.”
He continued to stare at the ground, unanswering.
I took a solid step towards him, soles crunching in the snow. “You’re really going to sit there in the snow and refuse to answer me?”
I let my tone say what my words did not: I wouldn’t be helping him until he confessed to everything he had done to cause this awful situation in Thorn Tree. What he had done to destroy Gracie Miller’s life.
Another cold breeze buffeted around us, stronger this time.
“I didn’t mean to,” Robert said, barely loud enough to be heard. “Me and the guys were drinking, ya know?”
He looked up at me like I was meant to answer. I wasn’t sure what sort of question that was, except meant to prolong what came next.
I set my jaw and gave him my best unamused look.
He dropped his gaze. “Then Rose, ya know, she was always on my dick. She told me she had a surprise for me. A gift. I left with her.”
Rose. That was the girl with the guitar who roamed the streets of Thorn Tree. When I’d spoken to her shortly after arriving in town, she’d been strangely anguished about Robert leaving her behind when he’d fled from Thorn Tree at the behest of his mother. She’d said she’d done everything my brother wanted.
What did that actually entail though?
My brother had gone conveniently silent again. He couldn’t have drawn this out longer if he’d been in slow motion.
“What was the surprise, Robert? I’m assuming it wasn’t rose petals and a hot bubble bath.”
He stared at the ground, shuddering in the cold wind kicking up around us. It wasn’t healthy for either of us to stay out here in this extreme weather, but I wasn’t going to budge. Not until he gave me the answers that explained what had happened between Grace and the town, and how he was involved.
I still held a shred of hope that this wouldn’t be so bad in the end. That I would be able to forgive my brother, that I would be able to understand his side of this story. Perhaps I would never be able to broker peace between him and Gracie, but I needed to know that my brother was a good person.
Please, let him be a good person.
“My house was empty,” he said at length. “My mom was out with the sheriff. On those nights, she wouldn’t return until the next day. There was no chance of us being interrupted.”
In any other situation, this would have sounded like a normal high school tryst: with the parents away, the horny teenagers will play.
But Rose had done more than just explored her sexuality. Something terrible had happened that night.
“In the house…Fuckin’ Rose, ya know? Why did she do that?” he said.
I wanted to slap the answers out of his mouth, but he was getting there, piece by piece. The sickening feeling in my stomach continued to churn. He wasn’t delaying this because he didn’t want me to know. He had compartmentalized his actions. Had built up some vague excuses that kept the memories of that night separate from his daily life.
Now, he had to unlock them. Had to let them meld with the reality he’d kept safely away from anything that might make him confront he had done something terrible.
One by one, truths bobbed to the surface.
“What had Rose gotten you, Robert?” I whispered.
I braced for his answer.
He leaned forward as if he could no longer stay upright.
“Gracie.” The name slipped from him with a hoarse croak.
My body went weak and limp with despair. I’d known it, hadn’t I? Had started to put it together the moment I found my brother here.
The confession swam over me like cold slippery eels.
“Rose had drugged Gracie with some weird concoction Amelia had made with her stupid witchcraft shit. She was awake but…”
“An herbal roofie?”
“Yeah, I guess. Rose had spiked Gracie’s drink then brought her to my house. She had her laid out on my bed…stripped of her clothes…”
He sounded helpless, like he’d been the victim in all this.
“And you just had no control? Like you just couldn’t fuckin’ not hurt someone?” I stormed to him until I stood directly over him. Anger heated my skin. “And you set her up to take the fall?”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. She wasn’t going to tell anyone. She’d promised. We were going to keep it to ourselves, but then…”
“Oh, fuck.” I would have sat down if I didn’t want to keep the pressure on Robert until he’d told me every damn way he’d been a shitty human being. “The pregnancy. She got pregnant, didn’t she?”
“I didn’t think that would happen, ya know? You don’t expect those things when you’re a teenager…”
I reached down and pulled him up by the front of his shirt. He puffed out big breaths as he tried and failed to make eye contact with me.
“Maybe you should have just kept your fuckin’ dick to the girls who wanted it,” I snapped. “I risked my goddamned life coming to this town to save your sorry ass, and you weren’t worth saving all along.”
“I apologized to Gracie.” He stammered over the words, and I couldn’t determine if it was from the cold or fear.
I hoped for the latter.
