Ruined

Chapter Thirty-Two

Sam

I wanted to scream. Of course, that was impossible. As we’d entered the hospital, Chase commanded me not to speak. I didn’t get the chance to tell Rick how much I loved him. Now, standing over his bed with the Flynn boys on either side, the darkest parts of me were glad he was gone. He’d be spared whatever horrible things came next.

“Well, that’s that then,” Chase whispered, dragging his hand from beneath Jax’s. He flinched when Rick’s fingers slipped from his and fell still on the stark white sheets. There were tears in his eyes, but his expression had reverted to cold indifference. “You take care of things here. I’m going to take our girl here for a little ride. Obviously I have some thinking to do.” He grabbed my arm and started toward the door, but Jax was in front of us in an instant. The expression on his face terrified me, while at the same time, sent a shiver of excitement shooting across my skin.

“Definitely not going to happen.”

Chase growled and adjusted his hold. If he squeezed any tighter, he’d break the skin. I could almost feel the anger coming off him. Furious, he spat, “Are you that disrespectful that you’d fight with me over Rick’s still-warm corpse?”

Jax cringed at his brother’s words, then stiffened. There was a spark of something dangerous in his eyes and before I could blink, his hand shot out, fingers wrapping around Chase’s neck. “Sam isn’t leaving here with you. Let her go.”

Chase stiffened. “Don’t. Fucking. Push. Me. Not now…”

Jax stayed where he was.

“Kill me, then… Wait. You can’t, can you? Hell on earth. Wouldn’t want that, now, would we?”

Jax, without hesitation, pushed forward and slammed into his brother, hands tightening around his neck. The three of us flew backward, crashing into the tiled wall as Chase’s airway closed off. How did I know?

Because I couldn’t breathe.

I groped at the invisible hands around my neck for a moment before the room began to water around the edges. Jax had one hell of a grip. Swaying, I grabbed the edge of a metal cart, an echoing clatter filling the room as I fell, struggling for air.

Jax, momentarily pulled from his homicidal haze, whirled around as his brother’s laugh filled the room. “Guess you forgot about that, too, huh? Seems to me like you’re well and truly fucked, brother.”

He stumbled away from Chase, horrified, and blessed air came rushing back. Jax took a step toward me, but Chase cleared his throat and waggled a finger. “Don’t even think about it.”

But Jax ignored him, grabbing my hand, helping me stand. “Let’s go,” he said, threading his fingers through mine.

I felt his warm skin, as well as a desperate desire to go with him, but my limbs wouldn’t respond. No matter how hard I tried to kick my feet into motion, it wouldn’t happen.

Chase laughed again, and a sliver of silver glinted against the light. A moment later a sharp sting bloomed at the hollow of my throat. The blade was pressed against his neck, the edge cutting into the skin ever so slightly. Just enough of a nip to cause a small trickle of blood to run down my neck.

“Stop!” Jax snapped. He threw both hands into the air and stumbled away.

Chase sighed. He rocked the blade back and forth, gently, each movement deepening the wound. It itched and stung. “Feel free to chime in with your thoughts.”

“It’s okay,” I said, thrilled at the sound of my own voice. “It’s just a scratch.”

The look in Jax’s eyes said he wasn’t buying it, but instead of arguing, he asked, “Are you okay? He hurt you?”

“I’m okay.” Overall it was true. Chase hadn’t hurt me except for the cut, and really, it was just a scratch. A warning. He’d forced me to kiss him in the car before we came in. It was short-lived, though. He could command me to do whatever he wanted with my body, but he couldn’t force the feelings he wanted to feed on. Lust. Now that I knew what he was—what he’d done—there was no chance of feeling anything but disgust for him.

Chase nodded and gestured toward the door. “Now that we’ve got that all cleared up, let’s move forward, ’kay?”

“What is it you want?” Jax asked, a subtle quake in his voice. I’d heard it once before, right before Azirak took over at my apartment.

“The same thing you want. My brother dead.”

There was obviously a whole different side of Chase that I didn’t know about, but what about the one I did? That had to still be there, right? He’d done horrible things, but he was still in there. That was obvious by the way he cried for Rick. “You don’t want to kill Jax any more than he wants to kill you. There’s a way around this. There has to be. Think about it. Hell on earth? Doesn’t sound like a party.”

His face twisted, a mask of anger and resentment, as he glared at me. “You don’t think I tried? I embraced my demon, trying for years to keep it happy. To keep it away from you.” He flicked a finger in Jax’s direction. “Both of you.”

Jax batted his hand away. “Don’t fucking use me as an excuse for what you’ve done.”

“Why? You’re no better than me! How much blood have you spilled to quiet the thing inside your head?”

Jax didn’t answer. He was staring at the door. Several nurses passed in the hall, one stopping to peer through the window. She nodded, giving a sad smile, and kept going.

“The college was my favorite place to feed,” Chase continued, backing toward the door. He positioned himself in front of the glass so they couldn’t see inside the room. “We were waiting for her that night. Saw her leave the party, and she looked so good. Smelled so good… We attacked her. The plan was to draw you out. To make you come running home—but you didn’t. You were there that night and swooped in to save the day, but like always, you ran away with your dick in your hand.”

“I stayed away to keep her safe,” Jax growled.

Chase laughed. “I waited, sure you’d come home for her, but when you never showed, we had to change direction. I had one of my demons follow you, killing girls that looked like her wherever you went. That would bring you running for sure.” He winked. “Guess I gave you too much credit. It took you forever to figure it out. Then Rick took a turn for the worse and you ended up back here anyway. I knew you’d leave the moment you saw me. The one way to keep you here long enough to end your life would be to put her in danger again right out in the open where no one could miss it. While you were waltzing into McCarthy’s to kick my ass, one of my demons was cutting her brakes. I knew you’d save her, and there would be no way for you to ignore it.”

“So, the plan was to draw me back home and what, kill me? Why go through all the trouble? Why not just find me yourself and do the deed?”

“A compromise I made with Zenak. I wanted you to have the chance to see them again. Once more. I hated the thought of you dying out there, and Rick and Sam never knowing what happened. I did you a favor. I did her a favor.”

“A favor? You made her a fucking slave.” Jax countered, taking a menacing step forward.

“I wasn’t thrilled when I found out Zenak had linked to her, but there was nothing I could do about it. Damage was done.”

“You could have done something to stop it.”

“I told you, I embraced my demon a long time ago. I didn’t want to hurt her, but we’re a team. We coexist and that means sometimes sacrifices have to be made. I understand now that only one of us can survive. Zenak wants its power back, and for that to happen, you need to die. The others need to be free.”

“So this is the part where you tell me you’re going to kill me?”

“Almost,” Chase said. The expression on his face almost looked regretful. “But regardless of what you think and how my demon feels, I love you, and I loved Rick. It’s waited a long time. You’ll have a day to get your affairs in order. Then we’ll finish this.”

“And Sam?”

“Since I have no plans on dying, she’ll remain linked to me. Providing you follow through, I won’t feed from her again. She’ll remain alive.”

“Alive and free?” Jax pressed, and Chase frowned.

“As free as possible. You worry about keeping up your end of things and I’ll do my best to make sure she’s safe and comfortable.”

Jax squared his shoulders. “And what exactly is my end of things?”

I couldn’t believe we were standing here having this discussion. Not that I saw an alternative at the moment, but still, it was surreal. We were discussing my life like it was something to be bargained for.

“We bury Rick, then you surrender yourself to me at a place of my choosing. You die with honor and Sam is free to live out her natural life.”

“And let’s say I don’t?”

The thing inside Chase had swallowed his humanity. It’d turned him into a monster in the truest form and the worst part was, he’d let it happen. Unlike Jax who fought his nature every day, he’d rolled over and given in. “I’ll leave you with this—there are so many things worse than death my demon could do to her. Things our simple human brains can’t even imagine. I hate to have to say this out loud, but I need you to understand there’s no room for compromise here. Not anymore.”

Jax’s face paled as his brother pulled me from the room.

Jax’s lips moved in silence.

“I’ll fix this.”