touch,

Whatever it was that ended up cut free at the point of sacrifice had poured from the body on the bed, leaving nothing but that hollow shell behind. Grey hadn’t been able to feel it humming under Destiny’s skin as they’d stood alongside it, ignoring the elephant in the room, but he’d felt something more. The reason for this. That slow shift of flesh under his hand that had brought tears to his eyes and almost sent him spilling to his knees.

On the way back up to his suite, he’d kept glancing down at the bump like their kid would do it again. Rolling in the deep as though he too felt that transfer of power. God, he hoped nothing else that had happened had slipped into that new, completely innocent consciousness. He didn’t want their kid standing here in 20 years with blood on their hands, fighting against the same darkness that had been swamping their lives for centuries. The thought had Grey frowning as he pulled the room door closed on the body – he’d come back later, once Destiny was settled, he’d bundle Remzi up and at least do the semi-decent thing and bury him. Unlike Leah he wouldn’t leave the body on her doorstep, a cat’s toy, broken by the paw that kept batting at it.

Grey had slipped his arm around Destiny in the lift, drawing her in, murmuring things that weren’t recognisable words in an attempt to comfort, against her temple. Remzi’s blood was still on them both, the scarlet stain of what she had done transferred to him in smears and spots, a scarlet echo of their first meeting. Cool and sticky, a stark reminder he wanted to wash away. ”We’ll get you into the bath,” Grey whispered as the doors pinged open and he eased the two of them out. ”Get you cleaned up. Fresh clothes.” Erasing all signs of what had been done.

She was shaking as they reached the bathroom. After Leah’s death he hadn’t had any time to think. He’d scrubbed at his skin in the bathroom, sobbing as he’d tried to patch himself up enough that he wouldn’t get stopped at customs. On the plane the blood had started to seep through the makeshift dressings, leaving him rushing up the plane to the bathroom, pale and sweating. Eyes had fixed on him when he’d walked back on shaking legs ten minutes later, bloody tissue bundled down the toilet, but he’d pretended not to see them. The second time he’d boiled himself almost raw with the body out in his room growing cold. Each time since the reaction had lessened, leaving him steady now as he reached for Destiny’s shirt to ease it out of her pants.

Gentle hands undressed her, dropping the bloodied clothes aside on the tile. Grey kept a hand at her waist as he started up the water, checking it repeatedly like a parent with a baby’s bottle – like he would be one day soon – dipping in and out until he was satisfied. Scented bubbles were poured into the water, anything to get the coppery stench off of her. ”Easy. Let me know if it’s too hot…” He held out his hand, a support to get Destiny over the side and into the water.

Next to the tub, Grey sank down on his knees. The bubbles were doing nothing to hide the pink tinge that crept through the water. He reached for the soap, had to mutter quietly as Destiny started to scrub her hands over her stomach. The blood was everywhere, the evidence a nightmarish map. ”Hey, easy. Let me …” The stains were gone from there though, washed away more easily than the stains on Destiny’s conscience might be. He smoothed the bar of soap over her skin, trailing it up her arms as Destiny let them sink below the water. ”You’ve still got a conscience and it’s always gonna make it harder. He wasn’t coming for you right then and there but he was going to hurt you, hurt our baby, for her. You’re going to feel what he wouldn’t have done.” She was going to hurt for a man and a bitch who didn’t deserve it.

Lips pressing together, brows beginning to bunch, Grey reached for her hand under the water. He lifted one into view, holding it between his as he rubbed the soap over her palm, his fingers tracing her knuckles on the other side. Eyes clouded with just a little with the troubled thoughts lifted to the side of her face. ”I … don’t know. At least a dozen. Not all of them were sacrifices. It … it takes three of each to get the full effect but the pack kept sending people. Are you going to be able to do this again?” Once would bring something, but not enough, and next time, maybe without the knowledge of what they were going to do, it would be harder. Those stains sinking deeper until there was no way to scrub them right out of your very bones.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 848

Tiny ripples through the water as she shivered. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, fluttering outwards to mark the disturbance. They always settled in the end, even if they took miles to run out of steam. He’d settled eventually, with enough blood painted on him for him to become almost numb to it. Destiny would too but Grey doubted she would ever be as numb. For such a tiny woman her heart was huge, spreading out well beyond her small frame to wash over others, ripples of a different sort closing over them. Over him.

It had been a warmth washing over him that first time, a glow that heated from the inside out. Sneaking up on him until he suddenly realised he was filled with it. Chasing back that darkness with sunbeams and fairy dust.

Trying to impart a little of it to flesh gone marble stiff, Grey dragged the soap over her skin. Finger tips brushing, like he could erase the memory of blood with that touch. Washing both her and the baby clean of what had been necessary. A thin thread of bile burned its way up his throat for the first time since Destiny had rushed into the apartment with Leah’s fingerprints on her throat. Not for him, but for having brought this to her doorstep, having left this stain on her skin, so close to Petyr.

Dark brows furrowed as she opened her mouth, like she was about to argue back about what he’d said. It was a hard line way of putting it but he was right. Leah had shown she wasn’t going to stop, the relentlessness that had driven her after him and straight onto the jagged remnants of a branch the first time pushing her again. They had to put the stop to it, putting her back wherever the hell she’d crawled back out of. He could’ve argued it until he went blue in the face but … not now. She had to know but he was already creating enough of a pall between them with the truth that slipped free. It was all she had wanted from him before but now it was a stain darker than the one fading into the water.

Soap bubbles slid slick over his own skin, gliding between them as thin as Destiny’s whisper. Like the bubbles, something in her seemed to have popped, a new truth emerging that had the frown furrowing back in. A dozen, more, for him, out of necessity … not just the one for her. ”Before?” he asked, like what he meant was obvious in that short, gruff question. Before Tanner? When those fracture lines hadn’t been driven deep within her. During? When she was mutely fighting that bruising grip. Was it ancient history that had been driven deep when she’d been fighting that asshole to try and survive? He didn’t want to wash the shield away that protected her from that but it seemed as though Remzi’s death had been a stone thrown into memories, all of those ripples spreading out from there.

He buried the frown as she looked at him. Drawing their hands against his chest, Grey leaned in to brush the other up her arm, up to her neck to rub a bloody thumbprint from her skin. His hand lingered there as she pulled away, Destiny’s hand disappearing back beneath the water like it was another barrier between the two of them. ”She pushed you to it?” Grey asked hoarsely. ”You … you were a kid and she might have not have ended up like us but there’s no sugar coating it if she understood all of that.” He shook his head, empathy, sympathy, pity rolling into a roiling tornado in his gut. He’d been a kid drowning in that darkness, and so had she. There was no escaping it without someone to pull you out. She’d been that hand for him, reaching down into murky water, bringing that light with her as she’d slowly dragged him up.

Destiny’s sister was the hands reaching up from the dark instead. Grasping fingers to close around your ankles and pull you down into it. Fighting that light, trying to snuff it out but she’d failed. His fingers curled lightly at her throat, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth as the apology slipped from it. ”You don’t have to apologise for doing what she said. Not to me. Never, OK?” It hadn’t been for protection, it had been a weaker mind falling beneath the crushing power of a stronger one. Maybe that was how his own family’s madness had continued for so long, that shroud always wrapped around the next generation by the one before until there was no way out.

Grey pushed to his feet, dragging at his clothing until it was a heap on the ground next to the tub. He stepped behind Destiny, easing her forward with a gentle brush of hands until he was sitting on the edge of the tub. The water slopped dangerously as he sank deeper but he didn’t care, the place could flood for all he gave a damn. His legs stretched either side of hers, his arms slipping around her to draw her back so he could pressed a kiss to the side of her head, her temple. ”It’s gonna be different now. For both of us, for Petyr. This is our line in the sand OK? He doesn’t ever have to do any of this. He’s gonna be happy and safe and he’s gonna have both of us loving him.” They were promises heavy as lead but Grey felt lighter for making them. His hands slipping down to the bump that breached the water, curling around them both.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 961