XLII

The gunshot was louder than Aiden expected. The kind of piercing sound that slaughtered all others. He felt it too. Like the sound itself had reached into his chest, grabbed his ribs, and rattled his bones like cage doors.

Aiden opened his eyes to blood and gore. Red so bright, so alive, that the streaks melting against the walls were like staring into the sun.

What had happened?

The smell of copper hit him as soon as he let himself inhale.

And then came the sound. The deep keening that flayed his skin and left him raw.

He had only heard it once before.

The night his parents died.

Aiden’s fingertips dug into the carpet. His panting breaths blew around the dust bunnies Momma was always asking him to vacuum out from under his bed. Next time, he’d listen. Next time, he’d do anything Momma wanted as long as she and Daddy were okay.

Sobs tore through the closed door to his bedroom and seemed to scorch the air. “Momma! Daddy!”

It was his sister, screaming for their parents.

Tears burned Aiden’s eyes and he clapped his hands over his mouth to keep his cries from escaping. Blair had told him to stay under the bed and stay quiet.

“Momma! Daddy!” Each of his sister’s cries squeezed his heart.

The door to his room hissed open. Aiden pressed his hands against his lips, his fingernails digging into his soft cheeks.

“Denny?” Blair’s voice was tiny, frail. She shuffled toward the bed. Her feet were covered in red, like she’d stepped in a bucket of paint and had forgotten to wash. She dropped to her hands and knees and peered under the bed.

Aiden reached out for his sister, but she didn’t return the gesture. Instead, she pressed her cheek against the carpet and let out a quaking breath.

“Momma?” Aiden retracted his hand and wiped his cheeks. He couldn’t stop crying. “Daddy?”

Blair swallowed. Her usual soft and loving expression had been replaced with something Aiden had never seen before. “Follow me, Denny, okay?” Silvery moonlight streamed in from the window, shining in the river of tears leaking from Blair’s dark eyes. “And when we leave your room, look up, up, up.” Her hand disappeared from view as she pointed toward the ceiling. “The moon is so bright you can see it through the roof.”

Denny let out a shaky breath. “Nuh-uh.”

Blair smiled and, for a split second, was his sister again. “Just try, okay? For me?”

Aiden crawled out from under the bed and followed his big sister’s red footprints to the door.

Blair sucked in shaky breath, her trembling hand hovering over the door’s keypad. “I’ll always protect you, Denny.” She typed in the code and the door hissed open. “Remember, look up, up, up.”

“Aiden!” Someone had grabbed him, stood right in front of him, shaking him free of his memories. But shock clouded his senses. He was there, in the room with the red and the cries and the scent of burned flesh. But he was also gone, a specter, a placeholder for the man whose life this was. It wasn’t Aiden’s. It couldn’t be.

Elodie filled his vision. Her hair stuck in untamed clumps against her crimson-splattered cheeks. Her scarlet-smeared lips moved as she spoke, but he could only hear the siren-like wails of his sister.

Elodie pressed something against his shackles and they popped loose. “Rhett will regain consciousness soon and the Key will be on their way.”

Aiden’s gaze swept around the room, pausing on the unconscious mound of Rhett Owens before settling on his sister and the petite woman next to her, frantically typing on her holopad. Blair rocked back and forth, her legs pressed against her chest, her face twisted by screams.

Elodie threw the handcuffs behind her. “They’ll kill us. Your mother wouldn’t want that.”

Then he saw her, Cath, his mother, in a pool of unending red. “Momma . . .” The word spilled from his lips with a sob so deep and raw he felt inside out. Enough love, enough mothers, for two lifetimes. And he’d lost them both.

Tears carved clean paths down Elodie’s blood-smeared cheeks.

He could save Elodie. Keep her safe, protected. Pour into her his everything. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.

Something within him clicked, and the well of pain that streamed into his heart ceased overflowing. It ceased to fill at all. He scrubbed away the red and blocked out the cries and the stench and stored those sensations in the farthest corner of his mind. Being a protector didn’t require sadness or grief. He stored those away too. Maybe he’d wrangle all of his emotions and stuff them into the dark as well. After all, hadn’t his emotions gotten him here?

The room was a blur as Aiden followed Elodie toward the exit.

“Brother!” Blair wailed, bloody arms outstretched.

Aiden flicked his eyes to the floor and the heap of shattered pieces disguised as his sister. “You did this.” His voice was even, firm.

The door opened in front of them and Elodie took Aiden’s cold, trembling hand and pulled him from the wreckage of his broken family. Aiden didn’t look back as the door hissed closed behind him.