Shadowed

XXIV. Playing God

Delia smiles. "Perfect timing." She saunters over to the far wall, leaving a trail of blood behind her, dripping off the knife between her fingers.

My eyes track her every move, but I still miss the moment her hands find the concealed door. Suddenly, there's an opening in the wall where there was nothing before. 

A man steps through. His hair is dark, almost black, and his features are sharp. I have a faint suspicion I've seen his face before.

But no. That can't be. I never saw the man who said my name in the city.

He looks me up and down. "Hello, Rowan," he says. 

It's that stony, rough voice from the alley. His lips curl into what looks like a smile, but isn't. 

The memory hits hard, slamming into me like a fist to my stomach. The air was cold and biting that day. Only a week ago. I was walking with Abby along a dark city street, my eyes fixed on the ground. I didn't yet know Drew. I saw Maya as a selfless protector, not the bitter girl who abandoned us in an alleyway when we were desperate. And I hadn't heard my own name in thirty years. 

Then, it came—the voice I hear right now, gritty and dangerous, upending everything. I'd spent decades running from my past, hating the curse that trapped me here and kept me breathing, thinking, feeling. 

And I'd managed to escape it, as much as something like this could be escaped. I'd sunk into myself. Feeling nothing. Until I heard my own name, and years of memories and emotions tumbled out and sent me spiraling down a twisting, fruitless path trying to find the origin of this voice.

I'd imagined facing the person who said my name, but never like this. Helplessly bleeding on the floor, surrounded by shards of my own flesh and viscera, a bullet lodged in my shattered kneecap. Tears stream down my cheeks, but I don't sob. My teeth are gritted tight, holding in the scream that wants to escape.

"I wanted to wait a few more days before we proceeded with him," says the man to Delia, his voice cold. "Didn't I tell you that?"

"We didn't get him out," she says. "He did that all on his own. Him and his little friends broke out of the Dungeon. We thought it was best to—" she gestures to the pools of blood on the floor "—deal with them ourselves."

He smiles. "Fantastic job, Delia, Jade," he says, taking in the destruction around us. Abby, ashen faced and limp on the floor. Drew, sluggishly bleeding from a dagger wound at his throat, leaning over her, mouthing something I can't make out. And Angella, silent and still in the corner.

There's no trace of the defiance that lit her up only minutes before, even though Jade's eyes still shoot daggers at her. Her ice-blue eyes are empty and haunted. She doesn't move, but her entire body trembles.

"What should we do with the traitor, Gio?" Delia asks, jerking her head in Angella's direction.

"Kill her, I don't care," says Gio nonchalantly. "I have no use for her anymore."

He turns towards Angella, leaning in close, and she recoils. "Shame. You'd have made a good Hunter, you know that, don't you?"

I can see her shaking as she fights not to spit in his face like she did to Jade.

"Couldn't you make her be a Hunter?" says Delia. "Like you did to me. I can't think of anything she'd hate more."

Angella stiffens, her breath catching in fear.

But Gio laughs. "Delia, what I did to you only goes so far," he says, his gritty voice gaining a condescending note. "I can take your sense of guilt and make you crave violence and blood and death, but your free will is your own. You have to want to work for us, to wear the Hunter's pin. No amount of bloodlust will do that for our traitor here."