The Fae Book 3: Butcher and Raine

Epilogue (Butcher): My Life

*** TW for violence/bullying ***

The darkness was surrounding me as I prepared to relieve some of it. Since I could remember, my world had been darkness and pain.

When I began the Lords of Mayhem, my drive to right some wrongs in the world was the force behind my MC's creation. Despite the darkness, deep inside of me was a compulsion to help the helpless, the weak, the ones who couldn't protect themselves because for so long, I had been helpless.

My first vivid memory as a boy born to an Italian mother and an Irish father was hiding under the bed with my mother, her hand clamped tightly over my mouth. The men who'd burst into our home and shot and killed my father had been some of the first ones on my to-do list, and their names had long since been crossed off.

A few years after my father's death, my mother remarried a brutal man. She realized her mistake after only a few months, but by then, she was trapped and her low-level Body husband wasn't going to let her go. My mother was beautiful, radiant even, when she'd been married to my father, but the years with her second husband took their toll on her. Gradually, she lost her radiance, her strength, her happiness, and she...existed. Every birthday I had, she'd whisper how many more years until I turned eighteen. 

She wouldn't leave with me, so I freed her another way. Her second husband had received what he had coming to him at my hands. But retribution for me was clinical; a logical knowledge that certain people needed to die rather than a deep-seated feeling or emotion.

So I lived with darkness surrounding me until Raine came into my life. For the first time ever, there was a bit of light in my life, an actual feeling. Once Burr had cracked open my chest, releasing the moon fae, I had, for the first time in thirty-some years, emotions. Raine had always felt good to me, even when I was filled with the moon fae, and I'd hated that because I believed she was somehow tangled up in the drug ring. Every time I fucked her, I hated that she was the only person I could touch and who could touch me without making me feel like I wanted to tear off my skin. Raine simply felt good to me, from the very start.

I didn't care for those urges that drove me toward her. I didn't understand my reluctance to use my knife on her. It confused the hell out of me that I couldn't read her like I could read the truth or lies in every other person I encountered. I'd never before hesitated to use my knife to get our guests to talk. But I couldn't force myself to draw one drop of Raine's blood, even when I believed she was involved in something I was determined to eradicate.

My phone rang and I knew who it was before I looked. She had a special ringtone of rain drops on a roof. "Raine," I said.

She was sniffling, and I knew what that meant. She was crying and that just added an extra signature to someone's death warrant.

"Are you and the raindrops OK?" I asked, eyeing the man in front of me.

"Yes. We're fine. Just had a close call, but I'm still shaking. It was that close, Butcher. It was that close."

It had probably been the fae who helped her avoid the accident. But I'd prefer if they didn't let it get that close.

More sniffling. Not unexpected. My wife, when she wasn't pregnant, never cried. I moved mountains to make sure she never had reason to cry. The only time I couldn't prevent it was when she was pregnant, like she was now with our sixth raindrop. Then, the tears came easily and more often, and it seemed to have gotten worse with each pregnancy. I didn't like it, but I accepted it.

"What happened?" I asked her, my eyes narrowing on the man in front of me who was tied to one of the guest chairs in Hotel Hell, as Raine called it. Outside, even though I couldn't see my blue flashes of lightning, I could hear the violent crash of non-stop thunder.