The Price of Blood

Chapter 27

I don't trust myself to breathe.

We are walking through the long lines of growing grapes that mask the factory underneath the chalet, me at the front, my brother's eyes tearing me to pieces from the back. I have a flashlight in one hand, the other stays by my side, trembling slightly at the thought of what is going to happen to me and the girl I love. The gentle wind and slight dusting of snow that covers each plant still makes me shiver uncontrollable, and I try to wrap the large, moth-ball covered coat around me to keep warm. We have not spoken, but I don't need to read my dear brother's mind to know that we are not going to speak, unless inside each others heads, and that he knows I will kill him if I get the chance.

"Take a left." he tells me inside me inside my head, making my jump. I don't reply, not trusting myself, afraid I will say something that will provoke his wrath. I do what he asks, taking that ominous left and once again being engrossed in the thicket. It is a few minutes before my dear brother can't help himself.
"You know," he says slyly, and my fists start to clench, "I can't decide what is going to be more fun, the killing or the sex."
He is baiting me. If anyone else had done that, they would already be dead on the floor. I still don't reply, focusing my attention on putting one foot in front of the other, left right left right left right. Ignore him, I think to myself, "Just ignore him."

"You will never be able to ignore me Brad." Jake's whispers fill my weak mind, and then suddenly an invisible force pushes me onto the floor, making me whack my leg on a boulder, jutted out from underneath the nearest line of grapevines. A huge sticky gash, covered in blood, emerges on my leg, and I know this is where I am meant to die. He will kill me. I shield my face, curling up into a ball to protect myself, my teeth bared, my eyes flashing angrily. The first blow comes to my knee, shattering it in two, making me scream in bewildered pain.  The second is a cut across my abdomen, making my face contort and my leg start to shake. I was losing so much blood, I couldn't keep my eyes open. But my ears? They heard everything.

"You remember when I told you that you were dead if you revealed anything?" Jake asks me, and I don't need to look to see that he is looking smug already, "well, you didn't."
I don't know why, but a sense of relief flooded through my veins. Maybe I wasn't dead after all.
"But," Jake continues, and all my relief floods away in a millisecond, "you do want to kill me, so I can't have you around any more."
No, no. This can't be happening. I feel myself slipping in and out of consciousness as his words begin to twist the very fabric of my soul.

"It's a shame that you won't be able to see what I am going to do to poor dear defenseless Lauren," his wickedness drips through every single syllable, and I cower even more in fear of what my brother has become, "But, you have become too much of a dead weight to keep around any more. So, I'm going to put you out of your misery."

He starts kicking me again, the anger, the pain he feels, the evil nature inside of him, exploding out of him. I don't have enough energy to fight back, so I try to move further and further away from him, but he keeps advancing towards me, his red eyes hungry for my death.

"You've had this coming for a long time Bradley." Jake admits, still advancing towards me as I start to crawl onto my knees and try and move away from him. He then kicks my already shattered knee, breaking my calf into two. I scream in pain, doubling over with my back on the floor. His voice enters my head, so he can focus on his violence through words and through actions. You know how much I hate you. You think that you're so much better than everyone else, a little righteous son-of-a-bitch who can change from being a monster. A person who will just kill. That's what we were created for. But you, you have to drag me and Jess down with you, in your pathetically self-righteous manner, making us worthless pieces of shit, giving us no power, no place in this world. The guilt you feel is always present, never ending. You've killed, you've killed too. Don't you love the feeling of power you get from killing?