Follow the Bloodshed (The Executioner Trilogy Book 3) (10 page)

Chapter 16:

If You Only Knew

Beth had skulked away to her bedroom with an ice pack on her cheek while Gordon and Chase went to work cleaning our mess of a kitchen. Sam would be out for a while. I stood there, arms crossed, wondering what to do with the body of the man I had learned the lesson;   crawlers couldn’t be saved; Now I couldn’t get his change out of my mind. Images of a holy water mist followed by convulsions and bloodshed. Would that be my life? I was beginning to believe so. I wasn’t thrilled by this revelation.

Gordon’s shirt was covered in drying blood. Chase had removed his shirt to avoid staining it. We didn’t have a lot of clothes these days, but Gordon didn’t really care. It wasn’t like we couldn’t pick up more when we went on a run for supplies and the like. In all reality, we weren’t sure how much longer we had in our protective bubble so who actually knew how long we would be stuck in the house and need more supplies stock piled for the future? I knew she was hiding something. Well, a lot of somethings. I knew Beth had been through a lot, but I needed more information than she was willing to give me. Our world had become a ghost town and I wanted to know what it would take to get our world back. I left the men to their dirty work and marched upstairs to her bedroom, knocking on the door.

“Who is it?” I heard her voice as my chance to crack it open. We would need to WD-40 the hinges to quiet them. I stuck my head in to find her sitting at the bottom of her bed with the ice pack on her cheek her eyes closed like she was working to calm herself.

“It’s me.” I paused, waiting on my cue to come in. When she didn’t say anything I asked, “Can I come in?” With eyes still closed she muttered an okay and I slipped in through the small crack in the door, shutting it quietly behind me. I wasn’t sure if I was welcome to sit down next to her on the bed so I did the safe thing and stood, resting against the edge of her dresser, unsure of whether to wait for her to speak or if I should go ahead and start. I decided I would start with the obvious question. “Are you okay?” 

Her eyes snapped open and narrowed into slits as she took in my appearance. I hadn’t been the one to strike her, but she definitely blamed me. “Nothing time won’t heal,” she stated as she pulled the ice pack away from her face. Her cheek was a nasty mass of deep purples and greens. Slightly swollen and outlined with red from the ice.

I felt the intense urge to apologize even though I had not hit her and I knew I shouldn’t, but it slipped from my mouth regardless, spilling from me in a jumbled disarray of words.

“There’s no need for you to be sorry,” she muttered as she raised her hand to stop me. “I would’ve done the same thing, to be honest. I’m not sure why I tried to hold him back.” She shook her head like she was trying to shake the memory from her mind. I couldn’t blame her. With everything that had happened I wanted to do the same, leaving those awful memories to rot in the darkness. I couldn’t take my eyes off Beth as she sat there. Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine and for the longest time we sat in silence. It would be now or never if I wanted to know everything. For some reason I couldn’t force the words. We truly had no idea when this eclipse would take place. I made the decision that, no matter how bad it sounded, I needed to make my purpose for my visit known.

“I know you probably don’t want to talk about any of it, but I need to know what happened while I was gone.” She looked up to me, annoyed. I let out an exasperated sigh and continued, “Look, it’s our destiny to take Lilith down. I can do it with or without you, but either way I need to know anything and everything that happened. This isn’t just about your fight to survive anymore. Now that I’m back it’s about saving the rest of humanity before it’s too late.” I let the words sink in, the silence stretching so far I almost lost sight of its purpose. Pushing myself away from her dresser I made my way to the door, my arm outstretched to take the knob in my hand. I didn’t expect her to help me. I just needed her to.

As soon as my skin touched the cold, slick metal Beth cried, “No, don’t go. Please.” I froze for a few seconds, not wanting to look at her. I spun towards her I could see tears filling her impossibly blue eyes, shining in the lamplight and threatening to spill over. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve kept a lot from you, and I know I shouldn’t. It’s all so hard to think about.” She rubbed her arms and I noticed her suppress a shiver of anxiety as she sat there.

I stood there, watching tears spill down her cheeks, staining her skin and leaving wetness on her shirt. I had seen her near death, unconscious and bleeding, but this I couldn’t handle. She had never let on she needed comfort before so I was at a loss. Confusion flooded my mind, but there was only one thing I knew to do. I made my way to the bed and sat beside her, pulling her into a hug. Sobs racked her body, her cries echoing through the room. There weren’t any words I could utter to take her pain way. This was all I could do besides hope the tears would wash some of the pain away.

I wasn’t sure how long it was before Beth pulled away, using her sleeve to wipe her face and her nose, and looked at me. Her hair had become a disheveled mess of auburn as her heart poured onto my sleeve. Her hair was sticking to her neck and face in thick strands. Her eyes were puffy and red and she sniffed before she spoke.

“You really have no idea what it was like. Especially in the beginning.” She used her fingers to wipe a few stray tears that streamed down her cheeks. “We tried to stop as much as we could, but without you we couldn’t keep up. We had lost before we   really began to fight.” Sniffing one more time she stood, walking to her dresser and looking in the mirror. “And now the world is a ghost town.”

“You know how far her reach has gone?” I questioned. She and Chase had already kept enough information away from me.

She nodded. “Yeah. We’ve known for a little while, but when you came back we decided it would be best if we didn’t say anything. We thought it may cause you to lose faith in what you could do to save humanity. Well, I did.”

I understood her reasoning, but it didn’t keep the anger from bubbling inside me. I wasn’t in the best of places when we got back to the surface, but I was so much better now and this information was too vital to miss. Lilith’s reach was farther than I had thought. I wasn’t sure whether to feel happy or sad that I had plenty to fix.

“How far?”

She looked at my reflection.

“Outside of the city. We don’t know if it’s worldwide or not. I hope not. If it’s only the U.S. it’ll be easier. No need to travel overseas. We wouldn’t really have a way to travel. That’s as far as we’ve gotten as far as an actual plan.”

“So you guys thought about formulating a plan to see how far this reaches, but never followed through?” That seemed fishy to me. I didn’t know Beth like I used to and it was starting to show. I didn’t know which way was up as far as this was concerned.

“Yes, but there’s a good reason for that.”

I stood, waiting for her to say one thing to cause me to fly off the handle. “And that reason is?” The spiraling feeling in my gut was almost too much and I felt like I was losing my grip; on Beth, on myself, and on the world. The frustration of it all was like a pit in my chest and in my stomach. My eyes met hers I neared her and the expression made me stop in my tracks. There was a look of resolve and determination in her eyes. It would’ve been infectious if I wasn’t so irate already. 

She turned towards me like she wasn’t sure if she should or not. “Because we know exactly where she is. There’s no point in going to see how far her reach goes when we can tear it all down at the source.”

“And you’re waiting until now to tell me this?” I was red hot and the urge to punch and knock her down was strong causing the beast to growl. It made me wonder if the sound was coming from me as I felt it vibrate through my body. Beth wasn’t the enemy. She never had been. My hands were clenched into fists, my nails digging into my palms to the point of stinging pain.

“It didn’t feel like the right time before now. Even now wasn’t the right time, but you needed to know,” she whispered. Her eyes were lowered to the ground and she wouldn’t look me in the eye. She was ashamed and I could see the flush of embarrassment on her cheeks as she stood in front of me.  I noticed she had thrown on a sweater. It was almost down past her knees, hiding the shorts she wore. Were they a couple? Or a friend borrowing from a friend? That wasn’t the issue now. The issue was they knew where Lilith was, knew her reach, but didn’t feel the need to tell me. This was information we needed to save what was left of the world. If we could.

“Not the right time? Really? When would’ve been the right time, Beth? Tomorrow? A week from now? A month from now?” My voice rose to a shriek. I spat, “When?” If she thought I was fuming before she was in for a rude awakening. The warmth of the beast began to flow through my veins. I could feel it in my eyes, burning with intensity. Beth wasn’t the enemy. If you caused me to feel anger or fear it was good enough for your blood to be spilled. I had to get a handle on this.

“Robin?” There was a note of concern and fear in her voice.   

I turned away from her and took a deep breath, letting the frustration and tension out, imagining it as a fiery glow without releasing any flames. Closing my eyes I took another breath, letting it out between pursed lips as my mother had always taught me. I repeated the action until the pressure and heat melted away. I could sense her moving closer. She placed a hand on my shoulder in comfort and said my name, the question still lingering in the single word.

“I’m okay,” I said, dropping my head in shame at letting the situation get to me. I felt backed into a corner and it was my instinct to fight out of it, which usually meant the beast made an appearance. We couldn’t have that. Burning the house down wasn’t in the plan and wouldn’t help defeat Lilith. Plus, I would never be able to forgive myself. Granted, my child and I would be perfectly okay, but no one else would be. I unclenched my fists and let my shoulders fall. There was no room for anger here. At least not from me.

I turned towards her and my eyes met hers. She had done nothing but hide things from me since day one and I wasn’t having any of it anymore. She could tell me anything I wanted to know, or I could find it all out myself. Either way, I would kill Lilith and purge the city of her kind. Possibly the world.

Why did she insist on keeping things from me? That was the main question I had after I found out exactly where Lilith was. I still wasn’t sure how to take her down, but I would do whatever it took to do just that.

I opened my mouth, “Is there any reason you’re hiding things from me I should know about? We can’t work together if you continue to hide things. I need it all laid out.” I cleared my throat as I moved to lean against her dresser, my gaze not leaving her face. “Granted, this wasn’t the world I expected to come back to, but I really didn’t expect to come back to secrets.” I saw the secrets she had buried behind her eyes. Would they be excuses or would she spill the beans? I was hoping for the latter.

“Robin, you have to know I never meant to keep anything from you. When I first saw you I wasn’t sure what to think. I wasn’t sure if you were real or something my brain cooked up because of how devastated I was when you died.” She took a deep breath. “I need you to know you can trust me. No more secrets.” Her eyes met mine and I saw a willingness to open up. I crossed my arms and leaned against the dresser. I was willing to listen to whatever she had to say. I wanted to know.

She watched me carefully.

“I want to know everything. You can start when you’re ready.” Once I heard the words leave my mouth I wished I could take them back, or at least the tone. I was extremely irritated but there was no reason for me to take it out on her? Or was my power what caused her to wonder? Once I thought about what I had been able to do with the help of the Hell fire I had absorbed in, well, Hell, I couldn’t blame her at all. Honestly, I’m surprised she let me inside the barrier. I could only imagine what I had looked like the first time and it sent a shiver up my spine.

Once she was seated on the edge of the bed, arms crossed and gaze focusing on the mirror behind me, she licked her lips and began to speak. She had been through a lot while I was away. I was surprised she didn’t run screaming when she saw I had come back.

“After you died it was pandemonium. I had never seen so many people running round screaming, looting, and murdering each other. The threat of Lilith and her horde was enough to tear the city apart. Chase and I had teamed together in the beginning to try to keep the peace as best as we could, but there wasn’t much we could do. I wasn’t very good with magic yet and anything I tried backfired, but it’s not like I’m great with it now. You have no idea how long it took me to get the protection barrier right.” She let out a giggle, obviously remembering something hilarious. “One time I singed Chase’s eyebrows. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen,” she laughed.

While it was funny I wasn’t amused. I wanted the important information. I would   need to remain patient.

“What happened next?” I urged. While I didn’t want to be too pushy I didn’t have the time for the small stuff. An eclipse was coming. I was here to stop the world’s complete downfall no matter what it took. I was hoping to avoid it at all costs, but if I needed to push so be it. I wasn’t here to make or keep friends. I had one singular purpose. That was what legend had said. And the woman in my dreams who   alerted me to this twist of fate was adamant. Beth shook the last tendrils of laughter away and looked me in the eyes.