Ruined

Chapter Thirty-One

Jax

I bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. It was the only thing stopping the roar of pain that threatened to rip me in half. It started building moments after I kissed her, driving me closer and closer to the edge of insanity. Sam’s breathing was soft and even, her body like an inferno beside me. More than anything, I wanted to stay in that bed, her wrapped in my arms, and forget the outside world existed.

Forget the demon existed.

“How bad is it?” she whispered.

I flinched at the sound of her voice. God. She knew me so fucking well. I thought about lying, but decided it would never work. She’d see right through it. Always did. Forcing a chuckle, I said, “How do you think it’d feel to have your lungs yanked out through your nose?” I threw off the covers. Azirak was bouncing images again. It wanted to stay here with Sam, yet after being with her, it needed to feed again. The dizzying back-and-forth—blood and agony alternating with flashes of Sam—made everything spin.

She rolled over. “I’m thinking pretty unpleasant.”

God. She was so fucking beautiful. Even with the slight frown tugging the corners of her lips down. A miracle. She was a miracle. One that loved me despite the fact that I’d shared her with a monster.

This wouldn’t work.

“I—I think I understand how it works now. With us.” I stumbled away from the bed, grabbing clothes along the way. Pants. Shirt. One boot. Through gritted teeth, I continued. “Being around you is hard, but not impossible. I think can take little bits of emotion here and there to keep Azirak under control. A nip of anger or a shot of fear, and it won’t do any damage. But when I get what I want—you, all of you—I’m flash-starving the demon. The good emotion just sucks the energy right out of us. Having it there while we—it made things…” God. This was so fucking hard. “Easier. We couldn’t have… If I didn’t let…”

“Jax, it’s okay.” Sam sat up, the thin, scratchy hotel sheet wrapped tight around her chest. “So you’re saying it’s like burning too many calories. When you’re…happy?”

I turned away and pulled on the other boot, fingers shaking as I knotted the laces to keep them in place. Actual ties were impossible. Anything requiring too much coordination or focus just wasn’t going to happen right now. “You’re the ultimate demon diet wrapped up in a sexy package. It’s—” A spasm went through me, stealing all the air. I needed to get out of there. Sam didn’t need to see this, and I certainly didn’t want her with me if Azirak took control again. The memory of the thing’s excitement, and then pleasure, while we were with Sam killed me. “I need to feed it.”

Sam adjusted the sheet and nodded, flashing a heart-stopping smile. How had I stayed away for so long? More importantly, how the fuck was I going to leave? Being around her again only reminded me how perfectly we fit.

Another spasm. Cutting it too close. Leaving her alone was risky, but it would be fast and I wouldn’t go far. With a nod, I was out the door.

It took longer than I’d wanted, but I was able to hunt down a demon. I stumbled upon it just as I was about to give up and head in the direction of the club. That part of town was where all the drug deals went down. It’d be easy to find a lowlife or two to pick off. But the demon was preferable.

Though not as strong as the one earlier, it calmed Azirak to the point where the near-blinding tension in my muscles eased, and the pain in my skull dulled to a barely there throb. And bonus? It came with zero guilt and a little extra kick. This was something I could get used to. Taking demons instead of kicking the shit out of humans. Double the energy and ten times less guilt. If I’d known offing them would afford him such a jolt, I would have been doing it all along.

By the time I made it back to the hotel with a new shirt for Sam, I wasn’t any closer to knowing what to do about the link. Sam’s life was tied to Chase’s, not to mention the whole hell-on-earth thing Azirak mentioned. I wasn’t clear on exactly what it meant, but it couldn’t be good. For anyone.

I balanced the coffees I’d picked up from Musso’s in one hand, the shirt draped over my shoulder, and managed to unlock the door with the other without dropping anything. The bed was empty, the comforter tangled at the foot and the sheet piled on the floor. I set the coffee down. “Sammy?”

No answer.

There was a stillness in the room that left me cold. I tore across the floor and kicked open the door to the bathroom. It bounced twice, the rattle echoing off the tile, before stopping to reveal an empty room.

Air. Maybe she went out to get some air. I rushed the door and stepped out into the sunlight. There was no one as far as the eye could see. Rick’s car was parked where I’d left it, the keys still heavy in my pocket. There was a noise on the other side of the room. The nightstand. My cell.

I nearly tripped over my own two feet to get to it. “Sammy?”

The person on the other end laughed. “Not exactly.”

Azirak rumbled. “Chase, I swear, if you touch her I’ll rip your limbs off one by one and feed them to you.”

Another laugh. The same cocky snicker I’d heard my entire life. “Graphic. You kiss my girl with that mouth?”

Azirak raged and words were impossible. All that came out was a low, feral growl. If my fingers squeezed any tighter, the cell would be toast.

“You’ll need to come down to Harlow General.”

“The hospital?” My heart skipped a beat. I fell back into the chair, Azirak feeding me a thousand horrible scenarios in graphic detail. “Why? What did you do?”

“Just come down, Jax. Now.”

The line went dead.

I made it in record time. Chase hadn’t been specific, so I had no idea where in the hospital they were, but the best guess was the ER. As it turned out, I was right.

“Don’t,” Chase said, standing. He and Sam were seated in the chairs right outside the emergency room waiting area. Whatever the reason was for dragging me here, Sam seemed fine. “Before you attack me or make a huge scene, consider this. All it will take is one word from me and she’ll do something nasty. Maybe to herself. Maybe to someone else. You’re going to need to play this chill, brother.”

Sam’s eyes were wide and her lips pressed in a thin line. She sat without a sound and avoided eye contact with anyone who passed. He’d ordered her to be silent. That was the only way she wouldn’t be kicking up trouble.

“Why are we here?” I asked. The anger Azirak was throwing off had me seeing double. Every inch of me hummed with the need to tear Chase apart.

“The doctors were wrong about the cancer. They underestimated the spread of the disease.”

At first his words didn’t make sense. Doctors? Cancer? But when understanding came, it was followed closely by an icy wave of panic and fear. No. Not now. I couldn’t do this now.

Chase turned and quirked a finger at Sam, who stood and followed him down the hall without objection. Over his shoulder, he said, “Better hurry, Jax. There’s not much time left to say good-bye.”

I followed them down the halls and around corners, numb. My uncle, much like Sam, was my lifeline to reality. I couldn’t count the times I’d sat on the floor in some dump, curled tight and hating myself, while the eldest Flynn talked me through the guilt from hundreds of miles away. It was during those calls that I found the strength not to follow our ancestors’ footsteps. Rick, along with Sam’s memory, had been the rope that kept me from the hole.

When we rounded the last corner and Chase pulled back the curtain that hung around the last bed at the end of the long row, I felt sick. Rick lay with his eyes closed, surrounded by tubes and wires. There was a machine to track his heartbeat to the right, and something else that let out a soft beep every few seconds to the left.

“Rick?” Chase said, stepping up to the bed. Sam followed. “We’re here, man.”

I moved closer, torn between watching my uncle slip from this world, and watching Chase and Sam.

His eyes fluttered open, and despite the situation, the elder Flynn smiled. “My boys. I’m so glad you made it.”

I took my uncle’s hand. His skin was so cold. Like he was already gone. “We’re here, Rick.”

Rick sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he was smiling again. “I was hoping to stick around for a while longer, but doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”

“Don’t say that,” Chase said, taking his other hand. I was glad our uncle would never find out the truth. It would have destroyed him.

Rick squeezed both our hands and pulled us together. He placed one over the other with mine in between, as a series of body-racking coughs shook him. When he managed to catch his breath, he said, “I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” I said.

But Rick didn’t seem to hear. “I put it off for so long,” he continued. “And now I’ll never have time to make it up to you—but you have to know the truth.”

“Shh,” Chase said. “Whatever it is can wait.”

Rick shook his head. The movement cost him. It took several moments, wheezing and coughing, for him to catch him breath. “I thought if I kept you apart, I could change things. That I could keep one of you from destroying the other. History, though… History has a way of repeating itself, doesn’t it?” He turned his head and stared at Sam.

She paled. “Rick, what are you—”

“They’re born. Over and over again. Once every few generations, they find their way into a Tainted—but Tainted are rare. It takes a special kind of monster to leave a stain on his entire line. One or the other has come and gone throughout the generations of our family, but never both. Never at the same time. And now, with them both here…”

My heart thundered until I could barely hear what he was saying. “Rick, you’re not making any sense.”

“The intense anger you felt toward Chase growing up, the itch to hurt him—it was never your fault, Jax. It was the demon. One of two clan leaders trapped in mortal bodies. Demon royals.” Rick’s head rolled to the left, so that he was looking at Chase. “You were always better at controlling it, weren’t you? I knew, though. I always knew.”

Chase was pale. He was shaking his head and swiping the back of his hand across his eyes.

“You’re good boys. Strong. You can beat this. You have to beat—have to beat this.”

“We will,” my brother said, voice cracking. He was squeezing our uncle’s hand so hard that his knuckles had gone white. “We will. Together. All three of us.”

I wanted to agree. We could do it. Together. But the words wouldn’t come. This was it. The end of something and the beginning of another. Rick had always been the glue that held us together. Death wasn’t just stealing the only father I’d ever known, it was stealing my entire family.

“No. For the sake of the world, you have to walk out that door and never, ever see each other again.”

“Rick—”

Rick grew agitated, pulling at the sheets and shaking his head. “If you spill each other’s blood, it will open the gates… Hell…”

His chest rose and fell for a moment, before falling still.

It was over. Rick Flynn was gone.