Ruined (The Eternal Balance #1)(73)

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.”