Legacy (Sociopath Series Book 2)(65)


“Maybe we’ll get him a top hat and make him tap dance. I think I’d like that.”

Harvey goes rigid, his eyes darting left and right. He’s afraid of this man. Shitting his disloyal, ungrateful pants.

“Anyway. The important thing here is, Aeron has obliged us. And so I’ll oblige him.” He leans in a little to catch my eye. “You really don’t know who I am?”

I chew on my lip. It’s dry as the rest of me. “Try me.”

“What if I told you that you named me, and I named you? Would you appreciate the symmetry…?”

I sit back, which in the bindings, means I move about a half inch. Panic hammers in the back of my throat. “I’ve seen your handiwork. You’re not one for symmetry.”

He knots his fingers—a quick, precise move. “The girls are always a little messy. Just the way it goes down.”

“Blood Honey.”

There’s that smile again, the one that makes the rest of the room a few degrees colder. “Indeed.”

“You didn’t name me.” I spit the words. Can’t help it now. “Jacob Lore was my father, and he’s dead.”

“He’s not your father, Aeron. But he is dead.” He gets to his feet, sighing. “Killed him myself.”

The next thing I see is his narrow, tight fist swinging toward me, and then there’s nothing but the splitting thwack as I hit the floor.

***

Help. There’s not enough space in my skull. Too much meat on the inside, getting bigger, growing hard. A liquid lump pushes down my throat and I need to choke it up, like—

Fuck.

Oh God, that’s better.

Gravity bends backwards. I’m moving; the chair is moving; there’s no damp wood against my cheek anymore, just stagnant air and my wet hair, plastered to my face, dripping down to my sodden t-shirt. I don’t see all these things—I just feel them. The room is pitch black, the darkness so thick that if I speak, it’ll burst. And my head. Jesus, my head. It throbs in dull flashes.

Where the f*ck am I? And why can’t…why can’t I move?

“You’ll have to accept my apologies,” says the voice my head doesn’t recognize, but my belly lurches to hear. “I just couldn’t wait to talk to you again. Please do excuse the water—I couldn’t think of another way to wake you up. It’s a problem of mine, impulsiveness. Never did quite get a handle on that one, see.”

I blink, trying to work out what’s going on between the bars of my soaked eyelashes. Two silhouettes fade in and out of the black, one moving, one very still. Both close enough to reach if I wasn’t…am I chained?

Oh shit. I’m chained. And betrayed, if I remember right, in the company of a wolf and a slippery f*cking eel.

There’s a click, then a waft of sulphur hits my nostrils and a match spews blood orange toward a half-melted candle, perched on top of a crate. The glow illuminates two faces like jack-o-lanterns; the glowering mask of Harvey, who now has a lump the size of a small planet on his temple, and calm, curious Blood Honey. The man who tells me he’s my father.

Grasshoppers, I will piss myself again before I take that as gospel.

It’s another second before I register that Harvey’s now taped to a chair like me, and sits opposite, his arms bulging uncomfortably from his bonds.

“It always amuses me,” says Blood Honey, “when people don’t expect me to hit them. Nobody does. You can have a conversation with almost anyone these days, and unless you’re wearing a hood and a cap and a f*ck-you face, they never see it coming. People are too trusting, don’t you think?”

Harvey’s upper lip curls into a snarl. Sweat drips from his mauled forehead, and he shakes around on the chair, almost as if he’s trying to tip himself backwards. Like that would make a difference. Seriously. Turning into a f*cking ladybug isn’t going to help anything, and if he had half his senses, he’d know it. But he’s too gone in the throes of panic. Does strange things to a man.

Blood Honey finishes with the candle, and drags himself up a chair. He’s changed into pants and boots. It must be colder now…that, or while I was out cold, he messed up his other clothes. “Do you know why your mother and I picked the name Aeron?”

“Enlighten me,” I mutter. I’d roll my eyes, but it won’t go down well. That and it would goddamn hurt.

“My grandfather—your great-grandfather, Mr. Dylan Hart, God rest his soul—was Welsh. Proper Welshman. Had the accent and everything. Couldn’t understand a word he said, but there was this sense of heritage and I wanted to preserve that. It felt respectful.”

This bastard really likes the sound of his own voice. That or he’s been waiting to tell me this shit for a very long time.

“Wales is as godless as anywhere else these days, but they’ve got stories, these little cakes they eat, and this language that’s nearly dead. Like Catholicism. You’re not Catholic, are you Harvey?”

Harvey just stares. Boils with contempt.

“For a moment there, I worried I might have offended you.”

He rolls his tongue between his lips. “Really.”

“I’m losing my place. Where was I?”

“You were telling me why you named me,” I say with as little interest as I can manage.

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