Colour Series Box Set (75 page)

“Fucking kill him.” I hiss at Art. “Not yet, Shannon we still need him alive. Not forever, just for now. But I will deal with this fuck up. You just fucking save him.”

I turn from him and follow the corpse of the man who left our house only days before, because I can tell without a doubt in my mind that Callum is dead. Whoever wakes from this will be a different man. My heart breaks because I have just lost the man I finally let myself love. I only loved him for a few seconds when he was gone. I just couldn’t admit it. Now he is gone and I am wrecked.

Once again death has followed me. I am the shadow where it hides. I am poisonous.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT happened, I am not where I am supposed to be. I have also been beaten again while I was out. The beating was more than my body could take. I am completely broken. Something has gone wrong. The biting anger at another betrayal pulses through me but is overtaken by pain. Agony like I have never felt before.

I saw the police, I heard the EMT’s. I felt every single bump of the drive ricochet pain through my body and my head. My head hurts so badly, let me just sink back into the black hole I was in. I am lifted up again and I wail from the agony. I hear the cry rip from me and I cannot stop it. I cannot open my eyes more than a hairline crack. I smell her. Then I hear her gasp and a muffled cry. I must look worse than I feel for her to react at all.  She is here with me, she didn’t run away as soon as Neil died. She stayed.

Before I can stop hurting I hear her command them to take me away to the hospital. Then the black-hole returns thank the good Lord for small mercies. I am not used to hurting, I do the hurting. This is too much, it’s unbearable.

I don’t need to go to the hospital I want to make them stop, make the pain stop. Make everything stop, turn it all back forty years and let me die on the steps with my mother. I want that bullet that took her. I want to erase myself from it all.

I try to pry my eyes open to see what is going on, the noise around me is just a cacophony of sounds my brain cannot sort them out. I feel Shannon holding onto my hand as I am moving fast through the tunnel of light and noise. I can smell her close to me when I stop.

“Don’t you dare fucking die, this is not how you get to die Callum.” She whispers in my ear before everything the pain included is gone. She does care. I knew there had to be a heart in there somewhere. “I don’t want to die. I want to live.” I say it, but I don’t think it comes out at all. Shannon cares enough to stay so I hang on.

The human body is an amazing thing the way it shuts itself down in order to heal. My body shut down they drilled holes in my skull to let the pressure out and I stayed trapped inside myself for an eternity. I could hear, smell and feel the world around my bed, but not matter how hard I tried my eyes stayed closed.

My mind screams to just get up. The time turns to a song on repeat, Art, Shannon, Sahib. Quiet, nurse. Shannon, Nurse. I feel nothing at all. Except thirsty I am dying of thirst all the time. I dream of a cool glass of water sliding down my throat.

Memories haunt me, steal me from myself and take me to other places.

“Callum you little cunt, show your brother what being a man is all about. Come on, he pissed himself. Show him or I will.” My father tells me with the barrel of his gun against my temple. My eyes are locked on the deathly blue ones of my best friend. He is meant to be a killer, not me. I see the single tear escape as I lifted the gun to his bound and beaten father's head. It is me or him, I know it. My dad hates me enough to kill me. Rowan stares at me and nods just a little. He knows it too. I have to kill his pop, he loves his pop. He will hate me forever. I was told not to make friends. I didn’t listen; now look. I feel the gun press harder into my temple and the subtle click of it loading and I fire without another thought. I am not ready to die, I will make it right one day. I will kill them all and make it right. Neil cries like a girl in the corner, my father helps him up and says “It’s okay son. I will make you a man yet.” While glaring at me with disgust. Not even killing my best friend’s father could make him proud. I turn around and see Rowan holding his mother and dead father as they both cry for what I have done. The rain pours as I walk away to the cemetery and I feel the pain of my dad's hatred deep in my soul.

The ambient noise of medical staff and beeping machines brings me back to the present, for a while. I still cannot open my eyes. I am not sure I want to. Maybe it is my time to die, time to pay. I can smell Shannon, she is here. She has stayed, that has to mean she feels something for me.

I can smell the ocean air of my home and I can see the beautiful flat top of Table Mountain in the sun. I laugh at my silly sister and she giggles with me. My heart hurts at what I left behind, but what hurts more is why I left it behind. I see my brother, my real brother Rowan and his passion for everything he does. I walk with Laurie and we eat cupcakes from Charly’s under the trees with the squirrels and long to feel those things again without the heaviness of my monster. I want to go home, to the vineyard where we shared meals and news of good things and bad things. To my family.

I remember horrors too. The beat of my heart amplified by the machines monitoring it lulls me back into the vile, dirty recesses of my mind where disgusting things are buried.

My mother’s body covered in blood on the cold steps of that house. Rowan’s face as I killed his father. His forgiveness, when it was done, hurt me even more. I remember Cassie and my hand on her chest before she fell and the halo of blood that turned her into an angel. Cassie, the girl who stole my heart and captured my dreams. I fucking loved her. I still do.

Shannon’s body after I beat her. Those images play on repeat along with the others that came before her jumbled in between. I have tried to find love in sex and sex in love. It never came. The way I hurt woman was never a kink or a fetish. It was hatred bread into me. “Callum you little shit come here.” Mirrie’s nails dig into the skin on my neck making me bleed. She holds me still while Neil lays into me. She is teaching him to be a man so that Connor won’t hate him as much as he hates me. “Neil, one disappointing son is enough. Put some effort into it boy.” Her wicked voice is laced with malice and the vicious jealousy of where I came from. Then she grabs me by my cock and plays with me until I come and tells me. “Filthy boy, that’s all you are is filth.”

I hear voices, real ones around my bedside. I can smell Shannon. Just her smell is enough to make my heart squeeze in my chest. I don’t deserve her, even if she is worse than me. I don’t deserve any woman after the things I have done. The vortex of my past sucks me back again and again.

This time it is Neil, the boy who stole my life. He stole my father's love and he took anything that I ever had. He introduced Rowan and Cassie when he knew I loved her. I might have been fourteen but my heart already beat to the rhythm of hers and he took even that.

My brother’s eyes as he realized I was the angel of death coming to get him are burned into my brain. I remember my monster all too well. As I float through the past but I cannot find him in me any longer. I should be fighting to stay alive, to wake up. For her. But I cannot find the strength I need to do it. My demons are gone I am weak without them.

The song repeats over and over I cannot keep track any longer it is blurring the lines of time and I feel as if I am my own ghost. I don’t want this any longer. I don’t know if I want to live or die, but this is neither.

“ROBIN, SOMETHING ISN’T right. Callum would come if he knew. I cannot speak to Neil he isn’t there anymore I keep getting Art. I don’t understand. I know I am the sister who should be dead, but my heart tells me my brothers are in trouble if they are not both fucking dead.”  I fight the tears as I try to tell my husband what the little ghost in my heart is saying to me. I have tried everything to contact them even calling Neil, who shouldn’t even know I am alive. I even googled them. It’s like they have just been deleted from the earth. Nothing, nothing and I’m scared.

I am done with losing everything I love to this fucking world. I hate it. I hate the very blood in my veins. I fucking hate that I am an O’Reilly. I changed everything, my name the way look the colour of my hair everything! But I cannot erase my father’s blood from mine.

As I sit cradling my friend's crying baby in my arms, I know she is crying for her mama, the mama who isn’t coming home. I know she has a broken heart, and she is only a month old. I do not think any of us will live through this unscathed. Laurie had fixed us all just a little bit; her ability to not only survive but thrive after the years of torture was astounding. We watched her change into the most beautiful woman, we watched her thaw Rowan and make him feel. She brought him to life and then they found their common ground, a way to be together in their darkness. Now she is gone, he is broken, and I know that there is no one who could fix him this time. Laurie always said that losing each other would be the worst pain in the world. I am watching him in agony. Worse than that I am aching too. I lost a friend probably the only friend I have ever had. I am holding her baby forced to face the loss of my little boy and I cannot walk away just because it hurts I have to just sit here and let it hurt me. Rip my heart out and crush it. Again.

Callum has been gone so long I am not sure what to think but I know something is wrong. I left a message for him he should know by now. He should be here, Rowan needs him right now. This is his chance to make up for the wrongs between them and he isn’t here. The connection I feel to him is lost and I fear that he is dead in the aftermath of our father’s unfortunate dealings with bad people. I know that there are bad things happening to my family. I don’t care about them in fact I hate them all, but Callum, he saved me and I love my brother dearly. I hope that he isn’t just another casualty in this war. Another black-hole child just like the one I am holding destined to be the price of her parent's name. This little girl is born out of blood, murder and vengeance, but love to.