The House of the Wicked (The snake and the raven #1)

19. Nora

Nora

cut this one loo se

W hen I fuck you.

The balcony door is stiff and swollen. Slamming my shoulder against the polished wooden frame, I push with the entire weight of my rage.

When I fuck you.

The door finally gives way. My body practically stumbles onto the small terrace. Desperate to lose myself in the soothing guided meditation, the sodden state of the terrace is a blur as my ass drops onto the wet cushions on the small couch. August’s words echo on a look in my mind as I shove the small plastic buds of my AirPods into my ears.

When I fuck you.

He’s so sure it’s ‘ when ’ and not ‘ if ’. And correcting him was pointless because my denial would’ve been futile. When … God help me, it’s definitely when.

Glimpsing down at the garden below me, at the lazy crawl of the mist moving along the grass; a s ubtle reminder that the seasons are changing. Soon we’ll be in fall. The swimming pool stands like a lodestone in the middle of the garden. I like winter. The cold is strangely soothing, but it robs me of the control I find in the pool. Pushing those thoughts aside, before hitting play on the meditation, I reach for the momentary peace it usually provides. Sounds of the ocean wash over me as a serene voice takes me through breathing exercises. I need this, the calm. I have to find it; I can’t plan an escape without it.

A successful one, anyway.

Roughly twenty minutes into the meditation, a sound in my bedroom makes my blood run cold. Spinning in my seat as I rip the earphones out, I stare into the dark room behind me. The terrace door is shut, with all the lights in the room off. It’s impossible to see who it is, but the movement—the slow winding toward the terrace door—is clear as day. Panic paralyzes me as the figure moves closer and closer toward me.

The handle rattles a second before the door opens slowly. Dima stands on the threshold, wide-eyed and alert as her eyes dart over every inch of my body.

“We need to go.” Her words are hushed, barely audible. She reaches for me, her hand wrapping firmly around my forearm before tugging gently.

Fear and panic still surge through me as I scramble to make sense of what she’s saying.

“It’s five AM,” I splutter, clearly still confused.

“We need to go, Nonny. Now. The police are coming.”

“The police?” I parrot the words back to her, staring blankly at her weary face.

“Come, we need to get to the cottage. We can leave through the steps before they get here. It ’s our only chance.” She tugs me forward with more force this time.

“Dima, wait.” I stop and turn her to face me. “We don’t have our I.D.s or enough money.” If we ran now, there’s no way we’d make it.

“We don’t need it. We can figure it out later. We need to go now,” she insists. Shifting from one foot to the other, my eyes dart down over the railing at the garden. Mist and darkness swirling together, making it impossible to see her cottage, to see anything really.

Thalia’s decision to leave Port Manaus thunders in my mind, snapping the already fragile thread that holds me to this place. When I told her I couldn’t leave, I meant I couldn’t leave with her . This was always the plan; Dima and I, together. We don’t have everything we need but no plan is ever perfect, and she’s right, we can figure the rest out later.

“Okay,” I say, sparing one last look at the slowly rising sun, resigned to this decision. August will try to find us, I know he will, but I can’t worry about that now. Following Dima into my room, I grab a coat from my wardrobe and tug on a pair of sneakers. “My laptop,” I say, moving toward the trapdoor hidden in my bedroom floor. The small crawl space has my stash of cash, a gun, and my laptop. We’ll need all of it.

“Leave it. We can come back when the police are gone. They’ll take Ricky, the house will be empty. We need to go now, Nonny.” Her anxiety is infectious. I have no idea how we’ll manage to return, but I trust she knows, that she has a better plan than I do.

This is what I’ve been waiting for, this moment, a chance. We need to go now.

Creeping down the staircase, Dima and I tiptoe through the tomb-like silence of the house. Ever yone is asleep, no guards in sight. When we reach the large glass garden doors, my hand settles over hers, stopping her.

“Alarm,” I whisper, before turning and slinking into the kitchen to disarm the perimeter sensors attached to all the doors and windows in the house. Once the alarm is disabled, I stalk back to Dima.

She’s opens the door. The cool early morning air drifts into the house as she slips outside. Silently, I follow, closing the door behind me. The soft click of the latch sounds as loud as a cannon in the otherwise silent garden.

Sticking to the shadows, we creep along the wall of the enclosed stone patio and down the steps that lead to the pool, eventually arriving at Dima’s cottage. Once we make it to the bottom of the steps, we’ll be out in the open. There’s no cover. Anyone inside the house could easily spot us. We can’t rush, moving too fast might draw attention to us, especially if one of the guards is in the command room, watching the cameras.

Suddenly, Dima pulls me into a nest of bushes just ahead of the pool.

“They’re here.” She points to the side of the garden where a narrow footpath leads to the front of the house. Blue and red lights pulse silently, casting a terrifying glow against the side of the house. We’re close enough to make a run for it. I can tell she’s afraid. With her hand clasped in mine, my fingers brush her wrist as her pulse races wildly.

“We have to run,” I whisper, turning slightly to look at her.

Her eyes jump from my face to the distance between where we stand and the door to her cottage. It feels like hours pass in the time it takes her to agree. One stif f nod later, I look around the garden, frantically trying to spot anything or anyone who might get in the way of our freedom. The coast seems clear. I turn to Dima and whisper, “One, two, three.”

Then we bolt. Her frail, cold hand is still gripped in mine, her fingers like a manacle holding us together as we race toward our freedom.

Thunder claps in a deafening boom, rattling the peace of the garden. But I don’t dare stop. I don’t stop until I realize Dima’s hand has slipped from mine. I don’t stop until I register the sharp bloodcurdling scream that pierces and then shatters my heart. An eerie silence pulses in its wake. My ears ring; the clap of thunder hanging in the air as if suspended in time. Dima’s screaming, terror still thick in her broken voice. Spinning around frantically, I look for her. It takes a second; a second that feels like the length of my entire life as my eyes land on her prone body, facedown, on the grass several steps behind me.

A switch inside me flips, the reality of this nightmare clicking into place.

Dima isn’t screaming.

It’s my own terror, my own broken voice piercing the silence in the garden.

Dima’s not moving.

My entire body shakes as my legs pump, racing toward her. Dropping to my knees in the sodden grass next to her, my hands move over her. Why isn’t she moving?

“Dima,” I cry. “Dima, get up,” I beg. She’s too still. “Dima!” I’m screaming now.

The sound of footsteps rushing toward me feels both distant and so near. I can’t focus on anyt hing other than Dima. My hands move over her back, frantically searching for any sign of injury. Anything to tell me why she won’t move, why she won’t wake up. And then I feel it. Hot, sticky, and violent, blood pools from a spot on her back. My fingers slip over the wound and I realize with terrifying clarity that wasn’t thunder I heard. It was a gunshot.

Faltering as I try to apply pressure to her wound.

“Help!” I scream. But help doesn’t arrive. Instead, cold, bony fingers rip into my arms painfully before dragging me away from her. Limbs flaying, I try to hold on, try to keep pressure on her wound. But I’m ripped away, thrown onto the grass. Heavy footsteps sound around me. Everything moves so fast as my arms are forcefully pulled behind my back. The cold slice of cable ties cutting into my wrists register in my mind as the snap and pull of them makes me wince. They cut in some more as the person behind me tightens them far beyond what’s necessary.

Dima’s face is next to mine. I stare in mute horror at her closed eyes. Twisting the upper half of my body, I try to reach her. It’s painful and awkward, but with my shoulder pressed into the wet grass, I finally have a better view of her face. “Dima, wake up,” I beg, hoping the sound of my voice will pull her from her unconscious state. We’re supposed to be in this together. She’s not supposed to be alone. It’s how we’ve weathered our storms since I was a child, together. I can’t do this without her. A hot tear rolls down my face. “Dima—”

A glossy pool of blood spreads across her back, moving, still so alive. I want to reach out, to dip my fingers in it. To feel its warmth. To feel the warmth of her. My vision blurs as violent tears spill from my eyes. As the small puddle of angry, heartbroken tears pool on the grass beneath my cheek, I scream again. This time it’s the scream of a bitter, disillusioned woman who has no one left to love. It’s the scream of a girl whose hopes have been irreparably shattered, a girl who simply never gets her way. A girl who will never know freedom.

Dima’s outstretched hand is so close to my own, like she’s reaching for me; I can’t tear my eyes away from the time-wrinkled fingers that once brushed my hair, that cooked me dinner, that held my hand just moments ago. Tears gather in my eyes in relentless waves.

“Is this one dead?” a man asks.

“Nah, pulse is strong.” The sound of a radio buzzes to life as the second man calls for a medic.

“Get up,” one of them says before a fierce shove of his booted foot lands against my ribs, punctuating his rough command.

Coughing, dull pain blooms along my ribs, rendering me momentarily speechless. “I can’t,” I say eventually, struggling to turn and face him. “She needs help,” I beg. It’s pointless, but I can’t stop myself. They said she’s alive, so why aren’t they helping her? The man wraps hands around my joined wrists as he drags me up. The movement is so firm, so merciless; I think my shoulder might be completely dislocated.

Staring down at Dima’s small body, so ruthlessly discarded on the damp grass, my heart cracks. I’m about to call for help, to scream, to rage, to pour the fire burning in my heart out into this godforsaken garden, when I hear the wheels of a gurney rumble down the stone path. Two EMTs appear next to Dima. They look between me and the two men standing behind me.

“She’s been shot in the back.” The medic accuses.

“T hey tried to run, we called for them to stop and they didn’t,” one of the men says.

Rounding on them, I scream, “Liar! You didn’t call for fucking shit. You shot her like a fucking animal!” The man steps forward, and for the first time, I see him clearly. But I barely notice his face. It’s impossible to see anything beyond the stark white lettering covering the front of his bulletproof vest: SWAT.

“Move,” he barks before shoving me forward.

“Get the fuck off me,” I say, trying to pull out of his hold. It’s tight, and the more I fight, the harder he grips.

Turning, I frantically try to catch one last glimpse of the medics loading Dima onto the gurney. God, let her be okay.

The police officer crowds the space behind me, the barrel of his gun pressing into the base of my spine as he marches me up the stone path, back into the house. As we move closer, the sound of Ricky’s voice becomes louder. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but his tone is steeped in the kind of rage that promises death.

The stench of sweat dripping off the man behind me envelopes me until it’s all I can smell, until it suffocates me. We reach the patio doors, and he shoves me inside. The scene in front of me is surreal, chaos, and my eyes jump from one horror to the next as I try to piece together what I’m seeing.

The man's grip on my wrists tightens, and my panic skyrockets. He marches me into the living room where the black-clad figures of at least twenty men and women race around the house, their movements precise and efficient.

There’s no sign—or sound—of Ricky. Is August here? Last night… I struggle to remember if he was working. Then, with barely a moment to process what’s happening, the man shoves me again; the force knocking me off balance. And for the second time that morning, the wind’s knocked out of me as I hit the living room floor.

“Don’t fucking move,” he yells. More police have arrived. Some of them wearing plain clothes and some in regular uniforms. Whoever is in charge is somewhere else. Likely dealing with someone more important than me… Ricky, probably. I hear his voice a second later.

“Leave her alone,” Ricky spits the words at whoever is with him. From my spot, face down on the floor, I can’t see him. I turn my head toward his voice, nonetheless. “Nonny, just be calm,” he insists, sounding close, but not close enough for me to actually see him.

Be calm? Be calm when our home is filled with SWAT and police and he’s about to be dragged off to God knows where? Fuck, I’m hyperventilating. My heart rate alone screams as a panic attack darkens the verges of my mind. Nothing will stop it—stop the image of Dima outside on the grass, not knowing if she’s okay, not knowing if I’ll be okay—all of it swirls together in the front of my mind until I can barely breathe.

A shiny pair of black pumps stops in front of me. “Book the two of them, cut this one loose, and then get the coroner here to clean this fucking mess up.” Her feet turn toward the man who threw me on the floor. “That mess in the garden? Write it up as resisting arrest.”

Cable ties pinch my skin as someone pulls my arms back. It should’ve been agonizingly painful, but in the aftermath of everything, it feels like nothing. The smooth metal of a knife, or maybe scissors, slips against my skin and between my wrists. The relief is instant as I’m cut free. No, not free—loose. I’ll never be free.

Rolling onto my side, more tears fall silently from my eyes. The black pumps click across the flo or as she follows the movement of my body, before crouching down until her face is level with mine.

“I guess we were destined to see each other again after all, Nora,” Detective Andrews says.