Twist My Heart by Brooke Taylor (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

typically it would’ve been years before she’d become one of the Six. But it really didn’t take time. It took death. He could kowtow to Sera, then easily squelch the wrath of the falsely risen redhead when she discovered the fire ritual and Sera’s approval had all been a lie. But he was done with Sera’s blustering every time he made a decision without her.

Who was she to make all the choices? All the rules? They were supposed to be a partnership, not a dictatorship. At least, he’d always been assured they were. “Savanah has done valiantly taking Aimee’s place. She was more than ready for her rise.”

“She’s risen without my approval?” Sera hooted. “Soon she’ll be six feet underground with or without her magister.”

The world and everything in it slammed to a stop at Sera’s terse threat. Perhaps now hadn’t been the time to deal with Sera’s petty control-freak tendencies. Her threats were real enough and it wasn’t like he had any allegiance to this Aimee.

“Don’t worry, she won’t make it out of this cabin alive.” Clay’s eyes went to Thea. No need tipping Aimee off to Sera’s blistering death sentence when both girls would be dead soon enough.

Sera knew better than to misread his ambiguity. “Bury Savanah and bring Thea to me, alive, or never return again!”

“I will fix this.”

“You can’t fix anything! You’re useless! Bring her to me!”

Chapter Forty-Two

Sera’s verbal assaults continued on repeat after Clay hung up the phone. The endless string replaying in his head sounded all too similar to the ones his father used to lash at him. Eventually the stinging, whipped words became a crash of white noise burying Clay in a wash of long-stifled memories.

The sound of the water filling a thermos, the crinkle of the lunch sack as his father rolled the top down, the smell of freshly plowed earth between Nanny’s farmhouse and the old hunter’s shed.

His father’s returns from the shed came with glassy gazes and angry decrees not to look at him. If eyes weren’t averted fast enough than fists would do a fine job of shutting them quickly. Clay suspected the ol’ man had alcohol stashed there. Nanny’s strict religious code frowned upon its use to the point she’d abolished it from the house. Clay had snuck out to the shed, hoping to find the reason for the ol’ man’s hatred and violence was because he was a drunk.

Peeking through the shed’s dirty windows, Clay didn’t see any booze or even cigarettes. What he saw was far, far worse.

Margaret Ann Miller, the little girl who’d gone missing a few weeks before.

Clay remembered seeing her and her blonde friend at the fair a couple months earlier. ‘Isn’t she one of those Gale girls?’ his father asked, referring to the blonde one. ‘Why don’t you go out with her big sister? Seems like she says yes to a lot of boys your age. Invite them to dinner. If Amanda says yes to you, I’ll keep an eye on the little one,’ he’d joked with a harsh laugh. At the time, Clay had assumed his father had been laughing at the unlikelihood of Clay going out with a girl like Amanda Gale. It wasn’t the first time the ol’ man had insinuated Clay had been too slow to start acting like other boys his age. And so he’d pursued Mandy to make his father proud. Surprisingly, she actually liked him, understood him. She comforted him. Told him that his father’s anger wasn’t because of Clay at all, but a sign of his father’s own sins and weaknesses. And upon learning the terrible secret his father had locked in the hunting shed, Clay believed her.

He knew he had to help his father rid himself of his sin. When his father slipped out of the cabin, Clay snuck in.

He wasn’t proud of what he’d done. He’d become…a sinner. A killer. A monster, like his father. But it was done.

Clay had watched the ol’ man bury her body deeper into the woods, never even suspecting the death had been at his pathetic son’s weak hands and not his own. With the sin buried, it would be over. No more beatings and anger. No more monster.

Except it hadn’t been over. For Clay it had only been the beginning of his own sin.

Clay’s focus came back to the present, his eyes landing on Thea’s lifeless body.

It was supposed to have been her all those years ago. Maggie’s little friend, the one who’d initially attracted his father’s eye. The one his father had wanted but never had. And now here she was lying on the cabin floor at his feet, ripe to pick.

* * * *

I’d fought the pain from Clay’s kick to my already tender ribs. But as it had started to subside, he grasped the collar of my shirt. With a hard, strangling twist, he jerked me semi-upright. His palm exploded into my cheek. “Wake up!”

A pained noise ripped from my throat on the second slap. Playing possum no longer an option, my eyes popped opened on the third.

My gaze shot to Aimee’s, seeking her compassion and finding only stone.

“Don’t look at her. Look at me.” Hard ice chilled his voice, but I didn’t comply. He wanted my fear. I wouldn’t feed it to him. Keeping him irritated, on edge… Son of a bitch… Slap four had a sting in it the others hadn’t.

Warm blood pooled on my tongue. It was a wonder my teeth weren’t rattling around my mouth. I fought for breath as I turned my eyes to his, keeping them blank. Clay’s violence wasn’t about him. It was about me—what he could make me feel, make me do. My fighting him off had aroused him. In the car, I’d caught the twirl of light in his pale eyes, the surge of his energy. He didn’t simply enjoy my terror. He needed it.

Clay’s threats from the Subaru rang through my mind, his voice so rich with