Mmm.
I spin slowly, looking at Joel and Karl. They’re both looking as innocent as the other two, and fuck if that doesn’t send me off on a rampage of belligerence. Tables get swiped, objects picked up and thrown. I can’t even contain my anger enough for Hannah who stupidly tries to get in my way again. Gray manages to grab her before she gets pushed to the floor, his chest fast in my face.
“Calm down, Malachi.”
I flip a chair, now so incensed by all of their seemingly calm demeanours that I can barely control the thought of killing someone. “Where the fuck is she then?” bellows out of me.
Damien steps up, hands still out in front of him. “This is just grief, Malachi. Perhaps if you went and saw Faith it might-”
“Fuck my dead wife,” I spit, pushing in at him. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she did this.” I glare some more, pissed at everyone and everything. “And if any of you utter a word about her death I will ruin every one of you. Be warned.” I pace, getting in each one of their faces again and shoving to prove a point that I can, and will, end them all.
I eventually land in front of Damien again. “I want her back.”
He looks confused. “Who are you talking about?” Lucien grabs my arm, hauling me away from him. The speed of my fist connecting with his jaw sends him straight to the floor, and my immediate hands grabbing at his suit to heave him back up for round two makes another set of hands grab me.
“My Alice!” I shrug in Gray’s clamped hold, rage fuelled hatred making it easy to break free.
I spin on him and shove so hard he stumbles backwards. “Don’t fucking touch me. This is your fault.”
He frowns and walks away a few steps, attempting to contain his own hostility.
“Jesus, Malachi. What the hell do you want from us?” Karl says behind me.
I turn to face him, unsure other than fucking answers. “I want her back. Now.” Both my hands land on his chest, pushing with as much force as I have until he’s backing out the door and we’re in the hallway. “I want her back here now and I want to know who dared fucking touch me to take her in the first place.” His hands go up at the same time as the rest of them flood into the space behind me. Lucien walks in front of me, his mouth about to open with some sanctimonious crap I’m not the slightest interested in. “And if you can’t find her and bring her back here, you can all FUCKING LEAVE!”
“We don’t even know what she looks like.”
“Assuming you mean the pretty, dark haired one with tattoos, I do,” says Lucian. I spin on him, jealousy coursing through me. It’s only when he eases past me quietly, a relatively serious expression on his face, that I manage to stop myself punching him again. “It’s alright, Malachi. I didn’t touch her. Neither Damien nor I did, just as you requested. We were hunting Pixie and she protected her in the elevator.”
It’s in that second that I remember the conversation I had with them about that, and then I remember the only other man that was in the room. “Where’s Temple Greene?”
“What?” They all look between each other.
Gray moves in my vision. “Anyone seen him?”
Various mutters of ‘no’ ring loud and clear.
“I have. A while ago,” Lucian says. “He was in the underground lake. It was before Damien found Faith’s body in the tunnels.”
“Why was he there?” I ask.
“Who fucking knows, Malachi? We don’t exactly ask round here.”
Gray moves in front of me again and strides off down the corridor, Hannah following him.
“Find her,” I seethe, at all of them. “And him.”
I eye them carefully, as they all move after Gray, still not trusting anyone, and then watch a maid come around the corner. She gasps and looks at my head, trying to avert her eyes as she does.
“Sir? Would you like me to see to that?”
My hand reaches for it and instantly gets smeared with blood. I glance at my shoulder, looking at the crimsons stains falling down that, too. I’d care if it wasn’t for the fact that this could be the state my Alice is in as well, and that just spurs me on to duck into a tunnel and head downwards.
Swift steps bring me down to the main floor area. I look out into the sea of fucking and frivolity, pissed at the nerve of any of them when I’m vexed. They have no right to be enjoying themselves, nor do they have any fucking right to be here at all if they can’t help me locate the one thing I’m missing.
I barge past a group of delinquent women, glaring at their glazed eyes. Fucking pills. I’m not in the mood for any of it, and I end up forcing the point by showing my contempt in various ways, especially when one of them dares trying to touch me.
She’s pushed so severely she’s damn lucky I don’t have anything else in my hands to use on her skin. My hand reaches for her throat, and then discards it to grab hold of the next available man to take the brunt of my annoyance instead. He goes rigid in my hold, his hands trying to yank at mine to get me off him. Not going to work, not with this much anger and pain running through my veins.
