A Girl in Red

39 | SAVING EVERYONE

SAVING EVERYONE

I spin around, knocking him off balance, and lunge like a feral cat. The world goes red with fury as I slam my fist into his body. I don't see him, I just see opportunity to fight. He becomes less than human in that moment. Less than dirt, he becomes space to put my anger. The scream that is let out is enough to show all my fury.

Where I am quick, Rory is quicker. My body is tired from the exhaustion of fighting him and he barely has to push me to the ground for anything me to keel over. I suck in a breath that brings nothing but pain. It only hurts more when I realize the sound coming from Rory is laughter — pure, thrilled, laughter. The knife returns cold and singing.

"I will kill you." I grunt out. "I will kill you."

"So you say," he smirks as he wipes the blood from the violence I just exuded. "And yet."

I am starting to go numb, "How could you do this to me?"

"Sorry that you thought I killed her, you do better with motivation." He whispers into my ear.

"How?" I question. "I saw the pictures, it was her!"

"There are seven people in this world that look identical to each other. They're not hard to find, trust me." He seems so happy, so thrilled at my confusion. "If you cut them up into pieces, no one really looks for too long, and I had her. It was easy."

"What was your plan?" I snap, "you could've just faced me all along, you could've just —"

"There's no fun when your prey doesn't run or put up a fight. I needed you desperate." His eyes...everything sways a little and I have to suck in a deep breath. "I needed you scared."

"Why did you do this?" I ask, again. I look on in shock. Why did he force us to go through months of grief? For Alana to go through all of this? I stare at Diana kneeling next to the bodies of Adonis and Harvey. I don't know if they're alive, I don't even remember them being taken down. Or do I? Everything is happening so quickly or maybe my mind can't catch up fully — it feels like I'm climbing through sludge.

"I just told you, are you even listening?" Rory scoffs but I don't even process this.

Alana and Diana see each other at the same time. They scream and each other for each other. I can see their chests heaving as their sobs escape them. I wished Rory and I loved each other like that. Instead we are full of anger and hate, instead every fiber of my being was beginning to burn with the urge to kill him. I watched as Lexi and Clary's chest rose up and down — they were still breathing. I could still save them, I could, I just needed to figure it out quickly. Alana and them could walk away from all of this.

At this point, protecting Alana overruled my rule to protect Rory. He has done too much, now. Some things even I could've found myself able to forgive but not this. Not this — our parents, dead, my traitorous friend, dead, and two others that were on death's doorstep. All of these reasons are more than enough to hate him but it is the pain I know he is going to bestow on Alana that breaks me. "She was alive all this time?"

"Mmm, I really thought Alana would be motivated to kill you but instead she fell in love with you." Rory hisses in my ear. "It really put a bump in my plans but I knew I could work with this."

"You -" my voice breaks, "you did all this when you could've just killed me."

"Killing you is no fun, this is fun, making you decide who lives and who dies like you did that night, is fun."