The Wretched and Divine {Black Veil Brides}

2 - New Year's Day

    I don’t know why I followed the young man with the cerulean eyes, but perhaps it was the hope I had seen in them.  All of my hope had disappeared, faith in life dwindling like the rain that poured into the gutters and cleaned the streets.  My brother had been all I had left and now he was splattered across my face, the deluge doing little to clean me of the red gore.  The hand that grabbed at my elbow was gentle to the touch and white as me, pallid skin shimmering like some sort of marble.  Perhaps I was only making these observations because if I allowed the crippling misery to overcome me, I would lose myself.

    “The way is long and hard, but we made a world outside of this one,” he called, “I can take you there tomorrow but we’ll stay at my parent’s home for the night.”

    I didn’t particularly care.  It took all I had to keep my feet moving.  Emptiness and numbness was enough to dull the quaking, debilitating anguish that threatened to spill over and wash away any sanity left in me.  I could still see Antonius, bright hazel eyes and dark locks even as the bullet passed through his head.  As soon as it had, I recalled the explosion of vermillion liquid as it rushed at me and then the thump that reminded me of Antonius’s demise.  The guard behind him had laughed even as the blood curdling scream ripped up my throat and as my knees failed me.  He had guffawed at my misery, taking no pity upon any citizen he saw as low born.  I was not a member of the church, not worth protecting or showing mercy to. 

    The anger blistered inside of me as I had looked up at him, fingers curling so that perhaps I could rip the throat from his neck out for the world to chuckle at.  I wanted to make his eyes bleed and his laughter die.  He deserved every bit of my ire and hatred for scorning me in such a way.  When he had pointed the gun at my head, I was ready to die.  Before he would have pulled the trigger, I would have figured out a way to murder him before the eyes of every citizen in Faith. 

    What a moronic name for such a desolate place.  The evil that thought it up was quite cunning to call this pigsty anything but what it really was.  Faith.  Fuck Faith.

    The grin now creeping over my mouth was contorted from all the boiling vehemence filling me to the brim.  My eyes glazed over even as I followed this young man through the alleyways and around broken homes.  His feet were quick and silent while mine were blundering and noisy.  At least if any of the guardsmen found us, I would seek my revenge and tear their faces off to expose the human skull beneath.  They believed themselves above us, perhaps even more than human.  I would show them otherwise by spilling their blood in the streets.

    It was then, in that instant that I thought what I had, that we suddenly stopped.

    I nearly ran into the boy with the crystalline eyes, but he merely pulled me around him and held me still as he seemed to present me to someone.  All the blood in my veins ran cold as I began to wonder if he was a secret assassin, as there had been rumors, sent to capture me so I could hang on the wall.  Hatred heated my core for an instant before I saw the people standing before me and suddenly that all went up in steam, leaving me cold and guilty.

    “Jinxx,” Sixx stated softly, “She needs help.”

    There was a man standing before us with ebony hair and deep blue eyes, the color a shade darker than the person now holding me by the shoulders.  He was decked from head to toe in black, pale white skin standing out just as much as Sixx’s did even though he was notably a head shorter than the man behind me.  Jinxx tilted his head at me before taking a step forward and studying my face, hands tilting my head this way and that.  I blushed, heart still aching but not masking the fear and wonder I now felt. 

    “She’ll be a distraction with that red hair of hers,” Jinxx commented, but not to me.  I felt Sixx shrug.

    “She needed help.  Isn’t that what this is all about?” Sixx replied.  The man known as Jinxx seemed to concede, the two men staring at one another with an understanding.  I swallowed and nearly screamed at the two of them that I didn’t need help, that I didn’t need them.