The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

Most say Lucifer fell for his rebellion.

I say God’s favorite of all the angels fell in love.

Captivated, enthralled, consumed with the only woman he could never have.

The only woman to exist.

Adam’s first wife, Lilith.

He watched from the heavens, furious that Adam made her lesser. Refused to make her his equal, although they had been created from the same pit.

Oh, the fury that burned inside Lucifer when God punished Lilith for her rebellion against her husband, turning her into a demon.

And so, Lucifer fell.

Like lightning from the heavens, he fell.

So that he could raise the kingdom in the underworld. Carving a throne from the ashes of Hell, becoming a king.

Creating a home for Lilith. A place where he could make her more than an equal.

A place where he would make her his queen.

Chapter 1

rook – the past

Masochism.

Pleasure in being abused or dominated. A taste for suffering.

I always liked that definition—a taste for suffering. It’s almost poetic, and I didn’t know the Merriam-Webster dictionary could be anything but conventional.

While being dominated isn’t something I necessarily enjoy in the bedroom or in life, I can always get down with a little scratch-and-bite action. For me, at least, it’s less about domination and more about the hurting.

Some call it sadomasochism. That’s what I like.

You see, I really love pain.

God, it’s like the cure-all. The magic bullet. The ultimate escape.

The way bruises hover on my body and ache for days after. Sometimes I like to press them when they are still purple, just so I can remember where they came from, ya know?

I love the way pain explodes inside my skin, reminding me of all the things I deserve punishment for. The constant reminder that even on Earth, we must all pay for our sins.

Hell would be a walk in the park.

I practically ruled it.

“It’s all your fault, Rook.” His voice stings like coals against the soles of my feet. “The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion!”

“Then shouldn’t he hate you as much as he hates me?” I spit back.

A son is supposed to be his father’s proudest achievement. I am his reckoning.

The straightlaced, self-righteous lawyer had disappeared the fucking second he passed the threshold of this house. The tie had loosened, his hair disheveled from pacing, and I can smell his whiskey-coated breath as I walk away from the kitchen, headed to the front door.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me, you bastard!”

Sometimes it’s not even the physical pain I need. I enjoy verbal abuse; it bites into me just as deep, just as brutal, making my toes curl, my body light up with chill bumps. It’s the only time I feel normal.

And nothing has been normal since I was seven.

Before I was excommunicated from my own father.

My scalp burns as he curls his fingers into the back of my scalp, gripping my thick hair and jerking me back into his space. Damn, man, I should cut this mop.

The earlier Bible verse rubs my skin raw, blistering my bones. Violence done without the name of God is something hideous, but as long as you’re quoting scripture before beating your son, it’s alright.

It’s holy, the work of prophets.

If we were going by Dante’s rules, I’d fall just above my father, spending eternity in the river of boiling blood in the seventh circle of Hell, while he walks for eons in the pits of hell, dancing in the sixth ditch of Malebolge.

Was any of it true?

Did sins rank worse in the underworld? Different punishments given based on your crimes against humanity?

“Pulling fucking hair? What are we doing now—we in a bitch fight?” My words are simply fuel to the already raging fire inside of him.

I could fight him back when he tosses me to the ground, do more than catch myself as my palms dig into the wooden floor, keeping me from banging my head on the hard surface, but I don’t.

His wingtip shoe punches into my ribs, making me grunt at the abruptness of the discomfort. I roll to my back, breathing out with a grin and staring up at the ceiling, wondering if God is laughing the way I am right now, happy that the devil is being punished on earth.

My laugh comes out cold and breathless.

It’s amazing what you find funny when you’ve seen what I have. When you’ve been through what I have. Comedies featuring Seth Rogan and Will Ferrell just don’t do it for me anymore.

“You’re getting old,” I choke out. “I can barely feel these now. You should hit the gym.”

“Ah!” he yells loudly, charging down on top of me, both knees on either side of my chest, his fist connecting solidly with my face. I taste the blood from my split lip, the metallic sting warming my tongue. “I should just kill you! You should have died—it should have been you!”

Throbbing pain shoots through my skull as he grabs the front of my shirt, picking up my upper half from the ground only to toss me straight back down. Damn, that’s going to give me a headache.

Over and over again, he lifts me up just to sling me back down. I’m swimming in my head, stars dancing in the corners of my eyes. Another concussion added to the growing list of injuries received from the man who created me.

“Then do it! Kill me!” I shout in my haze, feeling every ounce of this. Drowning in it. Allowing it to submerge me completely.

I hear his heavy breathing when he stops shaking me, and I stare up at the man who once taught me how to throw a baseball, who would toss me up on his shoulders so I could see over crowds, a man who used to look at me with fatherly love.

Now all I see inside of his eyes is the bloodshot misery I put there. The anguish I gifted him. I’d killed the part of him that believed in happiness, in good, in everything light.

This is my land of atonement.

This is what makes the pain feel so fucking good.

Knowing I deserve it.

“I hate you.” He seethes. Spit flies from his tongue and smacks me on the face. “You’re nothing but the devil. You will pay for this, all your wickedness.”

There it is.

My darling nickname. His favorite for me.

The devil.

El diablo.

Lucifer.

I had been an angel once, when I was a kid, before I was cast out of the good graces and left to burn.

Church used to be somewhere I didn’t mind going. When my mother was alive, and we were all happy. Now I’d catch fire walking through the door.

We stay there, staring each other down with enough contempt and fury to power New York City during a goddamn apocalypse. Deep breathing and damning history that will never be washed cleaned from our memories.

I have taken the man who thinks logically and analytically, turned him into a brash, impulsive beast. I made him into an older version of myself, both of us caught in our own version of purgatory.

I’ve ruined my father.

And every day he makes me pay for that. With his hands, his words, his religion.

A blaring horn seems to snap him back to a bit of his sanity as I swallow, trying to shove the dryness down my throat. “Welcome to the club.”

I push his hands off me as he climbs off my body, leaving me lying there without a hand to help me up. Not like I thought he would assist me, but it was worth noting.

Even at seventeen, I stand taller than him as I rise to my feet. A couple of inches allows me to stare down at him, my hair falling in front of my eyes some. “At least have the balls to finish the fucking job next time.”

His shoulders heave as he takes breaths, coming back to reality. He stalks to the kitchen to grab the whiskey glass on the table, raising it to his lips and pouring it down his throat.

The irony of it all is that he grabs his Bible off the counter next to it.

“You think God is going to help you while you’re drowning your liver? Gluttony is pretty high up on his lists of what not to do.”

I might be a bastard, but at least I’m not a hypocrite.

Ignoring my statement completely, he states, “Don’t you question my faith, son. And I don’t want you hanging out with them anymore. Burning down that willow tree was the last straw, Rook. You have no idea the strings that needed to be pulled to clear you of that.”

I chuckle, grabbing my hoodie from the back of the couch. I pull it over my head, tugging it down my body. “Final straw. First straw. Doesn’t matter, man.” Turning to face him as I walk backwards, I spread my arms wide. “You can’t keep me from them. It’ll never happen. Just like I can’t keep you from polishing off that entire bottle tonight. Remember, I’m the devil. The devil does as he pleases.”

I don’t bother denying the tree. He knows I did it. Hell, everyone knows I did it. But without any proof, with no witnesses, there isn’t shit they can do, and that is the beauty of it all.

Walking around knowing everyone sees me as a chaotic arsonist, from the police to teachers—they all know what I am.

The Antichrist is what they call me. Pooled from the loins of Satan. Hell on planet Earth, or in this case, hell for Ponderosa Springs.

I love it.

How they clutch their rosary when I walk by. Whisper three Hail Marys because just glancing at me is a sin.

I love that they know all the things I’ve done and can do nothing to stop me. Not now, not ever.

There is no stopping me.

Stopping us.

And you know what? Fuck that tree.

He looks at me, dead eyes full of disgust. “You make me sick.” He grabs the neck of his whiskey bottle and walks away to the den, not speaking another word to me before I leave.

I tug the door open, slamming it behind me with a thud, not missing a beat as I walk down the driveway towards Alistair’s car. The tinted windows shield his hateful ass from me, but I already know there is a permanent scowl awaiting me behind the glass, even if he’s in a good mood.

Slipping into the passenger seat, I lean back into the headrest with a deep breath. There is a pause of silence, and I can feel Alistair staring at the side of my face.

“Is there something I can help you with, Caldwell?” I ask, still looking forward.

“Yeah, you have blood on your fucking chin. Clean that shit up.” He reaches into the glove box, tossing white napkins into my lap.

I take them easily, wiping at my chin. The red stains them almost immediately. Tomorrow, the cut will be nothing but a dull ache, and in a few days, I’ll probably peel the scab back just to feel it hurt all over again.

Unless he hits me again and splits it back open.

Either way.

“I spar with you almost every other day. You can hit him fucking back.”

Rubbing harder to make sure it’s all off, I respond, “I can handle it.”

He shakes his head, pulling out of the driveway and heading towards the Peak to meet up with the other guys. The last few days of summer are fading to black, senior year of high school slowly approaching, and I’m not looking forward to seeing so many faces.

I spend ninety percent of my time surrounded by the same four people, and I’d like to keep it that way.

I reach into my black jeans for my pack of Marlboro Reds and pull one stick from the pack.

“It’s not about you handling it. I’m aware you can take a punch. It’s the fucking principle, Rook. How are you just going to sit back while your dad beats the shit out of you?”

Balling up the napkin, tightening my fist around the material, and tossing it onto his floorboard, I lean back and shut my eyes. Out of habit, I flick the Zippo through my fingers, rolling it around a few times before striking the flint and putting the flame to the tip.

“How about you let me worry about my father, alright? I’m fine. One more year and we’ll be off at college, far, far away.” I inhale the smoke deep into the bottom of my lungs. “I’ve been dealing with this since I was a kid. I can do one more year. So just drop it, bro.”

An aggravated grunt fills the car before I watch him press his foot farther onto the accelerator, and I barely blink when we hit eighty-five and climbing. If we die in a crash, we die in a crash.

Everyone ends up in the same place at some point, six feet under. Doesn’t matter how we get there.

Ya see, we all feel the same way. Well, all of us except for Silas’s lovestruck ass.

Thatcher, Alistair, and I want out of this town so damn bad we would claw our way through barbed wire to get there. Even if it means dying. We will get out of this place. Each of us has different reasons, but it all comes down to the history that’s attached to us. The memories we can never escape here because this town is a coffin.

It suffocates you with your past, never letting you move on. Never letting you forget.

“I hate when you say ‘bro.’ It’s fucking annoying.”

I laugh, pulling my hood onto my head. “Yeah, well, I hate when you’re a grouchy asshole, but that’s not changing anytime soon.”

“Whatever, smartass.”

Music drowns out our voices as we tear down the road. Alistair has mad control issues, so until we reach our destination, I’m stuck listening to metal, which is fine every once in a while. But my ears start getting numb after the seventh guitar solo. For two people who are so close, our musical tastes couldn’t be more different.

My eyes find the pines that blur together outside of the window. We fall farther and farther away from the town limits. Just before we enter the next shitty small town, he hooks a right, taking us down a dirt path hidden between towers of trees.

I spot Thatcher’s and Silas’s vehicles as the sun falls beyond the horizon, already parked. We pull in next to them and get out, walking the rest of the way to the edge of the cliff.

The Peak is a small piece of land on the coast, overlooking the deep blue waves of Black Sands Cove, a small beach where locals spend most of their summer months. Our spot is secluded, overlooking those below us. It’s where we come to hang out most of the time because we don’t exactly enjoy being home.

It’s always better to just be away from our parents. Alone, with each other.

“RVD! Thank heavens, Thatcher is seconds away from torching his eyebrows off.”

Her voice is smooth, softer than any of ours, and it can only belong to Rosemary Donahue.

The rich girl with enough balls to be seen with us and the only person who calls me by my initials. The only person I know willing to risk her reputation for the guy she loves. A sister to all of us. She infiltrated our group before we even had time to realize there was an intruder amongst us. I look over to her in Silas’s lap, both of them sitting in a chair beside a circular stack of wood.

Her auburn hair catches the wind, hitting him in the face, but I know he doesn’t mind it.

“The lack of confidence in me is a bruise to my ego, Rosie,” Thatcher responds, holding a can of lighter fluid.

“Bullshit,” Silas scoffs. “There is no bruising that massive ego.”

Thatch is good at a lot of things—talking his way out of a mass murder, winning the hearts of millions, stabbing things—but starting fires is a little too messy for the clean freak.

“Take a seat, Thatch. We don’t need you ruining your hair.”

I receive a middle finger as I take the container from him, letting him walk past me to his seat. Placing my dart between my lips, I squirt the liquid in a circle around the wood, swirling it into the center, making sure each piece has fuel on it.

Excitement pools inside my stomach, knowing what’s coming in a matter of seconds.

Fire is a key element in my existence. Every strike of a match, every flick of a flame is a compulsion. There is no stopping it. I’m always thinking about it, dreaming, contemplating it.

The way some people are driven to kill others, obsessed with cleaning or locking their door eight times before bed, that twitchy itch in your hands—that’s what happens to me without it.

Fire is my flesh. My bones. It’s my home.

It’s my way of balancing myself out.

Getting the shit kicked out of me for punishment can be demeaning, but controlling one of the most unpredictable elements in nature, that’s an unruly amount of power.

Every single time it burns, I feel content. A warmth spreads across my chest, down my arms, all the way to my toes. It brings me back to a time of remembrance when my life wasn’t a rotting dumpster fire.

And I’ll spend the rest of my life chasing that high.

My pyromania is the drug and the cure.

I flick the cigarette into the center of the wood, watching the cherry connect with the lighter fluid. There it is, the spark that starts it all. A buzzing fills my head as it catches, combusting together until the flames reach higher and higher.

Every piece of wood is soaked with dark orange, the heat making my skin sweat as the flames reach right above my chest.

I could fucking come just staring at it. Thinking about the destruction it would bring to the town, the people inside of it, the capability of damage it holds. And in that moment, I feel like the only person who could control it.

I take my seat between Alistair and Thatcher, tilting my head back and shutting my eyes for a moment, listening to everyone else talk.

“Are you four going to be at the homecoming fundraiser before school starts this year?” Rosemary asks naively.

“Possibly,” Alistair answers. “Probably not in the way you’d like us to, but it is a possibility.”

I grin, knowing what we have planned for that stupid fucking fundraiser.

“Nothing too illegal, okay? I don’t feel like bailing my boyfriend out of jail.”

“As if we’d ever get caught,” Thatcher adds.

“Maybe you can join us this go around, Rose,” I add, joking obviously because of her overbearing boyfriend who happens to be my best friend. “Might be fun.”

I can practically hear his grip tighten around her waist and his teeth grind from across the crackling fire.

“Over my dead fucking body. She stays out of the shit we do when night falls in Ponderosa Springs,” Silas says.

“When night falls? Is this where we scoot in closer and tell ghost stories?”

“Fuck off, Rook. You know what I mean. She doesn’t need to get involved with that shit.”

“I can handle myself, you know, and like Rook said, it might be fun, babe,” Rose argues, and I just know Silas is going to ream my fucking ass later for even bringing it up, so I might as well keep it going.

“See? Let the girl live, Si.”

“Remind me why I’m friends with you again?”

Laughter resounds into the night from four of the closest people to me. Laughter is such a strange sound for me, something so normal and human. You’d never think we would be the kind of people capable of the things we’ve done, the things we would do.

We are bad people who do very bad things. Very well.

I sigh, tossing my hands behind my head. “Because you need me,” I say. “Who are we without each other?”

The question soaks into their skin. While all of us have our own secrets, ones that we’ll take to our grave, there is a mutual understanding that connects us. One that others would never comprehend.

A darkness, a hunger that lives inside each of us.

Separately, we are just kids born with tragedy leaking from our split veins.

Together, we are utter chaos.