Chapter Seven
Meanwhile, in the treacherous streets of Razor City...
Dante followed the winding path through the shadows and back alleys of Razor City. His heart thumped. He wished he had a weapon. In the darkness behind an old, dilapidated tenement building, he knelt and searched the debris. He didn't find a knife or a gun, but he found a large, jagged rocked amongst the torn newspapers and trash. It would have to do.
He avoided the main streets, even in the city center. Marshals in scarlet suits patrolled, hassling the citizens who passed by or standing around in small groups, chatting and laughing. Even if the Marshals weren't behind his attack and the attack on the compound, he didn't think showing his face to them was wise. He'd seen them in action. He knew what they were really like now.
He needed to remember. If he could just remember...Part of him wanted to leave it all behind. He remembered just enough to know plenty of reasons why someone would want to kill him. He remembered enough to know exactly why there were many people who wanted to see him dead. His memories, the flashes of his life—they were horrible. Blood, misery--not his own misery. He'd been perfectly happy, but he'd caused so much unhappiness. He'd hurt and tormented so many people, and they all hated him for it. He didn't really blame him. He was beginning to hate himself.
His father's face, twisted and angry...The man in black in a dark alley with his hand raised to strike a killing blow...Petra...His mother. She'd been young and beautiful and sweet...His mother lying in a pool of blood...Elia...Blood...more blood. So, so much blood. A city of blood. A city of scarlet.
The flashes were coming fast and furious now. It was as though simply finding out his own name had broken the wall in his mind that had been keeping him from knowing himself. He didn't want to remember. He didn't want to know who he had been. He wanted to go back to Petra's fairy tale. He wanted to be a lost child. He wanted to feel the way he'd felt when he was with her. He wanted to be innocent. He wanted Grey to be real. He didn't want to know the truth. He didn't want to know all the things he'd done and the people he had hurt.
Suddenly, as though wishing them away had only drawn them closer, the memories crashed over him in a terrible, disorienting rush. He cried out and clutched his head, falling against the dirty alley wall. Then it was all back. Every ugly, horrific moment.
The war, the terrible, bloody civil war that had torn the country apart...the moment the government had been destroyed and everything had gone dark until the fires started and all hell broke loose...the fighting and looting in the streets...his father tearing through the city, crushing anyone who got in his way on his rise to power...innocents shot dead in the streets...children crying over their parents' dead bodies...himself accusing innocent men of treason and enjoying their fear as they faced a firing squad in the blood-soaked courtyard outside the King's mansion...so much blood, always blood everywhere...the Uprising spreading through the people like a silent, deadly predator, evidence of their influence appearing in every corner of the city...so many nights drinking...the women, the people he had hurt and humiliated...his father shouting at him, his eyes filled with rage and shame for the corrupted, wicked young man his son had become...his father, always his father who was willing to kill him himself if he had to...
He didn't want any of it. He begged to go back. He begged to be Grey again. Grey had been innocent. He hadn't known any of the horrors and the endless tiny evils that Dante knew so well. He'd been so desperate to remember who he was, but now that he did, he would give anything to go back. At least when he'd been Grey, he hadn't known what sort of person he truly was. There weren't any of these images, these hideous nightmares that were his entire world. When he was Grey, there had been only longing and fear, and there had been Petra.
The person he was--the person Dante was--was disgusting.
The flood subsided, but the pain did not. He groaned and straightened up. He pictured Petra's face. He'd cared for her. He'd genuinely cared for her, but he knew now that he hadn't known her at all. She'd lied and manipulated him. Everything she'd told him had been to keep him quiet and contained until she could use him to get back her family and friends--the ones who had been falsely accused. The ones who shouldn't even be locked up.
He pressed his hand to his forehead. He didn't know what Petra was. He wondered if he would have done the same. Yes, he certainly would have. Dante would have done much, much worse. He had done much, much worse. Those people she'd been so desperate to save, for whom she was willing to do anything, were in prison because of him and his people.
He couldn't really blame her for trying to use him to get them back.
Tears streaked down his cheeks. He took a hitching breath.
He knew everything now. And he knew Petra was the first person—the first thing--in his life that had made him feel safe and decent and loving since he'd lost his mother to Scarlet's city of blood. Even if it had been all a lie.