What the actual fuck? Jenna?
“I’m a little lost, Blake.”
“Jenna manipulated everything. She wants you to pay for her brother. She’s as crazy as you are and she or whoever the fuck she has killing for her may be heading here. I want you to come to the station and wait there.”
I end the call. Jenna.
The power cuts and all my killer senses spike. I rush to the bathroom still brandishing the knife I was using, and open the door just as Cereus is coming out to see what happened. I hear the front door open and I push her back inside the bathroom and warn her to lock the door and not open it for anyone but me. I lay my body flat against the wall and listen for the light footsteps tiptoeing around my apartment. How dare this cunt think she can kill me? I grip the knife tight in my fist and wait. I can hear her breathing; she’s right around the corner. I turn the corner straight into her and the blade slips into her skin like butter. Her gargle is music to my ears. Small hands drop against my chest and something heavy drops to the floor with a clank, a familiar scent explodes in my nose. The lights flick back on with the power and green shiny orbs search the dark depths of my own eyes. “Why?”
I lower her to the floor and watch all kinds of emotion play like a story in her eyes. The blood from the stomach wound covers my hand; I pull the knife free and put both my hands over the entry. I can feel her dying, her essence flowing from her, coating me in her soul.
Jenna is going to die for this; I need her to fucking die. “I’m sorry. You were supposed to be her.”
MY HEART IS GOING TO combust inside my chest. I’m outside his front door and the adrenaline pumping though my system isn’t enough to counteract the nervous fear crippling me. I need to confront this. I need to protect my family. I pull the gun from my purse and drop the purse to the floor. Trying the handle, it gives under my hand and clicks open. My pulse stampedes in my ears as I’m greeted with sudden darkness. I hear footfalls rush across the bare floors. I tiptoe my way inside, praying for the courage I need to get through this. I quietly creep up a small passage and just as I come to the end, the devil’s silhouette appears in front of me. My gun clatters to the floor when severe pain registers in my abdomen; my hands come up automatically to stop myself from falling. I’m gasping for air and tears build and fall from my eyes. I failed Blake and Cereus. I was foolish and reckless to come here and now he’s taken me from them. He finally finished the job. I gaze into the eyes of the man who my mother and father saw before their hearts stopped. He doesn’t look pleased or turned on by his victory; he looks almost shocked and . . . guilty? He lowers me to the floor and the words I never thought I would hear from him spill free from his lips. “I’m sorry, I thought you were her.”
He tugs at the thing in my stomach and I feel my life fading. Lights have come back on and they’re hurting my eyes and forcing me to close them. His hands leave my wound and the cold icy breath of death creeps over me, lacing me in fear and regrets. My mind is closing down with my body and I faintly hear Cereus crying, calling me Mommy and telling someone where we are. I think it’s a memory when another voice of a woman I don’t recognize joins her. “Your mother wasn’t part of the plan, but it was too perfect not to let it play out.” She laughs and I hear a struggle before the world disappears and the luring darkness absorbs me.
I LOOK DOWN AT THE red stains on my clothes. The soul that withered and died by my hands leaving its memory imprinted inside me was just that now; a reminiscence of a life I stole.
The rush of her depleting pulse didn’t feel as therapeutic as the others, she was different but I wasn’t. I still took her life.
“The blood is so red on my hands,” I murmur, holding them up to the light seeping through the curtains from a streetlight outside. The soft glow highlights the crimson painting my palms, the blood long since dried and sticky on my skin.
“It never bothered me before, but her blood was so . . . red. The warm flow trickled through my fingers as the knife buried into her flesh. I felt her life fade. For the first time I felt something other than the darkness. Something other than the satisfaction of the kill. I felt disappointment,” I whisper into the night, surprised by my own revelation.
“Ryan. Tell me why you’re here. What happened? Why do you have blood on you?”
I look up into the soft, worried eyes of my psychiatrist, Jenna. I came straight here using the key I had made from her set. I let myself in, making enough noise to alert her to an arrival, but not enough to call the police; not that it matters much anyway, she won’t get the chance now.