by K. C. Hamby
I ignore her.
“Give me the girl,” I tell the man and let my eyes flash.
“And what, you’ll let me live?” he jokes and rolls his eyes. “Right.”
“Oh, you should slit his throat nice and slow for that,” the Monster comments, glaring at the man with pure evil radiating from her posture. As if she’s about to pounce on her own.
Could she?
She seems to notice the doubt I have about my reality, because she waggles her brows at me before winking.
Focus, Fal, I tell myself.
“No. You’ll die either way. I just think it would be nice if you didn’t get your blood on Charlotte.”
I think my remark is funny, and the Monster’s cackle says she does too, but Charlotte’s fear-stricken gaze tells me she doesn’t.
“Oh, for fucks sake.” The man grits his teeth and tightens his grip on her arm. It was already tight. It’s surely hurting Charlotte now. “If you want her so bad, go get her.”
I take half a breath.
A choke dies in my throat, lungs stuttering.
Because, in one quick moment, he throws the girl over the cliff.
Chapter 59
Falen
I’ve been here before.
All I see is Nathan’s fear as he fell from the top of that building.
All that burns in my chest is utter helplessness.
But I’m not helpless.
Not anymore.
“What the hell are you doing!?” the Monster screams as I run full out and swan dive headfirst off the edge of the cliff.
Charlotte screams as she plummets, and I Move close enough to wrap her in my arms. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to slow us down even with Moving. Our momentum will travel with us and, if I Move us to land, it could kill us both with the impact.
But I must do something. And fast.
“Hold on to me!” I scream and Charlotte grips me as tightly as her little hands will allow. I wrap myself around her and flip us, so my back is toward the ocean.
I Move closer to the shore and we land hard into the black water.
Ice cracking all along my ribs as my body takes the brunt of the blow knocks the wind from my chest. I groan, forgetting I’m in the goddamn water, and choke as the salty liquid floods down my throat.
I’m so dazed from the impact, I don’t move.
The water is surprisingly clear to me when I open my eyes. I can make out every particle, every small detail in the dark, watery world we have landed in.
We begin to sink as darkness closes in.
Charlotte yanks on my clothes frantically and beats my chest with her little fists and I open my eyes once more.
I didn’t know I closed them.
With a painful thought, I Move to the shore and we land in the wet sand. I cough up mouthfuls of saltwater burning my trachea as if I inhaled acid.
Once I’ve gotten my wits about me, I look over at Charlotte a few feet away.
When I blink, it’s not an alive, ocean-drenched little girl I see. No. Charlotte is on the sand in front of me, but blood covers her little throat.
My breaths quicken. When could this have happened? She was with me the majority of the fall and she wasn’t cut when I reached her…
Wait. No. It’s not Charlotte at all. It’s…
Little blood droplets stain the sand, leading from the body to where I am crouched on the ground.
Black hair and tanned skin…
“You see it, don’t you?” is growled in my ear. I turn and the Monster is crouched beside me, eyes full of loathing but mouth set firm. She gestures to the blood. “Those spatters of blood drops on the sand lead to something terrible you’ve done.”
The body…
It’s Nathan.
My mouth falls open. I didn’t do that. I didn’t hurt Nathan. I wouldn’t…would I?
I close my eyes and shake my head.
“Oh, go ahead, close your eyes. Shield yourself from the horror of it all,” she snaps, and I grit my teeth against the urge to plunge my knife in her throat. “Hold on, what’s that? Look at your hands. The ones you are holding over your eyes. Do it!”
Her snarl startles me into dropping my hands from my face and I look down at them as they lie on top of the damp sand.
My skin is stained red with dark blood.
“That’s blood on your hands. Who did you kill? Who did you hurt this time?” the Monster asks, brushing wet hair away from my face tenderly as a mother should before she gestures toward Nathan. “I bet it was him.”
“I…I didn’t…” I whisper, to…myself I suppose. The Monster isn’t really here, right? “Surely, I didn’t do that to…”
I look over to the still little boy I love so much, cringing against every painful breath I thought was caused by broken ribs. Now I’m starting to think it’s from my broken spirit; my entire soul has finally shattered into small, sharp pieces.
“This is what happens if you keep pushing me away, you know. I will take over and I will wreak havoc on your life. I will kill and I will show no mercy. I am truly a petty, spiteful bitch,” the Monster cackles as I crawl toward Nathan. “Go ahead, follow those blood drops into the darkness you’ve created with the blood of your actions. Let it consume you. That’s where you belong, after all. In the dark with your life-stained hands and your black smoke soul. This is pain you have caused with your idiocy.”
When I manage to drag my sorry ass close enough, my sticky, red hand pushes Nathan’s black hair from his too-white face.
He’s too still.
He’s too bloody.
His gray eyes are too lifeless. The air in my lungs chokes me with this reality.
How could I have done this? How could I be such a monster?
“You’re suffocating inside yourself, Falen. You’re suffocating and I am the oxygen you need to live. You’ll choke on your suffering without me. You’ll come up for air, but you’ll be met with the blood you’ve tried to wash away. It will shove itself down your throat and straight into your own destruction,” the Monster purrs in my ear like a lover.
I cringe away from her haunting voice and seal my eyes shut. I wouldn’t do this. I wouldn’t hurt a child. I wouldn’t kill a child.
I would never hurt Nathan.
Nathan who was like my little brother. Nathan who was taken away from me by…
The Monster must be lying. I’m not who she says I am. I’m not.
I refuse.
“No!” I scream as I open my eyes. “You’re wrong.” My snarl cuts through the Monster and her smile falters. “Get the fuck away from me, you evil piece of shit. I didn’t do this. Nathan was taken from me by that vile bastard, Damien, and there is nothing you can say to make me think otherwise.” I’m panting now, anger crawling up my throat. “Losing Nathan is still goddamn painful, and I go over how I could have changed something that would have kept him alive all the time. But I. Didn’t. Kill. Him.”
The Monster stands, staring down her nose at me. Fury is clear in her darkened eyes.
“I loved him,” I whisper, balling my fists hard at my sides and staring a hole in the sand.
When I look up back up, the Monster is gone.
Nathan coughs beneath me and I gasp, crawling back to his side.
Wait. Not Nathan. Nathan is gone. This is Charlotte.
Charlotte. The little girl I just saved.
I help roll her over and pat her back to expel the excess water from her small lungs. There is no blood in sight.
She’s not dead, either.
I didn’t kill her. I saved her.
“Are you alright?” I ask, my voice rough from nearly drowning and sparring with the Monster. When I breathe, razors scrape against my insides. Definitely broken ribs and not just my shattered soul.
I take another breath and want to punch a brick wall. A lot of broken ribs, then. When I try to take another breath, it’s horrible tightness spreading like icy hot ointment coating my lungs and tainting the
very oxygen I breathe. If I could even call what I’m doing breathing. I barely inhale because it burns when my diaphragm expands, so my breaths are small. I can almost feel the broken pieces of my mangled ribs stabbing at my insides.
And I’m not healing at all.
Charlotte nods her head, wiping water from her dark eyes. “That was so weird. Are you a superhero?” Her lips are smiling and hopeful when she turns to me.
“Uh, something like that, I guess.” I bite my lip and look away from her. “Tell me, are you the only kid that was in the house you escaped from?”
“Yes. He said I wouldn’t be for long, though. He said he was going to get me a sister. He was so scary and kept me tied up in a closet.”
“How did you get away?”
She plays with the sand, now refusing to look at me.
“Charlotte?” I press.
“Well, there was a jacket in the closet with a knife in the pocket. Mommy always told me not to play with knives, but I thought she wouldn’t be mad if I did this one time.” She smiles up at me, shyly proud of herself.
“Good girl,” I tell her and push her wet hair out of her eyes, pride swelling in me as well. She’s a fighter, that’s for damn sure. “What’s say I take you home?”
“Please. Are we gonna poof again?”
“Poof?” Oh, my Moving. “Oh, uh, yeah, if that is okay with you.”
She nods and the movement is almost frantic. “Yes!” she squeals, jumping in my arms, and holds on super tight.
I keep in a moan of pain and instead roughly chuckle and Move, letting instinct take us.
We land on the porch of a cute little blue house on a dark street. All the lights are on and two people, a man and a woman, pace frantically in the kitchen.
“Here we are. I think your parents will be so happy to see you,” I whisper and place her gently on the white-painted porch.
“Are you not going to stay?” Her little face is disappointed, and the frown pulls at my heart strings.
Not going to lie, it makes my chest all warm and fuzzy like a soft idiot.
“I can’t. I have to go do superhero stuff and make sure that guy never hurts any little girls again.”
After a sigh of reluctant understanding, she slams into my legs and squeezes me tight. “Thank you, Shadow Lady. I won’t forget you.”
I pat her head softly and smile a little. “I’ll never forget you either, Charlotte.”
I ring the doorbell, wave goodbye, and Move across the street to hide in the shadow of a tree before stupid tears have the audacity to roll down my cheeks.
The front door opens, and the pacing man walks out. “Charlotte? Oh, god. Mary! She’s here!” he screams and falls to his knees, pulling Charlotte into his arms and crying into her hair.
The woman runs out and falls beside them. “Charlotte, baby, thank god you’re safe.” The woman kisses her cheeks over and over again, looking at her like she’s memorizing every little detail about her face. “Why are you wet, honey?”
“I’m safe. The Shadow Lady saved me! But we had to fall into the ocean, first,” she tells them with bright eyes and rosy cheeks.
My own face heats in response.
The parents look around outside, searching for this mysterious Shadow Lady, but they don’t see me hidden carefully in the darkness.
Now that I know Charlotte is safe, I can go kill the fucker who kidnapped her.
“Goddammit, you fucking bitch!” the Monster shrieks and appears right in front of me.
Before I can retort or even take a startled step backward, she clocks me with her balled fist.
It hurts. It hurts just like a real person’s fist slams across my face.
My cheek shatters beneath her knuckles and I slam into the brick wall behind me, knocking my head on the hard surface. Her hands wrap around my throat and squeeze.
But she’s not real, right?
Then how the fuck did she just punch me?
How is she choking me?
“You will submit to me!” she screams and rears back to headbutt me. When her head connects with mine, it knocks the humanity back to the back of my mind and the Monster takes over. My ribs and cheek heal quickly with painful snaps.
I cannot have any imperfections in this body.
“That’s better,” I growl at myself and fix my jacket. That act of stupidity set me back a bit on my timeline. “Who knew children would be a weakness? Disgusting.”
With one last sigh at the weak part of me and her idiocy, I clench my jaw and Move back to the forest beside the cliff.
I have unfinished business to attend to. An ugly soul to snatch and send to its eternity of well-deserved torture. I wish I could get in on this eternal punishment myself.
I catch up with the man easily enough as he walks back to a little cottage in the middle of the forest of trees. He stomps through the foliage, snapping twigs into pieces as his big feet slam onto the ground with exceedingly more force than necessary.
Hm. Maybe I should meet him in his house, just to make sure that child wasn’t lying about being the only one he has captive.
I don’t trust children.
I Move into his surprisingly tidy living room and sit in a lone chair, but I do see the closet the child was held in. Sure enough, there is a small pocketknife on the ground inside beside frayed and cut rope.
I tune in to my surroundings. Not another beating heart other than the man’s within a mile at least.
So, the child was telling the truth. Interesting.
Hanging on the open closet door is a floor length mirror. It catches my attention seemingly placed there just for me. It points in my direction, showing all the darkness on the outside as I have writhing on the inside of myself.
Instead of admiring my eternal beauty, I frown. The malice in my eyes…
I’m not so sure I’m quite fond of my reflection at the moment.
“At least I got rid of any witnesses. There is no way in hell those two survived that fall,” the man grumbles to himself as he opens and slams the front door closed, rubbing at the stubble spiking out of the skin of his cheeks and chin. “Surely eaten up by the waves by now. But I gotta go find another kid. All thanks to that fucking bitch.”
“How rude,” I snip and stand with my hands haphazardly placing themselves on my hips. “I thought we were friends.”
The man yelps, backing into the front door, looking up with fear on his horrid face. “How the hell…” He reaches in the drawer of a table placed thoughtfully beside the entrance; something to catch keys and other annoyances like pocket change.
But by the scrape of the metal against the bottom of the drawer, he’s not trying to give me a cheap tip.
“Oh, for shit’s sake,” I groan and Move right in front of him, catching the top of the barrel of the handgun in my hard-gripped palm as he raises it to aim. The action pops the bullet out of the ejection slot and my thumb presses the magazine release, emptying the gun of every shot this fucking fool could have attempted to shoot at me. “Let’s skip the ‘how the hell did you get here’ bit. I’m bored of you already.”
He falls to the ground, reaching for the discarded magazine full of unspent bullets as if he could somehow use them without the gun I throw across the room.
I roll my eyes at his sudden fear. He should have heeded me earlier, but vile men must always underestimate women who are magnanimously more powerful than themselves.
“Let’s just get straight to the bloody soul snatching,” I announce. I pull the rod from my jacket and twirl it, making it turn into a double-bladed sword with only a thought. I twist and sling the weapon toward the man, letting one of the blades hit him directly in the throat.
His blood splatters onto my face and I laugh to myself as he falls to the ground, gurgling and choking on his own blood. His suffering is delightful and sings a beautiful song in my own blood.
I catch my reflection in that mirror again.
My smile drops as I cringe at myself. What is this
heavy feeling in my throat?
Am I disgusted?
I roar at my reflection and stomp to the offending mirror. My fist breaks the glass into thousands of pieces, cutting up my knuckles. Blood drips from my skin onto the broken pieces of myself before the gashes heal completely. As if they were never there.
I stupidly let that lingering weakness touch me for a moment.
I bite the inside of my cheek and shake my head at my foolish reaction as I walk back over to the bloody fuckhead dying on the floor.
“O thánatos sas ischyrízetai, you piece of shit,” I snarl at the man, squatting to shove my open hand into his chest. I grasp the pathetic soul within and yank it from its host in one swift movement.
His blood hasn’t stopped leaking from the canyon in his neck before I’m Moving his soul down to Charon.
Chapter 60
Edelina
My fingers dance over the strings of my acoustic guitar with gentle smoothness, nothing at all like the emotions raging within me.
“Rage is a fire.
It’s a burning corruption.
What a horrible fever.
A luminous destruction…”
I murmur to the tune I created earlier in my head. I think I may have the beginnings of a new song.
“Eddie,” Ashy calls from his place on the couch.
I don’t look up at him.
“Babe, come on.”
“Come on, what?” I snap but quickly sigh when his lips turn down at my outburst.
Ash hasn’t done anything but try to keep me from getting myself killed.
“Sorry, lad. I was just so close to bein’ rid of the wench.” I walk over after placing my guitar back on its stand and drop myself onto the couch, leaning my back into my Mannie’s strong chest. “She is the last demon I find I needtae face.”
“Would it help if you talked about it?”
“I dinnae. I’ve tried for so long to ignore the feelins’ that twit brings up in me. But as soon as I see her fuckin’ face, it’s like I never healed from anythin’.”
He pulls me in close and wraps his big arms around me. It’s okay if I want to talk about it. I’m safe and here with Ash. My safe space.