by Lucy Auburn
First Kill
Cain University 1
Lucy Auburn
Contents
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Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
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Also by Lucy Auburn
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Copyright 2019 Lucy Auburn.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Author’s Note
This book contains triggers for domestic violence, especially in the first two chapters. It also has blood and gore.
I'm Ellen Arizona, and I'm a murderer.
I know you've heard my name. They're all talking about what I've done. But no one really understands why I did it. And no one understands me.
Except for the other killers at Cain University.
The Cain graduate program for killers is the only safe place left for me. But it comes with a catch: leave, and the consequences are deadly.
I need to stay. I have powers to train, and someone to kill next: the man who murdered my mother in cold blood. To get him, though, I'll need to survive the first year program.
Easier said than done. Especially when I find out the four men I loathe, who hunted me and petitioned to kill me, are somehow connected to my powers. If we don't learn to get along, it could spell doom—for them and for me.
First Kill is a brand new university-age first in a series, similar to The Magicians and Villain Academy. It has blood, gore, mature scenes, laugh out loud comedy, and a reverse harem enemies-to-lovers romance that will scorch off the pages. For readers 18+ only; please read the trigger warning inside.
Chapter 1
It's true what they say: I killed a man. Cut him up, put the chunks in a couple of suitcases, and floated the whole mess downriver towards the sewer treatment plant.
Yeah, I know you've read the story, and that's me. Crazy Ellen Arizona. I'm a murderer. The kind who slides a blade into soft skin until it hits bone. I made a man die, and I have the bloodstains on my hands to prove it. My fingernails are caked half moons of dark red, each of them undeniable proof of what I've done.
It isn't like what they say on the news, though.
You have to believe me.
I'm a killer, yes, but a different sort from Jeffrey Dahmer and all the rest whose misdeeds have gone down in history. I'm not a cold-blooded killer. Or a cannibal. For one thing, I don't have the cooking skills. So that story about me taking his nasty bits and frying them for dinner wasn't true. They made that part up.
They made up the part where I'm an angry bitch, too. It wasn't about jealousy or revenge. I didn't even know about that other woman.
What I did was for me. Call it justice, if you like.
And I wasn't the first, or the only one, to take matters into my own hands.
If anything, what I did is humanity's oldest tradition. What's more: one day you'll be glad I'm around to do the dirty work you don't want to get your hands bloody over.
Wouldn't we all kill a jackass or two if we could?
I know I would—and did.
It all started with a boy.
The kind with soft hair long enough to flop in front of his eyes, and a wide smile that curves up on impish cheeks.
A boy who said my name with a stutter on his tongue and a flush on his cheeks. One who seemed shy and gentle, kind and easy. Mothers dreamed of him for their teenage girls, and teenage girls put pictures of boys just like him as their phone lockscreen: unthreatening boys, non-assuming boys, ones with soft hair and softer lips, who smile gently and croon in falsetto.
His name... well, everyone knows his name. They've all seen it on the nightly news, read the headlines splashed across social media, gossiped about it at work and with friends. He was named Jack Johnson.
Yes, like the singer of Banana Pancakes. He even made them for me once, after we moved into our brand new apartment off campus in college, which we went to together, close to the homes we both grew up in. As the batter simmered on the stove, he joked that he couldn't sing, but he could do this. He flipped a whole stack onto my plate, and I laughed and said that he couldn't cook either, because half the pancakes were burnt at the edges but still somehow soggy in the middle.
That was when he started in on me.
It wasn't the first time he'd gotten mad, but it was the first time I'd actually felt afraid of him. He towered over me, alone in our apartment far from anyone I knew, the handle of the pan he'd cooked in gripped in one angry hand, waves of heat still coming off of it. In a low, quiet voice he demanded, "What do you want from me, Ellen?"
I knew the question was rhetorical, but I had a smart mouth then. Even smarter now probably. "I want you to learn how to cook."
"You stupid bitch." It was the first time he ever called me that word, and it hurt more than I care to admit. "You think you're too good for me? You think you can do better? I'll show you."
My eyes flew to the pan, and I felt fear. But I told myself it was irrational. Jack wasn't like that. He was the boy who put bandages on my knees when I skinned them. The boy who told me I was the only one for him, and he hoped he was the only one for me. When I said I wanted to move out on my own, he said he'd make sure nothing ever happened to me, and that we'd live together—because it was better that way.
Things were always better his way. I learned that quickly, though it chafed on me. I've never liked being controlled, or enjoyed having every little word I say, every action I take, scrutinized relentlessly. Looking back, I don't know how I put up with it for so long, but I was like a frog in a pot of boiling water, unaware of the temperature change until it was too late.
And he was still so sweet.
He never stopped being that boy with the soft hair that flopped into his eyes sometimes. Every morning he made me c
offee—it just sometimes came with a side of cold shoulder or a still-warm bruise somewhere on my body. When he cried, he looked so sad and small, like he couldn't take what he'd done. So I would soothe him, not because he deserved it, but because I knew I could take what he'd done, even if he couldn't.
I didn't realize that things weren't getting better. My heart clung on to the good times, and I told myself that they made up for the bad. Eventually I craved the moments where he laughed with me and loved me so much that I felt parched for them in the times he treated me like dirt. The more he pushed me down, the more I needed him to pull me back up.
Then I got pregnant.
I felt it the day he came home late, boots stomping up the stairs to our apartment, fumbling for his keys. I knew that it wasn't going to be a good day. Even though I'd done everything I could to make him happy—cooked his favorite meal, lasagna and apple pie, gotten good news at my part-time job—he was already in a bad mood the moment he came through the door. When he saw the dinner I'd made, he started yelling that I was trying to make him fat, that I must hate him, that I had another guy at the gym I'd stopped going to because he hated when I went.
On and on the accusations went: he accused me of overlapping my schedule with his so that he wouldn't know when I came home late after "fucking around." Claimed that I had to think that he was stupid.
Then the neighbors knocked on the door.
"Be quiet, Ellen," he hissed at me, his eyes hard like diamonds. "You better not run your mouth in front of anybody."
"I don't run my—"
"Just shut the fuck up."
As he answered the door, I watched him turn into an entirely different person. Suddenly the affable boy I met when we were both teens returned. He asked the neighbors what the problem was, and when their eyes darted over his shoulder towards me, he stepped casually away to give them a better view instead of trying to hide me.
"We were just acting out a play," he said, like that was a thing we'd ever do. "Ellen works at a theater part time. Right Ellen?"
I did. It was an issue of contention with Jack, because it didn't pay enough, which meant he took on most of the bills—something I'd believed, before we moved in together, he would be okay with, because he was the one who chose the expensive apartment. I was wrong.
I knew that I needed help. But I also knew that the older couple standing in the hallway couldn't give it to me, and more than that, I knew I didn't want them to see my shame. The only thing worse than what Jack did to me was the thought of anyone else knowing.
"Jack is helping me practice for a piece I'm performing at a company cocktail party," I said, coming up with a lie faster than I'd thought possible. "Sorry if we disturbed you—we'll keep our voices down."
They didn't believe me. I could tell just by looking at them. But because they lived nice lives in nice bubbles, neither one of them knew what to do about the fact that I was lying to them. I could see the thoughts running through their heads: none of our business, and she didn't ask for help. They'd go back to their apartment next door, look up condos and townhomes with thick walls, and tell themselves they'd done all a reasonable person could be expected to do.
I don't blame them for what wound up happening later.
I blame him.
They left, and it was just me and Jack again, alone with our darkness.
"That was quite the story you pulled out of your pocket." His voice was casual, quiet even, and I knew it wasn't because he wanted to avoid letting the neighbors hear him a second time. "Seems you're even more practiced at lying than I realized. What else don't I know about you?"
I lifted my chin and stared him down. "You need to stop talking to me like that."
"This again." He viewed my objections to his treatment of me like some kind of childish rebellion. "It's time you learned your place, Ellen. You get into too much trouble thinking you know what's good for you. There's a reason why you're still stuck in that dead-end job going nowhere: you just. Don't. Listen."
"That doesn't make it okay to talk down to me." I heard the quaver in my own voice and clenched my hands into fists, impossibly angry at him for making me feel so small. "I want you to apologize."
"Apologize?"
I'd poked the bear. I knew it the instant he tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, and took a single stalking step towards me. This was a version of him I feared—and once this side of him was out, there was no making it go away.
"You're out of line, Ellen. First disappearing in the middle of the day to do God knows what. Then trying to feed me this shit." Reaching out, he swiped at the lasagna I'd cooked and pushed it off the kitchen island. I winced as the glass dish I'd baked it in crashed on the ground and shattered into dozens of pieces. I saved up for weeks to get that nice dish so I could cook Jack's favorite meal in something other than the cheap foil pans that ripped and tore; it felt like he broke it because he knew that.
This was when he laid down the law. When he went too far. "From now on you'll go nowhere unless I tell you to. Do nothing without asking my permission. You're going to quit that job of yours—it doesn't bring in enough money anyway, and I don't like what you do there."
"All I do there is work," I protested, which was a mistake.
"I know about those after work drinks." Face twisted in a snarl of rage, the soft boy I fell in love with gone, he advanced on me. "I know you went out with Tabitha—that loose slut. You have no reason to fraternize with her unless you're out whoring yourself to any guy who'll take you, just like her. That you would do that to me—that you would treat me that way—"
"It's not like that! We just got drinks."
"Shut. Up."
He slammed me against the wall, the speed and force of it shocking me down to my core. His strong, broad hands which once gently cupped the back of my head pinned my shoulders so I couldn't move. I struggled ineffectually, and saw how pleased he was that he had me at his mercy.
"You're so cruel to me," he said, in an ultimate moment of irony. "The way you lie straight to my face, the excuses you have for everything. You know that you lied to me about what you did Wednesday. You know I found out. But you still keep acting like it's all okay."
This close his eyes were wide and crazed. I found myself saying, "Your breath smells like cheap bourbon."
I goaded him. I know that I did. Maybe that makes me a bad person. Maybe that means what happened next was my fault. I couldn't keep my mouth shut, though, and look where it's gotten me. I always was too much to contain.
"You don't listen," he said, his hand moving across my shoulder and to the nape of my neck, "so I'll just have to show you what you're meant to do."
Putting pressure on my neck, he pressed down.
And down.
Until I couldn't breathe.
Being choked isn't like what they film in the movies. You don't go all stiff and still right away. I thrashed against him, clawing and scraping, straining for breaths that wouldn't come. My chest arched and heaved. Over and over I kicked him with my legs. He just pinned me with his strength, until even my lower body was immovable.
His dick was hard the whole time.
I felt it through his pants leg.
When I stopped struggling, because the oxygen was leaving my brain, and the blood wasn't flowing either, he relished the moment for as long as he dared. He didn't want to kill me—not yet. There were other plans, after all.
He had to murmur in my ear how much he loved me.
Then he told me all the things he was going to do to me—to my body—whether I liked it or not, whether I fought or didn't. That was when he decided I'd had enough.
"I like you this way." As he stepped back he said, "See? Everything is so nice when you do what I say. Stop running your mouth and our lives will get better.”
I coughed and choked. Each breath of air was like waking back up again. I was weak, but something grew in me that day. It was born in the late hours as I went to the bathroom, blood running down my thighs, m
y body rejecting even the tiniest bit of him inside me.
Looking at my neck in the mirror, bruises reddening to purple and green, I vowed that I would run my mouth for the rest of my life.
I would run it, and my anger, all the way through him until he couldn't get it up for anything anymore.
The next time he hit me, I hit back.
Chapter 2
Stabbing a man to death isn't like what they show in the movies. There's so much more resistance, bones and flesh between the knife and your target: his heart.
I'd tell you the argument that started it all, but the truth is that I don't remember. Life is funny that way—the big moments stick around, while all the little things that start the ball rolling just fall right out of our heads.
He was yelling at me. I remember that much. And I remember that in the middle of being mad about one thing, after beginning an argument about another, he suddenly started in on my mother.
I love my mother.
I barely saw her because of him.