by Ker Dukey
Sucking air through his teeth, he widens his eyes for a fraction. But then he shrugs. “I have no idea, angel.”
I’m stunned. I can’t understand his hesitance with the truth. “For God’s sake, please, just be honest with me. I’ve done everything you asked. I’ve played your silly game, and I’m here, I gave you me.”
He smiles, giving me a nod of acknowledgement. “I know, and I am being honest. I don’t know if your sister is alive. I do know that you were meant for me though. Coincidence bringing fate to realign us. We’re made from the same depths of hell. Me and you, Winter, were crafted in hell’s fire and forged with sin. Soul mates if you will.”
My jaw drops and all the air in my lungs leaves me in a sudden rush. “Oh my God,” I choke out, closing my eyes when it clicks. “You never took her.”
Slowly, he shakes his head. “No, I never had your sister.”
“So all this,” I gesture between us with a hand. “What the fuck is this?”
“Language!” he chastises.” This is what you made it, dear girl. You came for me, you rolled the dice and started to play, not me. I never said I had your sister, you just presumed.”
Hope and finality leaves me, and I swallow back the tears. “Then who the hell does? Where the hell is she?” I shout, feeling weak and hopeless.
He looks at me strangely. “You still don’t know? I thought you were clever, Winter Kelly. It’s such a disappointment to find that I’m wrong.”
Fury rips through me and I burst from the chair, screaming at him, but within seconds he has me trapped beneath him on the floor, his blade thrust into my throat. “Don’t be reckless, sweet angel.”
“What the hell do you want from me?” I scream at him. Devastation rocks me. I’m so close to death and I’ve failed. I’ve failed my sweet, beautiful sister. “Just kill me! Just fucking do it!”
I flinch when his fingers gently stroke across my cheekbone. “Shh, you’ll leave this world with your peace, my sweet Winter. I promise we both will, we’ll go together.” He licks at a stray tear slipping from my eye and shivers.
My teeth tremble and I hate that his eyes drop to watch the fear in me show itself to him. He doesn’t deserve it, yet I can’t stop it. I don’t care that I’m going to die, I don’t care whether it’s painful or, like he says, fucking peaceful. I don’t care if the hands from hell come and drag me down. All I care about is Summer. All her damn life people have let her down, everyone failing her, her own mother, the system, and now me. And that’s the fear that grows within me, the fear of failing her.
His smile is warm on my face. I know he can read my thoughts. “You haven’t failed her, Winter. Your sister would be proud to know exactly what you have done for her all your life. You saved her many times, even from the people that were supposed to protect her. There’s only ever been you in that girl’s life, and I can guarantee you that her thoughts will be on you in her last breaths as yours will be with her. You killed for her, stained your soul to protect her and the blood from that kill seeped into your very being and made you my dark angel.”
“Where is she?” I whisper. I pray with everything inside me that he will answer, that before I die he will grant me this one last request.
But the air stills around me when his eyes widen and a blank expression crosses his face. His mouth opens as a funny sound breaks from him. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth as my eyes slowly move to the blade that sticks from the side of his neck.
“No!” I scream when Cole pulls Angel from me. I scramble up, clawing at Angel’s face. “Tell me! Where? WHERE?”
“Win,” Cole soothes as he tries to pull me off but I wriggle free, clutching at Angel’s clothes.
“TELL ME!”
“Win!” Cole tries again. “Win, he’s dead. He’s dead.”
“You fucking fool!” I turn on him, my teeth bared with rage. “He doesn’t have her! He never did!”
He blanches, his face paling as he looks to a dead Angel and then back to me. “What?”
“He knew where she is! He knew!”
A desolate sob bursts from me, the despair bringing me to my knees. Dropping my face into my hands, I weep. It’s all over, there’s nothing left. There’s nothing to guide me to her. I was stupid, so damn fucking stupid. I should have followed all avenues, but instead I fixated on the one thing that was most plausible. Angel. Yet I had been taught to look for the unseen, to anticipate the unbelievable.
Scurrying over his body I pull the blade from his neck and try to cover the pulsing river of blood. The warm, sticky substance coats my hands as I plead with his dead eyes to come back. “No… No!”
I give in when I feel Cole’s arms wrap around me. I give in to the darkness, needing the serenity it provided to stop my mind from breaking. He was my only link…I needed to be the one to end him.
Summer…Summer. Oh God.
I wake in the hospital. Cole is by my side, his face dark with concern.
“Hey.” His voice is quiet, his eyes scanning my face for any hint of my emotions.
I manage a smile but it’s more than I expected, my heavy heart taking what little energy I have.
“You okay?”
I shrug. “Not really. Why am I here?” I ask, sitting up and swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
“More for my benefit than yours,” he sighs. “I just felt safer getting you checked over.”
“There wasn’t any need. He didn’t hurt me.”
I watch as he nods and draws his bottom lip into his mouth, biting at it nervously. “Win…”
“It’s not your fault,” I say with honesty. “I doubt he would have told me. It was all part of his game, the torment, the taunt. He probably didn’t even know, just enjoyed the reaction he got from me. Besides, he was too cryptic with what he said to be honest with me, if he’d known where she was he’d have taken great delight in telling me, watching my emotions destroy me.”
Disregarding me, Cole says, “They found the girl. She’s going to be okay. Thanks to you.”
I shake my head, reaching for my shoes which are perched on the floor beside the bed. Cole takes them from me and crouches at my feet, sliding one foot inside before tying the laces. “Thanks to Angel, not me,” I say, gaining a scowl from him.
“Bullshit. Angel was the whole reason she was there in the first place. It is thanks to you for finding the courage to go there.”
“I think he wanted me to find her alive.” I’m unsure why I know this but when Cole stares at me slightly perplexed I shrug and say no more on it. I was pleased something good came out of this.
“She’s fourteen, Win, and gets to live because of you, not him.”
I gulp down the sadness.
His hand settles on my cheek. “I was so fucking scared,” he whispers. “I thought…” Shaking his head angrily, he cuts himself off, refusing to allow his thoughts chance to develop.
“It’s okay, Cole.”
“But it’s not,” he argues. “I let you down before. I didn’t look out for you when you needed me, when you were young and vulnerable.”
“You got us out of there, Cole. We ended up with real parents. Don’t think anything before that could have been prevented by you.”
He sighs and swipes at a tear on my cheek I hadn’t known had fallen. “I wanted you to have a life, a childhood. I needed to let you go, let you live but I thought about you and checked up on you both,” he tells me with a frown marring his brow. “You were so young but so grown up, does that even make sense?”
“I had to grow up, Cole, Summer needed me to.”
“It wasn’t a sexual thing,” he quickly clarifies.
I exhale a little laugh even though there was nothing funny about this moment or anything at all. But he was worried about what I’d think of him caring for me way back then.
“I heard Angel saying shit but it wasn’t like that. It was purer than anything he could say or try to darken it. I didn’t want to fuck you back then, Win, I j
ust wanted to wrap you in my arms and keep you there safe. I felt an overwhelming need to protect you and love you in a way that no one ever had. It’s why I let you go, because I couldn’t do that without it being dissected and made dirty.”
I reach for his cheek and stroke the stubble growing there. “It’s okay, I know Cole, I know.”
A nurse walks in, breaking our moment. “Hey, honey. Here are some clean bandages for you to take home. Try and keep from getting them wet by putting a plastic bag over your hand when you shower. But apart from that, rest is all you need.”
I look down at the bandaged thumb and thank her.
Cole takes hold of my arm and guides me out of the hospital.
“Where are we going?” I ask mindlessly as I watch the blur of the world pass the window of his car.
“I’m taking you to get some things from your place and then taking you back to mine so I know you’re resting and not out there looking for Summer in places I can’t protect you.”
I want to burst into tears and scream until my lungs burn but I don’t, I bury the pain inside and wear a mask on my face to placate him.
We pull up and he quickly runs around to open my door like I’m broken and can’t even let myself out of the car. As I round the building, a girl crashes into me, sobbing. She quickly apologizes and then before I can walk around her she grabs at my arm, stopping me.
“You’re Winter, right?” she asks.
“What’s it to you?” I narrow my eyes on her in a defensive manner.
“I’ve seen you with Professor Young. You’re his girlfriend, right? I saw your picture at his place.” She shakes her head in disbelief. She barely looks sixteen.
“What the hell were you doing at his place?” I question.
“He invited me there.” She shakes her head and then reaches up to wrap her hand around her own neck, rubbing at a bruise there. “He made me do things,” she whispers on a cry. “Disgusting things to make up a grade.”
“Was degrading yourself really worth an A?” I spit, angry at them both.
“I didn’t want to do it, I was scared for my life, he’s a psycho!” she screams, pushing past me and running in the direction of campus.
“Win, that was harsh, she’s young and vulnerable…” Cole’s voice fades as I remember what he said to me at the hospital. “I let you down before. I didn’t look out for you when you needed me, when you were young and vulnerable.”
Young and vulnerable?
The words fester in my mind, Angel’s taunt echoing inside my head. ‘Every partner you choose tends to be into the young ones.’
My heart rate shifts slightly, my mouth drying as more of Angel’s riddles filter inside. ‘Do you ever think that subconsciously you are attracted to what psychologically disgusts you, Winter?’
“Oh my God.” I can’t breathe, my lungs struggling to exhale as my throat constricts. My eyes snap to Cole’s. “I know where she is!”
His car is here and there’s a light on but he doesn’t answer the door when Cole rings the bell. I slip my key into the lock but it doesn’t give, he must have had them changed.
“I’ll kick it in,” Cole offers but I tell him no and make out like I’m leaving just in case Jake is watching us.
“Drive down the road a little.” I tell Cole, “I know a way in through the back.”
“You’re not going in there alone, Win.”
I inhale an exhausted breath and squint at him. “I know, just shut up and drive.”
Coming up to the back window after walking up by foot, I use a pin from my hair to slide up through the crack in the wood and shimmy the latch. It’s something I’d done before when he was in a lecture and I’d locked my keys in his apartment. It was one of Mom’s old boyfriends who had showed me this before he robbed our neighbor.
The window gives and Cole smirks at me. Pushing the panel up, he lifts me by the waist so I can climb inside. I’m in his bedroom and images of being with him in here assault my mind and cause hate to build up towards myself. How could I be so blind?
Cole’s heavy frame is less graceful coming through the window and he lands on the floor with a plonk, quickly causing me to shush him.
Movement outside the room alerts me to the fact I wasn’t the only one who heard his heavy entrance. I sprint for the door, pushing through and tackling Jake’s fleeing form. Jumping on his back I scream at him to tell me where she is. He’s shirtless and stumbles from my attack.
“You crazy bitch!” he bellows, pushing me into a glass cabinet that smashes and rains glass down around us. But I don’t let go. I curl my body around his with all my strength. He forces himself back again, breaking the wood and causing a shard of glass to cut into me. I cry out but don’t let go.
Cole joins the scene, pointing his gun at us. “Stop fucking moving or I’ll shoot.”
He stills, breathing heavy and holding his hands up. “She’s a crazy ex,” he pants.
I reach for the shard of glass sticking out of my hip and bring it down into his shoulder, slicing my palm as I do but relishing in his cry of pain.
“Tell me where Summer is or the next one goes in your fucking neck!” I threaten.
He collapses to his knees and I relinquish my hold on him so I can stand above him.
“You were so fucking blind, Winter,” he spits, pulling the glass from his shoulder and wincing.
I grab his head and smash it down onto my knee, busting his nose and lip.
“Cunt!” he screams, bringing both of his hands to his face but crying out when the action pulls his wounded shoulder. “You were always too tough, too fucking dominating to ever give up true control.”
I smirk down at him. “You couldn’t handle true control, Jake.”
He spits blood at my feet and laughs, the blood coating his teeth and making him look sinister. “When I would hear you talking to her on the phone. Her sweet, pure laugh,” he croons.
I slap across his face causing him to laugh louder.
“Then when you would video chat with her and she’d be in her little pink, pony pyjamas.”
Memories flood my mind, nearly crippling me.
“She was a younger, purer version of you, and I stroked my cock to thoughts of defiling her.”
My fists rain down on him. “I’ll kill you!” I scream.
Cole’s strong arms pull me away from him and restrain me.
“What did you do with her?” I bellow as I struggle to get free.
“It was easy really.” He chokes, spitting more blood. “I lured her here by using your cell to text her, pretending to be you!”
“No.”
“I erased the call and turned your phone off while you fucking slept there, right next to me.”
My blood feels like acid in my veins.
“I know your pitiful life story, everything you did to protect her from predators. And all the time you fucked them and led them right to her,” he taunts. “I knew you’d go looking for a bad guy and the Angel killings were so perfect for me. I already knew about the website, a student of mine left her laptop open in class while on the site. Do you remember how we met?” He grins, the blood gurgling through his teeth making me gag.
“The girl who drowned?” I breathe.
“I thought I’d been caught that night but you were so easy to manipulate. You salivate at the thought of cock. All I had to do was flash the lust eyes at you and you ate up the accident theme I went with; the hero complex I came to realize you had a fucking wet pussy for.” He looks up at Cole and scoffs. “This him, Snowflake? The man who wouldn’t fuck you as a kid? Your hero?”
Cole shifts me to the side and takes a step forward with his gun still aimed at Jake. “What the fuck did you do to Summer?” he demands.
“Everything,” Jake replies.
A wretched cry rips from my chest.
“Her cries of pain were real, unlike yours, Snowflake. I could never get a real scream from you, could I?”
I pull free from Cole a
nd race to the bathroom to throw up. I can’t control the tremors ripping through my body. I’m going to die from the truth.
Looking around the bathroom realization crashes into me like a sledgehammer. His other bathroom that he keeps locked, the one he told me was being renovated.
I walk through the apartment, past Cole and Jake in a daze. Life doesn’t feel real, it’s like I’m dreaming.
Cole calls out my name but I don’t stop.
I grab one of Jake’s heavy swim trophies from a dresser - I’d mocked him so many times for keeping these on display considering he didn’t even swim anymore. My hand touches the door, laying my palm flat against the wood as if I can feel her pulse through it. Bringing the trophy down hard against the padlock it doesn’t yield. I attack the lock in a frenzy until the whole handle breaks away and the door gives, opening a little.
My heart hammers inside my chest to a point of bursting as I push the door further open.
Blood stains the tiles. Towels coated in blood lay in a heap on the floor.
And then I see her.
And my world collides with hell.
Summer has always been my favorite time of year, my mother must have known when naming me that I would seek out the sun. I craved the glow of its warm embrace on my face from as far back as I can remember.
I also worshiped the feel of sand between my toes, the damp, soft touch as the weight of my body shifts the sand beneath them, the tips of the crashing waves teasing me with the cold promise of what the water holds. I even love the smell of the sun lotion soaking into my skin, but my most favorite part of summer was that we always spent it together as a family and most of those days were spent at the beach. One of my favorite sounds in the whole world is the laughter of my big sister as she gives chase to me, scooping me up and spinning me around until we’re both dizzy, the breeze sweeping our hair up and curling it weightless in the air like a floating leaf in autumn. The world distorting with each rotation until it’s just us two in a whirlwind of innocence… Of joy.
Those are the memories I go to, I hold on to, with a grip so fierce it numbs the reality of what my body is actually going through.