FREAKS

by Hart, Callie

  To the side of her, Sadie smiled smugly down at the huge piece of glass she’d obviously just driven into Sera’s stomach.

  “This is how she did it to my father,” she said, addressing me. “I could have used the knife, but this seemed more fitting. A shard of glass for a shard of glass.”

  Sera’s eyes found mine. Her lips were parted and flecked with blood. She licked them, and the blood transferred to her tongue. She was so, so still, but she was panicking, I could tell. “Do not pull that out,” I told her. “Look at me. Sera, look at me. Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.”

  “Tut tut, Father Marcosa. You really shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep,” Sadie said in a sing-song voice. “Little Sera Lafferty only has about half an hour to live. Stomach wounds aren’t very practical if you want someone to die quickly. I don’t mind waiting a while, though.”

  What the fuck did the woman think was going to happen right now? Did she really think I was going to let her live long enough to see Sera draw her last breath? No fucking way. A ruthless growl built at the back of my throat as I crossed the small bathroom and I took hold of the woman by the throat. “You’re insane,” I snarled. “You’ve accomplished nothing here. You’re going to fucking die, and we’re going to forget all about you.”

  I slammed her into the tiled wall. Her feet were five inches off the ground, the heels of her boots kicking and scraping at the patterned ceramic tile as she fought for purchase. I wasn’t going to let her have it. She’d dared to hurt Sera. She’d been hurting her for weeks, and I wasn’t going to fucking let her do it anymore. Sadie’s face turned a brilliant shade of red as I closed my fist tighter around her neck, digging my fingers into her throat.

  “Fix.”

  I immediately responded to the sound of Sera’s voice, turning my attention to her. The bloodlust that had taken hold of me was powerful, but it wasn’t powerful enough to drown her out. Nothing would ever be that powerful. “Please,” she said. “Just let her go. Take me to the hospital.”

  “I can’t. After everything she’s done to you…”

  Sera’s face was sheet-white as she reached out and placed her hand on my bicep. “All of those people who hired you came to you, begging for you to deliver them vengeance. I’m begging for you to have mercy. She’s already suffered enough. We should let the police deal with her. I just… I just want this to be over.”

  I stared into her eyes, wondering how I’d ever come across anyone capable of such compassion. I’d forgotten what compassion was altogether. Had no clue what it even fucking looked like.

  Just fucking kill her. Snap her neck. Get it over with.

  The voice inside my head, urging me to handle the situation with swift, brutal precision, was very persuasive. But when I looked at Sera and saw the resolved angle of her shoulders and the fiery determination in her eyes, I knew I would lose her. If I squeezed just that little bit harder, if I twisted my wrist, snapping the column of bone in Sadie’s neck, I wouldn’t just be breaking bone. I’d be breaking Sera’s trust. Showing her what to expect of me for the rest of our days together. Her entreaties would go unheard. I would always be cruel, hard, and brutal, leaving no room inside myself for anything that might resemble peace.

  She deserved more than that. Our life together had to be more than that. Slowly, I loosened my grip around Sadie’s neck, ignoring the twinge of frustration I felt when her rasping, spluttering gasps for breath eased. Oxygen was too precious to waste on her. She didn’t deserve one sip of the same air that Sera breathed.

  I dropped her, and she slumped to the ground, hacking and spluttering, rubbing at her neck. Her esophagus was going to be real fucking bruised, and I couldn’t muster up a single fuck to give. “You can’t hide behind your anonymity anymore, you deranged bitch. I swear to god and all things fucking holy, if you so much as think the name Sera Lafferty, I will fucking know about it, and I will come for you. I’ll find a hundred and one ways to cause you pain before I’m done with you, and she won’t be able to stop me next time.”

  I wrapped an arm around Sera. There wasn’t going to be a second to waste here. She was pale as death, her skin waxy, her brow beaded with sweat, and the pool of blood on the tile at her feet had grown uncomfortably large. I knew exactly where the nearest hospital was. I’d seen one in the cab on the way over here, about six or seven blocks away.

  “My car keys are on the hook in the kitchen,” Sera said. There was a worrying wet rattle in her lungs. The glass couldn’t have hit them, it was too far down for that, but whatever was happening in her chest didn’t sound good. I began to guide her out of the apartment. I couldn’t carry her. Lifting her would compress the wound, potentially causing untold damage. We’d almost made it to the front door, when the skin at the back of my neck prickled.

  Sadie was still weeping in the bathroom, right?

  Wrong.

  I pushed Sera out of the way as Sadie hurled herself down the hallway. In her hand was a knife, now—a seriously fucking sharp one. She swung her arm down, trying to dig the blade into Sera’s back. I reacted, ducking low, then brought my body up as I tackled her, lifting her off her feet and then slamming her down onto the floor.

  “You don’t get to show me mercy,” she screamed. “You think you have everyone so convinced. Sera, the little fucking goody two shoes. Sera, the benevolent. Sera, the kind. I know the fucking truth, you whore! You’re a fucking monster! I’ll never stop!” She kicked and spat as she fought, trying to rid herself of me as I pinned her to the floor. She clawed at my arms like a rabid dog, snarling and baring her teeth. “I will never stop, Sera. I won’t rest until you’re dead and rotting in the ground. You won’t know a moment’s peace. I will always find you, no matter where you go!”

  This was pure fucking madness. I understood Sera’s need to show compassion, but this woman wasn’t capable of appreciating it. She was mentally incapable of letting this thing go, whatever it was. “This can’t go on, Sera. She’s crazy,” I reasoned. “The only way to end this is to end her. If not, you’ll always be looking over your shoulder. We both will. I can live like that. I’ll tolerate it, if it makes you happy. But can you?”

  Sera swallowed as she looked down at her friend. A wave of unfettered emotion rolled across her pale face. “I need... Fuck, Felix, I need a moment to think.”

  SEVENTEEN

  ZETH

  So far, three ambulances had screeched up to the emergency entrance of St. Peter’s of Mercy Hospital, unloading their critical patients as I sat in my car staring at the building like it was the very gates of hell itself. Michael had been calling for the last hour, had left a number of messages for me on my burner, but I hadn't picked up, hadn't wanted to speak to the man directly. I’d gotten dressed at the warehouse. Put on my best tuxedo. Had even taken the time to polish my fucking shoes. But when I'd gotten into the Camaro, I hadn't headed towards the apartment where the party was being held.

  I’d somehow ended up here, parked outside the hospital. That seemed to be happening more and more recently. I liked to lie to myself. To tell myself that I didn't know why it happened, but I knew perfectly fucking well why I found myself parked here all the time. The woman I’d met in the downtown Marriott eighteen months ago had been on my mind ever since. Every goddamn day, she'd haunted my thoughts and my dreams like a goddamned ghost. Try as I might, I couldn't fucking shake her and I had really, really fucking tried.

  The cellphone I'd been using for the past two weeks lit up on the dashboard, letting me know that Michael was calling me yet again. I glared at the device with a kind of malevolence that sank down deep into my bones. He wasn't going to stop. Not until I picked up and answered him. The party that was taking place at the apartment on the other side of town was my party after all. I’d carefully handpicked and invited each and every guest. They were all waiting for me there. Expecting me to show my face at any moment. I knew how these things went, though. The Moet would already be flowing. Silver trays, filled w
ith party favors, were already being passed from hand to hand as the nights revelers sank into their debauchery. Usually I lived for these gatherings. They were an outlet for my pent-up aggression. A place for me to blow off some serious fucking steam. But ever since that night in the hotel with Sloane, my deviant little get-togethers were less and less appealing to me.

  The woman was a plague. A curse I had willingly invited upon myself. And now there was nothing I could do to break that damn curse. I’d tried everything. Blonde women. Redheads. Brunettes. Short girls. Fat girls. Tall girls. Three girls at the same fucking time. No matter what I did, no matter who I did, Sloane was always there, lurking at the back of my mind.

  I already knew I was going to go inside the hospital. The past three times I'd come here, I'd given in to my own weakness and stepped foot inside the building, pretending to be the loved one of a sick patient, or a delivery man. Once, I’d even impersonated a fucking doctor. I had watched her from the waiting room, from the hallway and from the canteen, always observing her from afar. I didn't know when I'd turned into the type of creepy motherfucker who would stalk a woman around the hallways of a hospital, but that's where I’d somehow ended up.

  As I climbed out of the Camaro, leaving my phone on the dashboard, a light rain began to fall. I hardly noticed the fine mist as it fell and clung to the material of the Tom Ford tux I'd donned for the evening’s frivolities. It rained so often in Seattle that the weather hardly registered with me at all anyway, but tonight sheet lightening could have been splintering the skies apart and I wouldn't have noticed the storm.

  I recognized the woman at the nurses’ station when I walked into the building. Her name was Gracie. She was a powerhouse. A force to be reckoned with, and Sloane seemed to rely on her whenever she was on shift to make sure her patients were being well cared for. Gracie looked up, her face a mask of professionalism as she picked up a tablet, ready to record whatever injury I had come to report.

  Most women flinched when they made eye contact with me. It wasn't their fault. It was a natural reaction. Some innate sense of self-preservation within them, screaming at them to run away and hide. Gracie didn't flinch. “How can I help you this evening, sir?" she asked. Her index finger hovered over the tablet, ready to take down my details.

  "Got a serious headache,” I told her gruffly. “Had it for three days now."

  I’d learned a long time ago that I couldn't report anything more serious than a minor injury. If I said I had chest pain, I'd be bumped to the top of her list and a doctor would be with me within ten minutes. I didn't want that. I wanted to sit in the waiting room. I wanted to sit here for hours. I wanted to be forgotten about, until I became a piece of the furniture, and the nurses’, and the doctors’, and the porters’ gazes skipped over me. That was the key. If I wanted to go unnoticed as I wandered the halls of St. Peter's, I had to be seriously fucking unimportant.

  Gracie gave me a tight-lipped smile, raising her eyebrows. "Do you get headaches often?"

  "Sometimes."

  “And have you taken any pain relief?"

  I gave her a bored, lazy smile. "Just some Advil.”

  Two small lines formed between her brows. Gracie fucking hated me. Tonight was a busy night at St. Peter's of Mercy. With the three triage patients that had been rushed in here earlier, all of the doctors were busy. All of the nurses, too. She didn't have time to deal with some idiot dressed in a tux, complaining of a fucking headache.

  “Okay, sir. If you can fill out your information here and then take a seat, I'll have someone with you as soon as I can." As soon as she could meant about two to three hours, given my past experiences here, and that was just fine by me. I took the tablet from her and began to fill out my information, providing my name and my address—all bullshit—and then I supplied a very bland medical history and family background at the bottom. Handing back the tablet, I went and took a seat.

  Mothers bounced screaming, red-faced children on their knees in every direction I looked. A guy with a pretty serious looking gash on his shin argued with someone on his phone. In the corner, by the vending machine, an old woman sat in a wheelchair, staring blankly at the opposite wall. Of all the people gathered in the waiting room I was probably the least significant. Perfect. An hour slipped by. Occasionally, the double doors would open and a doctor would appear, calling somebody's name. A name that was never mine. Every time I caught sight of blue scrubs, my heart seized in my chest, the oxygen burning in my lungs, but it was never her. It was never Sloane.

  They didn’t change the codes on the security key pads here at St. Peter's. Michael had given me a list of them after I’d tasked him with obtaining the information, and he hadn’t asked why. I knew the layout of the hospital like the back of my hand now. The blue prints were online, a matter of public record, but I'd also spent plenty of time hovering outside the labs, or X-ray, or the CT department. I knew precisely where a patient would be sent if they needed an MRI, and I knew how to get to the ICU. I knew where the fucking morgue was, for that matter.

  At ten-thirty, an hour and a half after I'd arrived at the hospital, Gracie took her break. I used the change in staff to my advantage, getting to my feet, pretending to head toward the bathroom. Yeah, like anyone would actually, willingly use the bathroom in an E.R. waiting room. If you weren't fucking sick before you used the john in a place like this, you were going to be violently ill by the time you had.

  I breathed through my mouth as I cut across the waiting room. Everything smelled like bleach and disinfectant here.

  Bleach.

  Disinfectant.

  And death.

  No one made a peep as I made my way over to the double doors, entered the code, and opened them. In the hallway beyond, I ducked my head, walking with purpose past a row of examination cubicles. There were people everywhere. I sidestepped around a woman with a tear-streaked face, clutching a small, red jacket to her chest. A child's jacket. While millions of people were going about their lives in the city of Seattle tonight, this woman was stuck here in this cold, sterile place, praying to god that her son or daughter would make it to see the dawn.

  Pretty fucked up.

  Working for Charlie had equipped me with a set of skills that I put to good use as I wound my way through the rabbit warren of hallways and corridors. My body was a weapon, a finely tuned instrument, primed to detect one thing, and one thing alone: Sloane Romera. I constantly scanned my surroundings, using my peripherals, searching for any sign of the woman. She wasn't tending to patients in any of the triage bays. She wasn't updating patient records at any of the computer stations. She wasn't in x-ray, and she wasn't outside the labs waiting for results, either. Maybe I'd remembered her schedule wrong. Maybe she'd taken the night off.

  Maybe she was sick.

  I railed against the unease that settled over me at that thought. If Sloane was sick and she was at home laid up in her bed… If we hadn't met under such strange circumstances… If I were any kind of normal man, and I had pursued her in any kind of normal way, I would've been able to go to her, take care of her, make sure she was okay. I knew perfectly fucking well where she lived. Her pretty little house perched up on the side of the mountain overlooking the city was out of the way, though. I couldn't just drive by pretending to be lost or visiting another property. If she heard a vehicle winding its way up the road towards her place, she’d be ready and waiting for it by the time it reached the driveway.

  I broke into a cold fucking sweat whenever thoughts like this occurred to me. I shouldn't be fucking thinking them. If Sloane was sick, the very best thing I could do was stay the fuck away from her. Her life was complicated enough, and my life didn't exactly allow for personal connections of any kind. If Charlie knew I occupied my days and nights with thoughts of a woman, he’d use the information to his advantage. She would become collateral in a twisted game he and I had been playing for many years. And that I could not allow.

  By the time I’d scoured the lower floor of t
he hospital, I'd given up on the hope that I was going to see her tonight. Wherever she was, she wasn't here. But then—

  I paused.

  Stopped altogether.

  My stomach slowly twisted itself into a knot. There she was, standing next to a public payphone, leaning against a wall, talking to another doctor. Her long brown hair was intricately braided around the side of her head and twisted at the nape of her neck. Her cheeks were marked with a high flush of color, and her dark eyes were bright, and shone with excitement as she talked to the man standing opposite her. I knew the guy. I'd done my research on the fucker when I realized how much time he spent with Sloane. Dr. Oliver Massey was a walking advertisement for clean living. A spoiled rich boy whose father had invented some sort of cardiovascular surgical equipment that had made his family millions. With the allowance his parents gave him every month, the arrogant bastard certain didn't need to work. And yet here he was every day, hanging around Sloane like a bad smell.

  After so many years working for Charlie, I’d lost the capability to really feel anything strongly. It was better that way. No guilt, no remorse, no shame. But when I looked at Oliver Massey's smiling face as he chatted so casually with a woman I couldn't even fucking say hello to, I was filled with a very strong emotion indeed. I hated Oliver Massey. I seriously, seriously fucking hated the man.

  Sloane grinned, and then took a sip from a takeaway coffee cup in her hand. "I can't believe he made it," she said. “When he tanked for the third time, I was sure we’d lost him.”

  “Just goes to show, you never can tell,” he said. “Makes you wonder how many more flatlines would survive if we kept working on them. A couple more minutes of compressions. Another shot of Epi. Maybe more people would revive if we didn't have to call time of death so soon. Twelve minutes is nothing. I read in a journal last week about a guy who was brought back after forty-eight minutes. Forty-eight.”