“Hey,” he said, and when she turned to face him, her eyes were very far away. Frosted over like icy ponds. She held her bound hands in front of her and he saw that they were raw, bloodied. Sticky burns around her wrists that would scar, if she lived that long. And of course, she wouldn’t live that long. She was a woman already dead, only her body hadn’t caught up with her soul yet.
“Montessa,” he said softly, and her name filled his mouth like the best of his mother’s cooking, like a smooth stone, something like hope.
“Montessa,” he said again, and her eyes thawed. Refocused. Her hair stopped blowing in the Wind That Wasn’t and settled around her trembling shoulders again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and staggered. He grabbed her automatically by the ropes around her wrists, saw them dig into the wet oozing wound. The body liquid. Pus and despair produced by pain. He cursed and put his arm around her.
“Don’t collapse on me. I don’t feel like hauling you back to the truck.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and the strength in her body went. Lu guided her to the ground. Without him, she would have gone down like a gunshot victim.
“Tired? Hungry?”
“I just need a second.”
“Still my demanding little princess.”
Lu squatted beside her. Pulled the knife out of its sheath. Reflected it in the light, back and forth. Back and forth.
“Trying to scare me, Lu?”
He didn’t like this weak voice. It didn’t sound like her, like the girl he thought he knew.
“Are you scared?”
He didn’t like his voice, either. Angry. Maybe a touch of hurt under it all.
He growled.
Montessa smiled at him, briefly. Barely. The tiniest of smiles. The smallest curve of her split and dried lips.
“So angry. Nuclear Lulu. I told you that one day you’re going to blow.”
“What happened back there?”
“Mama always said I was special.”
She closed her eyes, looking perfectly and beautifully and horrifyingly dead. Lu held the knife far above her, tracing it over her veins and cheekbones. He mentally took it to her hair, removed her eyes.
Loss. He tasted it.
He pressed the blade against his pad of his index finger. So sweet. So sharp. His blood filled the line that it left, dripped onto the ground, which devoured it hungrily.
“My dad tried to kill me with this knife,” he said. He studied the red on it, wiped it clean on his cargo shorts. “When he found out what I was. What I could do. He called me a demon.”
Montessa opened her eyes. Watched him. Felt the importance in what he was saying. Recognized that he was sharing, and it hurt, and was frightening, and he was more than likely to kill her now than ever. Share, and then murder. Let yourself be vulnerable, and then erase all proof such a thing ever happened.
She hoped that when she went, it would be like releasing her soul to the butterflies. She wished for it fervently.
Lu stared at her. He grinned and his teeth looked very sharp.
“He would have called you a demon, too. A devil girl. He grew up in China and still has some of the old ideas.” He studied his knife again. “I wish he had just said I was special, like your mama told you.”
Her breathing had been fast, frantic, pushed up-tempo by fear and thoughts of her father and her jagged anticipation of Lu’s dagger. She tried to slow it. Thought of Lu as a young boy, as a teenager, as a person who was considered evil by his father.
“My father thought I was evil, too,” she said, and swallowed the words.
“Yeah? Did he try shamanic medicine? The priest? Try to exorcise the devil out of you? Beat it out?”
“He tried everything.”
Lu sighed.
“So did my dad. None of it worked. I was still…me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you being you.”
He bared his teeth at her. Maybe it was supposed to be a smile. Neither one of them was quite sure.
“You don’t know anything about me, Devil Girl.”
She closed her eyes again, still weak.
“I know that you’re you. And that’s enough. Your daddy couldn’t ask for more than that.”
He watched her. He touched his tongue to the steel of the dagger. He’d licked it clean before, so many times. Used it to butcher. Used it to eat meals. Used it to dig in the dirt a few times, although he was afraid it would damage the blade, the shining oracle he kept so nice and sharp.
“How many people have the knife that somebody tried to kill them with?” he asked her. And realized that he really cared. This knife, it was supposed to be an ugly thing. A thing of horror, but he had taken it from his father’s clenched fist and done something else with it. Made it work for him. Made it serve him. He stole the terror away from it by inflicting that terror on everybody else who saw it.
The other women. Montessa. She’d never be just another girl, now. He remembered her name, always would, he thought, and he seldom remembered names. They just weren’t important.
“This knife,” he said, and held it out so she could see it, if only she’d open her eyes. “This knife, it’s important. Important in a way that most things aren’t important. Does that make sense?”
“You reclaimed it,” she said, and the word sounded just right. Reclaimed. Taken back. Made his own.
“Yes,” Lu said, and his voice was proud. “I did.”
Her eyes were still closed, her voice tired.
“Is that why you like it so much? To get back at your father? To show him that he didn’t beat you?”
Lu scratched at his chin. Looked at the knife again and put it away. Studied his hands, which were long and elegant. Piano hands, his mother had said, but he had no talent with the piano. Or the violin. Or tailoring tuxedos, which is what his father did. But murder? Peeling skin, neatly and smoothly? Making the cuts neat and tidy, perfect in every way? That was a talent he did have. Something he could share with the world. Something he chose to.
“I don’t need to show him anything, anymore.”
“Why is that?”
Her voice sounded dreamy. Lu realized she was nearly asleep, and that wouldn’t do. Stay too long in one spot and somebody will inevitably stumble upon them. Wonder why the brunette was tied up. People tend to frown on bound women out in the wilderness.
“I won’t fall asleep,” she reassured him. “I’ll get up in just a minute for you. But the sky, it feels so good. The air. The trees. It isn’t like home at all. And that’s a good thing.” She sighed, a sound like contentment, but it couldn’t be. Not tied up here in the forest with the man who was going to sever her soul from her body.
Lu frowned.
“Stop worrying, Nuclear Lulu. Tell me about why you don’t have to prove anything to your dad anymore.”
He shrugged.
“He’s dead. Gone. Can’t hurt nobody no more.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She opened her eyes and he saw sincerity in them.
His smile, it was wolfish. His smile, it was sly.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m not sorry. I’m happy. Delighted, almost. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Dad was my first kill.”
Her gaze sharpened, clarified, and something moved in her eyes, then. Something with scales. Something that made him suck his breath in. His stomach twisted in the most painful and delicious of ways.
“You killed your father,” she said, and struggled to sit up. He let her do it herself, not wanting to pull on her bloodied wrists again. When she managed to sit, she put her face uncomfortably close to his.
“Tell me, Lu. Tell me all about it. Please? Please.”
There wasn’t anything he wanted to do more.
“We have a long drive ahead of us. Let’s go back to the truck and get started. Then I’ll tell you everything.”
She picked her way back, gingerly. He didn’t say anything else until the engine roared and made angry, roaring so
unds. The same sounds Lu had made in his throat when his father had lunged at him with the knife. The growl turned into something else, something primal and loud and unstoppable. A force of nature. A wildfire. He had wrenched the knife from the old man’s hand, making the blade white-hot, and the wrinkled skin had flamed and smoked and charred while the knife was thrust up, under his rib cage, and it was the most terrifying and exhilarating moment in Lu’s young life.
“I was free,” he said, and Montessa watched him with her quiet eyes. Lu realized that he had said “I was free” without any other preface, that maybe she needed to hear the entire story first, but he started with the part that mattered before anything else. And being free, that’s what mattered. More than anything. Most of all.
“I was free,” he said again, and nodded his head, because that was exactly right. Then he grinned at her, a breathtakingly beautiful grin, although he didn’t know this, of course. But Montessa’s throat closed and her heart shuddered in her chest at the easiness, at the joy, at the satisfaction of that grin. And that smile, those white teeth. That was the beginning of this for her. That was the second that she decided maybe she wanted to live, after all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Renan had favors. Lots of them. Things owed to him since before the dawn of time, it seemed, and this was the perfect time to call them all in.
Monty had been gone for over a week now. A week. No calls, nothing. And that wasn’t right, wasn’t what a woman was supposed to do for her man. He found himself seeking comfort wherever he could find it, cursing her name with each bump, each hit, each woman. She was selfish, making him worry. Running off and passing her little whore self around to any panting dog that looked at her. Laughing at him, he knew it. He just knew.
So he called in his favors. Had sets of eyes looking for her everywhere. If she used her credit card, if she showed up on any newsfeed, if she stuck her head out anywhere in the country, he’d find her. He’d drag her back, screaming, if he had to. Then he’d make her pay. Oh, he’d enjoy that part. Making her pay was like nothing else on earth. It was like hearing the angels sing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Montessa was enthralled. She watched Lu’s mouth while he spoke, watched the way he used his hands, the way his emotions and expressions changed his face according to where he was in the story.
He talked about his dad’s abuse, about the way he hid in his closet as a little boy. The way they took him to rituals and the shamans beat their drums and how he ate the special foods meant to cleanse the soul and body. Lu had set the shaman aflame the last time his parents took him. She had been put out quickly. Maimed but not murdered. Scarred but alive.
“So not my first kill, but almost,” he said, and the way his eyes twinkled, it was like something out of a fairytale.
“Tell me how it felt to kill your father,” Montessa urged, and even though he had already told her, he told her again. And again, when she asked for it a third time. She was a child with a favorite bedtime story. Tell me again, please. Again. More and more and more.
“The way his bones cracked, it was like nothing I’d ever imagined,” he said. His voice, the excitement, it made her blood run faster through her veins, screaming through arteries like a rollercoaster. “The smell of his clothes as they burned. The heat. I watched his sparse hair burn right off his head, and it was…oh, Montessa, it was something special.”
She liked the way he said her name. She liked it very much.
“Ever feel like you have a calling?” he asked. “Something you’re really good at? That it was made for you to do, and you’ll never be happy unless you’re doing it?”
“That’s how you feel? That you were meant to kill your father?”
“Absolutely. Nothing ever felt so right. It was almost like being a knight. A deity. Taking the evil out of the world. I was doing the universe this big favor, right? It was almost holy.”
She wanted to ask if it felt like that with the other girls. If it was holy, as well. Were they being sacrificed on the altar of some god? Was he communing with a type of spirit as he slit throats?
She was almost jealous.
“When you kill me,” she said, and noticed that Lu blinked furiously, as if startled, “will you remember me? Maybe not as fondly as you remember your father’s death, of course, but will I…”
She didn’t know how to finish. Would she mean something to him? Fulfill him in some way? Could he sup on her soul for a little while, until he felt the need to take another woman, another life, and she became just another body in a line of bodies?
“Never mind,” she said. “I don’t really want to know.”
He was quiet. Thoughtful. When he spoke, his voice was low and melodious, and she remembered how smooth and calm it had been when she first heard it through the hood.
“I told you I’d dispose of you in the sea.”
Her smile, it was sunny. Full of radiance and joy and peace.
“Thank you,” she said, because she knew what he was saying.
“You’re welcome,” he answered, and blushed a bit on his high cheekbones, because he knew what she had been asking.
The silence in the cab was companionable. Soft and sweet. He wanted to reach out and hold her hand, run his fingertips against her fragile knuckles, but her hands were still shackled to the door handle. Out of his reach.
Such delicate hands but surprisingly strong. She could alter the course of the world using those hands.
That was when Lu realized he was going to let her go.
CHAPTER NINE
His heart hurt in a strange new way. Felt too tight, like it was bound and everything in him screamed to take his knife to it, to the knotted tissue, and whatever iron band had wrapped around it. Release it. Excise the hurt. Remove this pain. Lu didn’t like it, not at all.
It came from letting the girl go. He knew this. When she left, she’d go directly to the police and tell them all about the young Asian man, early 20’s, surprisingly muscled and wiry, maybe 130 pounds. 150? She was really terrible with weight. But he usually wore a t-shirt. A dirty denim jacket when things got cold. Jeans and white sneakers, like a frat boy. Oh, yes, and he had a knife. A long, shiny, very clean and very sharp knife. He murdered his father with that knife. He drives a semi. His name is Lu. He’s killed several other girls. When you find him, it should be the death penalty all the way, please. He hit me in the head with a wrench. It hurt so terribly, so terribly that I threw up, over and over and over. It’s a miracle I got away.
He’d be dead before the police organized their search. Dead before they chased him down, hounds to his fox, found him, threw him to the ground and cuffed him. He wasn’t going to live his life in a box. Wasn’t going to relive his precious kills for them, so some strange families could have closure. He didn’t care about their closure. He’d give himself to the sea, first.
“What are you thinking about, Lu?” she asked him.
“Shut up and go to sleep.”
He felt her hurt, a tangible thing. It rested on his tongue like snowflakes, like cocaine, bitter and worn and familiar. She was so used to hurting that she practically wrapped it around herself like a blanket. A soft, thin protection. The most ineffective of armors.
He sighed.
“I have to drop my load off tomorrow. Empty the truck. I’m trying to figure out what to do with you first, okay?”
“What do you usually do with your girls?”
A beat. A pregnant pause, as they say in books. A time where the air in the cab grew heavy and dark and expectant and full of responsibility. He didn’t want the responsibility. Didn’t need it. Wanted to kick the door open, roll out onto the moving ground beneath him, and pelt down the road away from her. She knew what he did. He knew she knew it. She wanted to hear him say it, to be beaten down by his words. So he said them.
“Kill them.”
“Oh.”
“You asked.”
“I did.”
She turned her face to t
he window, and Lu cursed. Cursed louder and hit the steering wheel.
“Montessa, enough of that!”
She turned back, her face white and her mouth dropped open. He saw it, saw the blood running from the corners of her mouth, saw her eyes swollen shut and the bruises that colored and puffed her face. Saw how many times hands had been put on her, and that she expected the same from him.
He’d already done so.
He blinked and the gore was gone. She was just terrified. Terrified and whole, her cuts and wounds having healed while they had been together, for the most part.
His heart twisted again.
“You accept too much, do you understand me? You’re always spouting how your mama said you were special. So be special. Enough of this beaten animal act all of the time.”
She pulled away from him, made herself into a small ball near the window, and that was it. All that he needed. The perfect opportunity.
He pulled the truck over, too fast, and the brakes hissed and puffed and threw up gravel like sheets of water.
“Lu? No!”
He reached over her, so close that he could smell her sweat and fear and something that tasted like sorrow, and unlocked the padlock. He grabbed her bound hands and pulled her roughly between the seats.
“Lu! Lu, please! I don’t want to die!”
He pulled her close to him, her hands up in the air, over her head. Shook them.
“Is that true?” he asked.
Her breath was coming heavy and fast. Her muscles were rigid and taut, her too-blue eyes wide and frightened and at the same time, smoldering with something darker.
Horror? No. Fury.
Lu nearly smiled, but caught himself in time.
“Huh, girl? Is it true? Do you want to live?”
She couldn’t speak, but nodded. Her face was so close to his that she could lift her chin and bite deeply into his bottom lip, if she wished. Tear it and spit the blood back at him. He almost hoped she would. Teach him a lesson. Make him sorry. Hurt him so good.
Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A tale of Atomic Love Page 4