Sick Twisted Minds (Cruel Black Hearts Book 3)

by Candace Wondrak

  “Are you sure?” I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that told me he was trying to hide something from me. Maybe because I’d discovered I was being lied to by him and Lincoln and Edward not too long ago. Betrayal was hard to overcome.

  “Yes,” he said. “He has nothing. He’ll get nothing.” A smile spread on Killian’s face. A cold, cruel smile that sent my heart skittering in my chest, beating rapidly. It was a smile I absolutely adored, cruelness and all. “No matter what happens, I promise I’ll protect you.”

  A serial killer protecting me. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or swoon.

  I could’ve told him thank you. Could have said I didn’t need his protection. I could have said a lot of things in response, but I chose to ask, “What are we doing tonight?” No one said I was the queen of transitions. My speaking abilities were nowhere as good as my writing ones. The skill was non-transferable, apparently.

  “It’s a secret,” Killian said, quickly adding, “a surprise, I mean. A surprise.”

  Right. Because there were no more secrets between us. Nothing left to hide. I knew his whole truth…but he didn’t know mine. Killian had no idea what Edward and Lincoln had given me, the woman they’d caught and kidnapped all for me. Destiny. When I closed my eyes and pictured her, I could still see her chained up, her arms and legs spread. I could still hear her screams as I cut into her face with a scalpel and her wrist with a bone saw.

  Killian had no idea that when I wrote the little note to him—that Barbie was more like Ken than Ken thought—what I truly meant by it.

  I needed to tell him, and then I had to arrange this dinner between the four of us.

  “I do have time to go home and shower, right?” I asked, hoping he’d say yes. I really should’ve showered at Edward and Lincoln’s, but both guys had work today, and I needed one of them to drop me off at home so I could grab my laptop and my phone charger before work.

  His gaze fell to my lips. “Of course,” Killian spoke, sluggishly drawing his gaze up.

  A familiar heat traveled through me. It was a heat I knew well enough after spending so much time with Lincoln and Edward. My body wanted his, which I found so odd because not once had he ever elicited a reaction from me before I knew the truth of who, of what, he was. My body was only a traitor now that my mind was.

  I got up and went back to my desk, well aware I received extra glances from the others. Oh, well. I didn’t care if they thought there was something going on between Killian and I. In a way, there was. I was exploring my feelings for the Angel Maker while fighting the old feelings I had about Killian. It was a difficult life, the one I lived.

  I opened my laptop, pulling up a blank document. I needed to get writing; my next article was due tomorrow by the end of the workday, and yet I felt nothing. No creative juices flowing. Nothing at all. Anything I forced these fingers to type would be just that—forced. So clearly forced it would read stilted. Where I used to be able to write from the heart, I just…

  I just couldn’t.

  Why? Why couldn’t I write like I used to? Why was I experiencing the worst possible writer’s block? If anything, I should have plenty to write about. Plenty to put down onto paper. I had three killers by my side; I had ended a life. There had to be some kind of inspiration I could glean from something.

  At least, you’d think so. But no—I sat there, my fingers hovering over the keyboard, for way too long before I gave up and started to Google the Angel Maker, reading the latest news articles about him. My articles popped up one page in, after the national ones. It made me feel some kind of special when I saw it, proud, in a way. Which was strange; I was never one to be proud of anything. Even my blog. To be proud would mean that I had people who I was confident in showing it to, and my family had crushed all of that when I lived with them.

  My family was a lovely bunch. I couldn’t wait until all this wedding business was over, then I could get them out of my life, sisterly obligation as her maid of honor aside. She should have chosen one of her friends to be her maid of honor. Not me. I had never been close to Bree, and I was reasonably sure it was only on my mother’s insistence that she chose me.

  Yay for me.

  I wondered how different my life would have been if I’d been born to a different family. Another family, one whose parents would have loved me, showered me with affection and compliments like my parents had done to Bree. A family where I wasn’t second best, the throwaway child. The first burned pancake. The one who didn’t matter. All these things I’d internalized…I often wondered what kind of person I would be if I’d had a loving, supportive family. You know, the whole nature versus nurture thing.

  Too late for that now. I was who I was and nothing could change it.

  So that’s what I started writing about. I exited out of the Google search and began typing away, nowhere near the lightning speed I usually had. It wasn’t an article I was proud of, but it would have to do. I wasn’t even sure if Killian read over my stuff anymore. He might just glance at it, make sure there were no typos or other glaring errors, and then send it right along to the formatter. Kind of like me and my loss for inspiration, he had no reason to stalk my blog or go over my articles with a fine-toothed comb.

  How quickly things changed.

  By the time my shift was over, I had a little more than three-quarters of the article done. I’d finish tomorrow and submit it in time. I used to wait until the last minute to whip out my articles, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. Maybe because I wasn’t feeling the flow. It was all foreign to me, even though I’d done it countless times.

  I packed up, not saying a word to the few other employees who were still there, and went home. The moment I stepped inside the house, I called out, “Callie? Are you here?” No answer, and a queasy feeling rose in my stomach.

  What if she was moving out? What if this was her way of saying she’d rather be with her boyfriend than with me? Then, of course, I remembered John, her brother. I had no idea what Killian had done with him, but that wasn’t why I thought of him—didn’t Callie mention that she was dating someone named John? I would never want to date someone with the same name as my brother.

  I didn’t have a brother, but that was beside the point.

  I dropped my messenger bag on the couch, walking to her room. The moment I entered, my feet froze. The air was stale. How many days had it been since she’d been here? How long until she came home? And why the hell couldn’t I shake the peculiar feeling crawling up the back of my spine?

  My eyes fell upon her bed, the sheets folded, not a wrinkle or a crease in sight. It looked like a made-up bed, one no one had slept in in ages. I stepped forward, my hand reaching out. Even though I had no idea what I was doing, I set my flat palm against the comforter, running my hand along it. I flicked my stare to the window, and I slowly moved around her bed, feeling…well, I couldn’t say. Some kind of dread, deep within my gut.

  Peering through the glass, I saw nothing unusual. Nothing out of the ordinary. The yard needed a mow—maybe I’d make one of the guys do it this weekend. The flowerbed looked healthy.

  Why did I feel like something wasn’t right here?

  I quickly left Callie’s room, hating the way I felt. Why couldn’t I put a finger on it? Why couldn’t I figure out just why the hell I felt so weird?

  Whatever. I had a date to get ready for. A date with my Angel Maker. Whatever I felt, whatever weirdness had come over me in Callie’s room, I would think about it later. There was always time to push things off.

  Chapter Five - Stella

  Our date was a night on the town. And by town, I meant the big city that was two hours away. The same big city my sister had her dress fitting in, but all of the streets looked the same, all of the skyscrapers blended in with each other, so I wasn’t sure if we were anywhere near where that place was. And I didn’t care. I was with Killian; I would focus on him.

  We walked hand in hand through the busy streets, stopping in whatever stores we wanted
. There was one store full of all of the different colors of M&Ms, any color you could dream of. Another store had a mini Ferris wheel inside it. Each storefront had huge televisions situated on their outer walls, so the people walking by on the sidewalks were inundated with ads and commercials for whatever new and hip thing the companies wanted to push.

  Some people might have wanted a more intimate setting, but this was perfect for me, for us. We were strangers, blending in with everyone around us. It was truly a miracle the wonders of anonymity could do.

  “I love people watching,” Killian spoke as he handed me a hotdog. Not the best dinner—Edward had spoiled me there—but if I was honest, eating food from a street cart had always been intriguing. People did it all the time in the movies, and now I was one of them.

  A shame biting into the hotdog didn’t make me feel more normal.

  Once he got his food, we found a bench and sat on it. I looked at him. He had a nice profile, handsome in a clean-cut way, not nearly as ruggedly sexy as Lincoln or as boyishly charming as Edward, but Killian had his own way about him. Funny how I never realized it until I knew how stained his hands were.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “When you watch people, when you really look at them and try to understand them, it’s amazing the things you’ll see.” Killian, with his mouth full, gestured to a woman walking by. She was in her middle thirties, wearing a dress that was form-fitting and tight, and heels that must’ve taken a certain kind of skill to walk in. “Recently single, either separated or divorced.”

  I studied her, spotting her hands moving with each sway of her hip. There was a white mark around her ring finger. Like Sandy, then.

  “If I wanted to take her home, I’m sure it’d be easy to. Him.” Killian pointed to a guy standing ten feet from us, wearing some wireless, expensive headphones. “Too oblivious to what’s going on. A little overweight. I could take him with no problem, too.”

  Was this what he did when he people-watched? Played a little game with himself of who he could take and who would outwit him? I found myself grinning. “So you look at them and rate them on a scale of one to ten—one being impossible to take and ten being easy?”

  The smile Killian gave me made him look youthful, tiny dimples on his freckled cheeks rising to the surface. Nowhere near as deep and as cute as Edward’s dimples, but they were there. They were there and they made my heart practically still. “How’d you know?” He flashed his teeth, two perfect rows of pearly whites.

  Truthfully, Killian was the opposite of a bad-looking guy, but he’d never caught my interest before I knew what he had hidden deep down. His hair was a deep red, too burnt to be a true ginger or a strawberry blonde. Not a single flaw lined his face—and now that I knew he was the Angel Maker, I couldn’t help but wonder if scars littered anywhere else. If there was a part of him so wounded. As weird as it was, I couldn’t picture anyone hurting Killian. I could not imagine anyone slicing into his flesh or separating him limb from limb, not like how I did with Destiny.

  He was perfect.

  And until I knew who he was, that he was my Angel Maker, I had absolutely no interest in him. He was too perfect. I needed someone with flaws as big as my own. I needed men who were as dark as the night, who could handle my own inner beast. Naivete was not my specialty—I knew I had darkness in me; before Edward and Lincoln, I just didn’t know how vast it was. How endless and beautiful it could be.

  Why else would I have been drawn to serial killers from such a young age? Why did I do all of the reports and speeches on them when I could in high school? Why did their dark minds fascinate me to the point where I lost sleep over it? So many questions and more, and they were all rooted in my long-standing obsession. Really, it wasn’t a wonder why I was the black sheep of my family, why my parents always stared at me like I’d grown a third eye, like I needed some kind of professional help.

  I…

  I didn’t. I wasn’t that far gone. I was completely aware of all of my functions.

  Pulling myself out of my thoughts, I shrugged. “You’re easy to read.” Was I teasing Killian? I think so. An odd thing, something I never would’ve guessed, something I never knew I’d be comfortable doing. Teasing. It seemed like such a normal thing, didn’t it?

  “If I was so easy to read, I think you would’ve seen me a long time ago.”

  I looked at him then. My Killian. My Angel Maker. He spoke the truth, and it took me a long while to say, “I know. Who knew you were so good at hiding?”

  We finished our hotdogs and started walking, his hand in mine. His hand was both rougher and smoother than I thought it would be. Smoother because I knew what his hands had done, and rougher because I knew he always wore gloves. Never did he use his bare hands for anything. To do so would be foolish and ask for trouble in the form of police attention.

  Wandering into the fray of the busiest part of town, where dozens of sidewalks practically drove away the roads, Killian’s hand tightened on mine. “Most people hate crowds,” he said, his green eyes darting around, his mind working whatever cogs they did. “I was never like that. I love crowds. I love being in the middle of the fray, where everything happens.”

  I was silent for a while as I gazed at all of the people. Hundreds of people, all busy with their lives. Their own dates. Watching whatever street performer was nearest; some naked cowboy wasn’t too far away from us, fifteen feet, maybe. Though he wasn’t really naked; he had underwear on, I think. I wasn’t about to look.

  It dawned on me then, what he meant. Why Killian liked crowds so much, why he’d brought us here for our date. We could’ve gone anywhere, done anything, yet he wanted to come to the big city, show me yet another part of his mask.

  “You like crowds because it’s easy to blend in,” I said. “You don’t have to try as hard.” I wasn’t sure whether or not he had to try hard to seem so normal, but it always felt like work to me. But then, I suppose I wasn’t nearly as good at it as he was. It came to him as natural as breathing, probably.

  “No one looks at you twice in a crowd this big,” Killian said, glancing at me. “No one cares what you’re saying or what you’re doing. Who the hell knows what kind of crazy shit half of these people are into?”

  I felt my lips drawing into a smile. A real, genuine smile—something that never would’ve happened weeks ago, before my life was irrevocably changed forever by meeting my three monsters. “So true, Angel Maker.” I didn’t even whisper it, but no one paid attention to us, so no one heard me. And if they did, they’d never put two and two together. “My Angel Maker.”

  Killian’s body turned to me, and even though there were hundreds of people around us, it was like we stood alone. Alone on the sidewalk. No crowd. No street performers. No giant flashing billboards of lights and sound. We were alone, just him and I, gazing into each other’s deep, soulful stares.

  Or maybe our stares were soulless. Who could say?

  “Yours,” he repeated, his voice soft. So quiet I could hardly hear him over the cacophony of sounds around us. “I’m yours. I like that.” He grinned another innocent grin, and I felt my insides twist in half a dozen knots. Though one hand still gripped mine, he brought his other to my face, swiping some hair behind an ear, fingertips grazing my cheek, the light, fluttery touch making me warm. “And what are you? Are you mine?” I wouldn’t say his tone was eager, expectant…but it kind of was.

  I kind of liked it.

  Okay, scratch that. I really fucking liked it.

  I wasn’t a fan of saying I belonged to anyone, but if there was anyone in the world I could belong to, it was my three psychos. My three sociopaths. My three death-craving knights in stained armor.

  All I did was nod. One slow, sluggish motion, my lips parting ever so slightly.

  Killian took it as a sign. Which was good, because I wasn’t certain how much more obvious I could be. I’d been moving at a glacial pace when it came to Killian in fear of something unnamed. Some part of me that was still un
sure. Here, now, that unsure part was gone. Completely and utterly vanquished.

  There was not an ounce of denial left in me, not a speck of doubt as Killian leaned down and pressed his lips on mine. And then—then it was like wildfire. Like something igniting inside of me, something that had only been an ember before. It raged with a heat and an intensity I could not deny, and I put all of that passion and fire into the kiss.

  Our first kiss.

  It wasn’t a fairytale like other women might hope for; we had been talking about kidnapping not too long ago, not to mention eating hot dogs that were strangely delicious. He’d shown me John’s body, shown me Sandy in all her of skin-winged glory. Killian had shown me so much that would render this kiss inexcusably wrong.

  But it wasn’t wrong, and if it was, I didn’t give a shit about being right. Being wrong, being bad, felt too good to deny.

  Our lips pushed and pulled against each other’s, our tongues touching. If I could devour him in this moment I would gladly do it. Although, if anyone was going to devour the other person, Killian was going to do it to me, given the way he kept nibbling on my bottom lip. I ran my hands up his sides, pulling his body closer. Sometime during the kiss, his hand must’ve let go of mine. I didn’t care. I wanted him right now; I wanted him so much more than I could have him.

  We were in public still, I couldn’t forget. There would be no tearing off of clothes while we were here, unless we wanted to get arrested. And neither of us wanted that, I was sure. Too many things left to do, so many loose ends to tie up. Plus, whatever would Edward and Lincoln think? They’d never let me see Killian again if we got arrested together. That was a line I couldn’t cross.

  Still. I wanted to, which was more than I could say for myself a few weeks ago.

  Parting our lips slightly, Killian whispered, “You sure know how to kill me, don’t you?”

  “In more ways than one,” I whispered back, giggling—yes, giggling—when I felt the hardness between his legs pressing against me. Though I couldn’t see it, I could feel it, and it felt just as impressive as Lincoln’s did. Not that I was choosy about sizes. It wasn’t penis size that I fell for. It was their black, twisted hearts and their cold, calculating minds.