"What?" said Mick.
I pulled the trigger.
Mick yelled, his hand going to his neck.
The bullet had only grazed him. Dammit. I got to my feet, aiming the gun again. I could do this.
But Mick was getting out his own gun. "I see you, blondie."
f.u.c.k. He could see me? I lined up his torso again. I breathed. I eased my finger onto the trigger.
The shot rang out.
Mick"s body jerked. He felt forward, off the porch.
"Nice shot, doll." Griffin dashed across the lawn, knife glinting. He knelt next to Mick, cutting at the back of his neck.
I crashed out of the woods to join him.
"What the h.e.l.l is going on out there?" Marcel and the remaining man were coming out on the porch.
I stopped moving, took careful aim, and squeezed off two more shots.
Marcel and the man both stopped where they were, falling lifeless.
Holy c.r.a.p. I"d just shot them both in the head.
Griffin raised his eyebrows at me. "Whoa. That was awesome."
My mouth was wide open. "I don"t know how I did that."
Chapter Fifteen.
The other man was dead. I"d cut the back of his neck while Griffin tied up Marcel. We didn"t want Marcel dead yet.
That was why he was tied to the hook in the bas.e.m.e.nt now, stretched out in front of us.
We were waiting for him to wake up.
Griffin had Marcel"s switchblade. He kept flipping the knife out, pushing it back in and then flipping it back out again.
I stood in front of Marcel, my arms crossed over my chest. I poked him. "Wake up."
His eyes opened.
I turned to Griffin. "He"s awake, baby."
Griffin"s lips curled into a smile. "Good."
I had a knife too. I held it in Marcel"s face. "You"re wearing too many clothes." I slit down the front of his white t-shirt, cutting it off of him.
"You letting blondie undress me, huh, Griffin?" said Marcel.
I stood up. I slashed Marcel"s throat. "You don"t get to talk."
He gurgled. Blood gushed out of him. His eyes got big with pain. And then dull.
Griffin sighed. "Now, we"re going to have to wait for him to wake up again."
"Oops," I said.
Griffin was giggling. He was tossing a gun back and forth in front of Marcel"s face. Marcel was covered in blood. He"d healed, but that didn"t mean the blood went away. "It"s just too much fun watching you die." Marcel shut his eyes. "You might think you"ve won, Griffin, but the fact that I meant this much to you only proves-"
"Shut up." Griffin jammed the gun in Marcel"s face. "Open your mouth."
Marcel didn"t.
Griffin grabbed him by the back of the neck, forced his jaw open and shoved the gun into his mouth. "Suck it hard, you f.u.c.kwad."
He pulled the trigger.
Blood spattered the concrete behind us.
"Did you know that Wolfman carved words on my body?" I ran the knife over the planes of Marcel"s stomach.
"He did like to do that." Marcel"s voice was haggard. It was late afternoon. We"d been at it for a while.
"What do you think I should write on yours?" I whispered. I let the knife slice into his skin. "Wolfman wrote his name on me. Should I carve my name into you? You want to know what it"s like to be marked, Marcel?"
Marcel was screaming.
Griffin"s hands were at Marcel"s crotch. He had a knife. There was a lot of blood.
"You"re not going to grow another one of those," Griffin hissed.
It was dark in the cellar. We had the overhead lights on. Marcel was still tied up, but now he was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess on the floor. His eyes were closed. He was curled up, wincing away from my foot as I kicked him.
"You killed Naomi," I was screaming at him. "You shot Griffin"s mother. You killed my baby. You did unspeakable f.u.c.king things to Griffin." I crunched the heel of my shoe into his nose. "There aren"t enough ways for you to die!"
He had stopped moving.
"Doll," said Griffin, "I think you drove bone back back into his brain."
"Oh," I said. I looked at him. "Does that mean it"s going to take him a long time to heal?"
"Probably," he said.
"Dammit," I said.
"Please," Marcel whispered.
Dawn was stealing into the sky.
The bas.e.m.e.nt floor was drenched in blood. Some of it had dried stiff and brown. But some of it was still fresh.
It was all over me. On my hands, my clothes, my face. It smelled tangy and rusty.
"Finish it," Marcel said. "Please finish it."
Griffin was standing over him sneering. He had a foot on Marcel"s chest. "You have to do better than that. Beg me. Beg me to kill you."
Marcel"s eyes were gla.s.sy and empty. "Please kill me. Please." His voice had a tremor in it. He sounded like a little boy. It was hard to believe that the same man who"d taunted us just days ago could be so easily reduced to this-sniveling, pathetic, weak.
I laughed at him. "Who owns who, Marcel?"
"You own me," he groaned. "I"m nothing. Please, for G.o.d"s sake, end it for good. I can"t take it anymore."
Light from the window, from the early morning, illuminated Griffin.
He was spattered with blood, brandishing a long, wicked blade. He was smiling like a jackal.
I swallowed.
Suddenly, I felt sick.
"You do belong to me, Marcel," Griffin said. "And if I want to play with you for longer-"
"No," I said. "Just kill him."
My stomach clenched on itself.
I ran up the steps, heaving.
I vomited on the porch, over the railing. The sun was coming up in the distance. The sky was splintered with beautiful streaks of purple and pink. I gazed at it, still feeling ill.
I looked at my red-stained hands.
I started to shake.
I stood there, watching the sun rise, trembling, clutching the railing so tightly that my knuckles turned white.
Eventually, I heard Griffin coming up the steps.
"Is it done?" I said, not looking at him.
He came up behind me, running his hands over my shoulders. "It"s done."
Chapter Sixteen.
But it wasn"t done, not really, because we had to bury the bodies. We found sheets in Naomi"s closet to wrap the bodies in. I was glad to wrap up Marcel. I didn"t want to look at him again. I didn"t want reminders of what we"d done to him. He looked small, somehow, lying on that sheet. He was a big, muscled man, but he was naked and b.l.o.o.d.y and dead, and he didn"t look particularly threatening anymore. Then there was the fact that we had to gather up the... pieces of him. We"d taken some fingers and a few toes. Of course, Griffin had cut off Marcel"s...
Well, there were pieces.
I thought maybe I"d cry or throw up again, but I didn"t. I kept it together. I felt numb and accepting of it. It was only the last in a string of horrors I"d gone through over the past month.
Griffin and I didn"t talk much while we were working, only conversing to give each other direction or to discuss the best way to accomplish a task.
He dug the ma.s.s grave. I dragged out the bodies, using the sheets as a makeshift sling.He buried the bodies. I used the hose and bleach to try to clean up the bas.e.m.e.nt.
It didn"t work.
The blood had soaked into the concrete.
I got down on my hands and knees. Scrubbed at the floor with Comet.
The scarlet stains wouldn"t go away.
That was how Griffin found me. I was up to my elbows in cleaners and blood, scrubbing at the floor as hard as I could.
"Doll," he said.
He was on the steps. I looked up at him. He was covered in dirt and blood. He looked like something from a horror movie, some monster that had crawled up from the ground to wreak vengeance. I felt sick again.
"You"re not going to be able to get it up," he said.
I dropped the scrub brush I was using. It hit the floor with a clatter.