11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
CRUE
W e are just staring at the walls, when we should be splattering them with red. What the hell are you doing?
My shadow isn’t much of a wordsmith. It tries, but as a construct of my own mind, its vocabulary is lacking, which is understandable. I’m no poet, and there are a thousand better ways to express a kill, but at least it’s trying. And winning. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t even know why I am. This house is a nightmare of delirium and delusion. If I don’t get out soon, it might swallow me whole.
“She wants me to stay, so I’ll stay,” I whisper. Fiametta could return any second now, and I’d hate for her to see me talking to myself.
I can hear your thoughts. You know that, right?
I do, but speaking them out loud makes me feel less crazy than an internal back and forth with myself.
“Where would we go instead?”
My shadow has evolved from a black spot to a black fog that hangs over every thought. It’s so thick that I can almost feel it moving around my skull. It is searching for a way to take control and drag me back to the forgotten realms where it resides.
At least until our next kill. But I fear that, if I lose my way and let the shadow win, I’ll regret who it picks as its prey.
I don’t do regret.
We’ll find someone, somewhere; take him to the kill chamber and deal with him the right way. Someone strong, fast and deadly. Someone like you.
“Are you trying to challenge me?” What the fuck am I saying?
Make Lorenzo believe he’s Fiametta’s stalker. The masked monster. Cover his face and—
My brilliant idea is cut short by Fiametta’s barging through the door. She looks ecstatic, with a smile beaming from ear to ear and eyes that sparkle like fireworks on the Fourth of July. When she tells me what Lorenzo said, I must admit I’d also be tickled pink. If anything could permeate the layer of black my shadow has cast over me, it’s that news.
“Are you going to do it?” I stand, unsure of what to do in this situation. A hug? Seems too personal. A quickie before I disappear into the night. More my style.
“Yes, I’m going to drag you along with me, everywhere I go,” she smirks, cocks her hip to the side and rests a hand on the extended flesh. I’m sure there’s a hidden meaning in her words, but I fail to read the subtext. “Not that I have to. Since you’re the one trying to kill me.”
“Tried,” I correct her. “I don’t have to anymore.”
“Have to or want to?”
That depends on who she’s asking. My shadow still wants her dead. He hasn’t said it, but I sense her death will finally still him. Potentially for years to come.
I am not mad enough to think that she can’t speak to the voice in my head, so I answer. “I never wanted to hurt you, Fiametta. It’s not a want. It’s a need. An all-consuming hunger—”
I shut my mouth. I don’t have to hide myself from her, this much I know. She’s seen the darkness in me and instead of trying to run, she embraced it. I can be myself with her. The hunter, the stalker, the monster, whatever you’d call me.
I can be Crue.
“Wait a second, what do you mean you don’t have to anymore ?” Her brow furrows and her cute button nose twitches.
“Precisely what I said.” I’m not going to go into the details. No one could torture me enough to extract them. “I have had a good idea. We’ll pin the blame for your stalker on some poor fool, who’d make a believable assassin. I’ll deal with him for Lorenzo and we—”.
“No, Crue.” She presses a single finger to my lips to silence me. “We can’t do that. Don’t just kill some innocent dude because you want to get out of a jam.”
That’s a mighty difficult request to fulfill when it’s all I can think about. Literally, with my shadow whispering its dark dealings non-stop.
“It will make things easier for both of us.”
“After you made them challenging.”
Being out of control is one thing, but having to suffer the constant undermining I am getting from everyone I speak to these days is a massive annoyance. Or is it my imagination? Am I misconstruing the reasons for my unyielding desire to follow through with my shadow’s requests?
It matters not.
“I can’t play this game, Little Flame.” I can feel the growl rumbling in my chest. “I told you that you’re mine. That hasn’t changed.”
Her eyes grow to the size of saucers and her lips curl into a pout. Happy? Sad? Yes? No? Give me a straight, fucking answer.
“Crue,” her voice is meek.
Screw it, here goes nothing.
I try to kiss her, but she turns her head, and my lips meet her cheek.
Oof, that has to sting .
“I need to go.” My neck tenses so hard, my head starts to rattle.
“Wait.” Fia presses her flat palms into my chest, desperately trying to keep me in place. “What? Why? We’re just getting to the—”
“I have to get out of here.” I clench my jaw, and ball my fists, while a sharp sting reverberates in my head. I can’t tell whether it's fury or a blood clot hitting something vital...
Yes. It’s time to go. Otherwise, I’ll make a much more regrettable decision than an attempted hit on Fiametta’s life.
Now we’re talking. Do it. Grab your knife. Slice her pretty throat .
No, not her. Never her. But this house is full of people deserving of my vengeance, and many more who aren’t.
***
One Week Later
“You’re overthinking things, Crue. If either of the dons wanted you dead, do you think you’d still be here?” Mark asks, stopping at one of the fourteen different booths that are scattered across the dilapidated, abandoned warehouse.
“I get the logic, only I don’t understand it.” I say, keeping my eyes focused ahead.
The fourteen sellers at this odd market sale sit among the various trinkets and toys of their trade that are scattered across their tables. They and their lackeys are all gross human beings. Out of all of the goons that work for the sellers, only one, a set of twins, seem to be of normal proportions, with their bits in the right places and their faces easy on the eye.
Well, the male twin anyway. His sister has suffered some kind of mangling injury to her left arm, from the mid forearm to just below her shoulder. Whoever did it wasn’t much of a professional, and the scarring and skin regrowth has left the flesh there mottled, spotty and loose.
I avoid eye contact with them. With all of them. It’s out of principle, mostly, but also because they’re all fucking disgusting.
“And you don’t need to. Matteo said everything’s okay, Lorenzo gave you easy access to his daughter’s peach...” Mark lifts a hand grenade off the table, looks at the twin sister’s arm, and puts it back down again. We both know a grenade wasn’t the cause of her disfigurement. A grenade’s impact that close to her body would’ve left her dead. But Mark’s in a tormenting mood, and these are easy victims.
Why are you complaining?” he asks.
Because I haven’t killed anything in months. Not even a God damned fly.
Instead of my shadow’s answer, I just shrug my shoulders as we move from one table to the next.
“Man, I love this place,” Mark says, barging through a crowd of three and on to the next booth. The owner is a bald man, who must direct his profits directly into enormous helpings of whatever the hell he can shove down his throat. He can barely lift his neck with all the fat dangling from it. “It’s like P.T. Barnum’s house of freaks.”
This quarterly event is organized by some mysterious benefactor, whom no one has yet had the fortune to meet. It’s like a market fair in its set up, the same kind as old folks frequent, to sell the crap they’ve been hoarding since the sixties. Only this black market is a hot bed of people like me. It’s for weapons, drugs, and on rare occasion, contracts with some poor fool’s name on. My very first hit came from the Black Market, and if Mark doesn’t hold his tongue, our names may very well be next on the list.
“You’re not wrong,” I say quietly. “But these freaks aren’t safely locked up in cages. They’re sitting behind tables, stacked with guns, bombs, and every deadly weapon under the sun. You might want to shut the fuck up before you get us both killed.”
“Christ, you’re no fun when you’re moody. Y’know that?” Mark shakes his head, disappointed, and moves over to the next table.
“Why do we even come here anymore?” I look around and see only young blood. New mercs and wannabe assassins, who are trying to carve their names into our history. Soon, they’ll learn that this isn’t the way to do it. Infamy is a lot harder to run from than one might think.
“I like to laugh at the little one doing his monkey dance,” Mark gestures with his neck toward a midget. “Always gets a chuckle out of me.” But he isn’t chuckling now.
“Answer honestly,” I put on my serious voice because I’ve had enough games for one lifetime. The old fucks, running their mafia families, can get away with it, but Mark has to know when it’s time to be serious.
“Because you’re gloomy. Glum. Whichever way.” He stops dead before we reach the last table. “You try not to show it, and you hide it well to them.” He waves a hand at nothing, but I know he means Matteo and Lorenzo. “But I know you far too well to fall for it. I’m trying to cheer you up.”
If he really knew the true me, Mark would know it doesn’t work like this. I don’t get a kick out of other people’s misfortune. Hell, I’m one of these freaks, only my deformity is on the inside.
Right now, it’s pressing on my brain, and it’s applying so much pressure I’m ready to collapse.
It needs a kill.
“Welcome to the meat wagon, boys. What’s your poison?” The speaker is a rather skinny man, with a crooked spine and a kink in his neck. Long strands of greasy hair escape from beneath a black top hat. He is older than the other sellers, with a face so tight that I can make out the structure of his skull. He has three missing teeth on the left side of his mouth.
“Why’s it called the meat wagon?” Mark asks, playing the fool. “And I don’t see any poison.”
“That pretty mouth of yours is awful smart,” the grotesque man says. “If you ain’t buying, get the feck out of my line.”
“Sheesh, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Mark returns with his usual brand of derision. We walk off, this time to my great pleasure, it’s out the door.
“Listen, go out there and have some fun. Forget about life for a while and hang out with your girl. Plot new and exciting ways to kill her old man and the rat-faced second in command. Man, you can even go hang another dude off the side of a mountain in Colorado. We’re in a quiet time. The calm before the storm.” Mark pauses when we get outside, and searches his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter.
“Have some fun before the shit gets crazy.”
“I’d rather have fun afterward.”
He makes an intriguing argument, all the same. My shadow can only be silenced by two things: the sweet embrace of death and Fiametta’s pussy. Killing some bum on the side of the road isn’t going to be enough, but maybe she can be. “I’ll give it a shot. See where it takes me. ”
Now comes the challenge...
Taking what she tried to deny me.