Hated (Pleasure And Prey #6)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

Imiss when the horses didn’t keep me up at night.

I can hear the stallion shift in his stall, making low noises of restlessness.

A hoof hits the boards, then another, but it’s not like I was ever going to sleep tonight, anyway.

It’s cold in the barn, even with the blankets Dad brought me after Mom stopped paying attention.

Probably around her fourth glass of wine, if I’m estimating right.

But my fingers are freezing, and my teeth chatter from the cold and something else. Something cold and sharp that’s pulling at me from the inside, radiating from somewhere in my chest without reaching my fingers.

Unfortunately, hatred doesn’t warm me in a way I need, but it’s been enough to keep me going when the fear has faded.

Tonight feels different, though I don’t know why exactly.

I hadn’t meant it when I said it. When I told Mom that she only had seven days to regret what she’d done.

But now those seven days are up, and something inside me whispers, saying it shouldn’t be an empty threat.

The fear in her eyes gradually faded over the first few days, not that she’s ever looked at me so much. The day she dragged me by my hair to the well a week ago was probably the most Mom has looked at me in a long, long time.

You have seven days to regret this.

That’s what I said. I hadn’t quite meant it, and I hadn’t quite known what I was saying at the time. But now it feels like there’s an alarm in my head that won’t stop buzzing and screaming, driving me to do something other than sleep.

Not that I’ve been able to sleep much for a long, long time. The loft is always too cold or hot, and the horses below me never really settle. This isn’t a room. It isn’t like my room in the house a few hundred feet away.

It’s a prison.

I’m on my feet before I can really think about it.

My boots are beside the creaky little bed, and when I slip my feet into them, the rubber is cold against my calves.

My heavy, patched jacket sits on the chair, and I barely need my flashlight to pull it on over my nightgown that’s really just an old, oversized t-shirt.

The ladder creaks under me, and my hands shake as I make my way down.

Within seconds my boots hit the soft dirt floor of the barn, and I let my flashlight drift over the horses in their stalls, their attention on me.

I used to love the horses and going with my mom to train, to help, to assist owners and vets. I even used to ride. But now, the horses remind me of Mom.

And there’s nothing at all happy about that.

Mom’s stallion makes a low noise at me, as if he knows something isn’t right.

He’s just as needlessly suspicious as Mom is, though tonight it’s probably not so needless.

In the illumination from my flashlight, he holds my gaze with one big, dark eye, unmoving as he keeps his head over the boards of his stall.

I hate this horse.

I hate anything that reminds me of Mom.

“I never liked you,” I whisper, my light trembling on his white-marked face. “You’re awful.” The horse just stares at me, almost accusingly, and I walk backward over the dirt, boots scuffing, until I can turn and slip through the slightly cracked door without making a noise.

It’s a quick trip up to the house, and my heart races in my chest as I go. I’m not allowed up here after bedtime. Mom doesn’t trust me. At least, that’s what she told Dad. Even with a lock on my prior bedroom’s door so she could keep me in there, she decided that wasn’t enough.

That I might do something, somehow.

I feel numb as I hunt for the key under the mat, knowing where it is thanks to Dad not being quite as secretive as Mom is. My fingers close around it, and I gently, quietly unlock the door while turning off my flashlight.

What am I doing?

I have enough sense to ask myself that as the door creaks open.

I don’t bother closing it, or bother caring about the mud I’m tracking into the house that would get me hurt on any other day.

There’s no point in caring this time. But my thoughts scramble, my brain seeking answers that my twelve-year-old self doesn’t know how to give as my movements are fueled by something other than rational thought.

That hot, pulsing feeling propels me through the house, toward the living room where I know Mom will be. Sure enough, she’s curled up in the old, threadbare armchair, under her favorite blanket, with a glass of red wine in her trembling fingers while her eyes stay fixed on the television.

She doesn’t notice me at first.

Tears are running down her face, and the laughter from the TV draws my attention like a moth to a flame. Whatever I expect to see, it isn’t me.

It isn’t us.

Mom is carrying me through the pasture while I reach for the horses with little hands, a smile on my face and a grin on hers. Dad must be behind the camera, just like always, and I hear him chuckling and panting as he tries to keep up with Mom’s long, confident stride.

We both look so happy as my small, chubby hands find a horse’s mane and Mom murmurs happily against my dark hair, long even then.

I can see that it’s me, but I can’t remember this day.

I can’t remember ever feeling happy when I see my mom. I can only remember the dread, the fear, and whatever this curling, seething thing inside of me is tonight.

“What happened to you?” Mom’s whisper jerks my attention away from the TV, and when I look at her face, I see that she’s looking straight at me. “Why did you take my daughter away?”

The words hurt like a knife through scar tissue. She’s inflicted this particular wound before. Sometimes with blows, or while her fingers dug bruises into my shoulders and she shook me like a rag doll.

“I am your daughter,” I whisper, not for the first time. It feels like a rehearsed play we’ve performed a thousand times before.

Mom gets to her feet, the wineglass still in her hand as she comes toward me. The liquid trembles, ripples forming along the top. “No, you took her from me. You’re not her,” she disagrees quietly, with cold disdain in her voice. “You know that, you wretched thing.”

“Sierra.” My name slips out of my mouth before I can think about it, and she pauses, confused.

But so am I. This isn’t how the play goes.

These aren’t my rehearsed lines. This is where I’m supposed to apologize, where I usually promise I am her daughter.

But the hot, sharp thing in my chest won’t let me.

My fingers tighten on the flashlight in my hand until my bones creak. “Sierra,” I say again. “That’s my name. That’s—”

She suddenly hits me with the hand holding the wineglass. It shatters, the fine glass breaking against my cheekbone and leaving a numbness in its wake while wine and glass pieces rain to the floor.

“You aren’t my Sierra,” my mother snarls suddenly.

“Don’t you dare use her name! Don’t you ever—” She reaches for me, getting the play back on script as blood trickles from my split cheek.

But yet again I deviate from how this is supposed to go.

As she leans closer, looking garish in the light from the TV, I don’t stand there and let her do it.

My hand comes up fast and sharp; I hit her with the flashlight as she leans forward, our combined momentum making the blow hurt.

Mom cries out, and when she stumbles backward, the glass on the floor does her bare feet no favors.

She yells again, and the pain combined with her drunkenness sends her collapsing to the floor.

I step forward, standing over her, the glass crunching under my boots as she wails and cries and yells for Dad.

But I doubt Dad will come. He went deaf to her madness a long time ago, not that it meant he was on my side through any of this. Not in any way that mattered, at least.

“Sierra,” I whisper again. “I’m Sierra.”

“You’re not my child!” my mother wails. “You aren’t my daughter! I know you’re some awful, evil thing that took her! I’ll kill you, I’ll—”

“You threw me in the well!” My cold anger shatters into something closer to her hysteria, and tears roll down my cheeks. “If Dad hadn’t helped me, you would’ve killed me! You hit me over the head and—”

I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what could make this better. An apology? Maybe. Maybe not.

My mom stops her trembling and her wailing. She rocks back and forth and stares up at me, her gaze glazed over from too much wine and madness. “I should’ve hit you harder,” she whispers, her voice filled with nothing but hate.

Something in me simply snaps.

Whatever she didn’t break a week ago finishes shredding into pieces now. I move without thinking, without feeling. Finding it easy to pin her down when she’s this drunk. The flashlight feels satisfyingly heavy in my hand as I lift it and let it fall.

Thud.

She gasps, her mouth open like a fish. One hand reaches for me, but I lift the flashlight again and bring it down, bypassing her hand to hit her face.

Thud.

Blood flies this time, spraying my face as her mouth still gapes like a fish. Her hand falls, but her eyes remain wide, pinning me with their accusation.

You aren’t my daughter, I can practically hear her say.

The flashlight comes down again.

What did you do to Sierra? The words echo in my head, along with memories of her shaking me, of her hitting me, of her dragging me to the barn and telling me I can live with the horses.

My eyes blur with tears as the sharpness inside me spreads, becoming all-encompassing. I can hear her pleas and begging, but they’re distant and muffled, along with the sound of the home videos playing on the television.

I stop only once the tape ends. When the laughter and love from the older TV stops, it’s no longer a soundtrack to my retribution, and I finally stare down at what used to be my mother.

Though now she looks like just a bunch of bloody, pulverized meat. Not fit for the dogs or the pigs.

Not fit for anything but this.

“I told you that you’d regret it,” I whisper, though my mom is far from hearing, even if her fingers are still twitching.

Her blood is sticky and warm on my face, and I feel bits of thicker things running down my chin.

When I try to turn the flashlight on, I realize the lens is cracked.

The blood fascinates me, and I wipe it off with my fingers to look at the battered, shattered plastic.

Numbly, I get to my feet, still staring down at Mom. She barely looks like a person from the neck up, and dimly I realize Dad should’ve heard. He doesn’t drink like Mom, and he isn’t so far gone that he wouldn’t have come to check on so much yelling.

My steps take me down the hallway and up the stairs toward the bedrooms. My room is just as pristine as it was before Mom made me leave, with all the belongings I was no longer allowed to touch. But I pass it, as if it’s just a guest room.

Maybe Mom was right, I think, as I barely glance into what used to hold my memories and my life. Maybe I’m not Sierra Morwen.

The light is on in my parents; bathroom, though the door is cracked. Curious, I walk toward it, and an acrid smell hits my nose as the light flickers.

It smells familiar.

It smells wrong.

But I push the door open anyway, to see the bathroom lights sputtering as if they’re on the edge of giving up. My gaze follows a black cord plugged in by the sink, across the white floor, to where it’s draped over the edge of the full tub.

Mom’s bulky hair dryer floats in the tub, looking innocent, as if it’s simply there by accident. As if maybe it just fell in. Yet Dad’s hand wrapped around it, fingers locked and frozen, shows me that’s not the case.

Of course, he didn’t come to check on us.

Of course, he didn’t hear the noise of me beating Mom to death.

How could he, when he’s lying here in the cooling water, his body electrocuted and his life having fled probably before I ever struck the first blow?

Dad’s as dead as Mom, and something in me simply…goes.

Maybe I hoped he’d forgive me. That we could be happy with Mom gone.

Maybe I hoped he’d hug me like he used to, and fix me pancakes while we problem solved the situation.

Maybe after all of this, I thought he loved me enough to stay.

I barely realize that I’m leaving, that I’m moving, until I’m standing on the porch of my house and staring at the moon. I don’t belong here, that sharpness, that heat, inside of my chest tells me.

Sierra Morwen belonged here.

But Mom and Dad were right.

She’s gone.

And I’m the thing that lives in her body now.