Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Bennett
T here’s only one pair ahead of us now, and it’s Maudlin Rose versus the Heartbreak Killer. It figures that Cat and I would be the last to compete in this event.
Ezra struggled in the last round, and now I’m getting nervous. He pulled a short candlestick and chose to beat his victim to death after first trying to shove the stick through the man’s eye. The flared design made it pretty impossible to hit the brain.
Jim ended up besting him, though only by a few seconds. The son of a bitch lucked out and pulled a carving knife from his chosen bag. If he hadn’t opted to grace us with a Shakespearean soliloquy before plunging the knife into the woman’s abdomen, he’d have won by more than a few seconds.
I’ll never understand theater people.
Before them, a slew of randoms and unknowns took their turns, and most of it was pretty boring to watch. Amateurs, all of them. Now, only four bags remain on the table, and I’m nervous to see what Cat and I will pull. So far, we’ve seen the many uses of a tree topper, a nutcracker, a pair of scissors, and a DVD of the gripping 1994 film The Santa Clause .
As Kindra and Rose head toward the remaining bags, I steal another glance at Cat. She hasn’t looked at me a single time since that first time we locked eyes, and it’s driving me insane. She’s turning this into a dangerous game. I’m used to getting what I want, and where women are concerned, I’m not accustomed to hearing the word no.
Kindra and Rose step to the front of the class, and I’m forced to look away from Cat. If her best friend notices I’m staring, she’s liable to confront one or both of us about it. That’s one complication I don’t need.
“Looks like I get to use an ornament hook,” Kindra says as she holds up the tiny sprig of metal.
Maudlin Rose turns a piece of paper in her fingers, then holds it toward Kindra.
“Oh, you got the ax,” Kindra says. “It was too large to fit in the bag, so we just wrote it down.”
Ezra appears beside her with the ax and holds it toward Rose, who accepts it with a gleam in her eye. Then she turns and studies her Cattle with a frown. She prefers to kill men, and her victim is a woman.
“Do you want to switch?” Kindra asks, and Rose nods.
That’s the sort of kindness I’ll never understand. Kindra is already against the ropes, and forcing Rose to kill a woman could have given her an advantage. She basically handed her the win.
The women get behind their victims, but before Kindra can give the word to begin, Cat raises her hand.
“What are you, twelve?” I say. “You aren’t in school, Miss Novak. If you have something to say, just say it.”
When she scowls at me, I remember that I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut. She makes that difficult when she does dumb shit like raising her hand, though.
“You can alter the item, right?” Cat asks Kindra. When Kindra confirms, Cat stands and hands something to her, then whispers, “Good luck.”
Swallowing the urge to call the pair of hens a couple of cheaters is like choking on glass, but I manage.
When Kindra says they can begin, I expect Rose to start wielding the ax like a madman, but she doesn’t. She strolls around her victim, caressing his cheek with the blunt side of the ax head.
Meanwhile, Kindra is busy jacking off the world’s smallest dick behind her wheelchair. That’s what it looks like, at least. Whatever Cat handed her, she’s making use of it now, though I don’t think it’ll be of much help. When she raises the hook to her eyes and studies it, it still looks the same to me.
As Kindra bends over the woman’s neck and begins performing some weird sort of pseudo-surgery, Rose finally swings the ax overhead and brings it down between the man’s legs. Everyone with testicles immediately recoils.
Blood flows through the wheelchair’s thick canvas seat and patters on the tarp, forming a fresh puddle. The man shakes and jerks so violently from the pain that the chair topples backward. Despite the carpet beneath the tarp, his head makes a loud thunk as it strikes the floor.
Rose walks around her writhing victim and raises the ax as she looks down into his eyes. The man looks back at her, sucking air through his nostrils with such force that they keep slamming shut. He shakes his head, yelling, “No! No!” through those flaring nostrils. Tiny little Rosie just laughs her silent laugh and pretends to bring the ax down on his head, always halting the arc just before impact.
We’ve all stopped focusing on Kindra, so it comes as a shock when she requests that Jim check her Cattle’s pulse. The woman’s head lolls to the side, and she certainly looks dead, though I can’t see how Kindra killed her. Then I spot the red freshet burbling from the woman’s neck. The blood has slowed to a languid trickle, but that’s only because most of what was in her body now covers the tarp beneath her wheelchair.
Jim tips the woman’s head to the side, revealing a slim gash in the thin skin of her neck. After checking for a pulse in three places, he declares Kindra the winner. As he raises her hand in the air, Rose chooses that moment to hoist the ax and separate her Cattle’s head from its body.
With an elegant sidestep, Jim saves his precious Italian leather shoes from the encroaching red river. It’s a wonder no one has slipped by this point.
“Maybe we should swap out the tarp,” Cat says, almost as if she was thinking the same thing.
Or maybe she’s stalling . . .
She licks her lips and looks around, then resumes picking at the side of her thumb like she’s been doing for the last twenty minutes. Either she has one hell of a hangnail, or she’s about to shit herself with nerves.
“Thanks for the assist,” Kindra says as she tosses a nail file to Cat. “I never would have been able to get that blunt tip through her skin otherwise.”
“Only one pair left to do battle.” Jim steps over the red smears and puddles as he heads for his seat. “Just mind the blood and you’ll be fine.”
As the lackeys wheel the dead bodies away, I stand and head toward the two bags on the table behind the chairs. Cat hurries to join me, probably to be sure I don’t cheat by peeking in the bags. She knows me so well already.
She steps in front of me, and I catch a whiff of that fruity shampoo she uses. I close my eyes and allow myself a few milliseconds to enjoy the scent. Any longer and someone might notice.
“I like those boots,” I whisper near her ear. “Make sure you wear them when you come to my room.”
“I never said I was coming to your room,” she whispers back.
“Any chance we could hurry this along?” Kindra says. “Lunch will be ready in twenty minutes, and some of us need to change clothes.”
I pluck up a bag when she takes too long to decide, which earns me a huff from her pouty lips. She should have been quicker. Once she grabs the remaining bag, we walk to the front of the room, where two fresh Cattle have already been positioned.
Kindra rolls her hand through the air. “Let’s get this shit show on the road. Go!”
Opening my bag, I find a glass reindeer statue the size of my hand. Unless a gun waits within that brown paper in her hands, this couldn’t be any easier for me. I lower the reindeer to the floor, then step on it while holding one of the antlers. Crystal crunches under my shoe, and I come away with a sharp, pointy spear about the size of my finger, complete with a smooth antler grip.
“I know Christmas was a couple of weeks ago, but I’m feeling quite festive.” I turn to my prey and drag the sharp end down the man’s cheek. Blood beads along the cut.
Giggles erupt from the peanut gallery, and I’m feeling quite pleased with my joke. Until I realize they aren’t laughing at me. They’re laughing at Cat.
Since everyone is looking at her, I feel safe enough to take a peek, but when I see what she’s doing, I don’t find it funny at all. With the grace of Mia Khalifa, she’s deep-throating a jumbo peppermint stick.
“You’re supposed to use it as a weapon, not suck it off,” I say. “You’ll be here all day at this rate, so I guess I can take my time with my kill.”
She rolls her blue eyes and keeps sucking.
I turn my attention back to the squirming man in front of me before Cat’s erotic impression of a Dyson gives me a gnarly case of blue balls. It’ll take her at least ten minutes to shape that thing into a tip that’s pointy enough to do damage. I should know. I used to make peppermint shanks every Christmas.
This actually presents a good opportunity to let her win, though. While I pretend to lose myself to torturing this asshole in front of me, she’ll have time to sharpen that point and make her first kill. Then I can act all mad before I rush to my room and strip down to my boxers so she can put her mouth skills to better use.
But time ticks by, and Cat still doesn’t make a move. My victim is an artwork of bloody lattice etchings; hers is still entirely intact. He doesn’t even look concerned anymore.
Cat pulls the peppermint stick from her mouth and takes a look. The end is sharp enough, but she inserts it into her mouth again and keeps sucking.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter under my breath.
She’s nervous, and I don’t think she has the balls to make the kill. Kindra and I might be the only people who know her well enough to spot the panicked glint in her eyes, but it will become obvious to everyone if I don’t do something.
I step over to her, snatch the red-and-white rod from her mouth, and plunge it into her Cattle’s throat. Repeatedly. The pointed tip holds its shape until the fourth downward swing, when it breaks off inside the man’s neck.
Cat stands behind her gurgling victim, her mouth gaping and her eyes wide. I can’t tell if she’s relieved or pissed.
“Bennett, you have about three seconds to get out of range before I start swinging,” she says.
Pissed. She’s definitely pissed.
“Okay, I think that’s enough for one day.” Kindra stands and hurries to get between us before Cat can rush forward and claw out my eyes. “Everyone, take fifteen to clean up, and we’ll all meet in the dining hall for lunch.”
She wraps an arm around her blonde friend’s shoulder and begins leading her out of the room. Eve joins them, though she takes extra pains to turn and scowl at me. I raise my middle finger in salute before the door shuts behind them.
“Boy, you’ve really put your foot in it this time,” Ezra says with a shake of his head as he helps Maverick begin gathering the bloody tarps. “You couldn’t just let her get the kill? She was so close.”
People are filing out of the room, but there are still too many ears present for me to tell Ezra the truth, which is that I wasn't trying to be a dick for once. I was trying to help her.
So I shrug and say what is expected of me. “She was taking too long, and I was sick of waiting.”
“Then why not kill your target, hmm? Why go for hers?”
“To make it more interesting, I guess,” I say. “I don’t know.”
Ezra drops his corner of the tarp, sending a slosh of red onto the carpet. Jim sucks in a breath and kneels to examine the stains as Ezra steps into me.
“You have to stop with this childish shit, and soon. Kindra and I put a lot of work into?—”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. You worked so hard, blah, blah. I’m going to my room. I have a headache.”
I storm out before he can say anything else, and I wasn’t lying. I’m starting to get a real nasty tension headache. My intentions weren’t nefarious for once, and yet I’m still labeled the villain. They won’t make me feel guilty for doing what I could to save Cat from embarrassment.
Now I just have to hope Cat understands.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she would have made the kill. That glint in her eyes could have been anticipation instead of panic.
When I reach the foot of the stairs to the second floor, Kindra materializes from the nearby shadows and yells for me to wait. She’s out of breath, so she must have run the whole way here.
“Ezra already bitched at me,” I say. “Whatever you need to say, I’ve already heard it.”
She shakes her head and grips the polished banister as she gulps air. “No, that’s not it.” Her hand goes to her chest, and she looks around before she leans closer and says, “Cat told me everything.”