Chapter 28 #2
“I’ve seen darkness. I’ve felt darkness.
I lay in a basement and stared at my mother’s dead body for hours.
I watched my father get shot in the head.
I felt something break inside of me that day.
But I trudged on. And then I met Gabriel.
He stepped into my path and brought my mundane and shitty world grinding to a halt.
And then you took that from me. You made me realize that Gabriel is too precious to be tainted by someone like me.
I have nothing left to live for,” I say with a laugh as I drop my hands.
“Fill me full of bullet holes for all I fucking care. Honestly, though, Whitaker… you really shouldn’t tell me your secrets because you’ve just informed me that you don’t want to kill me right away, now do you?
You don’t want me to die until you’re done with me.
” I give him a mocking smile. “You don’t want to dispose of me just yet… not when you have plans for me.”
“Keep your hands up or I’ll shoot!” Wilcox yells, but my eyes are on Whitaker.
“Are you going to let him shoot me, Whitaker? Are you going to let him taint what is yours? That darkness inside of you wants me… are you going to let someone else take the first bite?”
“Don’t shoot him,” Whitaker snaps at Wilcox.
“He’s fucking with you. Make him listen, then,” Wilcox says. “You don’t understand how smart this man is.”
Whitaker is letting that darkness rule him…
The first step to being a monster in plain sight without anyone knowing is to keep that darkness tamped down. Is this why he’s always hidden out of sight? He knows he can’t control it?
I reach out before lunging at Wilcox. The man is obsessed with Whitaker, all of these people are, so he won’t go against Whitaker’s words, but still, he pulls the trigger as a warning, thinking that it’ll make me listen.
I cry out and jerk back, grabbing my chest. “Fuck,” I scream. “You fucking shot me. You…”
And the darkness descends upon Whitaker’s face. Rage consumes him as Wilcox is startled still. He’s never seen the true man he’s become obsessed with. He has no idea that he’s a pawn in Whitaker’s fucked-up game.
“I didn’t—” Wilcox struggles out.
The gun fires and Wilcox’s final words are silenced as I hit the ground on my side. Wilcox’s body hits right after me while Whitaker roars out his displeasure and shoots Wilcox again, even though the first bullet was quite final.
But Whitaker doesn’t care because how could such a simple and useless pawn topple the most important piece in his game?
“No, no, no,” he yells, rushing over to me while I gasp for breath.
The moment he drops down, he sets his gun behind him, out of my reach.
My hand is digging into my chest, my body curling up as he reaches for me, and I waste no time before I slam that needle right into his leg, using the surprise of it to kick the gun away from him.
He looks down at it, almost in shock that I betrayed him. But that expression is nothing compared to the one he wears when I sit up, and he realizes that I’d never been shot at all.
I lean forward to whisper in his ear. “Don’t fuck with me, Whitaker. I’ve killed countless parasites like you. You are just a drop in the bucket for me, and not even a significant one at that.” That desire to kill has turned into bliss as I watch the man before me die.
He gasps for breath and reaches for something which I have to assume would detonate the bomb Jesse is wearing, until he realizes Jesse has taken the opportunity to rush up to us and gather Whitaker’s gun.
It makes him hesitate, but I know he’ll hit it when it finally sinks in that he’s going to die anyway, so I hold his arms tightly, refusing to let him grab it.
“You tried to ruin my life,” Jesse says while the man’s breaths become more ragged. His eyes are going wild and the limbs I hold are already growing weak.
He tries to say something, but his speech is slurred as he wobbles backwards and then hits the ground on his back. I don’t know much about venom, but whatever Jesse gave me was apparently enough to kill the man in minutes, and I’d made sure to aim it toward the artery in his leg.
Whitaker thrashes while I stare down at him, his eyes fixated on me before they grow vacant.
Honestly, it’s quite the uneventful end to such a miserable man.
“I wish he’d suffered a bit more as he died,” Jesse says, almost like he’s reading my mind. Then he lets out a laugh. “That sounds so fucked up. What is wrong with me?”
I take the gun from his hand and shoot the man right in the head before looking up at Jesse. “Let’s get the bomb squad in here… and don’t let them find out what really killed him. Got it?”
“You’re calling it in?” Jesse asks, looking surprised.
“Yes.”
“What if it comes back on us?”
“It won’t,” I say as I pull my phone out from where Wilcox had tucked it into his pants and call Michaels.
“This is Sgt. Michaels.”
“Where the fuck are you?” I hiss.
“We’re searching the premises… there’s nothing here,” Michaels says while I begin checking out the setup on Jesse. I know better than to touch it without a professional here.
“We’re at the premises and you’re not here. What the hell are you talking about? Wilcox was working for Whitaker. He put a bomb on Jesse. I need a bomb squad out here… Whitaker and Wilcox are both dead.”
Michaels is silent for a moment. “What… do you mean?” he asks through what sounds like gritted teeth.
“I had second thoughts about missing Whitaker’s arrest, and I went to the location Richard wrote down. Did Richard change the address before I grabbed it? Did he tamper with it? What address do you have? Because I’m on County Road 93.”
“Fucking hell. We’re heading there now.”
“I can explain in detail later, but there was a disagreement between Whitaker and Wilcox, so Whitaker shot Wilcox. That gave me enough time to get the gun Whitaker had sitting out, and I killed him before he could detonate the bomb. Fuck… What a fucking mess.”
“You can say that again,” Michaels says before I hang up.
Jesse takes a deep breath, like it’s the first time he’s tried to breathe since we got here. Then his eyes catch mine.
“Don’t cry. I don’t like tears,” I warn him.
“I’m trying not to,” he mutters. “I don’t know what fucking magic you just pulled, but… it was almost too damn simple.”
I nod slowly. “Yeah. It went significantly better than I thought it would.”
“Thank you. I left the hospital and met up with Lacey because she brought me the syringe. I was determined to end this. And as she pulled away, Wilcox nearly knocked me unconscious, then he put the bomb on me. I was supposed to call you and tell you to meet me here, but I couldn’t get myself to.
I just… thought I’d rather fucking blow up than let him kill you too.
But I should have known you wouldn’t die that easily. ”
“You should have,” I say. “How did Lacey get the venom?”
“She worked at a reptile facility for a long while. It’s how she ended up at the zoo since they have connections with the zoo.
The owner there really liked her and taught her a few things over the ten years she worked there.
I don’t know whether she got the venom I used today from there or the zoo, but we can’t let anyone know it’s what killed him. ”
“I’m aware,” I say as I hear sirens in the distance.
“You’re such a good person, Liam.”
“And that is where you’re wrong,” I retort before Michaels rushes in, not giving a fuck about the bomb. He’s the only one who does, though, forcing the others to stay back until the bomb squad arrives.
“You should go… in case this goes off randomly or something,” Jesse says.
“Nah, I’m good right here,” I say as I sit down near him. “Let it blow me up, and all of my fucking problems will just go away.”
“Yeah? They might… but Gabriel’s won’t.”
And isn’t that the truth.