10. North
Chapter 10
North
I feel something physically thick in my chest when I drop Ranen off at Olly’s after we finish eating. As much as I want to go to his apartment with him, maybe find an excuse to get my mouth back on his… I can’t. There’s a man waiting for me, tied up in my dad’s trunk.
It would be extremely inconsiderate to leave him waiting.
Still, the smug look on Olly’s face when I dropped Ranen off was almost enough to make me change my plans.
Almost.
If it weren’t for the fact that the man waiting for me had been one of those assholes intent on sending Ranen horrible messages, I would have.
“I thought you weren’t going to come.” Dad gives me a knowing look, and I’m not sure if I want to flip him off or ask him a dozen questions. Maybe he isn’t quite as fucked up as I am, and maybe he’s more into killing people for profit than pleasure, but he still bleeds the same psychopath blood I do. Once upon a time, he’d been in a relationship.
Once upon a time, he’d been in love with my mother. I didn’t remember her very well though—but I have vague memories of her smiling at him, kissing him. Loving him back.
I could ask him for advice—I could ask him how he balanced who he was with how kind she’d been. Instead, I flick my gaze to the knife block on his kitchen counter and sigh. “Where is he?”
“You’re not using my new knife set. That’s for cooking , North.”
My fingers twitch, the temptation to reach over to the block and pull out the small, sharp blade meant to fillet almost too much to resist. I only manage because Dad steps between me and the counter with a brow arched.
“What has you in a mood?” He says it like it’s a question, but his expression tells me he probably already knows exactly what.
“Nothing. I just need to let some extra energy out on the asshole I left you to babysit. Now… where is he?”
Dad stares at me for another second before shrugging a shoulder. He knows me well enough to know that I’m not going to talk about something if I don’t want to. “I thought about leaving him in the trunk, but I was afraid he’d make too much noise if you ended up not coming tonight. I dragged him into the basement. I’m, ah, sorry if something’s broken. When I say dragged, I mean I took him to the top of the stairs and kicked him down.”
I didn’t tell him much about who the man was, or why I was so insistent that I needed to secure him immediately , but I told him enough that he knew it was someone who’d hurt Ranen. Someone who would probably keep hurting him if he had a chance. Even though he knew it wasn’t the guy who’d put him in the hospital, apparently the answer was enough to get a bit of special treatment from Atlas Sinclair.
My dad was an amazing man.
“Thanks, Dad.”
Maybe I can talk to him about my problems later… because I’m beginning to think he might already have realized exactly why I was having them.
The basement is dark when I open the door, but I can hear the sound of pained whimpers intermingling with the grunts of a man desperately fighting to free himself. I’m not worried. I tied him up myself, and I’m pretty sure Dad hadn’t bothered to untie him before unceremoniously dumping him down the stairs.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” My voice comes out in a lethal sing-song, the tone deeper than usual. I can feel the zinging sensation slowly starting to build up, a bubble somewhere beneath my skin that sends excited little thrills through my entire body. This is what’s been missing lately from my kills. There are so few things in the world that make me feel like this, that make me feel like my nerves are alive and my blood is singing.
Killing does that for me.
And killing this asshole seems to have found an extra special place somewhere behind my ribs, because I feel almost lightheaded with excitement. I could take my time—I could keep him here for days and Dad wouldn’t mind—but…
No.
I probably wouldn’t have that kind of self-control.
I am polite enough to close the basement door behind me as I make my way down.
I step over the asshole at the bottom of the stairs like he’s a piece of garbage in my way, though I do glance at his leg and see that yes, it is broken. It makes a smile spread across my face, and that smile only grows when I make sure to kick the injured limb on my way back just so I can listen to him scream behind his gag. It’s already wet with a disgusting mixture of saliva and vomit, and I’m not careful when I slide the blade I picked up from the wall through the fabric and cut it free.
He’s instantly begging, gasping, promising me anything and everything if I’ll just let him go. I have to wonder if some part of him knows it isn’t going to work out that way, or if he’s seriously so arrogant he believes he can talk his way out of his fate.
“Do you really think I would have bothered bringing you here if I was going to let you go?” I kneel down. Sometimes I like to play with the people I take. It’s satisfying, seeing hope build behind their eyes just so I can dash it away.
This isn’t one of those situations. I want this asshole to know from the get-go that he’s fucked. I want him to know he never stood a chance from the second he typed that fucking disgusting message and decided to hit send so Ranen had to see it.
I want him to know he did this to himself, and there’s no way out for him.
Not now.
Not ever.
Not for anyone who hurts Ranen.
The last thought strikes me hard somewhere in the center of my chest, penetrating the bubbly, light feeling that pours through me. It’s something thicker, something solid and real that wraps roots around my ribs and starts to grow. It’s more than obsession—it’s almost like I’m possessed.
Possessed by my need for Ranen and the memory of his lips pressed against mine. Fuck, those lips . I’d nearly lost myself to that kiss. I want to lose myself to him, and I’m done resisting.
I don’t want to fight it. If those emotions are taking root in my chest, if they want to grow… I’ll water them with the blood of anyone who hurts him and happily watch the petals turn to crimson when the flower blooms.
With that in mind, I bring the blade I’m holding down in a sudden movement, feeling a small twinge in my wrist as it scrapes against bone before sinking into something thicker— the glance against his ribs is worth it to make sure I don’t stab anything vital.
Just because he’s dying tonight doesn’t mean I’m not going to take my time, after all.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“N-no.” He speaks through gasps and saliva pooling in his mouth, through pain that makes tears spring to his eyes and his body writhe in an attempt to get away from me even though he’s chained like so much meat ready for slaughter. “I didn’t do anything, I—”
I twist the blade in his side just so I can cut the lie off before it passes his lips. When I lift it up and bring the flat of the blade against his mouth to cut off the sound, he squirms again.
“Try again. I’ll give you a hint. You thought it was smart to look at someone in pain, someone who’d been hurt, and like it. You thought you could say something fucking disgusting to someone who wasn’t yours. To someone who…” I pause on the word, not because I don’t feel it, and not because I don’t mean it, but because I’m almost relishing it, saying it aloud. Saying it to this man. Painting it into the air with his blood. It’s like I’m sealing it into existence. I’m speaking it with murder , even though Ranen won’t know I did it. “You fucked with something that’s mine. You don’t get to do that and live.”
“I don’t—”
“Cas,” I spit out. I use his camboy name so the fucker in front of me will know exactly who I’m talking about. It takes him a second, and I don’t know if it’s because he’s in so much pain, or because he watches so many people online that he has to mentally scroll through the catalogue before he realizes who I’m talking about.
“Fuck… what? Cas?” His eyes are wide, and he looks more shocked than anything when he turns his face up to me. “That’s what this is about?”
I hate the way he says it, like Ranen isn’t important, like what he said to him was… forgivable. “Yes, he’s what this is about.”
The man’s voice is still thick, and the feel of his blood slowly oozing from his side to saturate my jeans reminds me I hadn’t bothered to put on any protective gear before I came down here. That’s fine. I don’t mind feeling it—I don’t mind it soaking into my clothes.
I don’t mind covering myself in his pain.
“I can—” He gasps when I lean forward, but grits his teeth and forces a brave face. “I can pay you. I can give you anything you want. I own my own business, I…”
“Try again,” I growl, because money isn’t what I want here—it’s his pain. His fucking death rattle painting an apology to Ranen across my skin.
“Fuck. Fuck . You’re going to fucking burn for this. Some little twink camboy isn’t worth—”
It’s a quick motion to cut someone’s tongue out—it’s fucking messy, though. But I’d put the pair of pliers in my pocket in case I needed them. I wrench them into his mouth and clamp them down, and his bullshit words turn into a high-pitched whine, a whimper, and then a scream that cuts off into gurgling as I saw my knife through the muscle.
He tries to twist, to turn his head as the flood of blood fills his mouth. I slap my hand on his lips to keep him from spitting it out and use my other to grab his jaw and hold his head in place.
“He’s worth everything , asshole.”
His eyes are rolling now, wild and wide. He’s finally , finally realizing he isn’t going to get out of this.
I’ve never felt this good killing. It’s almost euphoric, knowing I’m doing this for Ranen… knowing I cut out the tongue of the bastard who made him unhappy.
Blood bubbles from his nose as he starts to choke on the liquid pouring down his throat, but I keep his head in place. I stare at him while he drowns, while he bleeds out. I don’t take my eyes off his face until I watch the light leave his…
And it’s only once I’m finished that I realize… that was probably faster than any kill I’ve ever made, and somehow it was more fulfilling than all of them put together.
My eyes drop to his tongue on the ground beside him. There’s a small part of me that thinks about taking it with me, presenting it to Ranen… telling him that no one is allowed to talk to him the way this fucker did…
But…
Ranen doesn’t know about me, and I think a tongue as love language might be taking the term a little too literally.
It takes me longer to clean up the kill than it did to actually do it. I’m precise when I hack the body into pieces and careful when I wrap them up in bags. I pack them away neatly in a box to take to the incinerator at the back of the property before I leave.
Dad’s the reason I bought my isolated house. I learned from a young age that the best way to make sure no one discovered what you were doing with the bodies you created was to handle the cleanup yourself.
Speaking of cleanup, I look down at my hands as I walk back up the stairs. I’m not the only one awake. I figured Dad would be asleep by the time I finished… but I also figured I’d be down in the basement for a while.
“Uh, did you have a good time down there, North?” His voice is clearly full of amusement, and I’m reminded once again how lucky I am that I have a family that accepts who and what I am. The only thing Dad ever scolded me for was being sloppy—the only thing he ever forbade me from doing was killing on impulse.
Plan. Plan. Plan. Do it somewhere safe. Do it where you know you won’t be caught.
It wasn’t the talk most kids got, but I’d appreciated it all the same.
“I…” I think again about opening up to him about the problem I have, about the swelling obsession in my chest that I’m pretty sure is turning into something else, even though I barely know Ranen. It doesn’t matter, though. I know the truth, and once I know something, there’s no changing it.
Ranen is mine.
“North?”
“Can I take a shower and borrow some clothes?” I glance behind me to the stairs and the box waiting down there. “I need to drop a package off at the incinerator and then head back h—” I cut myself off before I can say the word.
Home.
Not the apartment. Not my house.
I need to head back to Ranen.
Fuck, this is more complicated than I thought.
Home. When I think of him, I think of the word home .
And maybe Dad can see it cross my face because he doesn’t push… yet . He just nods toward the stairs. “You go get cleaned up. I’ll handle what’s downstairs.”
Usually he’d pry, and I wonder whether he didn’t because he knows I’m not ready to talk about it or because I’m not even sure what I’d say. I’m still sorting through these feelings myself as they come at me one after another. I just know that killing that asshole felt good. Killing always feels good, but it’s always been for myself.
Killing for Ranen?
It’s a high I’ve never touched, a sensation I’ve never experienced in my entire life.
I want more.
And I want…
Fuck, I want Ranen .