3. Zane
Zane
My brother is a goddamn fool.
If burying Forty-three wasn’t bad enough on its own, Kane started humming a melody he swears came from his “Siren”—the girl who assaulted me with a shovel—while we walk back to the car. Like he’s happy that he left a loose end for me to burn.
“The game is stupid,” I say for the third time, unable to wrap my brain around the logistics.
Because there aren’t any. “She’s going to call the cops.
They’ll sketch our faces and put out an APB for anyone matching our description.
It’ll be all over the news.” Anxiety claws at my ribs like a rat climbing a ladder, the tiny beast desperate to avoid dark sewers filled with nothing but the rot and stench of death.
That’s what awaits Kane if this shit gets out— the death penalty.
Forty-three isn’t an arbitrary number I pulled out of my ass.
It’s the number of kills we’ve made since we started this venture as undisciplined teenagers.
Not that our first was intentional—it was self-defense.
But still. That’s forty-three murders under our belts and forty-three missing persons cases within a few hundred mile radius of the city.
Not to mention all the bodies we regularly disappear for the local bratva families.
Even the Baranovas’ influence can only go so far if this shit hits the national news.
We’re usually smarter than dumping bodies into fresh graves. Forty-three—Alejandro—was an exception on account of Kane’s soft spot for the man. He insisted that we bury Alejandro with his family since they mean everything to him .
I never should have allowed it.
Dragging a hand down my face, I make a sharp turn onto the next road on the right, the one headed for the outskirts of the city—what’s known as Old Town.
The historic district, home to the city’s oldest houses, is set against the mountain range to the north.
The richest settlers chose to live opposite the beach, so their houses stood longer against the test of time.
Only families whose names date back centuries still reside there.
The Baranovas, I’ve been told, even have land hidden among the towering evergreens.
My brother and I have no such claims to property or fortune, but a certain curious little kitten does.
Kane idly peels layers of paint off his hands and wrists while I drive down a long stretch of road.
The sun will be rising soon, its colors already peeking over the horizon.
The scent of salt on the ocean breeze gives way to earth and pine the further from the cemetery we drive.
It takes a few false turns for my memory to kick in, but once thick, wrought-iron gates come into view right where the slope of the mountain begins, I know we’ve found the right address.
Morningstar Mortuary.
Slapping his hand on the roof of the car, Kane whoops loudly. “Hell yeah, I knew you didn’t get enough of a taste. Let’s go.” He sits up in his seat, leaving paint strips to flutter to the floorboards.
Crinkling my nose, I smack his shoulder as we approach the gate. “Stay in the car. You’re peeling. It’s evidence.”
His brows lift beneath his bangs, finally flattened after a few hours spent digging in the dirt. “No way, you’ll hurt her.” He hops out of the car before I’ve cut the engine. “I gave my word. She has one year to live.” Squinting against the headlights, he covers his eyes. “Are you coming?”
It’s with the greatest patience that I watch Kane climb over the gate.
We’re not even thirty seconds into this operation, and he’s grinning like a kid breaking into their best friend’s bedroom window on a school night.
He always does this—getting too close to our targets, too invested, only to bleed when they do.
It’s what makes his artwork potent enough to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
He feels things deeper than most people.
It gives me room to feel even less.
I scratch the prickle on the back of my neck and exhale through the nerves skittering across my skin.
There’s no room for anxiety tonight, only action.
I grab onto the iron bar and hoist myself over the fence—not as quickly as Kane, but fast enough.
I jog to catch up with him on the gravel path.
The sky lightens through the canopy of trees.
Songbirds greet the morning with eager chirps, and Kane takes it all in with breathless wonder.
I’d thought he would be too enamored with our scared little kitty cat to appreciate the scenery, but apparently, he can make time to smell the damp earth and listen to the sounds of the forest preparing for daybreak.
Although the weather’s been warmer on account of the blast of heat coming up from the south, the sweat on my skin chills me to the bone.
I’m not as thick as Kane. He may burn a thousand calories fighting and fucking his way through the day, but not me.
I don’t have the metabolism or the muscle mass.
Definitely not the libido.
I steal a glance at Kane while he’s preoccupied with kicking a large rock into the ditch beside the path. We’re not related, barely even brothers on account of us never staying under the same foster family’s roof. I try not to think about it. The past doesn’t matter as much as the present.
As the sun crests over the unseen horizon and flecks of the palest blues turn to vibrant pinks and brightest oranges, they paint Kane’s body in an iridescent shimmer, highlighting the artwork painted all along his body.
The whites and grays turn to color, and it’s then that I can see the flaws along his back.
Not the scratch marks from his nightly conquests—but the flimsy lines and incorrect proportions pretending to be arched ribs and blocky vertebrae.
He can’t reach his back to complete his masterpiece, so he enlists me to complete the picture every year, and every year, I fuck it up.
In the dark, though, and with their thoughts on little more than his cock, Reaper’s victims don’t care that I miscounted the rungs of his ribcage or fucked up the shading on his spine. It’s not like they’re paying attention.
Not like I do.
Drawing a breath, I tear my gaze away and focus on the changing landscape.
Trees give way to swaths of open earth, and ancient, unmarked headstones begin to appear.
This land is some of the oldest in the city—and the most hallowed.
The only people who come here are the Morningstars themselves or their clients, the winding stretch of road keeping curious eyes away.
Unless they’re on a mission to skin a cat.
The funeral home sits at the front of the cemetery, recently remodeled to appear approachable and comforting.
Landscapers have installed a small pond, complete with croaking frogs and a pair of ducks idling in the water.
Kane hovers at the waterside for only a moment before continuing down the path towards the back house—the real centerpiece of the property—Morningstar Mansion.
It’s not actually a mansion, hardly more than two thousand square feet and sagging into the dirt on the back end, but it overlooks the oldest graves from before Harlin Heights was a city.
An old church is nestled up the slope of the hill leading up the mountainside, its white-washed walls having long since faded to a grievous off yellow.
Kane would have a better name for it—something stupid like butter yellow —but to me, it’s just fucking ugly.
Kane bounces in his step as we approach the house from the back porch.
Its front faces the main lot of graves, but its back faces the road.
We skip the steps in favor of climbing over the dilapidated railing, its chipped paint sticking to my palms. Kane leaves flecks of body paint in his wake, just as I predicted.
The skeleton covering his body has cracked, and pieces slough off carelessly, leaving a trail of salt and pepper everywhere he goes.
Grabbing his arm, I keep him from trying the back door.
I point up to the second floor window, the candle flickering in its eave no match for the sunlight breaking across the yard.
We only have a few minutes until it covers the entire area, and we’re sitting ducks if Mercy’s father has a gun on site…
and every man worth his salt has a goddamn gun in this town.
But as Kane boosts me up to the window overhead, it isn’t Mercy’s father we see in through the screen door.
An ancient woman with hair white as the purest winter snow peers unflinchingly at us, an antique lantern in her hand.
I kick off Kane’s shoulder and scramble through the open window, leaving him to deal with the old woman, because my target is in sight.
Mercy’s asleep.
My heart pounds as I knock over the candle on the windowsill and tumble onto a desk.
Papers and pens scatter to the floor as I catch myself, banging my elbow in the process.
With a hiss, I clutch my ringing funny bone and glare at her limp form beneath a mound of blankets.
It’s not that cold, but she’s bundled like she’s fighting a fever.
I roll my eyes and move to her bedside, ready to right the rules of this stupid game.
If I’m playing, I have a say in how this shit show ends.
She looks peaceful in her sleep. Waves of midnight hair spill across her white pillowcase, accentuating just how pale she actually is.
Skin smooth as porcelain covers her cheeks, down the hollow of her throat, across the length of her collarbone.
Icy blue veins streak across her chest and over the curve of her breasts, dipping beneath the blanket before I can glimpse any further.
In the dark of the cemetery, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at other than a fucking problem.
But here, with the morning glow of dawn illuminating her beauty, she’s a goddamn angel.
Too bad I have to clip her wings.