3. Ivy
THREE
IVY
Every muscle in my body ached. I’d been sitting in this same cramped position since before midnight, and I was hungry, tired, and sick of staking out the fucking Guild. The bushes across the street weren’t a good viewpoint, so I’d climbed the fucking trees on the opposite hill and set up camp.
It was the perfect spot. I could see the side of the building Bonnie had identified as the dorm windows and started counting.
One, two, three up. One, two, three, four, five, six across.
There.
A shadow moved across the window I had identified as theirs, then passed by again in the opposite direction. Back, forth, back, forth. Someone was pacing.
But why?
Killers without a conscience didn’t have a reason to worry and pace. They had no morals to keep them up at night. They didn’t worry about little things like who they hurt in the process while they were out here mindlessly killing and slaughtering people for money.
What kind of monsters kept a killer up at night?
Hopefully, it was the memory of my father’s face when they ran it across their bike tires.
The plan was simple–I needed to get into their dorms, leave my note, and get out, all without being seen. I’d come back later and do the real damage, but these fuckers had enjoyed freedom for too long for me to give them the easy way out.
I wanted them to suffer. Mentally, physically, emotionally. And I had plans that would ensure they got their just desserts.
Torture.
A continuous stream of mind games to keep them wondering how I knew where they’d be and when, who their targets were, the intricacies of their methods and calling cards. I laid out a tiered and extensive method to get under their skin and drive them batshit crazy–until I was ready to end them for good.
I would rip their minds to shreds and have them questioning themselves. And when they were inches away from tearing each other's throats out, I’d swoop in, string them up, and beat them until I was ready to put a bullet in each of their heads and bury them in the depths of the Dread River.
Paybacks were a bitch. But this time, they were being delivered by a bitch, too.
And I’d be the last bitch they’d see before their lives were snuffed out. For good.
Two burly guards, both making up for what they lacked in brains with the thick walls of muscles they sported, wandered back and forth along the entrance to the driveway, not bothering to hide the guns in their hands and on their backs as they lived out their tough guy Rambo fantasies.
Fucking men. Especially the roided-out, tiny-dicked ones whose personalities meant they couldn’t hold down a girlfriend for longer than a few weeks at best. I’d bet every single date they had recently ended in the girl ghosting them on whatever stupid dating app these knuckle-dragging Neanderthals managed to slap their pictures up on.
I rubbed my eyes, forcing the edges of my vision blurry as I shook the sleep from my brain. “Wake up, you stupid bitch,” I muttered just low enough for myself to hear, and only myself. “There’s work to do.”
There was always work to do. I didn’t have time to fantasize about a future or laugh about idiots, or even breathe for a second. Every moment of my life was devoted now to accomplishing the only meaning my life held anymore, and there was room for nothing else in the schedule.
Not happiness, not a relationship, not sleep or fun.
Only pain. Revenge. Hatred.
The only things I could feel were negative. And it would never end until I finished these assholes off once and for all, giving them everything they deserved and more .
I was here for a dry run of the plan, and I had to turn my attention back to the task at hand with a firm hand and a sigh of irritation. As the guards were relieved by the next shift, I slinked down from the perch I’d been clinging to and settled into the mindset of a killer.
Showtime.
My feet moved silently across the grass, carrying me closer to the asylum walls as I felt my breathing quicken and my pulse hammer through my veins. Adrenaline filled my lungs with every step, and when my back hit the brick-and-mortar exterior, just a few feet below the targets of my obsession, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
No guards in sight and not a single person around to spot me. The whole back wall was a blind spot for the security cameras, and the team of goons they relied on to patrol the grounds were likely in the throes of a circle jerk.
Time to start the clock.
I whipped out my phone and flipped on the stopwatch, shoving it back in my pocket as I pulled myself away from the building and searched for the nearby fire escape. Every one of these old buildings in town had one, and the asylum was no exception. Old, rusted, and likely to be loud as fuck, sitting right there on the corner of the building itself, just at the edge of the camera range.
Get in, get it done, get out.
I was careful to be gentle when I put my hands on the rungs, pulling myself up the warped and unclean metal ladder, watching my surroundings to make sure I wasn’t caught unawares. Step by step, I cleared the first floor, then the second, then the third, then counted over until I’d reached the window Bonnie claimed belonged to the Dogs.
Odd. They’d turned out all the lights.
I recounted the windows, reassuring myself I was in the right place. Once I’d double-checked the location, I set to work slipping the lock on the shitty, old, unreliable single-pane windows they’d never bothered to upgrade.
A minute and a half later, I was inside.
From the looks of it, I’d landed in a living room, right beside a TV that felt too small for as far away from the couch as it was. I started to move across the room and nearly fell face-first as I tripped over a pair of shoes laying haphazardly in the middle of the walkway.
Righting myself before I could make too much noise, I took the opportunity to adjust to the lack of light. Shapes in the dark slowly became objects I recognized–a coffee table, a chair against the wall, the sink across the room, a flag propped in the far corner. I noted the front entrance, pleased to see a chain lock dangling across the small gap between the door edge and the wall.
A single, malevolent, intrusive thought crossed my mind, and I had to stop myself from entertaining it.
Pick up the shoes and put em in the sink, on the table. Somewhere they know they’d never put them.
Scare them a little.
It wasn’t a terrible idea, but I didn’t want to show my hand too quickly. If I gave them reason to suspect someone was sneaking in and moving their shit, they might up security around here. And then I’d have to come up with another plan to give them what they deserved.
I didn’t want to go back to the start and rethink everything all over again.
I wanted them dead, sooner rather than later, so that I could live my own life.
What even was my life? Did I have one anymore?
Mama turned to the bottle after Daddy’s murder. When we had a falling out, she disowned me, swearing never to let me through her doors again. I was an only child, which meant it was just me and the old, haunting memories of that night .
I couldn’t stay there, though; the trauma ran so deep. Never touched a red cent of the family money I'd inherited, never once set foot back in the house that held the worst nightmare of my life between the walls. My mother was too stubborn to ask me back, and I was, like her, too stubborn to forget the past.
Instead, I shacked up with some bitch from across town in a severely overpriced apartment with no personal space and no privacy, all to avoid dealing with my demons. Go fucking figure. In running from everything about my old life, I waltzed right into another one I hated.
People were miserable creatures when you stole their little slice of happiness.
I moved around the room like a panther, head low, crouched down in case someone happened to look at the same windows I’d studied minutes before. As I crossed through the kitchen, I took note of everything relevant to my future plans. How the sink, the counters, even the appliances, looked so boring and plain. It was as if they had no personality, no sense of style, no taste.
Which felt . . . kinda sad, really. They didn’t seem like the type to live so blandly. They seemed like they’d have more personality than this in their lives.
I was so stuck on the mundane shit, my fingers sliding over the small collection of out-of-date VHS tapes on the mantle, no tape player in sight, that I almost missed the sound of a slipper scuffing concrete flooring somewhere behind one of these doors. I sucked wind as I scrambled to find a place to hide, realizing the window was too far away now to guarantee an escape in time.
I eyeballed the table, then dismissed it as stupid, considering it was utterly open-legged. The cabinets might or might not have room for me inside; there was no way to tell without giving my position away. And if I risked hiding behind a chair or the couch, I could be stuck there for who knew how long.
At the last second, I lunged for the front door and slipped out it, leaving a crack for me to slip back in through once the asshole ducked back into his room. The corridor was silent and dark, so there wasn’t really a risk of getting caught. Plus, I was in my mask, so who’d recognize me, even if they did catch me?
My breath fogged up the side of the metal door as I watched a light come on in the living quarters, joined by the sounds of shuffling feet and annoyed grumbling. I clung to the door handle for dear life until my knuckles went white from the exertion, but just when I thought the coast was clear, something tugged at the door from the other side, and I wasn’t fast enough to think on my feet as the damn thing was yanked out of my grip and slammed shut. I could hear a faint voice on the other side grumbling about damn assholes forgetting to close the door, but the voice was too far away to tell who it belonged to.
One thing I did know for sure–it wasn’t Jackal.
I would never forget that voice as long as I lived.
Suddenly stranded inside an insane asylum, a building specifically designed to keep the outside world out and the residents in, I was left with only one option–find another exit, and fast. The longer I stayed in this fucking place, the more danger I’d be in.
Staying put until someone came out of the room was dangerous. I couldn’t pick the lock, since I’d failed to bring my lockpick set with me. I couldn’t just walk out the front door?—
Or could I?
With my mask on and my knife in hand, I’d look just like every other fucker in this place, And ten to one, the guards wouldn’t stop me as I left. This wasn’t exactly a prison anymore. The members came and went as they pleased.
The only other option was to try to sneak back out through another room, and with no idea what the inside of the place looked like or what the residents’ schedules were, there was too much risk in that option unless someone had suddenly decided to start putting windows that never locked in a fucking hall closet.
Blood pounded in my ears, my vision swimming as my eyes adjusted to the low lighting I was plunged into. Moving down the hall couldn’t have taken as long as it felt like it took. An eternity later, I found myself at the edge of the wall, opening up on what looked like a slightly more illuminated balconette of sorts—oh, no, there was a set of stairs. I followed the sound of low chatter over the rails and edged to the banister, clinging to the wooden beam that kept me from walking right off the edge.
And my heart stopped.
There beneath me, coming in from what must have been a night of debauchery, singing drunkenly and clinging to each other, were none other than the fucking dogs I was after. They looked almost human, the only identifiable thing on them the baseball bats slung over their shoulders and the masks hanging from their belts. I’d venture to bet even a stupid murderer wouldn’t wander too far from home without his mask and weapon in hand, just in case.
You never knew what kind of crazy you’d run into these days.
Those fuckers are just coming back. Which means . . .
Which meant the apartments I’d just been inside couldn’t have been theirs, unless they had a random fourth member I didn’t know about. And the thought of them sneaking in another member with how closely I’d kept tabs on them was unfathomable. It was impossible. Nobody was that slick.
Bonnie and Clyde would have said something by now.
Right?
The bastards wobbled and stumbled their way to the floor below me, marching down the hall just below the one I’d just come down, and I realized with a start that the fucking idiots I was paying for insider intel had counted one floor too high.
Never trust a fucking idiot to do a job right.
I should have known better than to rely on someone other than myself to figure something this important out. Cursing my oversight and lack of preparation, I slipped my mask on, puffed up my jacket to mask my feminine features, and snuck down the stairs after them.
Maybe tonight wasn’t a total loss after all.
Jackal was unmistakeable as I rounded the corner to spy on them, a second man slung between him and a third guy, the second clearly wasted out of his mind and unable to walk on his own. The fiend who’d haunted my nightmares every night, his wild cackle and malicious, frightening sharp teeth, turned to peer down the hallway as if he’d heard me breathing. His eyes peered into what I knew was darkness, emptiness, searching for something that wasn’t there as he shook the confusion from his head and slipped a key out of his pocket to open their door.
The third man dropped the bats he held, fumbling to keep his charge upright as the second man groaned ominously.
I knew that sound. I’d worked in enough bars and smoked enough mid-shift cigarettes in the alley not to recognize the sound of a man about to waste all the liquor he’d poured down his own throat.
“Get him inside, Dingo,” Jackal whisper-shouted as he flung the door open and shuffled in. “If he pukes on me, I’m going to kill someone.” He disappeared into the apartment, door still wide open behind them. “I might start with you.”
I blinked stupidly at the bats lying abandoned in the hall, ripe for the picking, and shook my head at the insanity of the idea that had just flitted through my mind.
I was not going to steal one of their bats. I had a perfectly good bat in my damn apartment. I didn’t need one of theirs.
How it ended up in my hands, then, as I slunk down the stairs and tried my damndest to pretend I belonged there, was a mystery.
My hands clenched the wooden handle so hard I was afraid I’d snap it in two and embed half the filthy wood in the palm of my hand as I passed the guards at the door, whistling to myself as if I didn’t have a care in the world. I shoved the swinging French-style doors open with a well-placed boot to the wood and tipped my head high as the outside air rushed up to greet me.
I walked a whole six blocks away from the edge of the damn property before I let myself breathe a sigh of relief.
Fuck, that was close.
On the one hand, I hadn’t accomplished what I’d set out to do tonight, thanks to faulty information from tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber. But now I knew for a fact their room was a floor below, and there were still only three of them. And with one of their bats as a trophy, I’d found a way to leave a tiny little worming curiosity in the back of their sober minds, wondering where they’d lost a bat.
My eyes scanned the length of the wood under a nearby streetlight, fingers tracing the lines of the name burned into the cracked wood.
J-A-C-K-A-L.
He stole my sanity. And now, I had his bat.
I barely registered the sound of trash cans falling to the ground, my mind fixated on the steady handwriting of the name of my mortal enemy, contemplating the type of person who must’ve customized this bat.
It couldn’t have been Jackal. He didn’t strike me as the kind to do something so elegant, so sentimental. That meant someone else cared enough about him to write his name on the wood, etching it with flame and electricity and love?—
And we weren’t going to analyze why that stirred feelings of rage inside me. Men like him didn’t deserve to be loved by anyone, let alone to the level this work insinuated.
“Hey, bitch?—”
A hand slammed down on my shoulder, shaking me to my core as I realized where I was.
South End. Dangerous even for a Guild member .
South End was the place even the crazy contract killers didn’t go. The place where the original asylum residents had been turned out to when the state shut it down and put it up for auction. Most of the city left this part alone, determined to pretend the crazies didn’t exist. Even the Guild didn’t often fuck with the Southies. They’d rip you to shreds and eat you for dinner, quite literally.
I shook off the grip and spun around to face my assailant, realizing a little late that he had a pretty big pistol in one hand and a fucking weird ass demon half-mask that hid his eyes and gave him a frightening silhouette, with the horns popping out on top. He wasn’t one of the Dogs. But he was of their ilk. The hints were in the way he moved, the way he watched me as I took a step back and narrowed my eyes at him dangerously, the way his gaze cut to my hands as I raised the bat in my hand, then lowered it again, realizing he might recognize it, even in this dark alley.
He scanned me from tip to toe, a slow grin crossing his face. “You’re in a dangerous neighborhood, little lady.”
I huffed in annoyance. Last thing I needed was to get caught busting into, and then out of, the fucking asylum. “How do you know I’m not the danger here?”
His smile cracked in half, tipping up in a saccharine half-smile as he chuckled. “You’re not a Southie. I used to walk these streets, sweetheart. I know my own kind. You’re not one of us.” His gun waved nonchalantly in my direction, still pointed away from us both in an almost military-like manner. He set me on edge, and not in a good way.
Whoever this man was, he was trained, and trained well.
“I’m just on my way out,” I hedged, eyeing his finger as it strayed closer to the trigger. “No need to fire that thing.”
“I’ll let you go if you tell me why you’re carrying a bat that doesn’t belong to you, and how you managed to get into the Guild without being caught. ”
So someone had spotted me. It was too much to ask for to have managed the escape unnoticed in a building filled with trained killers. Still, answering him might be more dangerous than ignoring his demand. I’d have to play it careful.
“Who says the bat isn’t mine?” I tucked it behind my legs, playing at coy. “And I’d have to be pretty stupid to sneak into the Guild. That place is filled with killers and psychos, and I’m no dummy.”
“You’re pretty dumb if you think for one second I believe that innocent girl act.” His hand came up and adjusted the side of his mask, a grimace of discomfort crossing his lips for a second before his mask of indifference fell back into place. “And unless Jackal suddenly grew tits, then his bat is in the hands of someone it doesn’t belong to.”
He had me there.
“So I stole some asshole’s bat. Who cares? It’s not like he’ll miss it.” My lips twitched at the idea of admitting even that little truth. “Besides, I’m just borrowing it. I’ll give it back eventually.”
Buried in the side of his head, sure.
But at least I’d be returning it.
Nobody specified how.
“Sure you will.” He scratched the side of his temple with that fucking pistol, and I damn near winced at the laissez-faire manner in which he’d switched from trained gun owner to criminally neglectful and unsafe. It felt like someone’d switched the lights off inside and forgotten to flip them back on.
The effect was . . . jarring, to say the least.
“Listen, buddy. I’ve got places to be. So unless you’re going to shoot me, I think I’ll be taking my leave?—”
I moved to slide past him, but his hand shot out at the last minute, barring my escape. His face was an inch from my own, the mask nearly touching my skin. I could feel the chill radiating off what I realized now was painted metal, it was so close. His hot breath against my ear was a stark contrast as his words skated across my skin.
“I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon, little lady. You just make sure to tell Jackal the Ghost says hello next time you see him.” His head jerked in the opposite direction from where I’d been heading, and I chanced a glance in that direction, spotting a well-lit street that looked like it led back into civilized territory. “You wanna get out of here in one piece, take that road. Six blocks, and you’ll be able to follow the wall of the asylum to the junction. You’d better get out of here soon, before the crazies wake up and cause trouble.”
I turned on a heel and held Jackal’s bat over my shoulder as I jogged down the street, my chest loosening its death grip on my heart with every inch I put between me and the man who’d called himself the Ghost.
As I left the darkness behind for the light, I wondered what kind of man I’d just been saved by, and what sort of indebted bullshit I might now be twisted up in, owing him quite possibly my life.
I didn’t need any more ties to this fucking place, these fucking people.
Let him tell Jackal hello on his own.
I was nobody’s messenger.