5. Lilly St. Clair
FIVE
LILLY ST. CLAIR
All I fucking wanted was a midnight snack.
I did not want to walk into my kitchen to find fucking Angus O'Leary carving up a whimpering, scared little blonde waif of a thing, who was too busy watching the knife he held to her exposed tit to notice me.
Standing next to him was Jack Algreth from the Rebels, his hands around his cock as Angus pierced the skin and drew blood.
"Fuck, man, that's so hot," he muttered, grunting as he tugged on that thing between his legs he didn't deserve to carry around with him.
I didn't mind me a twisted psycho every now and again, but he and Angus were two peas in a psycho pod I didn't even want to peek into.
Matter of fact, I wanted very much to lock their brand of depraved in a fucking cage and throw away the key.
Even the worst of us had our standards, but I suspected their desires ran far south of where we all drew the line.
Angus drove the knife deeper, growling as the poor girl started to cry, probably regretting all the life choices that brought her to that moment in time. "P-p-please, sirs, j-just let me go, and I promise I'll behave. I won't leave the rooms again?—"
Great. Fucking fantastic. Who'd smuggled her in tonight? There would be hell to pay for that shit.
Outsiders never did well in this house. It's why most of them got their jollies off outside of the asylum.
The Guild wasn't safe for anyone, not even the crazies that roamed its halls.
It was one of the reasons I carried a weapon on me at all times.
You never knew when you'd need to fend off an insane, unhinged, blood-lust-filled man in the throes of his mental disorder or killing spree.
I weeded many of them out over the years, but the new ones always cropped up when the old ones vacated their places, and since the guild was founded on no rules, I couldn't just go around making new ones out of the blue.
And for the most part, I'd never had any issues with the police or the residents doing anything they shouldn't. Usually, the only ones they killed were targets—contract work.
This girl wasn't on any of my contracts. And I would know—I accepted or denied them before they went on the board.
"You boys know better than to torment a guest," I commented dryly, tapping my still-bloody heel on the imitation marble floor tiles.
"Let the girl go, you pricks, and put the knives away.
" I glanced down at the tiny dick that sprouted from Angus's hips, smothering a smirk.
"And your cocks, too. Nobody wants to see those embarrassing things. "
The Scot's eyes narrowed, but Jack just laughed, tucking himself back into his pants, the blade cutting his dick in the process.
The wound didn't seem to phase him in the slightest, and he licked the blood from his fingers, waggling his brows at me before slipping off down the hall and back into the darkness.
Angus was slower to comply, dragging his blade down the girl's abdomen, tracing the path where he'd obviously cut her blouse from throat to navel, painting her in her own blood before tossing the knife in the sink with a grunt of protest.
"She's not my problem anymore; she's on you, St. Clair," he warned, shoving her at me.
I caught the girl with ease, somehow managing not to topple off my heels at the impact.
When he, too, slipped into the shadows, I turned the girl to face me, tugging her blouse together in the front to afford us both a little bit of civility and modesty.
"How did you end up here?" I asked her plainly, surveying her body for signs of abuse. She had cuts and scrapes up and down her arms, rope marks on her thighs and arms, and she looked well-used but not battered.
She stared at the ground, her still-damp hair dripping on the floor, hanging in limp ringlets around her face. "I came with a group of guys. The first one you chased off—he's one of them."
"Didn't they tell you to stay in the rooms at night?" I was fast running out of patience for the situation. If we weren't going to have rules, we had to be responsible for our own guests. I hated that they'd brought this girl into this madhouse, but there was no going back now.
"They warned me, but I was hungry and didn't hear anything, so I figured I'd come find the kitchens."
And found something else entirely, it appeared. "Did you get anything to eat before you were accosted?"
She lifted a satchel from the counter, shaking it a bit. "Bag of chips, some peanuts, and a bottle of soda," she rattled off like someone asked her to take stock. "I was just gonna take it back up to their rooms and crash on the couch."
I nodded pointedly, leading her from the kitchen with a hand on her back. "I'll escort you. It appears these men can't be trusted to behave, and I would hate to find you laying in a corridor somewhere, bleeding out after they'd tired of you."
Once I'd seen her securely back in the Rebels' suites, I returned to my own room, ready to grab a few more hours of sleep before the halls filled once more with the moans of the hungover and perpetually miserable when the sun rose.
Why I thought it would be that simple, I'll never know.
I woke to the sound of a girl's screams echoing off the walls of the building, high-pitched and filled with terror. Then, as I slipped on my robe and walked into the hall, those screams turned wet, and I knew damn well what that meant.
She was no doubt drowning in her own blood now.
With a heavy, heartfelt sigh, I marched down the halls, nearly slipping in an impressive pool of blood at the top of the staircase.
From there, it was relatively easy to follow the bloody trail she'd left behind as she ran for her life.
Down the stairs, predictability, then she took a hard left into the main foyer and skipped right past the front door in favor of sprawling all over my solid white lounge chairs.
There were bloody red hand prints all over the leather.
I wasn't going to be cleaning that.
Whoever thought it'd be funny to chase a dying girl all over this fucking place was about to get a bucket of bleach water and a mop and?—
The sound of laughter drew me up short, and I turned a corner to see two very filthy, very naked men standing over the broken, limp, and silent body of the girl from earlier.
Of course, it was the two who'd tormented her in the kitchen, and unfortunately, one of them had her hand in his, using a dead woman's palm to jerk himself to completion.
Three guesses which sick fuck that was.
I cleared my throat, but they didn't seem to notice, so I decided to take matters into my own hands, chucking my hidden blade at the one currently desecrating a corpse.
It lodged in his shoulder, a few inches away from being a kill shot, as I intended.
His cry of pain was like music to my ears, muffling the wet plop her hand made when it fell lifelessly back to the floor.
Blood had pooled under her body, and it splashed up against his shins as he yanked the knife from his body and laughed, staring me down with malice in his eyes.
"You bitch," he growled, brows drawn together as he debated something inside his head. "What gives?"
Jack, at least, had the wherewithal to back off, his hands up in supplication and self-defense. "Listen, Lilly, it isn't what it looks like?—"
"Oh, do tell me what it is, then, because what it looks like is a dead innocent laying on my floor, who was chased down the stairs and into this hall, leaving bloody trails all over my asylum.
" I crossed my arms pointedly, tapping the toe of one of my shoes as I waited. "So, what is it, then, Mr. Algreth?"
He frowned. "Well, I guess you already got the gist of it, really."
"How did she end up with the butcher's cleaver in her throat?" I nodded at the blade that had cost me a pretty penny, mainly used to break down meat for bigger family-style meals. "My cleaver."
It wasn't meant to slaughter humans.
Jack shrugged, but his gaze cut to the real perp, Angus, who was busy shuffling from one foot to the other, a lighter under the blade of my dagger as he heated it with single-minded devotion.
He didn't pay us any mind, grinning like a fool as the metal turned orange from the heat.
There was only one reason to heat up a knife like that, and I winced as he pressed the hot steel to his stab wound, the sizzle of burning flesh and the acrid scent filling the air.
The smell assaulted my nostrils, and I covered my face with a hand, trying in vain to avoid it at all costs.
Nothing assaults the senses like the scent of barbecued human.
"You're a sick fucker, man," Jack grumbled, stepping a few feet further away from his partner in crime.
I hadn't had occasion to see two men from separate crews work together to kill a target, but she was far from a hired mark.
She was a bystander, a sick pawn in their game who'd just happened to make the mistake of not staying far the fuck away from here.
And now, she'd never get the chance to see life over the hill of 30.
"She was a baby," I spat, my eyes narrowed as I knelt beside her, yanking the cleaver from the gaping wound on her neck.
The pump of her heart stopped long ago, so there was no impressive spurt of flowing blood, nor was there a large quantity seeping from the injury anymore.
I laid my other hand on her face and closed her eyes, hiding their unseeing, thirty-yard stare of abject horror and resignation, with just a hint of hope that in her eleventh hour, someone might save her.
That hope had been for naught. There were no heroes here in the asylum. Not a soul in the Guild was good at its core.
It was what had kept them safe from the normies around them for so long. It was why they were able to live here unhindered, somewhat peacefully.
Jack snorted at my quiet lament. "She certainly wasn't a baby when I had my cock in her?—"
In a flash, I jammed the cleaver into the meat of his shoulder, coming down from above with all the force I had in me. His girlish screams were satisfying, to say the least, and the way he whimpered when I yanked it out and turned on his partner sent a thrill down my spine.
I wanted these men to pay for victimizing an innocent girl whose only crime was to want to enjoy herself with some men who oozed danger and mystique.
Angus wasn't as fast as I'd expected him to be, and with a yelp, he barely managed to slip out of the path of the blade, sucking his gut in to make sure I didn't rip him open like a pig for slaughter.
I sliced through the air in a choppy imitation of a slasher film final girl.
The cleaver wasn't designed to be a murder weapon.
I'd faced down greater odds and come out on top, though.
With a grunt of frustration and a slight rebel yell, I launched myself at him, toppling him to the ground, relishing the stuck pig noises he made as he writhed beneath me.
I brought the cleaver's handle down on his temple, laughing as he brought up those meaty fists of his in an attempt to block my blows.
He could have easily put hands on me to stop me, could have wrestled the knife from my grip, but instead, he relished the cuts and scrapes I offered him, only hoping to ward off the deadliest of blows.
His cock hardened underneath me, and my lips turned down in disgust but twitched at the edges at his plight.
"That poor thing is so unimpressive I feel bad for laughing."
Rage filled his features, flooding his body with adrenaline as I cackled at his embarrassment and shame.
I was ready for his next move, though, and easily dodged the incoming fist. He growled and snarled like a rabid dog, but I had a few legs up on him, and with a final squeak of conquest, I threw him back and tossed the blade aside, my hands going for his ears.
The whites of his eyes roiled as I lifted him by the ears, slamming his head against the tile.
Still he fought me, so I switched to dirtier tactics, shoving my thumbs in his eyes with a wet squelch.
The screams that left him as I lifted him again and slammed him back down, painted now with the blood and liquefied eyeball as my war cries echoed off the silent hallway, were soulful and agonized and filled me with a sick sort of glee.
I would make an example of this cretin, one these fuckers in here weren't likely to forget any time soon.
He was still alive, though, and I hadn't given him the comeuppance he deserved.
I left him there, writhing on the floor, crying and clutching his head as blood pooled beneath him, so I could retrieve my trusty cleaver, and then, with a twisted sense of justice, I yanked his pants open and chopped his cock clean off.
The sounds that escaped him weren't human.
Chopping a man's dick off was really quite satisfying, too. Especially when he'd knowingly used it to defile an innocent. Karma was coming back to bite him in the ass, and it felt phenomenal to be her instrument of death.
I stuffed the offensive appendage in his mouth and watched him suffocate on it, the life draining from his body as he shuddered his last breath.
And then I turned to Jack, rising off the now-silent body of former guild member Angus O'Leary, lifting the cleaver off the floor out of his puddle of blood as I went.
"Jack, be nimble, Jack, be quick. You think you can escape me, but you'd be wrong, prick."