Chapter 7 Uh Oh
UH OH
BAZ
His nametag said Andrew, and the moment he died, I knew we’d be friends.
We sat together on the floor, surrounded by blood and unopened candy bars, watching Bree go feral on the store’s entire population.
I bumped my boot against Andy’s shoe—I figured he wouldn’t mind me calling him Andy.
Mainly because of being dead, but I hoped that our friendship counted as a factor, too.
“You know how they say the crazy ones fuck better?” I asked, smiling under the mask. Andy didn’t say anything, naturally. I dragged my finger across the green and black veins on his hand.
“Well, let’s just say it’s true.” I turned Andy’s head, letting him get a good look at the insanity of my girlfriend and figure out how good she fucked.
Well, took a fucking, really. I know Orson liked to lay back and let her ride him like he was a dying horse, but I very much enjoyed doing the exact opposite.
Bree maniacally laughed before a blood spray painted the ceiling in dots.
“She scares me,” Andy said. I nodded.
“Me too, buddy, me too. Well … occasionally. To be honest, it’s hard to be scared of someone you’ve seen choke on your cock.” I laughed and knocked my shoulder against his. He fell over on his side. I let him stay there—it looked like he needed a nap. Guy time was fun.
“Come on,” Nemo said, grabbing my arm and pulling me off the ground.
“You’re getting too comfortable manhandling me,” I commented.
Nemo was an Alpha; it wasn’t natural for him to listen to me.
His defiance would bubble up into fights that always ended the same—me on top.
Metaphorically and literally. I recalled what had happened before Bree’s bloody smorgasbord.
For the first time, I wasn’t going to win a fight.
It had finally happened; Nemo was immune to my venom.
While we’d wrestled on the floor, I’d pressed him with venom, and he was still fighting. Hurting, but fine. I was so fucked. Metaphorically … and literally.
I ripped my arm from his grip and took a step back. Maybe I’d lied about not caring about hierarchy. I wanted control. I needed it. Especially right now. No Verfallen. No Hazel. No control, no walls, no guarantee I wouldn’t end up back where this all started. Alone in a cold mansion.
“I can hear Supra outside,” Nemo said. “They have a whole unit armed to the teeth. We need to go.” I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
Our dynamic was shifting at the worst possible time.
As I stood there voiceless, contemplating loss of control and the state of my ass, his eyebrows crawled together in suspicion.
“What about Andy?” I asked, voice breaking slightly.
I coughed while waving at the dead grocery store employee.
Nemo’s nostrils flared, his deep brown eyes reading me through the mask.
My tension was probably as strong a scent to him as rotting garbage.
Perhaps because I’d become some little boy looking at his feet and asking permission for his friend to tag along for the family outing.
“Nemo, can you grab her,” Orson yelled. Bree was hissing at him while she hovered over one of the many bleeding bodies. Not a single person had been left alive.
Nemo leaned so close our foreheads nearly touched.
“We’re talking about this later,” he promised.
Great. It was finally time to admit I actually liked being in charge the very moment I probably wasn’t.
That epiphany snowballed into an entire plethora of increasingly uncomfortable thoughts.
If I wasn’t in charge, that meant I was no longer the deadliest of the bunch.
My whole identity was wrapped up in being the thing people feared to even look at.
The monster whose parents couldn’t even survive it.
Now, I was surrounded by a group who were mostly immune to me.
Who looked me right in the eye without flinching.
Who eyed my mouth like they wanted to swallow my tongue for dinner.
Who could probably actually eat me. I was a goddamn human with a parlor trick at this point.
The cute little weakling they kept around as a fuckable pet.
Oh my god, I was having an identity crisis in the middle of a massacred grocery store.
My safe space had burned to the ground, my sister wiped her memory of me, and Orson wanted to leave me on the side of the road like an abandoned puppy.
“Shit,” I rasped, grabbing the sides of my head. I didn’t like feelings. “Go away,” I groaned to them.
“Baz!” Nemo growled. I snapped to attention, anger coming in to save me from more uncomfortable emotions.
“Coming,” I sneered, dragging my hands down my face.
“Want to throw in any more requests, Alpha?” Nemo’s eyes bugged, and Orson looked between the two of us knowingly.
I wanted to punch him in the face. I didn’t like whatever thoughts he was having.
He knew too much about all of us. Fucking therapists.
I stomped over the dead bodies, my boots losing traction on all the blood. I’d rather die than ruin my tantrum with something embarrassing, like falling on my ass in a puddle of Bree’s leftovers. That alone kept me upright.
“I wasn’t ordering you around,” Nemo tentatively lied. Bree frowned in his arms. I was acting out of character, but I couldn’t stop myself. Ugly feelings were trying to be felt, and what kind of psycho would I be if I couldn’t bury that shit back down?
“Yes, you were,” I hissed.
“Can we delay this argument until after we evade capture?” Orson asked.
“Oh, now you want to boss me around, too?” I asked, wheeling on him. He gave me an apathetic look.
“Basil, we can talk about your feelings later.” His pedantic tone made me snap. I launched at him. His mouth popped open in surprise as I tackled him to the ground and peeled up my mask, collecting enough saliva in my mouth to spit into his. He twisted his head, and my spit landed on his cheek.
“What the fuck?” He rubbed his cheek clean.
“Next one has blood in it,” I said with sadistic joy, biting my lip hard enough to bleed.
Killing Orson would make all these unwanted thoughts disappear.
I’d reestablish my deadly powers, I’d take back some control, and my therapist could never leave me if he was a corpse.
Hell, if I thought I was still capable of it, then I could kill each one of them.
Then, just like Bree wanted, we could be together forever. My little corpse harem.
The glass walls at the front of the store shattered, and something sailed through the air. A sharp pain exploded below my ribs. I looked down and saw a dart sticking out.
“A sedative, really?” I scoffed, wrapping my fingers around it and pulling it out. Something black dripped from the tip.
“That’s not a sedative,” Orson said. Bree sucked in a breath of shock. I turned around and looked at her. She’d never once given me that look. It was a cross between terror and anguish.
“What—” Searing pain ran through my veins.
I crumpled over, falling on the floor, and dropping the dart.
I saw a paper wrapped around the vial and quickly grabbed it back up, shoving it in my pocket.
The others moved around me as whooshing and pounding filled in my ears. Someone lifted me off the ground—Nemo.
“What’s happening?” I asked him before grinding my teeth against a fresh wave of pain.
“It was the serum—-Zero’s blood.” Nemo carried me out of the back of the building, and the sky opened up above us. I stared at the black expanse as my body coiled in agony.
“We need a new vehicle,” Orson said. A moment later, I was in the back of another small car, spread across Nemo’s legs and whatever space was left. He seemed to take up the entire back seat as I kicked the door angrily, trying to distract myself from the incredible ache.
“What serum?” I growled. Zero never attempted medicating me after realizing chemicals wouldn’t work except in quantities he wasn’t capable of easily procuring.
Minus the time I had a wee little tantrum and killed seventy percent of the inmates, give or take.
Then, he had to use half his stock of sedatives to knock me out for a few brief minutes.
Bree turned around in the passenger seat and looked at me with rare concern.
“It’s his blood. The one that brings out your powers more. The one Nemo and I were given.”
It took a moment for the meaning of that to settle into my bones. And that’s when I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, I didn’t actually want to kill any of them. Mental breakdown or not. I’d rather be the weak one, the human with a parlor trick. A fuckable pet.
I reached for the door handle, panic blazing inside me.
Frantically, I attempted to pull the door open and fling myself out of the moving car.
I was half in Nemo’s lap, and I was going to kill him.
I was going to kill all of them and wouldn’t be able to control it.
I hadn’t feared doing that in a long time and I’d taken it for granted.
Nemo grabbed my wrists, refusing to let me open the door.
“I’m going to kill you,” I hissed. Not a threat, a chilling fact. I felt the serum spreading through my body in blazing pain. My body was weakening rapidly, and I fought for consciousness.
“It takes time to work,” Nemo said.
“Let me out,” I demanded weakly. He took a big breath and let it out.
“No.” And there it was. He was taking charge. I gave my last reserves of strength, thrashing in his lap, trying to break his grip on my wrists, but his strength was far beyond my own.
A wave of pain took my breath away before I passed out.