Chapter 4
four
EZRA
Midnight is the perfect hour. I can move almost undetected among the gloomy campus streets. A guy is hurrying down the sidewalk holding thick books close to his chest, and two drunk girls are swaying and stumbling while laughing obnoxiously.
I push the black hood more firmly over my head and keep walking.
I know where all the cameras are, so it’s not difficult to bypass them.
I’ve been avoiding any kind of electronic device since I faked my death more than a year ago after I discovered Nine was still alive and out there looking for revenge.
A sudden scream makes me slide my hand under the hoodie to grab one of the knives tied to my back.
I don’t unsheathe it, though, when my eyes fall on the two girls now giggling as they approach me on unsteady feet.
I don’t let go of the knife as I wait for them to reach me.
One of them is wearing furry cat ears on her head, while the taller one has smeared purple lipstick over her cheek and chin.
“Well, hello, masked stranger!” the cat woman slurs, staring at my face. She doesn’t seem scared by my odd appearance—university students. Her hand falls on my arm. “Is there a carnival around? Where? Me and my-my friend are looking for more fun! Whoo-hoo.”
She is too loud for my taste.
“That Phantom of the Opera mask is doing it for me,” the taller one whispers sultrily. “Want to come and hook up with… both of us?” Drunk but still able to flirt.
The other woman agrees with her friend after giving my body a slow, dirty once-over.
I know that hungry look, have seen it in most of the people I’ve fucked.
It’d be easy to follow them to their place, have sloppy blowjobs and two eager holes to nail.
It’d definitely be pleasurable. But they aren’t who I’ve been craving for the last eight months.
They are just…bodies in my way. I’m here to get my daily dose of my little chick.
And I need it now. I grit my teeth, knowing only seeing him will release the pressure I feel against my skull.
I let go of the knife handle and remove the green-polished nails from my arm.
“No,” I growl, before resuming my walk and leaving them behind. I hear them making a disappointed noise—not for long, though. A couple of seconds later, they start talking to another guy on the other side of the street.
My burner phone vibrates in my pocket. I take it out and answer Uriel’s call.
“Where are you?” My twin brother’s voice enters my ear. We’ve been estranged most of our lives—forced to, at least for the first part. In the past few months, we’ve been working together to find our common enemy, but that doesn’t mean we trust each other or act buddy-buddy.
“Where are you?” I flip the question.
“You already know,” he deadpans.
He’s right, I do. He’s at a charity event with Sariel, Michael, and Raphael—the sound of useless chatter and clinking glasses in the background confirms it.
Neither Raphael nor Uriel gives a fuck about philanthropic causes, unless using those fundraisers to seek above-the-law evildoers to torture and kill is seen as a humanitarian act—cleansing the world and all that shit. Both things I’m not into.
“Found anyone interesting yet?”
“Maybe,” he replies before I hear Sariel’s sweet “hi” through the line.
He’s Uriel’s partner. Their intimate relationship intrigued me from the start—I kept an eye on my brother for years.
It was clear that he had a peculiar interest in him, but witnessing it with my own eyes left me a little confused.
Uriel’s sociopathy mirrors my psychopathy in many ways.
Feeling affection is impossible for us. Ownership, on the other hand, can develop an array of different emotions, like hunger, obsession, relentlessness, and ruthlessness.
When we were kids, we used to steal toys from other children, not to play but to simply possess them.
Breaking them was the predictable and enjoyable conclusion—power is less in what you have and more in what you are capable of.
Keeping and protecting our possessions wasn’t a thought we ever contemplated. What made Sariel different, then?
Uriel is my identical twin. Mine. Sariel belongs to him, and therefore, he’s mine as well.
That’s the only reason why I followed him when he was kidnapped a few months back and helped my brother find him.
The desperation, self-sacrifice, and recklessness in Uriel’s actions until he got his boyfriend back puzzled me, until I somehow got fucking jealous—an emotion I don’t particularly care for.
At first, it irritated me that Uriel had found something—someone—he didn’t want to get rid of.
Like me, he used to get bored easily. One of life’s certainties was that most people were interchangeable.
But the more I saw them together, the more cracked that certainty became.
I wanted that, that one person to possess and make mine.
Sariel, though, didn’t do it for me. What I wanted was a Sariel of my own.
My toy to take and break or do whatever the hell I wanted.
And I did find it faster than I thought.
“Are you coming on Wednesday?” Uriel’s voice takes me back to the phone call. “You didn’t answer my text.”
I didn’t reply on purpose. My silence made him contact me, showing me how eager he is to see me.
Why, though? Is it about Nine? I wasn’t very forthcoming with him or the others, but I needed time for them to accept me and get comfortable with me.
To let me in. I’m close, though. Having five killers in my corner will be handy until we get Nine.
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
A sudden boisterous laugh follows my answer. The drunk girls are chuckling thirty feet away from me.
“Ezra, where are you?” My brother repeats the question from earlier.
I like hearing my name. I chose it a while after escaping the assassin program, but I hadn’t heard someone calling me by it in years.
“Hunting,” I cryptically say, before hanging up. My phone is secured, impossible to track, unless Ramiel decides to use his hacking AI and tell my brother. No one else knows my whereabouts.
I walk five more minutes before I reach the big oak tree.
Fucking finally. After making sure nobody is around, I start climbing.
I’ve done it so many times before that I could do it with my eyes closed.
I find my usual spot on the bigger branch and make myself comfortable, opening a pack of M the other the color of the richest caramel with hints of cinnamon and yellow tones.
They are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, holding such depth that it seems to have no end.
Would they look lighter, overflowing with tears as I skull-fuck his face?
Would he try to dip his chin to dodge my gaze as I nut inside his throat?
I’d like to see the constant fear shadowing his irises disappear as I make him come on my dick.
I know what he went through. His father sold him to be one of the victims of a live show on the internet where people were beaten to death.
Uriel and the rest of the team took care of the fuckers who sent Sully to the hospital, but I found out they didn’t do a very thorough job.