Chapter 12
The showers were a fucking mistake.
I should’ve left before he walked in, but my pride and stubbornness were like a chain, tying me there.
Carrington didn’t so much as glance at me.
He stripped down, turned on the water, and stepped into the spray like I was nothing more than a fucking tile on the decorative wall.
Zero words. None of his incessant stalking, bullshit mind games, and no acknowledgment of my existence.
His silence was almost as bad as his obsession. More unsteady than the violence. It felt like he erased me.
By the time I left the showers, where I had no fucking business being in in the first place, my jaw was sore from how hard I’d been clenching it.
My body still felt wired, like I’d swallowed a bolt of electricity from the storm starting outside.
I stalked through the hallways, dripping water like blood, half expecting someone to stop me and demand to know where I was going in just a fucking towel. But no one did.
It was quiet.
I must have been standing in that shower for hours because everyone, including the actors, had left.
The foyer was empty, except for some staff rustling in the kitchen, cleaning up the massive party they had here after the hunt.
There was a light on in the upstairs hallway, like a beacon pointing me to Alexandra.
Xanthy’s room was safe. Xanthy was always safe. It was my light.
When I slipped inside the door quietly, I could smell the scent of the fruity flowers from her perfume and fabric softener.
Her hair spilled across the poofy pillow like golden thread, as her chest rose slowly in sleep.
She looked so peaceful, no chaos whatsoever in her mind, but the biggest issue she worried about was her designer bags matching her designer clothes. It was painfully easy with her. I fit as her future trophy husband, as a doctor to be. I knew eventually I would get on one knee and propose to her.
She would be the perfect Stepford Wife.
I looked down at her smooth, soft stomach and imagined it swollen with my seed. She would be a good mother. I didn’t know how to be a damn father, but I sure as hell wouldn’t be like mine.
You couldn’t get worse than Edmund Anderson.
That was what the papers said. Thousands upon thousands of articles were printed with his name. Celebrating that he had been caught and imprisoned for life. I remembered that day like it was pressed behind my eyes.
“Shy. I am so proud of your hunting skills. I think you are ready to take on some bigger game, don’t you?”
I blinked up at my father, the final screams fading of the boar underneath me. My father looked different today. His jacket was wrinkled, the usual perfection creasing like his brow.
“Bigger game, Dad?” I parroted with a shaky laugh.
My breathing was already off from the fight with this damn boar.
Ever since I turned fifteen, he had been pushing me to go after a bigger target, and I thought going hand-to-hand with a couple of hundred-pound boars would have gotten him off my dick, but apparently not.
“Yes. There is always room for improvement, son. I have something for you. A gift, to show you how proud I am of you in all you’ve done.”
A gift?
My ears perked up, getting to my feet, I dropped the massive hog into the pool of its blood. “Can’t say I’m not intrigued. But what’s the catch, Dad?”
My father wasn’t stupid. In fact, he was the smartest man I knew. Ever since my mother died, he’d kept me too busy even to mourn her death, or to question the strange non-answers about how she even died.
I knew he was different from the way he used to be, but he was my dad.
Hell, my best friend, and the only person I had in my life. He took me hunting whenever he got the chance. He knew I needed to release the strange energy that buzzed in my blood. He always knew how I felt, even before I tried to explain.
“No catch. I caught your next hunt. You only need to end its suffering. Can you do that, son?”
I tried to catch my father’s gaze. It was wavering and unsteady. He went hunting while I wrestled the boar to its death. That must be why he was covered in dirt and specks of red. My dad never had a hair out of place, so this made sense.
But why would he do all the work for me just to kill some animal?
“What kind of animal is it?” I said, as I gripped the hog’s thick legs and readied to pull it back to the truck nearby.
“Don’t worry about that hog, Shiloh. This is the greatest animal of all. It’s my favorite trophy to claim, and I think it will be yours too.”
I was confused, but I let my father drag me away from the bleeding boar and followed him through windy paths and scratchy bushes. It was so fucking cold. I hated hunting in the winter.
It hurt my nose to breathe, much less run after stupid prey.
Dad didn’t make small talk as we walked past the truck.
“Where are we going?”
He ignored me. Eventually, I just shut my trap and followed in his snow-covered footprints. We stopped at an abandoned-looking shed. The warped wood was decaying. It smelled like rotting meat mixed with an unknown chemical.
“Dad?” I questioned, hesitant as he kept dragging me forward right to the door of the foul-smelling place.
“Shh. Inside is your gift, Shiloh. Go ahead. You’ll know what to do. It’s okay. I’ll be right here for you.”
I stood frozen for a moment. I was confused about what I was supposed to feel and uncertain about what lay ahead. I didn’t hear an animal struggling. There was no sound whatsoever, just that protruding odor that made me want to vomit.
“Uhh…okay, Dad. If you say so.”
I tried to remain nonchalant, like I wasn’t about to lose my breakfast pizza. My skin burned from the vapors of the strong chemical coating the air. Nudging the door open with my foot, I walked inside the dark shed. The door smacked shut behind me with a loud crack.
I grimaced, trying to let my eyes adjust in the darkness. The worn-down wooden slats were my only means of light, and I squinted, walking forward with my hands out. I tried to see what animal was strung up in here for me to kill randomly.
I coughed from the sour scent, my stomach roiling with unease, and bile rising in my throat.
“No. Shiloh, get a grip,” I told myself, spitting onto the ground and wiping my mouth with my sleeve.
“H-Hello?”
I froze.
What. The. Fuck.
The voice came from the back of the shed, and I wondered for a second if it was my father trying to pull a dumb prank on me.
“Dad?” I choked out, walking forward, letting my eyes adjust to the dusty darkness of the wooden shack.
Fuck me, that stank was so bad. It was the most sour scent I’d ever smelled. It physically coated my tongue and burned the back of my throat.
What the heck could stink so bad?
“H-Hello?”
The voice again. Unease slammed in my gut, and I swallowed the panic, continuing to push forward toward the soft, strangled sound. There was something on the ground…maybe moss…and my feet kept getting stuck in it.
I stopped cold, like something electrocuted my ass as the light from outside shone through the cracks and onto a pale figure on a slab in the back.
It was a woman, a human being, crudely tied with a rope coated in the liquid that smelled like a vat of bleach. Etched into her skin, filled with maggots and pus, green sores formed a word…no, a name.
Shiloh.
I turned my body and vomited all over the ground.
No. What the fuck was this?
My dad didn’t leave a woman inside a shed. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
I coughed, continuing to puke until there was nothing left but bile in my burning throat.
Now I could see it.
It wasn’t moss on the ground. It was…body parts: intestines, livers, hearts, every organ I’d harvested from animals over the years with my father.
They were thrown on the ground in a crude, ritual-like manner, coating the ground until it was sticky and wet. It looked like they were all at different stages of decay, and the rotten smell made me even more nauseated.
“P-please,” the woman whimpered on the wooden altar behind me. “Help…me.”
I blinked, trying to snap myself out of it. When I turned back around, I could see her fully. Her body was beautiful. Naked and open and…
No. What the fuck. Get a grip, Shiloh.
“I-I don’t know how, lady. What the…what is this?”
She struggled. Her dark hair glistened with blood. She was in bad shape. The wounds on her body looked infected beyond belief, and her eyes didn’t have a normal color to them. One was red and blown. And the other couldn’t look at anything correctly. She was helpless in here.
My father’s words echoed in my mind, and I shook my head.
‘You only have to put it out of its misery.’
No…
“What happened to you, lady?” I said, looking around at the massacre of organs on the ground for something to free her bindings. As if a beacon from a cosmic figure, the light shone onto a knife wedged into the shed’s wall.
I pulled it free, staring at the familiar markings, and losing my ability to breathe.
This was my hunting knife—the one I always use to eviscerate the game.
I had looked everywhere for it this morning when Dad said we were going hunting.
I had to use Dad’s for the boar I’d downed earlier.
I’d had this knife since I was a little boy.
It was a gift from my mom, and had my name carved into the metal on the hilt.
The letters shone from the light, and I swallowed.
Why the hell was it here?
‘You only have to put it out of its misery.’
“Hey. Please. Help.”
I snapped out of my thoughts and moved forward to reach for the woman. She was unable to move at all. Her body looked like a broken doll, and it made me sick to think that she was beautiful, but I did. I even tried to hide my stupid boner as I gripped the rope.
“Ow!” I hissed, jumping back and looking at my hands.