Chapter 14 #2
The blood from Zelda’s hands comes from a deep wound in her lower abdomen, near her right hip.
The fabric of her dress is torn and shrouded around the gash, lumping on the edges like ground beef.
I swear I can see some entrails and organs resembling long sausages sautéed in fresh blood.
The inside of her body looks closer to what you would find in the back of a butcher’s shop than anything I’ve seen before.
Blood pours from the open flesh, staining the fabric of her clothes and her pale skin, pooling under her thighs. It’s a miracle she hasn’t bled out. Danny tries to cover her wound with his hands, but she bats them away, alarmed.
“Don’t touch me!”
He lifts his hands in the air in a sign of peace, respecting her request.
“What happened?”
I swear she rolls her eyes at me, even though she’s in pain and probably nearing death.
“I got stabbed, you dumb cow,” she mutters through gritted teeth.
Okay, it seems like our rivalry isn’t over, in spite of the fact that I’m trying to help her.
It’s incredible that she can still gather the strength to be snarky when she’s so badly wounded.
“It hurts too much for you to be asking stupid questions.”
“It’s not stupid,” Danny intervenes before I can say anything, getting ahead of an impending and immature argument. “Can you tell us what happened?”
“Sophia left me when he attacked us. We saw him dragging El’s body to the bathroom and then he came at us. He stabbed me. I don’t even know how I made it here. I think he was trying to get Sophia. How dare she leave me like that?”
I can’t say I blame Sophia for reacting out of pure survival instinct, but I can understand why Zelda feels betrayed. Her best friend and confidante abandoned her when she was in a life-or-death situation. If they make it out, they’ll have a ton of things to discuss, just like Cerys and I do.
“You’ll be okay, Zee,” Danny calms her. “This is a scary situation for everyone. Do you know if anyone else was attacked?”
She nods. “Ray.”
Who the fuck is Ray?
Danny tilts his head, confused by the name as well.
“Refresh my memory, please,” he asks, speaking for both of us.
Zelda licks her lips, gasping for air. I worry she might only have minutes left to live and we’re here interrogating her when she’s using what’s left of her strength. Are we being insensitive? Knowing how many of us are left seems like valuable information to have.
She describes Ray as one of the guys who was sitting with them at the beginning of the night. Which means it puts the death count at three. Almost four, if we count Zelda’s current state, leaving ten of us around.
“You should stay here,” Danny whispers in my direction, turning his head away from Zelda to exclude her from the conversation.
I frown.
“What? No.”
Why would I stay here with Zelda? She’s four breaths away from dying.
Dios mío, I might have zero empathy right now, but I don’t see the point in staying with her.
We’ve never gotten along; she was among the people who led a witch hunt against my best friend and me last year.
It doesn’t mean I want her to die alone, yet I can’t really come up with another option that doesn’t involve leaving her behind.
After all, it doesn’t look like she can walk or move.
I’m not confident she could even make it out of this lounge without passing out or worse.
“We can’t leave her.”
I look at her from the corner of my eye.
Would it really be that terrible if we did? I must have a reserved spot in hell for even considering it. Danny is too noble to even consider leaving someone behind, especially a person who can’t defend herself.
I gulp.
Carajo.
Deep down, I know the right thing to do.
It doesn’t matter what has happened between Zelda and me in the past because we’re in an extraordinary situation.
She’s an injured person who needs help and company.
Maybe she hasn’t made the best decisions in life—neither have I—but she doesn’t deserve to go out completely alone.
It would be cruel, and I don’t consider myself a cruel person.
She deserves some mercy.
“Maybe I can go,” I offer for the last time, knowing Danny will never go for it.
“Mabel,” he groans.
“No, let’s think about this logically,” I say, and my voice twinges with a hint of desperation.
Do I want to go alone? No.
Do I want to sit here and stay with defenseless Zelda? Also no.
Do I want Danny to go alone? Absolutely not.
There’s no scenario where we can all be happy and content.
Someone has to make a sacrifice, and I fear that someone will have to be me, because if we’re real and think about it logically, Danny is the one who has the better odds of making it to the kitchen, grabbing a weapon, and finding Carmen and Cerys.
“Mabel,” he repeats. “I have to go.”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
Why does he get to leave?
Why does he insist on doing it?
Why is he right?
For the first time, I get how he must’ve felt when I stood my ground earlier and decided to come out here again to find my sister.
Yet I don’t like it one bit. If anything, it sets off the alarm in the back of my brain.
Volunteering to go out alone is always a bad idea.
Danny must know this. He barely made it back to me when he went to find the flashlights before everything went down.
How is he so confident that he will come back to me again?
Why is he so adamant about going off alone when he must be aware of the risk?
I hate it.
Frustration builds up in my throat, leaving a scratchiness as it rises. I bite the inside of my cheek and try to come up with a different solution. Anything that might give me the chance to turn this around, but nothing comes to mind.
Glancing at Zelda, I debate with my morals again. But they also won’t budge. I’m too aware of what’s the right thing to do.
Fuck me. Things are too complicated.
“Don’t,” is all I manage to say.
A thousand silent words tie themselves to that singular plea.
The caramel in his eyes softens, his brows lowering and erasing all traces of determination.
Instead, there’s a sense of validation in the way he nods in a subtle movement.
Quietly letting me know he understands exactly what I mean without having to say it.
Danny lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses the back of it. The pure intention behind the action floods my eyes with tears. I blink them away. I’ve cried enough for one night.
“I’ll be quick.”
“Swear it,” I demand, holding his fingers tightly between mine, unable to let him go.
His eyebrows curve, softening his expression.
“I swear, baby.”
Leaning toward me, Danny presses a kiss on my forehead before he stands up. He gifts me a reassuring smile and, quietly, he walks out of the room, leaving me with Zelda.
Although she grimaces from the pain she must be experiencing, her stare is both confused and shocked.
“You’re with Danny?”
I roll my eyes.
Gossip right now seems out of place. It’s jarring to think she’s interrogating me about Danny when she’s bleeding out on the floor next to me. What’s happened to the world?
“Um . . . I prefer to not say.” I don’t have a concrete answer either way.
I drop my weight onto the floor, avoiding the blood pooling between me and Zelda. Thirty seconds go by in silence before she speaks again.
“For a moment, I thought it was you.”
“What?” I frown, not understanding.
“The killer. I thought it was you,” she explains, pressing her hands on her wound. My jaw drops an inch, caught off guard by the sudden accusation. “You’ve always been so creepy with your horror stuff. I thought you were capable of killing us.”
This is probably the most unbelievable theory I’d ever heard, but now that she’s brought it up, I have the chance to dig for information.
While I adore Danny and I wish he was with me, his presence distracts me.
I turn into a different person when he’s around, a much softer version of myself.
A damsel in distress, when I should be the opposite.
So I take advantage of this borrowed time and take a look at the mental puzzle.
It’s something productive to do with my time while I wait for Danny to come back.
Maybe, if I can figure out Cupid’s motive, we’ll be able to stop this from going any further.
More people can live, Zelda could get the medical help she desperately needs.
“Why would I do that?” I ask, arching a brow in her direction.
Zelda’s brows jump a centimeter, acting like the answer is obvious.
“Because your bestie killed Brian?”
“She didn’t kill anyone.”
“How can you be so sure about that?” she snaps back and winces. It took too much effort snapping at me. “She’s not here. For all we know, she is the killer.”
Except she’s wrong.
Cerys can’t be the killer tonight, regardless of what she might think about her involvement in Brian’s death.
If we take out the people who are already dead, there are a handful of people whom I distinctively remember arguing in the living room when the spree began.
I can vouch for their innocence. Carmen and Cerys are at the top of my list since I got them out of there when Cupid killed Elodie and then he continued to chase us.
I distracted him when Carmen and Cerys went off to complete the original plan, so there’s no way it can be either of them.
Bethan was also present when everything began, and from what Zelda has said, Sophia was chased by the killer as well, which makes her an unlikely suspect too.
Sadly, I also remember Seth’s presence in the living room because I slapped him. We had been arguing when things went to shit, so, unfortunately, I can’t pin this mayhem on him. He’s a shitty person, but I don’t think he has a murderous streak in him.