CHAPTER TWO
KASH
Helia was a fucking goddess. I’d kneel to worship at her feet, but she trotted across campus too fast after her altercation with her lecturer.
I walked away after the first part of her class, leaving my twin to listen in.
He could stay and contemplate the future of the man who I refused to call professor, as if he was even worthy of the title given to his colleagues.
I had another job tonight to occupy my time that took me away from sweet Helia. But I would return to her soon.
Mind, the girl that my twin and I followed around campus like a fucking puppy attracted plenty of attention. The sort who wanted more than a little look while she sat in art class, painting pettily away. The sort who wasn’t content to simply see.
The sort who needed to touch.
And that was never okay.
Her little art friend found out the hard way. He liked to touch, and he liked to do far more than look. Because he liked to steal.
It turned out that Art Buddy Ethan had an obsession to rival ours.
No. That was an outright lie. I should punish myself, but later. After I washed away the blood that coated every pore in my arms. I toed the body out of the road as I moved around, keeping my steps small, my feet on the plastic I’d laid out for this particular event.
Ethan hadn’t made a whole lot of sound. He hadn’t fought much, either. In fact, he only said one thing, that I still mulled over, as though it baffled him:
“I thought it would be both of you.”
Strange words, for a strange college student.
Usually, the Rippton cadre screamed and begged for their lives, or offered some ridiculous—and often, lowball—amount of payment in order to keep their pithy lives intact.
That tactic never worked, of course. But on the rare occasion, someone offered something we didn’t have, and we… kept them. Like a prized puppy.
And once. Just once, we let that person run free.
I still wasn't sure if that had been a mistake or an interesting turn in life. But right now I needed to clean up before Key berated me for my mess—again.
Helia Mascot had been a long running obsession of ours. Unhealthy, unusual and unseen. All the things that made us…
Well, us.
She was perfection in every way. Pretty, in an unintentional, gothic princess sort of way with the elfin, delicate features, and the eye of an artist who sees the world from a skewed perspective, rather than taking reality at face value like so many others.
Eyes hollow from internal pain and torture, the kind that we often dealt out.
She already understood that, which meant that we had a common ground.
The insomniac in her ensured that she saw plenty of midnight hours, sunrises as she stumbled about, not ready for the next day as each blurred into the next. The cloud of sleep deprivation that bordered onto psychosis in its more intimate moments.
We saw those, too. Stole moments when she slept. Had no idea we were there, inside her space.
And her art. It spoke to both of us in a primitive, prey-in-the-making kind of way.
Because I truly doubted that Helia Mascot was any kind of hunter, even if she would make such a beautiful victim.
“You were never her type,” I told Ethan as I bagged his body, careful not to let his blood drain over the flooring in his dorm.
His roommate was off fucking another in his frat, and since that particular man had the stamina of a Rippton Allstars, one of the star athletes on campus, I was guaranteed an unbroken handful of hours of sex marathon plus recovery and aftercare time to boot.
His hands and feet were bagged next as I talked to him softly, soothingly.
“She’ll be cared for, I promise. No, she doesn't know about the pictures. I’ll hide them away,” I reassured his head as it went into a plastic bag, separate from the rest of his body. “Unless you want her to find them? Did you have a humiliation kink, Art Buddy Ethan? Should I check?”
I raised my eyebrows as blood pooled in the corner of his bag, leaving a soft plopping sound as I dropped the dismembered head and bent to collect my blades. I had seven, one of each occasion, though I only used three tonight.
“No, you should not check.” My twin brother’s voice drew my attention to the window where he balanced in the frame like a moonlit elf.
I imagined that was the filter that Helia would see him through, my pale, pigmentless identical twin, our albinism highlighted in the artificial light. Or maybe she wouldn’t and I was being a romantic fool, lost in my happy space of murder and death.
“But we could have some fun, message her from his phone,” I protested. “I do love games.”
“And I love not having to bribe police officers. Don’t you remember?” His strict face glowed, forcing me back to the first time I killed. To the memory that set us on the path we followed now.
“Shit. Fuck. I’m—no, I’m not sorry you utter fucking abusive cunt who deserved to die.
Shit. Fuck. Fuck!” I gripped my hair in both hands, knowing the stain of my abusive father would transfer to me the moment I grasped the colorless strands and yanked.
The pain helped but nothing could alleviate the panic that consumed me as I stared at the fallen body of my sire.
The man who decided his son was his toy nightly for years, until I grew old enough to understand what the sharp end of a steak knife could do in a hard grip just after my eleventh birthday.
And already I swore like one of the mafia friends he associated with frequently.
I’d sat in on enough meetings, learned the art of negotiation at his table.
But I hadn't seen a man bleed so much, hadn’t thought it would be so messy when I took the knife and ran it across his throat as he sank his saggy, sloppy body into mine.
And the blood drenched me like a deluge of sin.
The mess was enormous as I managed to haul my skinny, pale ass out from under his convulsing bulk. The scents of death—piss and shit—that I learned to recognize as part of the process later, clung to me that night. Different from any other, a benchmark I lived by from that point.
And as I sat, pointing the steak knife at a still body, covered in another man’s blood, Key pushed his way into my room and found me.
The knife disappeared from my hand and the body was pulled from the bed.
Together, we rolled it and bagged it. And then we phoned one of my father's friends, who turned out not to be a friend at all, but one we could pay to help clean up the mess.
A man who Key had used before.
“Next time, don’t be anywhere near the spray,” he taught me, showing me how to slash and stab. "Watch how they clean up. Ask to help. They’ll say no, but they’ll let you sit and watch, providing you don’t interrupt. Just watch, and learn. I’ve been doing it all year.”
“Watching?” My eyes were round as saucers, not a shake in sight from my pale, thin hands that my father had loved on his tainted flesh.
Key shook his head, his eyes on the cleaners, absorbing everything.
“Killing.”
I hadn’t realized what twisted little monsters we were until that moment.
Me, out of survival. Him, because he was all sorts of other fucked up.
I never asked why he was the way he was, simply accepted him.
and … it worked. But my twin still managed to creep up on me sometimes, even when we shared the same obsession.
“Don’t fucking well touch anything in his room. Don’t gift her anything. Don’t touch her.” Key’s personal brand of obsession shone through.
“No?” I traced my fingers across Ethan’s sealed lips where I had sewn them shut. “He didn’t say much.”
Key snorted. “Looking at him now, I don't doubt it.”
“Not here. Before.” I considered. “It’s like…he expected us. Did you make a deal with him?”
Key tilted his head to one side. “No. Did you?”
“I did not.”
Breath left me. Why would this man expect us, when we hadn’t shown ourselves to Helia yet? Certainly, we’d marked her as ours, but we hadn’t shown our obsession, our dedication to her to anyone else at all.
“We need to visit her.” Key hopped into the room, pacing delicately around my contained crime scene. “This is well done, brother.”
I took the rare compliment from him with a nod. “We can touch her? Finally.”
His soft laugh left me rock hard in my pants.
My natural state during the end of a deal that ended like tonight’s has.
More than once I’ve let myself finish over a victim, release the pent up energy.
Beau Bennet has been present for several of those occasions as he often feeds our desires.
But that little habit is too much, even for the head of the Kingsman fraternity at Rippton U.
The college where the country's richest sends their offspring to study, socialize and fornicate while their parents tend to business deals.
Deals that their children will one day replicate, in turn.
A closed social infrastructure. It’s a hideous net, and by culling the undesirables, I suspect we are simply doing our part.
Unfortunately for us, dear old daddy never got to explain his part in the grand scheme, apart from the obvious, and that little habit stops with his grave marker.
“You want to see her? Helia.” Key’s lips wrapped around our obsession’s name like a caress.
I was instantly jealous of his ability to turn that single word into something so much more. “I want to touch her. Tonight. She needs to know us.”
Key looked me up and down. “We have a lot of work to do. Cleaning.”
“Fine. Only because he pushed too far.” I finished tying the head off and double bagged it. Blood had a bad habit of leaking out, especially when the object inside was—-ha, pun—a dead weight.
“She was kicked out of her art class tonight." Key let the words out casually.
I blinked. “She was what? Magnus.” That man was a bane. I added him to my mental list. Helia was far too decent a talent for his mentorship and that wasn’t simply my obsession talking. “What happened?”
Key shrugged and bent to help me with the torso.
“He didn’t like her sketches. Something inane and cutesy.
” A grimace curled his lips. “Not her usual, but she earned hate for it. Anyway, they had a fight after you left and she walked out, leaving him holding his limp little duck while the rest of her class watched on.”
A warmth started low in my chest. “She owned him,” I breathed, suddenly so proud of my girl. Our girl.
Key was right. Helia did Magnus a favor by walking out of his classroom, not in the least because she could now seek a new class to fill her timetable with.
But also because while ever I was distracted in following the girl of my literal dreams, then I wasn’t in his office, discovering a digit to dismember or another part of his body to damage.
“Indeed.” Key directed the rest of the clean up and I took to it, lost in my head. After my shower in the other man’s bathroom, and cleaning that too with bleach I didn't need to use, I transferred as much as I expected the bribe to be worth for the local police unit before I called the murder in.
What? I didn’t want to keep the parents worrying. There was a responsibility here after all Key dis agreed with that last part, not about calling it in but alerting the parents. But if that was my child, I'd want to know.
Not knowing what happened to someone I loved? That might be the scariest damn thing in the world.
“This is done.” Key stretched languorously as flashing lights approached campus. “There. They’re coming. Happy now?”
“Immensely.” I smiled and shook my head. “The roommate is fucking a few doors up. We should vacate.”
He paused, and looked at me. “You want to see her.”
I checked the clock tower that sat in the middle of campus. It was well past midnight and I hadn’t heard it strike a single hour. “I’ll see her whether you’re with me, or not.”
Key nodded. “Then we go together.”