Chapter Eighteen
Ash
Did I think it would play out that way? I really had no idea, but I knew the second that bitch went for the knife that my little game might not go my way.
I didn’t want Cal dead. I wanted him broken, and desperate, and hurting like he’d hurt me, but I didn’t want him to die.
He was supposed to be mine. That bitch was the one who had to fucking die, and I wanted it to be as painful as fucking possible.
Ethan followed me as I charged for the room, and fumbled with the controls. Every second I wasted was a second closer to Cal’s death, a second closer to him being lost forever. I couldn’t destroy him if that sick twisted psycho-whore did it first.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I cursed, as I pulled on the door, and Ethan helped shove it aside.
I don’t know what we expected to find in there, but there was blood pooling on the white tiles, a rapid enough flow that I suspected an artery had been hit, or maybe there were multiple stab wounds, but it was bad. So bad.
“Jesus Christ,” Ethan hissed as he stopped dead just inside the door.
Also dead, or very close to it, was that raping bitch, and kneeling beside her, a bloody knife in hand, and a distraught tearful look on his face, was the man I loved.
He lifted his eyes from her prone body, and practically whimpered.
“I… I didn’t mean to…”
He lowered his head again, his eyes fixed on the knife in his hand, no doubt watching as Elizabeth’s blood trickled from the blade onto his skin.
The evidence of his crime. The proof of his commandment-breaking.
The irrefutable truth of his actions. He killed her.
He murdered the bitch who raped him, who raped both of us.
She deserved it, she deserved pain, and death and fucking eternal damnation.
“Bitch deserved it,” Ethan murmured like he could hear my thoughts, edging his foot forward, so the tip of his shoe smeared blood across the tiles. “Rot in fucking hell.”
The knife suddenly clattered against the tiles, almost deafening in the otherwise silent room, but another sound was growing louder.
Gasping, ragged sounds. The echo of his despair as Callum broke down and sobbed his heart out, as he toppled over sideways and lay on the cold tiles, tears pouring down his face.
“I didn’t mean to,” he kept whispering over and over, sometimes clearly, and other times mumbled like absolute gibberish, but the cadence was the same.
“Apparently he didn’t mean to,” I said loudly to Ethan, who barked out a laugh and smeared more blood with his shoe. Maybe he was infinitely more fucked up than I’d realised. He was literally covering his clothes with DNA evidence of a murder, and he clearly didn’t give a flying fuck.
“Yeah, I suspected as much,” he replied, suddenly dashing forward and leaning down to snatch up the knife, just before Cal’s fingers closed around it again.
“Ah ah ah, no easy way out for you, little shit, live with what you did.” He backtracked to stand beside me, twirling the bloody knife, and sending droplets sailing in a haphazard pattern across the white floor.
“Could you make more of a mess?” I asked irritably, holding my hand out for the knife. Ethan snorted, pointing at Cal with the knife.
“You could fuck him in her blood. It’d be like taking back your power from her.” What?
Cal’s head shot up, and he made a panicked sound, scrambling across the hard floor, away from Elizabeth’s cooling body, and the wide circle of spilled blood.
“Ethan?”
My sister’s twisted husband shot me a grin, waiting for me to speak, but I don’t think he could possibly know what I was about to say.
“Is that what you’d do?”
His grin widened, and he winked at me. Winked? Jesus fuck, what had my sister done to him to mess him up so much, that he was relishing this moment instead of recoiling, like I kinda wanted to?
“I mean, it’s unsanitary, and your sister would be pissed about getting blood in her hair, but once she’s dick-drunk, she’ll let me do anything to her, so yeah, probably. Mind you, she’d look hot as fuck with blood red hair…”
I mock-gagged and held up a hand. “Didn’t need that much detail. A yes or no would have been preferable, man. I mean, I’m just wondering, fuck him now, or leave him in with her for another day or so, and then take him.”
Ethan chuckled, and honestly, it sent a chill down my fucking spine, so god only knows how it affected Cal.
“That’s so much better than my idea, bro. Do that.”
He turned and left the room, stopping in the doorway. “I’ll probably head back home, because I like you, but not enough to watch you shagging, yeah?”
I flipped him off, because even though I was thankful for his company, and support, right now, I was kind wigged out by his words. I’d never thought boundaries might be a good thing, but Ethan was starting to make me rethink that with every word that came out of his crazy mouth.
“And now it’s just us, babe.”
Callum
She came at me, and I just reacted. How the hell had it come to that?
How the hell had the knife ended up in her chest, and would I ever forget how it felt when it pushed into her body, and that sound she made when she realised she was stabbed?
More than that, why did I keep stabbing her?
Why did I pull the knife out and keep jabbing it back into her chest and stomach like that?
Why did I brutalise her body as she lay dying like that?
Wasn’t one stab-wound enough? Hadn’t that one done enough damage that she’d die?
I felt like I’d lost my mind in that moment.
She tried to kill me, and she’d already taken enough from me.
She took everything. She took my body, she broke my heart, and she took the part of my mind, my soul, that wouldn’t have reacted like that.
She destroyed the part of me that made me a good person, and that’s why I had to kill her.
It wasn’t just about protecting myself, or deflecting her.
I wanted her to die. I wanted her gone, so she couldn’t hurt any more boys like us.
I didn’t think I had that kind of evil in me, but there it was. Her cooling corpse, surrounded by the slowly coagulating blood, was the proof of what was inside of me. Was it always there, or did her actions put it there? Would I have even considered hurting her, if she hadn’t come for me first?
I didn’t know the answers to those questions, but I knew something. The world was a better place without her, but it needed to be without me too. While I removed the source of her wrongdoing, the dark whore who tortured poor young men, I was no better than her, was I?
By setting Ash up, by perpetuating his torture at the filthy whim of that bitch, I was as much a rapist as she was.
By making that happen, I was as evil as she.
And by killing her? I hadn’t redeemed myself.
I’d just proved that the rot in my soul went so deep that there wasn’t enough of me left to save.
“Kill me,” I whispered as Ash approached me, crouching down beside the body I’d stolen life from. The fact that she deserved it didn’t make it right, or me a good guy. It was just more evil, perpetuated by my hand.
“Why would I do that, babe? You did the right thing. She deserved death. She deserved pain, and suffering. She deserved to be forced into something she couldn’t prevent.
No, this was perfect.” He turned his head to smile at me, and it seemed like such a strange reaction in the literal face of death.
“I’m proud of you, Cal. You ended her evil, and you saved who knows how many more boys like us from going through that hell.”
“Kill me,” I begged him again, laying prone on the cold tiles and wishing he’d give me what I wanted, what I needed. Freedom from myself. An end to my evil acts.
“I don’t want you dead, babe. I want you to be mine, that’s all I’ve ever wanted. We… we don’t have to stay in here with her. You could be upstairs with me. You could be with me, Cal.”
Ash moved suddenly, and leaned over me, his chest pressing against mine as his lips hovered over my own.
“Babe, get out of your head, and kick your parents out of there too. You choose your path in life. You choose who you love, and you choose your future. They had no right to fuck with you like that, and try to control you. You’re a person. You can be who you want to be.”
“Kill me,” I hissed, lifting a hand to his hair, gripping it in my fist and tugging sharply. Ash let out a low groan, and his eyelids fluttered as he pulled against my grip. Why was he fighting my hold, but staying right here? He was supposed to move, and back off.
“KILL me,” I demanded, lifting the other hand to grip his throat, squeezing the fragile column as I pulled more harshly at his hair. “Fucking KILL me, Ash.”
He drew a ragged breath, and more of his weight landed on me, the length of his body crushing against mine in a way that didn’t necessarily repel me.
“Babe,” he whispered, and a surge of anger forced me to brutally tighten my grip on his throat, even though it dragged another low pleasured groan from his lips.
“FUCKING KILL ME!” I roared in his face, lunging up and rolling us until I straddled his hips and held him down, both hands now at his throat.
The weird thing was that he didn’t fight me.
He didn’t try to shift my grip, and he didn’t beg me to release him.
A ripple of something rode through his body, and it rocked up against mine, as he groaned again, the sound tortured as it came from his constricted throat.
“What’s the matter with you? Ash, kill me.
” His eyes had fluttered closed, but it wasn’t because I was choking him hard enough for him to pass out.
He was fighting for breath, but he wasn’t fighting me.
He was writhing beneath me, and his chest was heaving as he struggled for air, for any air to fill them.
His hands though, they weren’t on my wrists, or trying to peel my fingers away, they were flat on the tiles at his sides.
He didn’t want me to stop. He wanted me to do this.
He wanted more. Did he want to die, or was this pleasurable for him?
Was he enjoying it? Was it getting him off?
“More, babe…” he choked out, “hurt… me… more.”