Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ash
Killing Cal’s parents was our next priority, because as more time passed, they’d get a chance to figure out who might have a reason to end the sick fucker, so it was the next morning when we decided to deal with them.
The original plan had been to go to their home and fuck them up right there, but my sister Em was the one who had a better idea.
She and Ethan had popped over to visit, because apparently we were a fucking open house and welcomed visitors.
“Ren seems nice,” she said, watching him head up to his room after a few minutes of chatting with them.
“He’s a bit shy still, but you know… rescued from psychos or whatever.”
“Ash, don’t say it like that.”
“They were psychos, baby.”
Cal rolled his eyes. “I’m saying Ren’s more than what happened to him, as you well know.”
“Whatever, are we killing more people with you or what?” Ethan asked, idly checking his newly tattooed fingers, which now had permanent blood spatter across them.
“That’s really cool,” I said, leaning over to check them out, and Cal sighed, dragging me back into my seat.
“If we could have one conversation at once, that’d really fucking help.”
“Yes, we’re killing his folks,” I said, gesturing to Cal with my thumb, while still wondering if I could get Em to tattoo some blood on me too. I’d helped with the killing, so I should get inked like my family are.
I knew for a fact that my brother Blaze had a literal kill list tattooed on his skin, and my dad Gray had fire all over his.
“We’re heading over there today,” Cal said, not even bothering to argue with me, or the way I’d just declared it, like it was something normal.
Ethan rubbed his hands together with glee. “Great. I’m really getting into this whole blood thing. I see the attraction, even though I always thought you guys were all fucked in the head.”
Em threaded her fingers through his and held his hand in her lap, maybe trying to calm down that frenetic energy of his, now that he had more kills in his sights.
“Isn’t it really risky to go there to kill them? You could be seen.”
We all fell silent, because she was right, but since when did we worry about stuff like that? We always found a way, because we’re the fucking Cross family.
She looked at each of us in turn. “You’re all idiots, you know that, right? Get them here, then you have as much time as you want, and nobody to see or hear anything.”
“Perfect kill room downstairs too,” Ethan added, probably casting his nutty mind back to the bloodstains from last time.
I felt Cal shudder beside me, because let’s be honest, he’d been put in there to die, and had only survived because he killed first. I regretted it now, but that’s what life is.
Regretting things once you can’t undo them.
Well, that and great sex. It’s a balancing act, I guess.
“How would we get them here?”
Cal took a fortifying breath and dug his phone out.
“I can make that happen.” He was tapping on his phone’s screen, and got up to walk out of the room, and a moment later his voice could be heard out there. He’d called them?
I watched my sister with her husband, the teacher she’d pretty much turned inside out with her obsession. Actually, more accurately, I think she’d turned him into a fucking villain from Batman or something. Maybe the Joker.
“We should stay,” Ethan said, his knee bobbing as he tapped his foot on the carpet. He was definitely overflowing with abundant fucking need to kill.
Em focused on him for a moment, then turned back to me.
“He’ll calm down after. Either that or we can go upstairs and fuck, and that’ll burn off some of his excess energy.” Ew. I didn’t want to even think about that, and even Ethan looked affronted.
“I’m not a fucking puppy, although…” He stood up, dragged Em up, and headed for the hallway, tugging her behind him. “Yeah, we’re gonna fuck until you need us.”
Jesus. I followed them, if for no other reason than to make sure they didn’t do it in my fucking bed, and I caught the tail end of Cal’s call. Clearly his parents had heard Ethan’s perverted declaration, because Cal was glaring at his back as he headed up the stairs.
“That’s what I’m saying. They’re all depraved, and I need to be saved. I need help. Please. I want to be good, and clean, and normal. Like you.”
He listened for a moment, and clenched his fist, his voice dropping low, becoming weaker.
“They’re trying to corrupt me, father. To make me a sinner like them.”
A second later he turned and threw his phone at the wall, letting out an enraged scream. I ran over to try and comfort him, but the look he gave me wasn’t one of pain or sorrow, or even frustration.
“Cal?”
“They’re going to die, and they don’t even see how much they deserve it,” he said almost gleefully. Fuck. Did we break him too? Were we destined to break the ones we loved, just to make them choose us?
When their car pulled up outside the house, we watched them park up and head for the door, both of us peering out through the small window beside the door. They had no idea what was waiting for them in here.
“You ready for this?” I asked Cal, sliding my hand into his, and squeezing his fingers gently. His breath left him in a stutter, and he physically flinched back from the window as they reached it and rang the doorbell, his father’s fist slamming against it a moment later.
“Let him out, you deviants!”
“Aw, it’s like he knows us,” I whispered to my sweet man, who seemed to feel every word from his father like a sharp barb aimed right into his soul. Those fuckers had to die for the way they made him feel.
I turned to check that Ethan was where we needed him, and the twisted fucker was literally pretending to tap dance on the spot, a knife in each hand. Crazy fucking dude.
He grinned widely at me, and laughed as the bastard outside banged on the door again.
I nudged Cal behind the door as I pulled it open and his parents literally spilled inside in their eagerness to rescue their son from our godlessness.
They barely caught themselves before falling flat on the carpet, but as I slammed and locked the door, they quickly realised that things weren’t as they seemed.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Cal’s dad demanded, tucking his wife behind him, as if he could protect her from our evil.
Cal stepped around me and folded his arms, which probably looked like an attempt at intimidation, but I knew it was something else entirely, because I could practically feel his trembles as he stood so close beside me.
“You called us for help. Let us go now, before this gets ugly,” his mother gasped, trying to smooth her stuffy church hair as she stepped up beside her husband.
They both looked at me like there was shit wafting under their noses, and it would have hurt me once, but not now.
You know the difference? Back when I was a kid, it might have got to me, might have dented my confidence in who I am, who I know myself to be.
Not now though. Now what I see is two desperate indoctrinated fools, both too trapped in their twisted beliefs to love their own son, regardless of his inner soul.
“It’s already ugly, bitch,” I hissed at her, and they both gasped, drawing back as if I’d just taken their lord’s name in vain.
“How dare you speak to my wife like that? Defend your mother’s honour, son!”
Cal sighed, locking eyes with Ethan who was edging his way around the perimeter of the room, a gleeful grin on his face as he held both knives at his sides. I hoped he didn’t try killing them here. Blood was a bitch to get out of carpets, I was betting.
“Honour?” Cal spat, glaring right back at his father, who was probably only now realising he was outnumbered and smaller than both of us. He’d always seemed larger and more intimidating when I was a kid, but he was nothing but a coward.
Cal
I didn’t consider how it’d feel to be faced with both of them like this.
It was strange, because I’d felt love for them at one point, back when I was too young to understand their damage.
That’s what it was. Damage. They were so locked into their faith and beliefs, and the twisted teachings of people like Uncle Gordon, that they couldn’t see that love could exist everywhere, not just in their tiny pockets of acceptance.
“There’s no honour in the way you treated me,” I said, my voice a little softer now as emotion filled me, but not because of what they were about to suffer through. It was because that frightened little boy inside me still didn’t fully understand why his mum and dad couldn’t just love him.
“Son, they’re messing with your mind. This is how their deviant nature corrupts the good.”
Ethan snorted behind them, and they both spun to see him brandishing both knives at them. Mother screamed, but father didn’t seem at all concerned, tutting at him, like he didn’t see the literal madness in that fucker’s eyes.
“He won’t kill them right here, right?” I whispered to Ash, who looked just as worried as I was.
“Can’t guarantee that,” he replied, turning to face the doorway, “EM! Get in here!”
My parents were trying to back away from Ethan, but that brought them closer to us, and they knew that was also a risk.
Em walked into the room, immediately seeing the problem as she straightened her clothes after their way-too-noisy session upstairs. Her psycho murder-obsessed husband grinned widely at her.
“Jesus!”
“How dare you use the Lord’s name in vain!
Blasphemy!” Father spat, and Ethan suddenly started to laugh.
It was loud, almost unhinged, but it seemed to break that spell that’d settled over him as he faced them once more, and tightened his fingers around the knife handles.
He looked so determined to cause them agony, and they deserved that, but maybe we could still get them out of this room before they died.
“Ethan, give me those!”
Ash started chuckling, and I had no idea why, until Ethan handed his wife one of those knives, and her whole demeanour seemed to shift.
Suddenly I wasn’t looking at the sweet sister of Ash’s that I’d had trouble believing had any connection to the crazy fucker, Ethan.
I was looking at pure evil in feminine form, and it sent chills down my spine.
“What the actual fuck,” I hissed at Ash, who laughed louder.
“Yep, that’s my big sis. She’s awesome, right? Lead them downstairs, will ya!”
I watched with complete fucking bemusement as the two of them used their chilling behaviour, and sharp knives, to corral my parents, leading them out of the room, even as father protested loudly, thinking he had any fucking power here.
“She looks terrifying,” I said to Ash as he turned to check all the locks on the door, then dug his phone out and sent a text to his dads, letting them know we were proceeding.
“Yeah, she’s no better than the rest of us, babe. She just looks so sweet nobody believes it. Back when she was more of a goth, it was easier to believe, but now? Yeah… not so much.”
We headed down to the hallway, and in the direction of the kill room. That room my own parents were being led to, never to leave it alive again. I was so fucking relieved I’d advised Ren to stay in his room watching something on the TV, away from this showdown.
“He’s going to insist on fucking her in their blood, Ash,” I suddenly said, horror filling my throat with bile, even though it had nothing to do with whose blood it’d be. Not anymore. Their behaviour when they got here had sealed their fate, and they hadn’t even let out all of their evil yet.
“Ugh, do you mind? That’s my fucking sister,” he said with a grimace.
Instead of heading downstairs, he led me into a small room, that I quickly realised was where he’d lay in wait while I was trapped down there.
There were multiple camera angles on the bright white room that held my parents while Ethan circled them like a ferocious predator, and Em leaned back against the door, testing the blade on her knife with her thumb.
“This is where you were,” I said pointlessly, because it was obvious.
Ash gestured to the chair beside him as he sat, and I joined him, glad to be held up by something other than my shaky legs right now.
“I was in my own hell last time I was in here, Cal. I thought I’d have to live without you… no, that’s not true. I fully planned to follow you into hell, but I’m glad we get to live first instead.”
“Jesus!”
“That’s my boy,” he murmured with a grin, reaching over to stroke my cheek.
A yell from the speakers wrenched our attention back to the screens. Father was down on his ass, and Ethan was laughing, while Em shook her head at his antics. Mother was dropping down onto her knees to try and help father, and that’s when Ash leaned toward the free-standing microphone.
“That’s right, pray to your pathetic god, but guess what… he won’t save you. He doesn’t care. Nobody fucking cares. You’ll die in there, and nobody will even notice.”
Ethan glanced up at the camera, waving the knife like… well, like a fucking serial killer.
“Can I tell them?”
Ash frowned at me, and leaned close to the mic again.
“Tell them what?”
“What we did the other day.”
The grin that crept across Ash’s face was as chilling as his sister’s had been.
“Wait for us. We’re coming down.”
What?
“Ash, I don’t know if-”
“Babe, you’ll want to look them in the eye when we tell them what we did to that cunt.”
Shit. Uncle Gordon. Did they even know yet? He was prone to falling out of touch while he tended to his ‘flock’. Ugh. I gagged at the thought, at the word playing in my head in his voice.
“Okay, let’s do this.”