Chapter 15
Quill
Iturn slowly, my body numb with shock at finding the last person I’d ever expect on the other side of a gun.
Piper’s snobby lab partner.
Cass is absolutely unfazed as she holds the gun to my forehead. I’ve always disliked her, even before she started to speak to Piper. I don’t like people who aren’t scared of me.
And she’s definitely not scared of me now as she stifles a yawn while keeping her finger close to the trigger. I have no doubt she would kill me without hesitation.
That in itself wouldn’t bother me, if I didn’t have my cricket waiting for me.
The idea of not seeing Piper again feels pretty unbearable.
Then I take a step back and accidentally step on Ray’s lifeless form. And all my anger comes surging back.
“I was supposed to kill him,” I hiss out.
She smirks. “Got to him first.”
“Why?”
I’m not asking why she killed him. I’m asking why she got to him before me. But she misunderstands my question.
“I found him… annoying.”
Her lips twist up into a cruel smile. I thought I was a psycho, but this girl definitely gives me a run for my money.
“Okay.” I force myself to shrug away my anger, then take a step forward with the intention of moving past her, back to the door she’s currently standing against.
But she tilts her gun at me threateningly.
“Not so fast. Turns out, I find you annoying too.”
“Okay,” I say, for lack of anything better to say.
“So I’m going to shoot you.”
“Okay.”
She presses her finger against the trigger. “Aren’t you going to ask why?”
I frown in confusion. “I thought you found me annoying.”
She clicks her tongue, tossing a lock of perfectly straight, perfectly blond hair back. “I was being facetious, Quill. You fucking idiot. What the hell does Piper see in you?”
“Well, you seem to enjoy calling her stupid too, so I guess that tracks,” I snarl, my hands fisting by my side. “Get it the fuck over with. I don’t have all day.”
She raises an eyebrow, confusion swirling in her light blue eyes. “You don’t have… all day? To die?”
“Go on,” I prompt.
The whole situation is starting to annoy me. Why do killers always insist on talking for hours? I wouldn’t have said three words before shooting Ray. So what the hell is this girl doing?
“I like Piper,” she snaps, and I stare at her with a mixture of aggravation and disbelief.
“I may call her stupid, because she kind of is,” she adds, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I like her.
At the very least, she’s the person I least despise at school.
I can’t stand all those bratty rich kids who think they’re better than everyone else. ”
I clench my jaw to stop myself from telling her that she’s just described herself. Not because I’m scared of the gun she’s currently waving around, but because I do not feel like getting into a fucking debate.
Either fucking kill me, or don’t. Just for God’s sake, be quick about it.
“But you,” she continues. “You, I could kill just for breathing. That’s how much I hate your guts.”
“The feeling is mutual,” I mutter when she pauses as if waiting for me to say something.
“That’s not why I’m going to kill you, though. Because unlike you, Quill, I’m not a psychopath.”
I quirk up an eyebrow at the very clearly unhinged person standing before me. Gone is the cold, heartless girl who sits next to Piper in science class. In her place is a wild-eyed killer with bags under her eyes, as if she hasn’t slept for days.
“I’m going to kill you,” she continues, “because you murdered my father.”
Oh. For the first time since I found her standing with a gun over Ray’s lifeless form, I’m surprised.
So that’s who I killed that Sunday night, during my memory lapse. Cass’s father. Huh.
I guess I can’t fault Cass for wanting to kill me. My surprise gone, I wait passively for her to do that.
“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” she seethes.
I shrug.
That clearly angers her. She must want me to ask questions. Or at least, defend myself. Apparently, she has a lot to get off her chest before she kills me. I set my jaw in aggravation as she continues to talk.
“You may have been drugged, Quill, but that does not excuse your actions. And it turns out you messed with the wrong person. Because I...” She marks a dramatic pause. “I am the Dark Devil.”
I stare at her dumbly.
“The Dark Devil,” she hisses. “Don’t you know what that is? Don’t you read the fucking news, idiot? Don’t you have the least bit of curiosity about what’s going on in the world? I’m a fucking serial killer!”
“Okay,” I shrug.
I am admittedly surprised to hear that Cass Henley of all people is a killer. But I also realize how pissed off it makes her that I look unimpressed. So I keep a bored look on my face with the sole purpose of provoking her.
“I have urges, Quill,” she huffs out. “Maybe you know something about that. Well, my urges are bad. Really bad. Dad brought me to Astley so I could take out those urges on people who deserve to die. People who work at Devil. And now, I have a nickname. The Dark Devil. Cool, huh?”
Her lips twist into a self-satisfied smile, but it quickly disappears under her usual cold, cruel expression.
“But now, my dad is dead. I don’t know why. I can only assume they thought he was the Dark Devil. After all, who would expect perfectly sweet Cass Henley to be a murderer in disguise?”
I snort, because if there’s one thing Cass is not, it’s sweet.
“I guess the good thing is that now, my urges have a purpose. I’m not just going to take down a few people who work at Devil. I’m going to fucking blight that company, and every single person connected with my dad’s death. Starting with you, Quill. What do you think about that?”
I shrug yet again.
She lets out a heartless laugh. “I bet the only brain activity going on in that thick skull of yours relates to your cock, and what you’re planning to do with it.
But let me tell you something. Killing Ray also saved Piper.
Because she was there, the night you killed my dad, and Ray beating her up would’ve just been the start of a real shitstorm, had I let him live. ”
That makes me freeze. I stare at her, my eyes wide.
“Finally got a reaction out of you,” she smiles, letting out another cruel laugh.
“Well, of course, seeing as your girl is the most oblivious human being on Earth, she doesn’t know she saw anything.
She just happened to cross Ray’s path as he went to clean up your mess.
As he went to bury my dad. He was lugging around a big trash bag, filled with my dad’s remains, when she literally tripped over it and fell on her ass. ”
Yeah, that’s Piper alright. The only thing keeping me from smiling at her clumsiness is anxiety, rolling in the pit of my stomach, as I wonder what kind of trouble she’s in.
“Well, my dad’s been missing since Sunday,” she continues, going back to a subject that I do not care about. “But I wasn’t worried initially, because he’s often away for work. When I accidentally injected Finn, though—”
“Yes,” I spit out, cutting into her flow of words. “You did inject Finn. With the injection you’d been planning for Piper.”
“Oh, that.” She rolls her eyes. “Completely harmless. Supposed to give you photographic memory for like an hour. I thought it would help Piper, but Finn still had those other drugs in his system, and that mix was no good. It fucked him up, and he escaped. Campbell was freaking out, and somehow, he let his guard down and revealed parts of what happened Sunday night. Enough for me to piece it all together, and that’s when I started following you. ”
She pauses a beat, as if waiting for me to say something, but I merely look at her passively, wishing I hadn’t interjected anything before, because her monologue is seriously neverending.
“So anyway, when I came here to the warehouse,” she continues, tossing a lock of blond hair back, “Ray gleefully told me that he’d been holding onto the information about Piper tripping over my dad’s body, and he was planning to tell you about it.
Both so you’d know it could have been much worse than a few punches if someone else had found her, and to threaten you with telling his father.
I’m not sure of his thought process there.
I think he might be even stupider than you.
Anyway, I was already planning to kill him. That was just the cherry on top.”
Her lips part into a smug smile, as if she expects me to thank her. But if anything, I’m even more pissed off than before. I should have been the one to kill him. That was my job.
It’s starting to be a struggle to keep an impassive mask on. But I manage to ask coldly, “Now what?”
“Now, Quill Nelson, I’m going to kill you. So think your last thought, and get ready to die.”
I would never have pictured Cass as the talk-too-much kind of girl. But shooting Al Campbell left me feeling pretty giddy, and I imagine it’s the same for her. Especially since her shot killed Ray.
But it just so happens that I’m not currently on a shooting high. Which puts me at an advantage, as I watch her take a few steps back and aim her gun.
Right before she pulls the trigger, I lunge at her, grab her wrist, and twist it so viciously that I feel the bone snap. Then I grab her other wrist, and do the same thing. She screams out in pain, clutching her useless hands as I wrest the gun away from her.
She squeezes her eyes shut, clearly expecting to receive the bullet she’d planned for me. And the truth is, I’d be capable of shooting her without a moment of hesitation.
But I don’t want to.
First times matter a lot to most people. I guess it makes sense that you wouldn’t want to get deflowered by just anyone.
And it’s the same thing for me. I don’t want my first conscious kill to be this girl. She may be some weird mix of cruel and deranged, but she’s not the kind of person I want to pop my killing-people cherry for.
Ray would have been the perfect guy, and it pisses me off that she got to him before me. But it’s fine. I’ll just wait for a better opportunity.
And I’m sure that in a shitty place like Astley, better opportunities are not lacking.
“I’m going to let you live,” I tell her, and she looks up at me in surprise. “But you’re going to leave Astley High, and you’re staying far away from Piper from now on. Got it?”
“Got it,” she says weakly, staring down at her broken wrists. But there’s a hard edge to her voice that tells me I haven’t heard the last of her yet.
I shove her gun and mine under my belt, then head toward the door.
“Finn Austen’s probably going to finish you off anyway,” I mutter, before walking away.