Chapter Six #3
“Don’t forget.” I blur until I’m standing close enough for the barrel of the shotgun to dig into my chest. “I killed your friend too.”
His bright blue eyes are round and fill with tears. “What? What did you do? What did you do, you mother fucker!” he shouts so loud, spit flies from his mouth and onto my face.
He dares to fire his shotgun three times, blasting holes into my chest. Black smoke drifts free, the blood almost evaporating into thin air. My chest stitches itself together, followed by the stench of piss.
He’s wet his pants.
Coward.
I frown, wiping this stranger’s spit off my cheek. “The only person allowed to spit on me is my—fucking—mate,” I sneer, gripping the barrel of the shotgun and bending it backwards.
The barrel is in his face.
His fear is palpable, cloaking me like a cold night promising a warm meal.
He’s delicious.
We lock eyes, and the moment my vampire influence grabs onto his mind, his entire body relaxes, his eyes hood with drowsiness, and a hint of a smile stretches across his lips.
“Pull the trigger.”
“Okay.”
His index finger moves, and in the next second, a loud bang reverberates off the walls. My new friend’s head is gone, splattered across the floors, walls, and ceiling. His body is still standing somehow, and with one finger, I poke his chest.
“Timber,” I sing, watching as his body thuds against the ground.
Stepping on him, blood squirts from his neck. I step into a puddle of it on the floor, following the scent of terror from the last two heartbeats I hear in the house.
“Might as well come out,” I urge. “I promise to make your death quick.” It’s a little lie, but they don’t need to know that.
I curl my fingers on the edge of the wall, the long claws tapping as they make contact with a hard surface. They aren’t in the room. Their heartbeats are faint and coming from upstairs. Their pulses are so fast, adrenaline binds with their blood to pump it harder and faster in their veins.
Footsteps from up above have me look up at the ceiling. They think they are being quiet. Every step they take creates a small creak on the floor as they try to find a safe place to hide.
Don’t they know?
They can never hide from me. I will always find them, hear them, and smell them. I’ll give them a little hope just so I can feel the excitement of when I take it away.
I step on the headless body, my boots squelch on the ground from the blood as I walk to the staircase.
“Is anyone home?” I chuckle to myself, climbing the first step, then slam my claws into the wall again.
With every step I take, I engrain grooves in the walls so this house is cursed by my presence.
“I have a joke for you.” The staircase groans, threatening to give under my massive weight.
“Knock. Knock.” I pound on the wall with my fist.
I wait for someone to answer, even though I know they won’t.
“Who’s thereeeee?” The nightmare asks, dragging his breath across every word.
“Your worst dream.” The grind of my claws is the only sound in the quiet space.
“Your worst dream, who?” Nightmare hisses.
I stop at the top of the stairs, skimming my gaze down the darkened hallway. Left, then right.
“Me.” I slam my fist into the family photo hanging on the wall. The glass shatters, but the sharp pieces don’t penetrate the thick rhino skin.
Roots stretch from me, swimming on the ground, overtaking the ceiling, the floors, and walls. They creep further down the hallway, looking for someone to render motionless.
“La-lala-la-la-laaa.”
I stop mid-step, listening to the loud pounding of their frightened hearts. I’m getting closer.
Actually.
I turn my head left, staring at the wall covered in roots, pressing my ear against the impatient plant.
My next victims are whispering to one another.
“What do we do? What do we do? Oh my god, he is a monster. He did this to me. He—he—”
“Shhh, stop, he will hear us. You have to calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. You didn’t get shot in the leg by him spitting a fucking bullet at you!” Fireopal whispers harshly in panic.
I grin, loving that they find me important enough to talk about me in ‘private.’
How sweet.
I don’t do sweet.
Following the sound of her friend’s voice, I readjust my position, pointing my feet forward, and then take a small step to the left. Flexing my hand, I punch through the wall, wrap my hand around the back of his nape, and pull him through. Letting him go, so he slams into the wall.
Screams ring out, somehow harmonic and soul-easing.
“Don’t! Don’t! Please,” Fireopal begs through broken breaths and heavy tears. “I’ll do whatever you want. Do you…do you want money? I can get you all the money you want.” She crawls out of the hole in the wall, a belt tied around her thigh to slow the bleeding.
Her pants are soaked in red, and the color in her face is gone—pale and lifeless.
The man I ripped from the other side of the wall yells, charging at me with a sharp piece of wood that broke from the staircase. I don’t move. I don’t flinch. I stand my ground, tilting my head in curiosity.
He rams the sharp point through my chest and steps backwards, smiling in triumph.
“I got you, you sick son of a bitch,” he spits, literally, onto my boot. “Cops will be here any minute. You’re done. You’ll answer for all your crimes.”
Without saying a word, I wrap my hand around the spike, then tug it free from my chest—without blinking, without breaking eye contact—and his grin of accomplishment fades little by little.
Blood pours from my chest, the hole healing within seconds. My flesh stitches back together as if his attempt at murder didn’t happen.
That’s the thing about attempts—you always need to make sure you do it right the first time.
Twirling it in my hand quicker than he can possibly see, I launch the wooden spike in the air, and it lands in the middle of his chest, pinning him against a wall.
“No!” Fireopal cries, limping her way over to her friend, maybe even another mate.
I don’t care enough to find out.
He gurgles blood, red waterfalls spilling down his chin. Such a lovely sight to see. I couldn’t have painted a more picture-perfect moment. If this could be turned into a canvas, I would hang it above Lula’s fireplace so she could see the lengths I would go for her.
“Save him! Please. Save him!” Fireopal begs of me, going as far as dragging herself over to my feet. “I’ll do anything. He doesn’t deserve this. I’m who you want.”
“He doesn’t?” Gripping her by the roots of her hair, I drag her across the floor and toss her at his feet, where his blood is collecting. Clutching his chin, I force him to lift his head so his eyes can lock onto mine.
He’s barely breathing. He only has a few moments left before he dies.
His mind and body are so weak, he is easily locked into my influence. “Tell me, what’s the worst thing you have ever done? I’ll save your life if it isn’t bad.”
“Fuck you,” he spits.
I rip the spear from his chest, and he falls onto the floor, gasping for breath as the hole in his chest floods with blood.
Gripping him by his shirt, I lift him to his feet that aren’t strong enough to hold him up and shove the wooden spike up his ass, through his body, and out of the top of his head.
“I do the fucking,” I growl.
His eyes move left and right before death finally takes him, gravity bringing his body to the ground.
“Why! Why would you do that? No. Bring him back. Please, bring him back,” she sobs, touching his face with shaky hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for shooting you. I’m sorry. Please.”
“La-lala-la-la-laaa.”
She sniffles, rubbing her nose on her sleeve. “What is that?”
“Your worst nightmare.” The roots blur with speed, wrapping around her, then sling her against the wall, trapping her for me.
“I’ll give you all the money I have. I have millions stashed away in foreign bank accounts. You can have it. You can take it. Don’t kill me. Please,” she shouts. “Help! Someone help me!” she screams.
The nightshade flower blooms, releasing the invisible poison, and her screams for someone to come save her become silenced. Fireopal coughs and chokes, struggling to even say one word.
“No one is coming for you.” I scratch a claw down her cheek. “No one is saving you.” I press my finger against her gunshot wound, and her mouth parts, a silent scream leaving her. “I’m not in the business of saving lives, Fireopal. I take them.”
The nightmare leaves me as smoke, entering through her mouth. Her big, fearful eyes release one last tear before sin possesses her, melted coal dripping down her cheeks in replacement of her sadness.
“What do you fear, Fireopal?” Nightmare asks in a breathless haze. “Let. Us. See.”
I drift into her mind, chasing her subconscious.
In the depths of her mind, we’ve found ourselves in a very dark, cold fog. I look up to see snow has started to fall, gentle like Lula’s hand when it will one day caress my face.
My boots crunch over rocks, and I look down, noticing I’m standing on a cliff or a mountain of some sort.
“Help me, please, help me!”
Her voice echoes through the empty space, bouncing off the stone walls. Rocks crunch under my boots as I follow the sound of the desperation hitching in her voice.
“Someone! Please, don’t let me fall. Please! Oh, god!”
I haunt her through the dark, my breath the only cloud my eyes can see. Snow begins to gather in the cracks, showing that time is passing by. A brisk chill howls, a frigid storm—another threat to her life.
Making my presence known, I kick a rock hard enough that it rolls to the edge of the cliff. It falls. Seconds pass until I finally hear it hit the ground. The impact bounces between the cliffs, taunting Fireopal with just how loud her death will be.
“Is someone there? Hello? I’m going to fall. Please, I’m afraid of heights. I’m afraid of falling to my death. Help me!” Her cries echo pathetically in the fake scenario of her mind.