Chapter 23 #2
As time trickles on, Bunny begins to fade, head falling forward and back when sleep sinks its claws in her.
“It’s okay,” I reassure, reaching back to rub her knee, “go to sleep. I’ll wake you up if anything changes.” At this point, I’m starting to believe that nothing will. Maybe he’ll stay inside all night.
I’m brought back to the fire idea.
It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever considered.
Groaning, Bunny sits up straight, stretching out before sliding to her knees and resting her head between the two front seats. “That’s alright.”
She looks at me from the floor with wide, fluttering lashes, trapping me in a gaze so blue, I must be drowning. Reaching out, I press the tips of my index and middle fingers beneath her chin. She hovers in the air, floating towards my lips when a staticky voice cuts through the tension.
“Reynolds, bring the car ‘round to the rear exit,” the walkie screeches, “He needs to slip out without being noticed by the vultures in the front.” Laughter, sarcastic and annoyed, filters through the feed. “They’d have a fucking field day with this one.”
Whoever was on the other end doesn’t wait for a response. As soon as he finished, the line went dead, leaving Bunny and me staring at each other in silence.
“Shit,” she whispers while I mutter, “It’s time.”
Dropping her face, I twist around in the seat, putting the car in gear.
“Get on the floor or something. Don’t let anyone see you.
” I don’t look back while I bring the car around the side of the building, but I hear panicked shuffling all across the seats.
It stops seconds before the back door swings open.
“Here you go, sir.”
“I don’t want to go!”
The mayor puts up a weak fight, placing his hands on the roof of the car in an attempt to stop them from throwing him inside.
The struggle doesn’t last very long. Within seconds, Mayor Williams’s back hits the seat, and I’m left sitting in the front—silent and anxious, wondering where Bunny hid herself.
While Williams sprawls against the leather, spewing drunken obscenities, the accompanying security guard ducks down.
Alarm bells start ringing in my head the second his chin comes into view.
Instantly, I grab ahold of the blade’s handle, ready to jab it straight through his nose to his brain if he makes the slightest move. But he never dips below his lips.
A heady gust of alcohol wafts into my breath when he says, “Take him back to the room.” The guard, whose tag reads Dylans, swaggers back toward the entrance, but stops and swings back to me for one final word.
“But come back within the next few hours for Mrs. Williams. She’s not ready to leave yet. Old bitch.”
I can hardly understand his mumbled phrase, but I nod anyway, blood pounding in my ears. In the back, Mayor Williams chimes in, laugh sounding like booming thunder. “Old bitch!”
The backseat rocks with his vigor, his entire body shaking and convulsing against the leather. Glancing in the mirror, I once again wonder where the hell Bunny is, but then I see her, crawling like a fucking demon out of the trunk.
Eyes gaping, I shake my head. Wait! Wait! I want to scream, at least until we’re away from the gala and all the security. She catches my warning in the mirror, stare burning with hatred and impatience, but she listens. Bunny crawls back into the dark and sits still until the car rolls to a stop.
As quickly as I can, I pop the trunk, a green light for her to do whatever the fuck she wants now that we’re hidden.
“What’s going on?” Mayor Williams asks, but I don’t have shit to say to him. This isn’t my battle. This is all hers.
Come in, I mouth in the side mirror, jerking my head toward the door. Before Williams can question me again, Bunny’s inside, and the lock is reengaged.
Nowhere to run—
“Nowhere to hide, huh, dog?”
The memory of Marone’s words continues to be an unwelcome presence inside my mind, but I shut him out, knowing his time is coming.
When I look back again, Bunny is no longer in the space beside him, but fully on his lap, her opening directly against his growing bulge. “Remember me?” she asks, a smile alive in her voice. “We spent a long night together.”
I want to reach back and rip her off him, cut that slick, wasted grin off his face when he responds, “Did we?”
Everything turns red when his hands come up, sticking to the sides of her curved ass.
I’m out of my seat, knife already in hand, when I remember this one isn’t for me.
Mayor Williams, as disgusting as he is, is Bunny’s to kill.
He’s Bunny’s to maim. I really wish she’d get off his lap, seeing as his dick is straining toward her center, but I have to wait.
I have to trust that she knows what she’s doing.
Taking a deep inhale, I force myself to calm down.
I’m here to support.
I’m here to help.
I’m here to be whatever she needs, and what she doesn’t need is me being a dick and taking this moment away.
I repeat it until my blood cools, and then I hear him call her baby, see his hand reach for her center with a sinister smile, and I know it then, no matter how hard I try, I won’t be able to stay in this seat much longer.
“Look at me,” Bunny purrs, so I do, but it isn’t me she’s talking to. Her head is dipped low. I can hear her grin. I can feel her fluttering eyelashes. A moment ago, Williams was ready to take her right in front of me. Now? Even in the dark, his fear is unmistakable—so potent I can taste it.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” he stutters, breath racing. “You shouldn’t be out.”
Bunny, a predator playing with food, laughs, “Where should I be, then? Hmm? Back in those rooms? Maybe with your dick in my ass.” This shit is hard for me to hear, but Williams acts repulsed by the notion, as if these aren’t his actions at all.
It’s a bewildering act, but undeniably fake.
Does he think it will save him? Bunny flips to the side, showing my face.
It’s all he needs to know that nothing will save him now.
“Oh,” she whispers, still chuckling, “come on now. Don’t be so scared! What’s the worst that could happen?” The tears forming and blood vessels popping in his throat are proof that he knows exactly the worst that could happen.
He finds his voice. It’s not as confident and boisterous as before. “You killed Colette and Nathan… Were you the cop killer, too?”
Bunny appears thoughtful, head tilting in question before asking, “I don’t know, Mayor Williams. Did they deserve it?”
The question hangs in the air, tainting the space around us until Williams starts to choke. Panic snakes around him, attempting to throw Bunny off, but he’s drunk and weak and helpless beneath her. When he can’t get away, he offers the only thing he has. “I have money!”
He offers her thousands—millions—if it means we’ll disappear, but Bunny and I grew up with nothing. We survived without money once. We can do it again without issue.
“Cade.”
“Yeah, Bun?” Her smile is radiant and bright, much lighter than it was hours ago. With each monster she confronts, with every life she takes, it’s like another piece of her returns. I wonder who she’ll be when this is all over.
How much brighter will she burn?
“Bla-Cade,” Williams interrupts, “Cade, listen!” He pleads with me from underneath Bunny, stare crazed, with hands plastered up at his side. “Yo-you were a prize to us! W-we treated you good!”
“I was your fucking dog,” I bite back, recalling the way they’d look at me whenever I entered that ring.
“You’re lucky the cage kept me away from you.
” You’re lucky she’s keeping me away from you now.
I flash him my blade, wishing I hadn’t cleaned it, so he can see all the company he’ll keep.
Like most, the sight is enough to have him shitting his pants.
“Whoa! Wait! Hold on, hold on, hold on! You don’t want to do this! Just calm down!”
While he begs and pleads, I slip the knife into Bunny’s waiting hand. Maybe he would have seen it, had he focused on the right devil. But he didn’t, and now he knows exactly what kind of game Bunny’s playing.
“Why should I?” she asks, pressing the newly sharpened tip to his.
“B-b-because I can help you! I can help you! Whatever you need, I can get it in an instant!”
I can’t tell if it’s fake or real with her back turned to me, but the interest is there. “Anything?”
“Anything!” Williams howls. “Anything. Please, just… don’t kill me.”
I expect Bunny to laugh away the request, to blow him off, and stick the blade straight through the hole of his dick. Instead, Bunny falls silent, as if she’s actually considering his words.
“Bun—” I whisper at the exact moment she rushes out, “Where is he?” Oh, fuck. “Where is Marone?”
Williams understands what she’s asking for, what she plans on doing, and a whole new terror runs through his system.
“I-I can’t do that.” The knife enters his limp dick, cutting through the expensive slacks with no resistance.
Blood pops and pools inside the material, coming away on her hands as she pulls the blade in and out.
“No! No!” he cries, thrashing in the seat. “Wait! Please! Please! Please!” Bunny slides the weapon into the hilt, sawing upward. “Please!” Williams' shouts sound like incomprehensible cries, “You don’t understand! He’ll kill me!”
“So will I.” To prove it, she rips one hand into her pocket, shoving a bloodied, broken tooth of Colette’s between his lips. “I want Marone,” she hisses for a second time. “You want to live? You get me to him.”
I wonder how Marone would feel knowing one of his top clients folded within moments. And all it took was a little cutting and a few loose teeth.
I write the South Hampton address on a piece of tissue, expecting her to be done when she asks for more.
“And the apartments? The one he pimps us out of. Where are they?” He recites that too with a broken, defeated sigh.
Bunny looks back at me, almost shocked at how easy this was.
Like me, she expected more of a fight from someone who harbored such vile secrets.
“Is that it?! Can I- Can I go now?!”
Williams and I sit in silence, he panicking, but I am curious. What is Bunny going to do?
“Why’d you do it?” she asks. It sounds genuine this time. There’s no sarcasm in her tone, no teasing or playfulness. Bunny sits on his lap, lips close to his, and wonders… as if his answer will breathe some life into her again.
“D-do what?”
“You know what,” she snarls, “but if you need to hear the words, why do you fuck children? Why do you torture them? You have a wife, the looks to screw whoever you want, and enough money to pay for every hooker you pass. So why children?” She asks again, “Why me?”
Silence. Then a loud slap followed by the crunching of teeth.
“Why. Me?”
Weeping, Williams sags, hiccupping a broken and weak excuse. “I’m sick! I’m sick! I’m sick! I can’t stop myself! I’m sorry!”
He folds and wraps his arms around Bunny’s torso, sobbing into her chest while she freezes under his touch.
She stares back at me, with skin turning green.
I can’t tell if she’s sick or scared. I want to reach out, just a touch, to remind her I’m here.
I can save you. But Bunny doesn’t need me. She hasn’t since she first arrived.
I don’t see her hand move at first, only a slight jerk of her shoulder, but the sounds are hard to ignore.
Underneath his screams, the squelching of his cock turning to mush is undeniable.
Even I sit back, stomach cramping at the sight.
When the pulp begins to ooze out of the sliced fabric, Bunny stabs freely, hitting high and low until the entirety of her is stained red.
The slickened knife goes flying, hitting the car’s carpet with a thud.
Speechless, I sit and stare as her back heaves with heavy sighs. She remains forward, gazing at the work she’s done—at the person she’s reduced to tissue and bone. Slowly, her head dips, examining the chunks and gristle sticking to her.
“Well, fuck,” she hisses, jumping from his leaking body. Bunny falls and crashes into the front seat, hands in front of her face. I wait for her to say something, unsure if this is another panic attack like after Colette or something else. “I think I’m a monster.”
Of all the things she could ever be, that will never be one of them.
And if it was, “And whose fault is that?” I kiss her maroon-painted fingers, eyes shifting to the blob in the back.
After all, it’s his own fault Bunny came after him.
It seems to bring her some comfort, enough to rest her head against the window.
When I put the car back in gear and drive us through the darkened, deserted alleys, Bunny peers up. “Where are we going?”
“Well, we can’t sit there with you looking like that and him…” Fuck. Like that. I’ll find us somewhere nice to hole up. There are tons of developing buildings. One of them has to have running water and a flat ground to sleep on.
I’m scanning our options when Bunny says, “I want this done.”
My stomach clenches. “What do you mean?”
Shifting in the seat, Bunny sits straight, back pressing so far into the leather I think she might sink. “I mean,” she sighs, “I find a sliver of peace with every one of them gone. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I admit, not needing to lie. “I can breathe with their blood on my hands.”
“We only have one left—only one who really matters,” she purrs, looking sinister and breathtaking beneath the lights. “We could be done,” she proclaims, “we can feel full again… we can go home. We just need one more.”
Only one.
Damn… I can’t believe we really fucking did this.
Only one.
I chew on her words, letting the realization hit me we’re nearly done. “And then we can rest?” I confirm, hope blossoming into a lazy smile.
Mhm, she nods. “Until the end.”