Chapter 34
The holy water made a pitiful splash as it hit the floor, and I was kind of disappointed it didn’t hiss and steam.
“I’d like to put in a formal request to upper management to up the dramatics with the holy water, okay Luci?” I threw a cutsie smile his way.
“I’ll see what can be done,” he replied.
I plucked the flask of bleach from the table, emptying it into the water gun before turning back to face Callen. The trigger squeaked as I let off a few squirts to make sure the bleach was front and center.
Then, for funsies, I shot a few streams at Callen’s Hunter Green T-shirt.
“Jesus!” Callen sneered.
“Yeah he’s around here somewhere,” I mused. “He’ll probably come out when you start losing fingers.”
“What did you do to them?” Callen gritted out. I watched him stare at his brother, dulled emotions trying to work their way into the wrinkles over his forehead. I knew better. Callen was incapable of feeling what he should be right now.
In another life, I imagined that Damien tried to protect Joe from his father.
The night I’d died, Damien was the only one who felt any sort of sorrow for what was happening.
It didn’t stop him, though. Didn’t stop the brutalization or the creativity with which it was executed. For that, he deserved to pay. To die.
“It’ll all make sense soon. Now, back to the task at hand.” I reentered the staring contest with Callen and Mother Mary how I wished I could hear his thoughts.
“You don’t seem too upset about your besties. Do you want to hear my theory about why?’
“Fuck off.” Callen’s voice was, well… calloused. His mother must have known what sort of demon she bore when they handed his squirming, bloody body over to her.
“I think you always knew this day was coming,” I quipped.
“After all, your paranoia must have been activated after Damien disappeared all of those years ago; no body or trail to be found. Then, you probably forgot all about it until Andrew was next.” My hips moved like liquid grace as I stepped up to Callen and planted myself on his lap. “Did you get my little love letters?”
“Who are you?” Callen asked, low and furious.
“I thought you might need some reminders. Never fear! I brought them.”
The fury in his green eyes translated into mind-altering adrenaline fueling the proverbial ants in my nonexistent pants.
Because of that, I could not help myself.
I leaned in until I could see the small flecks of ocean blue hiding in the sea of green in Callen’s eyes, licked the pout of his lower lip and then bit into it with an excited groan before moving to whisper in his ear. “You taste just like I remember.”
His eyes narrowed as I patted him on the chest and hopped up, running toward the cooler I had stashed under the kitchen table.
“Now. I was never a fan of beer, but!” I ended my sentence on a high note of anticipation, grabbed a bottleneck of the cheap shit he used to drink, and let out a satisfied sigh as I hopped up on the dining room table and cracked the beer open.
“After a life changing night with the three amigos… I gotta tell ya, it really hits the spot.” I took a swig and swished it around. “Do you wanna try some, Luci?”
He lifted two fingers in a ‘I’ll pass’ motion.
He really wasn’t missing out.
“You’re not the first hussy I’ve shared a beer with,” Callen gritted out.
“Ah, yes. I will be the last though,” I said with a wink and tip of the bottle before feigning shock. “Oh my goodness gracious! You probably don’t remember it quite like this. How silly of me.” I smacked my palm against my temple. “That was how you drank the beer.”
The first traces of that age old wrath slipped through my sneer and I could see the predatorial recognition in his eyes. Takes a psycho to know a psycho.
I didn’t blink as I ran my tongue up the neck of the amber bottle before tipping it back. Fizzy liquid filled my mouth, eager to begin the race down to my stomach. I let the bottle sink deeper, the opening getting closer and closer to the back of my throat.
I didn’t stop there.
An ache of discomfort squeezed through my chest as I forced the bottleneck deeper until it was so lodged in my throat that I couldn’t move my head. The alcohol burned as it went straight to my stomach, my esophagus bulging to three times its normal size.
Hate. Disgust. Understanding.
A heavy string of saliva dipped between my mouth and the bottle as I pulled it out of my throat. When it broke, it fell on my chin, and I wiped it away with a devilish smile.
“Is this ringing a bell? Or am I still not the only hussy you’ve had beers with?”
“I’ll need another detail or two. There’s nothing really special enough about you to stick out from the others.
Did you used to bag my groceries?” Callen tilted his head like he was a predator sizing up the prey he circled.
“Or maybe you lived in one of those disgusting orphanages that my wife insisted spending money on. Yeah,” he nodded with narrowed eyes. Mocking. “You look like the type.“
Luci stepped forward and I raised a hand to stop him.
I can do this, I said silently.
I took a deep, steadying breath. He was trying to get under my skin but I was not the same girl he baited, tortured, and killed. I was a phoenix born from the ashes of the stake he left me to burn on.
Instead, I plucked Andrew’s head off of the candlestick and smoothed the thawing hair off of his forehead. “Andy here introduced us.” I turned the severed head to face Callen and, in my best Andrew impression, answered, “I was your best bro, remember? Don’t you remember me?”
I put the head back down. “He knew who I was the moment he saw me,” I reminisced.
“I waited about ten years after you left me for dead to visit Andy. You know,” I said, matter of fact and hopping off the table to pace.
“Of the three of you, I was the most angry at him. Just a stupid jock whose mommy and daddy gave him everything.”
“You sound jealous,” Calen quipped. “Is it because you were a street whore?“
“Actually, it’s because of a conversation I had with my friend Barb.
See, she believes that people will go to the extremes when they’re bored.
And I don’t mean you finished crocheting your blanket and don’t want to start another one bored.
I mean the sort of boredom where money can buy you any manner of thrills.
When people get that sort of bored, Callen, they start looking for the black market thrills.
You know what I’m talking about,“ I huffed a sardonic laugh, “like raping and torturing a girl for hours, and then leaving her dead body on the road where anyone could find it, including the police, because the possibility of getting caught gets your dick hard. That was Andy. He had fun taking everything from me because he was bored.”
The intensity of that hate drove me to open Andy’s mouth, forcing the jaw past rigor mortis so that I could cram the beer bottle down until the tip stuck out of his neck.
I took a moment to breathe through the rising wrath, attempting to get it under control with a simple promise that it wouldn’t have to hold back at the end.
“And then,” I said, a little breathless. “There was Damien. Sweet, sweet Damien.”
The bottomless black where Damien‘s eyes used to be looked like open pits of despair. It brought me a sick sense of satisfaction every time I saw it.
“Hate isn’t a strong enough word for what he made me feel. It was more like… loathing.”
“You’re sick,” Callen spat.
“I disagree. Sick means overrun by bacteria. A virus. Cells that fuck like rodents and eat you alive. No,” I mused, picking up Damien’s head to study as I considered. “I’m simply a woman empowered by scorn who’s bold enough to perk up her tits and get the job done.”
Damien’s skin sloughed as it thawed. A ghoulish frown melted down his chin in a disgusting display.
Disgusting to most people. I kind of liked it.
“There’s not much to say about your brother. He was a weak son-of-a-bitch. Darwinism and all. You can’t let that shit procreate you know?” I tossed a knowing smile and wink over my shoulder. “Does anyone want a family photo? I forgot to get one before I offed him.”
I grabbed Damien’s head by the hair, taking my cellphone out as I hustled over to where Callen sat. Before I could get a few steps in, that piece of his scalp detached from the bone and his head fell just as my right foot was swinging forward.
The tip of my toe caught it at the perfect time.
Damien’s head arced through the air and landed face down right on Callen’s lap. His bellow echoed through the room, topped only by the sound of my cackle.
“Satan’s taint, that is some Sodom and Gomorrah shit if I have ever seen it! Callen, this taboo relationship between you and your brother was something I never saw coming.”
“Get it off!” Callen screamed.
“Quit being such a pussy,” I said with a light smack to the back of his head.
I swung around to the back, stuck my hand into Damien’s neck to hold him by the spine, extended the selfie stick between them and said, “Alright, everyone say Jeezits!” The camera flashed.
“Ahh, I wished I kept that old Polaroid but this will have to do.” Damien’s head thudded to the ground as I inspected the picture.
Callen looked pissed, Lucifer was half-smiling from the door frame, Damien looked, well, dead, and I was definitely having the time of my life. “Yup, that’s going in the scrapbook.”
“Whatever you’re going to do, just do it,” Callen demanded.
“You’re right. The police will be here soon and I don’t really have time for any inconvenience.”
Of all the things tonight that could have set him off, mentioning police was the one that went global.
“You called the fucking police?” Callen yelled and bucked against his restraints.
“Oh, yeah. I decided, Callen, that death was too kind for you.” Luci perked up, his face locking into that cold control he saved for everyone else.
I rolled out my kill kit on the table, running one hand lovingly over each instrument before grabbing my favorite spoon with the homemade serrations on one side.
“And I know now that there’s no amount of torture that I can give that’s going to have the effect I want.
” I turned around, leaning against the table so that I could watch every reaction unfold on his face.
“It satisfies you that I’ve gone through all of this trouble just to get to you.
That I’ve held onto this grudge for thirty long, agonizing years.
But I’m not going to let you rule my life anymore.
I won’t give you the satisfaction of controlling my afterlife the way you did my death. ”
Releasing those words was like climbing out of the grave I’d been buried alive in. Because the truth was, I’d been standing in my own way for too long.
“Luci,” I said with steel strengthening my spine. “I want to make a new deal.”
“And what would that be?” he asked cautiously.
I got up from the table, ignoring Callen’s screams and the siren’s wailing in the distance, and walked slowly until I was toe-to-toe with Lucifer, God’s most favorite son and the great King of the Unwanted.
“I won’t ask you to choose me,” I whispered. “But I want you to know that I choose you, Lucifer Morningstar.” My hand lifted of its own accord to soothe the wrinkle in his brow. “And if one day, you choose me too, I’m here.”
His lips thinned, and he didn’t speak for what felt like an eternity. And then, “What of your deal, dearest Dany?”
“Well,” I laughed a little. “I want to renew our contract, let you keep my soul as long as you promise that this bastard relives his Death Day for eternity.”
“He is not yet dead,” Lucifer whispered.
I smiled, winked, and said, “Watch this, big boy.”
It only took me minutes to do something I’d put off for thirty years. I popped the top of the last beer and gripped Callen’s hair from behind, forcing his head back until my face was the only thing he could see.
“Sleep tight, motherfucker.”
His screams were like the climb before an orgasm and when I shoved the neck of the bottle into his mouth, breaking teeth and forcing it past the vomit I knew he’d aspirate on, it was bliss.
I held it there until the black oil stain swirling behind his eyes stopped moving.
My serrated spoon made quick work of scooping them out so that Luci could claim Callen’s soul for eternity.
I took comfort in knowing that this would be the moment this piece of shit would live until God decided nothing was worth living anymore.
Luci regarded me heavily as I handed Callen’s eyes over to him.
“Now get us out of here, because I’ve got some shit to say to you and I don’t think the human police are going to take kindly to us standing around a bunch of dead people.”
The corner of his lip twitched. “As you wish, dearest Dany.”