CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
BUNNY
Panic electrocutes my body, pulling me from a vibrating darkness. The first thing I’m able to digest is the sun swallowing my room, then the crackling in my nerves tingle from a touch, centering my hazy focus on Razor cleaning between my fingers with a wet washcloth.
Carefully finishing his wipe, he glances up and dunks the washcloth in the bowl between his crouched legs. “Welcome back, stargirl.”
Pressure envelops my head, trying to sit up.
“Easy.” Dropping the washcloth, he slips a hand around my back, helping to guide me upright.
I almost ask what happened. But the moment my lips part for the question, the distant memory slams to the front of my mind.
Sucking in air, paranoia pins my eyes wide. “Um… Did I-”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
“What?” Shifting toward him too hard, my head circulates, simulating the cold drop of bleeding out. “Th-that’s not fine, Razor.”
Shrugging, he studies my hair. “Don’t worry about it.”
I guess making the decision that my hair is a mess, he slips a finger into the closest hair tie and tugs my bun loose.
Ignoring it, my face hardens. “Why would I not worry about killing three people and…” My stomach knots, purging a flash of iron over my tongue. “Why did Xene do that? That’s not a normal reaction to getting blood on your hand.”
Pulling the other bun free, he stretches my hair ties around his wrist and starts combing his fingers through my tangled hair, looking way too calm for how alarming it is to see someone like the taste of a stranger.
Razor drawing blood and cleaning it off me is different. That’s intimate. But Xene moaning and enjoying the vein juice from a dead body is not right. That’s not normal. And I’m not going to forget about it.
“How ‘bout we stay in tonight?” Razor offers, languidly raking my hair around my shoulder. “Leave the Globe to the guys, stay here, and-”
“Answer me,” I demand.
Although a sickening rage is crawling up my chest, salt is entering the wounds of being ostracized and making my eyes water.
“Bun…” Softening his face, he inches closer, placating himself by playing with my hair. “It’s not easy to.”
It’s not easy to.
Tears roll over my waterlines, running free down my cheeks. “If it’s not easy to tell me. Can you show me?”
Thinking silently, the air feels a little denser the longer he takes to respond. But he finally gives me a curt nod, and it’s, like, a breeze rushes through the room, lifting my skin just enough to breathe.
“Really?” I ask quietly.
He nods again, wringing out the washcloth and tipping his head toward the door. “Go get in the shower. I’ll be in there in a sec.”
Shower?
My face twists, but the horrific realization of what I did drops the confusion, my hands striking upward to cover what’s surely evidence in my hair. “Oh, my God.”
He cracks a grin. “Always so fuckin’ precious.”
Even though I’d like to kiss all over his handsome face, I’m bolting off my bed and into the bathroom.
I don’t bother shutting the door. I know he’s gonna come in here anyway, and I’m a bit more worried about getting whatever’s in my hair out and down the drain than I am about someone possibly seeing my butt.
It takes me maybe fifteen seconds to crank the water on and get undressed. Apparently, that’s enough time for him to do whatever he needed to. I’m just getting under the water when he’s cracking the curtain back to reach in for my shampoo.
Rushing to soak my hair, I take a moment and lean into the wall, trying to calm my thoughts ahead of time.
I can feel my brain getting hot, which always induces an extra warmth behind my eyes and cycles in a nauseating loop of my voice.
But the overthinking doesn’t stand a chance against Razor’s attentive massage on my scalp.
The words melt before they can even form.
I close my eyes, letting him scrub my hair clean of the malevolent attack. “Why aren’t you freaking out on me?”
He hums in thought, raking the soap up the nape of my neck. “The hunt’s in our blood, little bunny. It’s not something that can be controlled. Only tamed.”
“The hunt is in our blood?” I turn to him, squinting through bullets of water. “What does that mean?”
He tilts his head, giving me a somber grin and coasting his hand down my back. “I’ll show you.”
Getting back inside the house, I close the front door after Razor, watching him set the stack of boxes down on the coffee table. Anticipation brews in my chest, swirling a contradicting haze of victory and dread.
This is what I’ve wanted.
Everything I’ve been asking exists in the boxes he filled with files and VHS tapes. The questions that have driven me nuts are just… in there. Well, not the questions themselves. But everything that made me question all of this.
It’s… kind of underwhelming. And overwhelming. If that’s even possible. I just, I don’t really feel the big blow of excitement.
Maybe that’s because my internal slaughterhouse expected a big production to drain the secrets. Not that what I did wasn’t…
Never mind. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. And I’m not sure I even want the answers he’s pulling out. I’m scared of it changing everything.
Brushing off a VHS, he pivots to me, running his finger along the marker scribbled on a white sticker. “You ready?”
“Um…” My lips twist, stepping a little closer with my hands knotting low at my waist. “What is that?”
He turns it out for me to see. “It’s yours.”
“Mine?” My throat swells, reading patient 1013 written in unknown handwriting. “What? Patient? W-w-what-”
“Baby,” he hums, dropping the VHS to his side and giving me a parental look. “I know. It’s confusing. And it’s gonna be a lot. But I need you to-”
“Stay calm?” I interrupt, lashing a stiff hand toward the tape. “That says patient, Razor! How can I stay calm when a VHS that’s supposedly mine says patient with an assigned number after it?”
“I know, Bunny. I fucking know.” His chest stiffens, the flare in his nostrils bringing attention to the gloss coating his eyes.
I’ve never seen him… Why is…
He blinks hard, the rough clamp dispensing a tear down his cheek.
Tracking it rolling to his chin, my head teeters, trying to digest the fact that whatever is on that tape is enough to make Razor, a volatile predator, wipe his face free of the tears he’s fighting off.
My chest is caving in, but my feet move anyway, stopping right in front of him and returning the care he’s given me countless times. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, using light fingers to dry the damp trail left on his cheek. “You remember everything, don’t you?”
Nodding, he sniffles quickly, attempting to turn his face away so that I can’t see the faint hives forming above his upper lip. “It’s my fault.”
“What’s your fault?” Gently cupping his face, I coerce him back to me, looking up at his self-content.
As if he has his own slaughterhouse, that old bulb kicks on, spearing against violent hooks and darkening his eyes, his expression dissolving into something arsenic, something inhumane and spiteful. “Athanasius.”
“Atha…” I frown, digging through my mind to try and remember what he could be talking about. But of course. It’s just dark.
Calmly taking my hand from his face, he presses my palm to his sternum. “You gonna forgive me?”
Shaking my head, I mumble, “I don’t… I’m not…”
“You will be.” Threads of ink spread from his pupils, stretching through his irises and reaching over the whites of his eyes in knots and tangles.
My heart expands, ballooning up my throat and trapping a yelp. I try to pull my hand away, but he’s locking my wrist in a vise-grip and forcing me to watch the jet color crowd his eyes, the hollows of his skull deepening with shadows migrating across his skin.
“What’s the matter, Bunny?” he tilts his head, slashing on a smile—showing me the sharp extensions of his canines.
Horror paralyzes me, my lungs trying to keep up with the climb of my pulse. I don’t manage to say anything. I can’t. My eyes are fossilizing and my tongue is dry, watching the tan on his face fade to white, the cadaver hue intensifying the black shadows he…paints on.
I’ve seen this before.
Not just from his performative makeup. I’ve seen his face shift to soulless cruelty on its own. I’m familiar with the beast smiling at me. My body’s safe with the fangs he’s slowly been teasing my memory with.
“Run! Everyone, run!”
“Onee, twoo, Razor’s coming for youu.” I skip, swinging the dripping axe up, following close behind the woman running for her life.
Blinking hard and swaying back, I shake my head, refusing to accept that as a memory. “No.”
Must’ve been something I saw on the TV… Or my anxiety manifesting visuals to make me sick.
“Bunny, Bunny, Bunny,” he hums, getting closer, retracting the sinister shadows from the hollows of his face. “Onee, twoo, Bunny’s coming for youu.”
Stumbling, my knees shake, wildly staring up at the haunting song I just heard in my mind come from his mouth.
“You said you wanted to see.” He cocks his head, straightening up to his towering height and holding the VHS between us. “Pop it in.”
My hand trembles, reaching up for the tape. But I don’t make it further than scathing his knuckles with my fingertips before the porch is shaking, the loud rumbles of fast feet splitting both of our attention toward the front door.
“COPS!” Cash yells hoarsely.
Distant gunfire sinks through the walls. I start to shift to the window near the TV in the corner, to the noise, but Cash ripping open the screen door and barreling inside snaps me right back to him and the underwater screams he’s letting in.
“Co-” His second warning gets eaten by a loud pop, his weight teetering onto each foot as he lazily reaches up to his chest, his fingers spread in tense claws.
No…
“Cash?” Razor panics, forming a hand over my shoulder and rushing past me.
Crimson blooms through Cash’s jersey shirt, the jarring wetness spreading through the number 13 embroidered in black.
A gasping cry scrapes down my throat, innately closing a shaking hand over my open mouth, my eyes pinned into rounded glass that’s quickly shattering.
Razor gets his hands on Cash’s arms to yank him away from the door, and as he does, several more loud pops are resounding in my head, their sharp, echoing abrasiveness drowning every fearful scream coming from the park.
Everything slows.
I see Cash collapse to the broken glass of the door. I watch each shot whip Razor’s shoulders. But time doesn’t become real until the last bullet knocks Razor back, his weight becoming too heavy and dragging through his heels.
“RAZOR!” I scream. I scream it so loud his name burns itself into my lungs.
Forgetting all about the threat at hand, my legs are engaging and I’m lunging. I know I can’t catch him. I fucking know I can’t. But the brutal drum against my ribs lashes my arms out, coiling them around his torso as he falls backward.
His dead weight takes me with him. My body slams down on top of his, blowing a dull ache through my stomach.
There’s not enough oxygen to breathe let alone make a peep.
All I can do shift my knees around him and bolt upright, my hands working to the pump of my panic and searching him, slipping through the liquid drenching his shirt and pooling up to the notch of his collarbones.
“Razor,” I choke out, fumbling to get my hands around his neck. “Razor! Come on! Please! Please-please-please!” My lips puff, my entire face going numb.
“They marked you as a success,” a feminine voice sneers behind me.
A sob cracks through my chest, whipping over my shoulder to the long, blonde hair watching me from over Cash’s body.
It doesn’t even take my mind a withered second to register her, who she is, where I’ve seen her. That same stirring in my gut expands through my bones. It’s the same exact feeling that had me staring at her when she was pretending to be innocently curious in that fucking booth.
“You,” I waver, a snarl ripping my lips and baring my teeth.
She laughs, and that’s all I see before collapsing down to Razor, my body molding to his, like maybe I can save him by being armor.
But this isn’t a fucking fairy tale.
I can’t save him with a kiss.
And I can’t tell him that I love him one last time.
My cry is muffled against the iron soaking his neck, my limbs squeezing harder and harder around him.
“I really, really want to know what it is about your brain specifically.” Her steps stop next to me, the warm gust of her squat blanketing my arm.
Raking her fingers into my hair, she combs it away from my ear and crowds over me, delivering her taunting, dry laugh to where I can hear it over my own sobs. “Let’s poke around in it.”
Hands latch onto my hip and thigh, tugging me away from Razor. I hold him tighter, burying myself in his blood and crying, the metal of his barbed wire chain brushing my lips.
“No! Leave me with him!” I plead through tears, my voice broken.
“Just fucking grab her!” Cassi snaps.
More hands grab ahold of me, ripping and tugging, using so more force their attempt to separate me from Razor keeps us together.
He lifts with me—until a loud zap runs electricity through my veins and forces me to let go.
My head bows back on a scream, my vision crackling to the currents knocking me into submission. I try to fight as they grab me and tear me away. I thrash and scream, using every ounce of energy to try and break away.
But in the end.
I am weak.