2. Chapter Two Lakey
Chapter Two: Lakey
That stupid ass motherfucker. I was going to ride his face until he couldn't breathe and then I was going to make him apologize for making me wait.
The wind whipped my hair as I tore down the street, my bike screaming under me, the vibration humming through my thighs in a way that was doing absolutely nothing to help the situation between my legs.
Cam had sat across from me at that diner, eating his eggs benny with that smug fucking face, knowing exactly what he was doing when he said the thing about fucking me ten ways from Sunday.
Knowing I'd slam my hands on the table. Knowing I'd storm out.
Knowing the ride home would wind me up tighter than a spring.
He played me. Every. Single. Time.
And I let him, because the payoff was always worth the performance.
I pulled into the underground, parked, and took the elevator up.
My hands were shaking. Not from the ride.
From the wanting. From the violence still simmering under my skin from last night that hadn't fully been fucked out of me yet.
Cam had tried. When I'd come home covered in blood with the kill video on my phone, he'd stripped me down, put me in the shower, washed every inch of me while I told him what I'd done.
Then he'd pulled up the video and fucked me while we watched it together on his phone propped against the headboard.
It should have been enough. It usually was, but last night had been different. Last night I'd killed two people, and the second one had stirred something in me that two rounds with Cam hadn't settled.
The first was Dani. Birthday present. Number twenty-seven.
That kill had been clean. Beautiful and poetic. Three weeks of surveillance. Cam's charm at the bar. Her falling asleep at our apartment because she was stupid enough to trust a man she'd met four hours ago. Then his text:
She's out. Come kill my present.
Followed by that knife emoji that I thought was hilarious and Cam thought was "a liability in our text history." Whatever.
I'd pulled the Cassidy routine when I woke her up. Little sister. Bad nightmares. Drove her to the cliff. Mask, karambits, ritual soap, the whole thing.
"Oh, Cam doesn't like when girls sleep over. He has really bad nightmares and can hurt someone if he has one and they stay over. I'm surprised he didn't mention it."
She looked relieved when I told her. "Thank you so much..."
"Cassidy." I shook her hand and nodded. "Come on, I'll drive you home. I have a bike though, so you'll have to be my backpack."
I did drive her... somewhere. If I had feelings, I'd have felt bad, but I don’t feel bad for women who hurt kids, and I sure as fuck don’t feel bad for home wreckers.
She was so chatty, even at 2 a.m. but unfortunately for her, she'd taken the bait.
She didn't understand that Cam was devoid of a soul, save for when it came to me, and vice versa.
We'd grown up together. We'd suffered together. We'd bonded together.
In sickness and in health. Though, to be fair, it was not the kind of sickness where you cough and sputter and see a doctor and then a spoonful of medicine makes you feel better. It was the kind of sickness that crawls under your skin and builds scars from the inside out.
But they didn't know that. How could they?
The more she chattered on about what a gentleman Cam was and how smitten (who the fuck uses that word anymore?) she was with him, the more I itched to rip her face off.
Only, I smiled and nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
When she pointed to the street I was supposed to turn down to take her home, a frown fell over her face as I casually drove past it and kept going down to the valley just beyond the city.
"We're going to watch the sunrise."
She hadn't even questioned it.
Parking at the top of the cliff, just outside the jurisdiction of our sleeping little town, I grabbed her a blanket from my saddlebag and told her to set it up, throwing her a couple bottles of water before grabbing my mask.
Staring down at the beautiful criss-cross pattern across the eyes, and the bands of bright pink across the mouth, I smiled.
Ever since I'd watched the movie as a teen, I knew that this mask was the one that spoke to my soul. Cams was his modified Scream mask, typical, but this one... in it's bright pink and blue glory spoke to me on a primal level. It was beautiful. Terrifying.
I'd slipped it on and grabbed my karambits, my favorite little knives. The way they fit in my small hands, the curvature of the blade. No one ever saw them coming. They were clean, easy to maneuver in small space.
Quick.
Most killers wanted the big, hunting blades. The ones that left the most mess, with the biggest holes.
Or guns.
But I found guns uncouth. Impersonal.
If you're going to kill a stranger, you need to look them in the eye and watch their life playing out in their final moments. It was my favorite part. Not for the demented reasons lesser psychos enjoyed it. They enjoyed watching people die, but I liked to see how people had lived.
It allowed me to see exactly who was behind the mask they wore everyday. Were they that confident person they pretended to be? Did they go fearlessly into the void? Had they achieved self-actualization, and could they genuinely leave this earth with the knowledge that they had accomplished enough?
As the light left their eyes, the answer was almost always no.
And since the answer was almost always no, then why were they wasting time hurting children they were supposed to protect instead of figuring out who they were and what they wanted to accomplish?
Honestly, I was doing them and the world, quite frankly, a favor. Anyone who wastes time to this degree doesn't deserve to have it.
I digress and with a sigh, I began my ritual.
Grabbing my travel bottle, I clicked open the lid.
Sliding my hands across each other, I lathered with my favorite coconut and argan soap before rinsing off with a half empty bottle of water.
I liked my hands being clean before I painted them red.
This soap was the most moisturizing one I've found that didn't also make me break out in hives.
Of course, it was almost empty because Cam couldn't seem to buy his own and kept using mine and not remembering to replace it.
Did he let her use it?
A fresh wave of anger flowed over me as I shook my head.
My mask was in place, my babies resting comfortably in my hands and my target sitting comfortably on the blanket, sipping her water.
I slid in behind her, my knees resting on either side of her as I clicked the LEDs on, lighting my mask against the dawn, giving it a nice glow against the blonde of her hair.
"Cassidy? What—" She craned her neck backwards. She tried to squirm, suddenly uncomfortable.
"Shhhh. Just relax." Of course, she couldn't and that just sent her into a wave of panic.
With a sigh, I brought my hands to her neck and with two swift movements, brought the knives down on the jugulars on each side of her neck.
Just an inch on each one, holding her tightly against me, tipping her head upwards as the blood began to flow.
Her panicked heart made it spurt much faster than I'd have liked, and the narrowing of her eyes spoke volumes.
She wasn't ready to die. Her arms came up, trying to clutch at my face, her hands weak attempts to grab at my shoulders, my hair, my mask.
"It's okay, Dani... shhhh, it's okay." I petted her hair as I reassured her quietly.
I don't know why I had comforted her as she went.
Normally I watched in silence, but something about the way her eyes held the image of fear was different to those who came before her.
It was strange. For a moment, I wondered if she saw me for what I truly was, or if she just saw herself reflected at her.
Not strange enough to cause me regret. But strange enough that she deserved a moment of peace before she took her last breath and I dumped her body off the cliff and into the ocean, forever forgotten.
Dani's fear wasn't new; it was universal. They all looked the same when the truth hit them, that their lives meant nothing to me. To anyone. The irony? Neither did mine.
With a sigh, I gathered the blanket and put it in the metal drum and lit it on fire, along with the waterproof, lightweight jacket I had on and my pants, which were now destroyed.
Socks and underwear too. My shoes would be bleached and washed.
These were my favorites, and I cursed my lack of foresight at not wearing my grubbies.
Standing up, just as the sun rose, warming my skin, I stretched my arms to the sky with a deep breath. My back crackled and popped with the motion, relieving some tension. It was beautiful here. Probably my favorite place aside from next to Cam and watching the little girl.
Dressing in some random leggings that were in the bag, I checked my shirt to make sure it was clean before wiping my mask with baby wipes and putting it in my saddlebag and strapping my knives to my thighs before heading down the cliff.
That was Dani. Clean, efficient, deserved. Number twenty-seven in the books.
Then I stopped for gas, and Brinley happened.
Brinley was unplanned. The kind of kill Cam would call "impulsive”, and I would call "taking out the trash." I was inside paying when I heard her behind the counter, phone wedged between her ear and shoulder, not even pretending to keep her voice down.
"No, listen, Kristen, all we have to do is say the same thing. If our stories match, the cops won't even question it. We file the report, say she assaulted us, and boom. She's done. We can probably also get Sally in on it."
I stopped walking. Picked up a bag of chips I didn't want and pretended to read the nutritional information.