“Maggie loves me. Sapphire is a child. I don’t have any interest in a child. I’m not a monster.”
The little Sapphire girl liked bunny rabbits. Just like Lincoln. She had a large bunny teddy on her new bed in Maggie’s home and always slept with it cuddled in her arms as though it could protect her from the monsters in the dark. I’d be kind enough to bury her with her bunny teddy when I went backto Maggie’s house and sliced open Sapphire’s tiny throat soon enough and I would-
The sharp blast of a shotgun startled me out of my thoughts as I stomped through the garden, and towards the nearest fence that was short enough for me to reach the top of.
“Mum!” a girl’s voice screamed and with that single word I knew my sister had spited me once more.
She’d stolen her death from me. She’d no doubt blown her worthless brains out just so she could have the last laugh. But more fool her. I would go back inside that house, find Ares and Hades, and peel their skin off. I would take out their bones and-
You need to leave, Cass. Now. You can’t be here – there will be police and innocent people.
Misha is coming back inside. We can’t hurt Misha.
We can’t hurt Maggie.
Not again.
My hands didn’t stop shaking as I finally listened to the cursed woman’s desperate pleas and forced myself to hop the fence despite everything inside of me begging me to go into the house again. The shaking still didn’t stop as I strolled around the corner and down a little side alleyway, filled with graffiti, shattered glass and a vile stench, to where the car I’d stolen was parked. I carried on trembling as I yanked open the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel.
The shaking stopped a little when I saw the mess I’d made. The pretty mess of blood and agony that was well deserved.
“Please.” Widow Smyth’s aggravating voice from my backseat broke through the haze of anger in my brain. “I did what you wanted. Let Delilah go; she needs help.”
Delilah Montana. Hendrix. Whatever she was called, she was pretty. Even if she had her silly purple hair now and dressed like she was always at a funeral. The trouble for her was that things never went well for pretty girls in this world. Things wentbadly.Wrong. Life was full of darkness and despair and those deemed desirable would have it worse.
I could have got a nice penny for her. A single sale to the right type of buyer and I would have millions in the bank and a hassle free from my life…
She was lucky I wasn’t as much of a monster as some villains in her story.
Lucky that I preferred to kill her outright and not sell her on to be slowly destroyed.
Widow glared at me as he held her in his arms, stemmed her blood flow with his shirt, and held a palm to her clammy face. She was so still. Corpse-like. Honestly, I thought she was already dead from the knife I’d shoved in her gut when she’d been stupid enough to climb out of the car and not check her surroundings. Then, to top it off, the needle filled with poison that was far slower acting than the one I’d given Shannon.
Foolish. Foolish. Foolish. Not a gangster, even if Delilah thought she had the makings of one.
She wasn’t even alive. Not really.
She was a Montana now, and we killed the Montana’s. But really, it was just a name. She had no Montana blood, and how could I slaughter her for something as silly as her name when I hadn’t killed the twins for being related to me?
Well, I could do it. It would be easy. But shewasinnocent. There had been nothing in her life that she’d done that was a sin except for screwing her virginity away with her older brother… adopted brother. They didn’t share any DNA. They were no more related than me and a stranger down the street. Still… it seemed wrong to me. A little off. And truth be told, had it not been to save her from a fate like the one I’d faced, I would have killed her for her sins.
For now, I could leave her. Leave her to be more useful than another thing added to my to do list today.
Widow carried on begging, his voice finally breaking through my thoughts.
“Please.You said you’d give her the antidote if I did what you asked, and Idid. Sapphire will be chasing fake leads about me all night and she won’t-”
“Who’s Sapphire?” The car started moving, and though I was in control of it, it was like I was watching it from a far.
It wasn’t me behind the wheel. It wasn’t me anywhere near anything.
It was the cursed woman. The one who kept to the rules as often as she could. The one who slid her hand into our pocket, pulling out the vial of antidote that would stop the girl from dying just yet from the poison… and another of something far more fun that she chucked to the backseat.
“Drink that and I’ll give Delilah the antidote.” The cursed woman’s voice left my mouth, but it was with words I wanted to say.
She was playing along for now because she had no other choice.
As I sighed, Widow did as we asked; he downed the vial in one sip, and we happily gave him the other. And as the cursed woman shoved our foot down on the gas, and did her best to pretend everything was fine, our new pet spider scrambled to push the glass vial of clear liquid against the girl’s mouth. To force it down her throat and pretend that he was calm and in control as he began to pass out from the drugs in his system barely a moment later.
