“Please.”
I’m sure Evelyn said the same thing.
But I have no mercy to offer tonight.
“Was it yours?” I ask again. Slowly.
Her lips tremble.
“No.”
I lean in close to her ear.
“Lie.”
The rage inside me isn’t sated when I’ve gouged out her eyes.
It doesn’t recede when I’ve etched the words ‘whore’ and ‘slut’ into the skin of her thighs with sharpened nails—
Until I’ve exposed her insides to the air and removed them from her body.
Even when she draws her last breath and I’m left alone under the beginning of a rising sun.
It isn’t enough. Because it won’t bring Evelyn back.
I am tired when I destroy all the cameras in the space—all the ones high and low—every hum of a device I can hear across the strip.
I am tired when I shift back into a bird and make my way back to the estate, coated in the blood of the dead.
I am tired for days after that as I return to my life as Christian Adler.
And within a fortnight, I’ve had enough.
Within a fortnight, I’ve decided it’s time to put an end to what has become… a nonsensical charade.
Phantom
I examine the images on my tablet, the crease in my brows deepening with each swipe.
Gory visions stare back at me, of men mutilated and torn apart—images on images of corpses rotting under an afternoon sun on a familiar airfield.
“An entire family is murdered in the span of one night,” I speak into the earpiece slowly, “and you’re telling me someone used an entire zoo to wipe them out.”
January isn’t even over, and I’ve already started the new year with a very expensive joke.
“In a manner of speaking.” The doctor sounds unsure. “This is a very… strange occurrence, sir.”
My eyes narrow with new suspicion as I look up from the images, “Did you buy your license online, doctor?”
“I—I assure you, I didn’t, sir.”
You never know these days.
“Then be coherent.” I keep my voice calm, but my mood is plummeting quickly.
I’d been financing the Lester Family’s operations for years since they picked up the Harvester. Guts like that—to go behind the Taiga’s back and beneath their noses—takes money.
I was that money.
