1
FAITH
Ohmy God, he’s dead, and I’m holding the knife that killed him.
Blood. Even in the darkness, that’s all I could see as it pooled on the earth like spilled wine. All I could smell, with its metallic tang coating the back of my throat.
Moonlight dappled through the trees, illuminating the crumpled figure on the forest floor.
What the hell happened?
Why was I holding this blade?
Why couldn’t I remember using it?
Why was I in the woods? At night? Alone with whoever this guy was?
Why did my head hurt so damn bad?
I touched my skull and hissed.Loss of blood makes thoughts fuzzy, Faith.
I wish I could say I’d never seen this much blood before, but that would be a lie. My abusive foster father’s head had bled plenty after my brother, Blake, bashed it in with a bat to save my life. That scene should have registered as more shocking, what with brain matter literally stuck to the walls.
But this felt different. More visceral.
I’d survived thirteen years of violence. Thirteen years of fistsand fear and learning to make myself small. I’d clawed my way out of that hell, built something clean and safe and good. All that blood and pain was supposed to be behind me. I was supposed to be done with this.
But now here I was, my trembling hand holding a blood-soaked knife.
Making my thoughts echo the same question again:What the fuck happened?
What happened?another voice seemed to chime in.There’s a dead man lying on the ground in a lake of blood. Blood is dripping off the knife in your hand. Put two and two together, Faith. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist.
I stumbled back.
This can’t be happening.
Oh, it’s happening. You might not know why or how or what, but it’s definitely happening.
Even though he was face down, I could see that his torso wasn’t rising like it would if he was breathing. His body was too limp, lifeless.
This has to be a mistake. Maybe he fell or?—
Tell you what. Why don’t you stand here, holding a bloody knife, and wait to see what the police say happened? You know how great law and order has worked for you in the past.
Still, I needed to call the police. That’s what you did when you found a dead body, right? But what would I even say? That I woke up, standing over a corpse, with no memory of how I got here? That I was covered in blood and holding a knife, but had no idea what happened?
The dark forest pressed in around me. Pine needles and damp earth. Even the owls had gone silent, like they couldn’t believe what had happened.
Tears pricked my eyes, but I swallowed them down, my gaze darting between the trees. Looking for what? An explanation? Help? A way out of this nightmare?
Through the darkness, amber light blurred in the distance.That familiar orangey-neon hue I knew too well: the barbed wire perimeter of the penitentiary. Which meant I was close to the mansion my brother, Blake, frequented with his friends. The place he’d dubbed the Sinners and Saints Club. The place he’d told me to come if I ever needed anything.
Anything at all.
I bet he never imagined this though. Maybe if I’d called him before this man’s lungs stopped moving, my brother, an emergency room doctor, could have helped him. But one glance at the lifeless form confirmed nothing could bring this guy back to life.
Still, Blake had insisted that if I were ever in trouble, he or his friends would do whatever they could to help me.
