I scoff under my breath at my own thoughts as I weave through the dense foliage to the clearing beyond. Nothing about this is simple. I’ve had enough bullshit for a lifetime. After this, I want to live a boring as fuck life…if we even make it out alive.
“It’s bad,” Luke says softly as I approach.
“Hey,” I say over my shoulder to the three females behind me. “Stay there. We have her.”
All three halt. They stand stick-still amongst the shadows of the trees.
Below us, placed in a small clearing of towering evergreens is the small broken frame of a woman. She reminds me of a bird I saw once as a kid. It had died and fallen from a tree. Its tiny broken body had looked so small and fragile on the cold ground. Just as Erika looks now. Her limbs are bent and splayed at awkward angles. Red is splattered across her pale flesh in streaking paths. Shimmering ginger hair is splayed beneath her head as her face looks up to the heavens.
Well, what was her face before Will turned it into ground beef with his fist.
“Gloves on,” Luke reminds me as we move to grab the body.
“He really did a number on her,” I state as I snap on the black latex gloves and move to help Luke grab the dead woman’s limbs.
She died yesterday, meaning she’s still in rigor. The stiffness of her body makes her difficult to move, but it also means livor mortis has set, and we should be able to move and reposition the body without it being too obvious.
“He’s a bad man, Garett,” Luke says as we begin to slowly and carefully carry Erika’s remains out of the forested dump site. “He deserves to be eradicated from this Earth.”
I couldn’t agree more. This whole group of men has fed off each other’s evil, twisting their souls into a single rotten plaguewhich has tortured this town for long enough. I’ve spent too long letting the demons of my past turn me into a monster. I’m ready to be free.
“Open the back,” Luke calls out to the women, his breathing heavy, as we finally approach the cars again.
The women walked ahead of us on the way back, leading the way to make sure we didn’t run into anyone by accident. Not that we were likely to way out here. I have to admit, Will picked a good location for a body dump. She would have likely never been found out here.
But we need her to be found.
“Alright, this is going to be gross,” Luke says as we carefully drop Erika’s stiff form in the back of his large SUV on the tarp we placed there before driving out here. “You ladies can wait in Garett’s car if you want.”
He pulls out a lighter from the back, next to the body. It’s one of those stick lighters used for fires, candles, and shit. Or, in our case, for burning off fingerprints.
“Not a chance, my Demon,” pink-haired bimbo says as she comes to stand next to Luke with her hand on her hip. “This woman used her claws to carve at my skin. I will be the one to burn them away.”
Celeste steps up next to her girlfriend, female fire radiating off them both in a way that has me chuckling to myself. Luke has his fucking hands full with these two.
“She hurt my girl,” Celeste says as she threads her fingers through Liv’s and squeezes. “I want to watch her burn.”
I can tell this means something to them, so I take a step back, moving to stand next to Ali who’s been silently standing at the back of the group the entire time. This might have been her idea, but I’m not sure how she’s handling all of this. I’m not sure she’s ever even seen a dead body before.
“Are you okay?” I ask as I gently stroke her arm, drawing herattention back to me where it belongs.
Her hazel eyes flit to mine. She’s so beautiful. Even surrounded by this evil and death, seeing her brings a lightness, a joy into my soul that I’ve never felt before. She’s my everything.
“I should be the one asking you that,” she says with a smile that doesn’t truly reach her eyes. A fake smile. “You’re the one that just carried a body out of the woods.”
“I’m no stranger to death. In fact, he and I are old friends,” I whisper as I take a step toward her. A piece of red hair has fallen from her ponytail and I move to slide it back behind her ear. “But you’re far too good, too bright for any of this.” I lay a light kiss on her forehead. “When this is done, I promise to make sure you get away from here.”
“Can we move away from the rain?” She smiles up at me with such hope that it damn near breaks me. “Somewhere warm?”
“Of course, my Beauty,” I whisper against her forehead as I hold her close.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that I’ll make sure she makes it out of here and lives the life of warmth and happiness that she deserves. But I’m not sure I’ll be making it out of this alive.
The smell of singed flesh bites at my nose. I recoil at the disgusting smell. Ali must smell it too as she pulls away slightly to turn toward the source.
In the back of the SVU, Luke’s girls are making quick work of their job. The flesh of her fingers is blackened and burned. Her red fake nails have melted into a puddle of acrylic beneath her charred skin. The two women work efficiently to remove her identifying fingerprints. They don’t enjoy this, they’re not monsters, but they do what needs to be done.
“Her teeth are too damaged from the beating to be used for identification, right?” Ali asks me without taking her eyes off the grotesque scene in the back of the car.
