My face steels, and I wonder if I’ll be able to control myself once we get to him. Her words strengthen my desire to crush him like the insect he is, knowing his words still pain her. “You, Mattie, are a goddess in this bleak world. An angel of death sent to clean up a mess you didn’t make. Anyone who tries to diminish your soul doesn’t deserve to have their own.”
Her lips frown, and she kicks at the dirt before returning my gaze. “Instead of letting my rage go, I held on to it until it burned through me. I hoped it would give me the strength to walk through the fire, not become it.”
“Nature burns itself to allow new life to grow.” I grab her other hand and pull her into my chest. “You said you killed those men, if you can even call them that, to make it safer for those like you. From what I’ve seen of humanity, I have no doubt you’ve done just that.”
She nods her head against me, and I kiss the top of it, taking in the softness of her hair. I release her, and we continue walking until I can hear the rushing water beyond the trees. A sour smell drifts through the air. He’s here, and he’s here alone. So foolish, especially after the way he ran for his life the last time. I was only toying with him then. Wait until he sees what’s coming now.
I press one finger to my lips. Mattie stares at me, waiting for our next move. “Hey!” I call, imitating Mattie’s voice. Her eyes widen in shock.
“What the fuck?” the sheriff screeches, and there’s a clatter like he’s dropped something. “Who’s there?”
“Hey!” I call again. His footsteps grow louder, his breathing heavier. The brush crashes ahead as he clumsily makes his way towards us. The scent of alcohol is ripe in the air. “I knew you’d come looking for me, you little bitch,” he grumbles.
Magic pulses through me, urging me to shift. I can’t just yet, or he’ll be lost in madness before Mattie can get her hands on him. My body vibrates with anticipation. I lick my lips, imagining what his soul will taste like.
The sheriff finally looks up, stopping just short of crashing into us. Mattie stiffens at the sight of him. Her energy shifts like he has flipped the switch to turn on her rage. His look of confusion quickly turns to anger. “Listen here…” he starts, but Mattie steps in front of me to face him head-on.
“No, Sheriff Danvers. It’s time for you to listen.” The way she says ‘you’ is chilling, causing even a being like me to shiver. I wouldn’t be surprised if the sheriff pisses his pants again. “You think I’m damaged. Another poor backwoods piece of trash that you treat like shit because you think you’re somehow above me. But damaged people are dangerous, Sheriff. We know how to survive the fires of hell and make it feel like home.”
The sheriff clears his throat, moving a step forward. He goes to speak, but Mattie stops him again. “I’m not finished.” The words come out gravelly and sharp, throwing each one at him like a dagger. “You’re weak. You try to cover it up by hurting people, by drinking until you don’t have to remember how pathetic you are. By taking a job that gives you a false sense of power and entitlement. But I see who you really are now. I’m not the one like my pa. You are.”
His eyes dart back and forth between me and her. I’m sure his brain is scrambling for some miserable response that won’t save him. His lips curl in a sneer, and he launches himself towards her. I leap out from behind Mattie, wrapping my arm around his throat. I seize him in a chokehold with his back to my chest, and he attempts to kick out with his legs, but it’s useless.
“Humans,” I growl into his ear. He whimpers, but I tighten my hold. “You’re all so fucking fragile. I’ve been watching you all for thousands of years, and it’s just the same shit over and over again. You never learn your lesson. I should squash you all like insects. Yet, suffering for one hundred years is a fate worse than death, and it would be fun to watch time slowly wither you away to nothing. However, you’ve hurt my little bug here, and I can’t allow you to continue to breathe the same air as her.”
Wild, choked laughter gurgles from him. He struggles again before slumping against me. “You think killing me will end this?” he sputters. “It’s been going on long before you were born, Mattie. Your father’s death didn’t end it, and neither will mine.”
Mattie’s eyebrows raise like she’s about to ask a question. Instead, she pulls a pocketknife from her shorts. She flicks it casually, staring at the blade and running one finger along the sharp edge. “I don’t listen to confessions from dead men,” she says then rushes towards him, driving the knife into the soft spot where his neck meets his chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
mattie
Trails of blood swirl down the drain as I scrub myself, trying to wash off my crime. A dull feeling sweeps through my body. I know what we did was wrong, but I can’t bring myself to care. Will I look like Ripp when I finally succumb to the darkness inside me? I shiver at the thought. My mind prickles as I try to remember exactly how he looked, but the picture in my head is hazy, like I’m looking at it through a dirty window.
I step out of the shower and stand naked in front of the mirror. One arm mindlessly makes its way up and cleans a circle in the fogged glass. My eyes stare into my reflection, and I don’t recognize the face looking back at me. Her eyes are pools of black, and the darkness swimming under her skin makes it look grey. The darkness pulses and swirls with a life of its own. The shadows in the vial around her neck swirl furiously. All signs of light inside it have been completely extinguished. I blink, but the image doesn’t disappear. I look down at my skin, and while it’s not as grey as my twin in the mirror, it doesn’t look like my own.
The image of the sheriff’s body sinking into Devil’s Pool until it’s no longer visible drifts through my mind. I can still feel his blood on my skin, even though I just furiously scrubbed it off, but instead of feeling anxious, I just feel annoyed. My eyes raise to the mirror again, and the alternate version of me is gone. My tired green eyes have replaced the black orbs, and the only darkness under my skin is the black circles below my eyes.
I robotically move through the motions of getting ready. Exhaustion weighs heavy in bones, making each limb feel like it weighs a hundred pounds. I mentally go through everything that needs to happen now. The feeling of emptiness begins to fill with subdued panic. I’ll need to burn my stained clothes, and I grumble about what it’ll cost to replace them. We need to triple-check our path through the woods. Maybe stage a bear attack? Fuck, I don’t know. I’m so fucked. While I doubt anyone, except maybe his drinking buddies, will actually miss the sheriff, peoplewillnotice he’s missing.
What worries me the most, though, is that these feelings of panic aren’t rooted in guilt for what I’ve just done. They’re based solely on self-preservation. That truth sits like a stone in my stomach as a tidal wave of nausea crashes over me.
Ripp sits in a chair in my room, eyeing me silently. I’m grateful for it, since right now, my mind is loud enough. Once I’m dressed, I sit at his feet, my legs no longer willing to hold me up. His hands softly run through my hair, and I lean back into his legs.
“What do you think he meant by it won’t end with his death?” I ask, not really expecting an answer. Ripp shifts behind me but continues rubbing small circles into my head.
“I don’t put much thought into the frantic words of men as they’re about to meet their death,” he says casually. “Humans will say anything that might save them in those final moments.”
He’s right. I’ve heard my share of pleas and confessions before the lives of my kills slipped away. I’ve never given them a second thought. Nothing they said would have changed my mind, but I can’t let go of the thought that there was something to Sheriff Danver’s final words.
“I can’t remember much from my childhood,” I admit. “I’ve read that our brains protect us from the memories, but our bodies still hold the feelings.”
“Humans are delicate.” I feel his arms tug up on my hair as he shrugs. “Though some of you can endure a surprising amount before you finally break.”
I huff, rolling my eyes. I close them, trying to dig through the storage boxes in my mind for any clue that might help any of this make more sense. The chasing through the woods. The night he set the hounds on me. My ma lying in a pool of her blood on the bed. Both of my folks fear of me interacting with anyone outside of us.
“Once both of my folks were gone, I packed all their things into boxes, everything that reminded me of them. Every last shred of evidence that they existed was banished to the attic. I should have burned or trashed it all.” The words spill out of me before I can stop them. “I was just so messed up from everything that happened, I couldn’t look at any of it anymore.” Heartbreak sears through me, like I’ve pulled open the sutures of a healing wound and poured in an entire shaker of salt.
