But I remembered another. A woman. Blonde. In a building that smelled like rot and old blood. I'd killed her, hadn't I? Or had I dreamed it?
The girl who wasn't there.
Batch 39.
S or M.
I'd killed her.
Or she'd never existed.
Or I'd killed someone else and confused her face with a memory that wasn't mine.
I couldn't remember.
I couldn't trust my memories. I couldn't trust anything.
Four. Maybe four.
Or maybe seven.
Or maybe I'd lost count because losing count was easier than facing the number.
The blood was drying on my hands.
I looked down at my palms—red-brown and cracking, the way it always looked when it had been there too long. The creases were full of it. The spaces between my fingers. The half-moons of my nails.
"A good girl keeps her hands clean."
Gabriel's voice, or maybe my own, or maybe something I'd read once, in a book I'd never owned.
"Blood attracts attention. Blood leaves trails. Blood marks you as what you are."
And what was I?
A killer.
A hunter.
A woman who'd traded her name for a collar and her freedom for the promise of love.
I walked to the corner of the basement and sat down with my back against the wall. The concrete was cold. The air was thick with the smell of copper and fear and something else—something sweet and rotten that I couldn't identify.
"Daddy."
The word came out before I could stop it. Soft. Broken. A prayer whispered to no one, to the empty air, to the man who'd left me behind.
"Daddy, where are you?"
I waited for an answer.
None came.
"I've been looking for you. I've been killing for you. I've been waking up in strange places with blood on my hands and no memory of how it got there, and I've been doing it all for you."
"Because you said I was ready."
"Because you said I was yours."
