It’d been the first f*ck since spending the night with Isis at the hotel. Isis’ smell surrounded me, vanilla and cinnamon, even when I hadn’t touched her for very long. The hurt in her brown eyes haunted me as I came in the nameless girl, the silent name on my lips spilling from a place of heart-torn, guilt-laced pleasure, and if I shut my eyes I could pretend, if only for the briefest second, that it was Isis beneath me.
But the illusion faded quickly.
‘Use everything you can to your advantage,’ Gregory’s voice resonates from training. ‘And that means your damn pretty face. Women will love it. Use them.’
The evidence we need is one step closer.
Redemption is one step closer. Redemption for Sophia. Redemption for Isis. Catching Nameless, putting him away for life so that she never has to see him again, is the one good thing I can do for her. The one good thing I can do, period. The one thing that could put a dent in redeeming the hurt I’ve inflicted.
I pull on my shirt and button my jeans, leaving the posh apartment quietly so as not to wake her roommates. I pause at the door, looking back into the shadowed apartment that holds the evidence of my sordid manipulations.
I thought I was done with it, with this. But I got it backwards - it was never truly done with me.
“Redemption,” I murmur, and leave. The guilt sears me, gnawing at my insides. I need relief. I need distraction. I need something other than Isis’ text, my phone burning up in my pocket with her sadness and disappointment.
What does she want from me?
I can’t give her anything. I can’t give anyone anything anymore. My heart is empty and broken and useless.
The neon lights of the college district flash with technicolor temptation – pawn shops, strip clubs, liquor stores open late. I find what I’m looking for in a seedy club packed to the brim with sweat-stench and greasy bodies. I watch the crowd carefully from the bar, and pounce on the one man who slips a roofie into a brunette’s drink.
He is bleeding - his nose broken and his arm dislocated - when I am done with him. It takes forty seconds, and he punches back with equal fervor and splits my brow with his knuckles, hot blood oozing into my eyes. For those forty seconds it’s all static – I am a blank canvas, moving like Gregory taught me, punching and dodging like he taught me. Nothing is in my mind but moves and counter moves, observations and rapid calculations of how fast my opponent’s fist is moving, where it will land, how to sidestep and trip him so he’ll eat a precise stone step of the club. I am empty. Isis is gone. Sophia is gone. There’s only the taste of blood and anger and sweat, and the soundless roar of the beast in my head. But the roar is different, now. It is sharp and honed and precise. It is softer, yet more chilling.
‘When it asks to be fed, feed it promptly, and in small portions. It will never rebel, and you’ll never hurt anyone you don’t want to, as long as it’s fed.’ Gregory’s words echo. ‘As long as it’s fed, you are the master.’
The bouncers break us up, and as they lead me out I nod at the brunette, who gathered around to watch the fight with the rest of the club.
“Your drink was spiked. I suggest you take a cab home.”
She looks shocked, and her friends sniff at the drink in her hand. Her horrified face is the last thing I see before they dump me into the road. The beast gives me strength enough to stagger back to campus, and collapse in bed, the blind rage fading rapidly, cooling like lava hitting ocean water.
I am the master.
I will never hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it ever again.
-8-
3 Years
48 Weeks
4 Days
Kayla understands everything because she understands nothing. She’s like a dry sponge that I throw buckets of water on. And sometimes piss. With copious sides of vinegar.
It’s a beautiful sight to see after a week of sporadic texts – her on Skype and me on Skype, both of us painting our toenails and talking at the same time.
“Isis, you’re killing me,” Kayla groans.
“Not literally, one would hope. Unless you want to be a zombie. I can dig being the only girl in the world to have a zombfriend.”
“I am not actually dead. What I am is disappointed. I can’t believe you and Jack aren’t just…like…”
I raise a brow, daring her to go on. She sniffs indignantly and then nearly tips over the green polish bottle with her sudden fist of rage.
“He left, and you left, and now you’re together in the same place and I told you so and why aren’t you taking this very obviously predestined opportunity to hook up like crazy monkeys?”
“Because, sweet Kayla, there is more to life than being a crazy monkey. Bizarre, I know.”
“Look, I just mean,” She grits her teeth and carefully adds a stripe of green to her big toe. “I just mean even if he is doing some weird Jack-like stuff, that’s never stopped you before! You were hitting on him constantly –”
“Actually hitting on him. With my fist,” I correct.
“ - when he was in the Rose Club, but now suddenly he’s slept with a girl for info and you’re all angry at him?”
“I – I –” I splutter concisely. “That was before!”
“Before what?”
“Before I –”
Kayla looks expectant. I wail.
“You know what I’m going to say!”
“Say it anyway,” She demands.
“No!”
“Yes!” She shouts.
“You present a compelling argument.”
“Isis, don’t get smart with me!”
“Fine! I like him. I like him, okay?”
“So you like him,” She leans back. “You want to make him lunch and hug him platonically once a year.”
“No, because then we would be in 17th century England.”
“That’s what like is,” Kayla continues. “Like is just so-so. It doesn’t really mean anything. Like, like me and you! I don’t like you. I love you.”
“Um.”
“In the way where you keep your pants on, ew. I love you and you love me and you also love Jack. In a different way.”
“Kayla –” I say warningly.
“In the hot way.”
“No.”
“In the ‘hug me until I run out of breath’ way.”
“Wrong.”
“In the ‘invade me with your penis’ way.”
I screech like a horrified fruit bat and slam the lid of my laptop closed. I can hear my own flustered, angry panting. I fling the lid open again and argue at the screen.
“There are no invading genitalia thoughts going on here.”
“Really?” Kayla asks airily, sanding her nails. “Because I can guarantee you Jack’s thought about it. Repeatedly. While jerking it.”
“Kayla! When did you get so – so –”
“Awesome? All thanks to your influence.”
I’m silent and stare-y.
“And Wren’s,” She relents. “He’s very informative and methodical. One time I got to hear a history lesson of the condom while I was putting it on.”
“Ugh,” I gag. “I don’t know what’s more miraculous – the fact he only did that once, or that Wren of all people in the conceivable universe has turned you into a sexpert.”
“All I’m saying is,” Kayla huffs. “If you want Jack to date you –”
“I don’t!” I harp. “I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t. I’m not dating anyone ever again.”