That fact alone should have terrified me.
It was the feeling I'd become addicted to over there in the sandbox, the rush of being in the zone, simultaneously detached and completely aware of your surroundings. It was like meditating-my breathing would get deep, my heart rate would slow, and my senses would become hyper-focused. Time would stand still in anticipation of my blotting out a life.
I felt the same thing now. A feeling of calm.
Completely at peace with what I was about to do.
Vengeance was mine.
We took Tink back to the warehouse, a place Benicio used for things like this. There, a side of Crunch emerged that sent a chill down my spine.
I don't think Crunch had ever killed someone like this. Not up close and personal, anyway. Killing someone like this was different than shooting someone. With a gun, you had some distance. Guns were efficient.
This was in no way efficient.
It was messy.
Crunch broke Tink, piece by piece, slowly and methodically. With a hammer, he smashed his fingers, one by one, taking his time. I had never seen Crunch like that. He laughed when Tink cried, said he'd been fantasizing about the sound of his bones breaking. When he took the hammer to Tink's hands, he breathed in deeply, satisfaction written all over his face.
I broke Tink's knees with a crowbar. By then, he'd passed out once already from the pain. No stamina. But we revived him. I wanted him to suffer.
When Tink screamed his apology, it sent Crunch into a frenzy. He grabbed a sledgehammer, and I nearly tried to stop him, to keep him from passing over that cliff, for his own sake. It wouldn't bring April back, what he was about to do.
But I think he'd already passed over the edge, descended into madness.
I watched while he beat Tink into oblivion. The sight of it would never leave me.
When it was over, I should have felt something, but I didn't. Satisfaction eluded me, but once the others were sent to Hell, then maybe I would get what I was looking for.
Then it was Fats' turn to die.
Benicio's men pulled him right off his sofa, right out of his fucking house. He had no idea we were coming for him, the stupid lazy bastard. They drove him out of the city, and we met them in the desert sometime after midnight. Out in the middle of nowhere, where his screams wouldn't be heard.
Fats pleaded, protested. Blamed everything on Mad Dog and Mud. "I didn't touch the girl. It was Tink who wanted her," he screamed.
He was a stupid fuck.
He didn't realize that we had already killed Tink, that his response would only fuel Crunch's fury. And mine.
Crunch wrapped chains around Fats, leaving his gag off so we could hear him scream. I wanted him to plead. To beg our forgiveness.
He did, the entire time.
I talked to him, explained how we would drag him behind the car, that the last thing he would see in life would be our faces. I wanted him to know.
Crunch took the wheel of the SUV and slowly picked up speed. We could hear Fats screaming in agony as he was dragged through the dirt, the sand grinding against his exposed flesh. Then Crunch stopped the vehicle, walked back to Fats, and stood over him while he pleaded, whined like a distraught child. Crunch bent down toward Fats, said something in his ear. Whatever it was, it had an immediate effect on Fats, who began wailing.
Wordlessly, Crunch returned to the wheel of the vehicle, and this time, floored the gas pedal. The dust billowed up behind us, a miniature dust storm. Fats' screams faded away quickly into the blackness of the night.
Blaze stood there silently, watching. When it was over, not much of Fats remained.
"Mud is mine," I said. He killed my father. Tied him to a chair and beat him to a pulp.
In Benicio's warehouse, his kill room, we tied Mud to a chair, restrained him the same way he'd restrained my father before he beat him to death.
It was more poetic that way, I figured.
There was a special place in hell for people like Mud. But on this earth, I had my own kind of hell prepared for the man who had killed my father.
When he saw the blade, his eyes got big. Like the others, he pleaded for his life. Said he had a girlfriend. "Please," he whined. "Mad Dog. It was all Mad Dog's doing."
Standing behind him, I brought the blade close to his face, ran it along his jawline. Reaching down to the side of his neck, I felt his pulse.
"Your pulse is through the roof," I said, my voice calm, friendly. "It's not healthy, your pulse racing like that."
Mud begged. "Please, man, you don't have to do this."
From the side of the room, Crunch stood with his arms crossed over his chest, watching me.
I pricked the skin on Mud's face with the tip of the blade, watching blood bead up on his face, drip slowly down his cheek.
Mud whimpered.
I talked to him, my tone measured. "You know," I said. "People associate scalping with the Native Americans, but it's found throughout ancient societies, back to the Greeks and Romans."
I heard Mud whine.