“Don’t be a brat.”
“Fine. Then I don’t need you here.”
“Tough. You aren’t staying here by yourself.”
Before I could argue, he called out to the nurse waiting by the door. “I want him gone and removed from my list of authorized guests.”
“You got it, sweetie,” the nurse gushed. When she turned her attention to me, her eyes widened in that familiar look of lust. She moved as if to usher me out, but one look at my face had her stopping in her tracks.
“Keiran, leave,” Dash offered, his voice gruff with aggravation. “Just go. I’ll stay with him.”
*
“Stab him.” The knife pierced flesh.
“Again.”
The sound of tearing flesh and running blood as it seeped from the man’s body mingled with the emotionless commands from Frank.
“Pierce him deep, boy. That’s it,” he encouraged when I obeyed.
A profound and unsettling feeling continued to build in my stomach as I mindlessly drove the knife into the bound man. Arms, legs, and even his knees. The sickening crunch of bone was worst of all.
His screams were muffled by the gag, but his eyes watched and pleaded with me as he held on to what little life he had left. Even now, I could see the life draining from his eyes while I used him for practice.
Think of them as your canvas, Frank would tell me.
They would never let me outright kill them. I had to torture them first with pain that would maim but not kill.
I was no longer sure this was what other human beings were meant to do. Lily said it was wrong when I finally confided in her. I don’t know why I told her about the things they took me to do. After a month of not being able to shake her, she became someone to talk to, and when she still wouldn’t give in, and do what they wanted, she became someone to protect.
Lily.
I let my mind wander to her and all the good she was teaching me. She told me about home, she told me about her parents, her dog, and even her older brother, Keiran. I wished secretly that one day I could be Keiran. Someone with a family, home, and even a school to go to.
Finally, the man died with what might have been a gut-wrenching scream. His gag saved me from having to endure the sound of his life fading away, but somehow, the effect was just the same.
I stopped driving the knife into his lifeless body and desperately swallowed back the need to empty my stomach.
He was the fourth man I killed today, and when I looked around the room to see the other bodies, I knew he wouldn’t be the last.
Chapter Twelve
Lake
The tapping at my window started off as a figment of my dreams. A dream I didn’t want to wake up from so imagine my irritation when the tapping continued followed by the melodious chiming and buzz of my cell phone. Fantasy and sleep faded away to the less appealing reality of being woken in the dead of the night.
If it carried on much longer, my aunt would wake up, and then I would have to spend the rest of my night explaining to her why there was a teenage boy throwing rocks at my window.
I knew without answering the call that it was Keiran. He was the only one who dared to go against his own rule to pursue me.
“This is getting really old, you know. You can’t just pop up and worm your way inside my house whenever you feel like it,” I grumbled to myself, knowing he couldn’t hear me.
I stomped to the window, my bare toes gripping the plush carpet, muffling the sound of my anger. Frost covered the window from the cold night air, and when my fingers gripped the window to pull it open, it was a little more forceful than necessary.
“You’re kidding me, right?” His face and body were partially obscured by the night shadows. Even so, I could make out the dark hoodie he wore, the hood pulled over his head with the shiny locks of his dark hair peeking out.
“Did I wake you?”
“It’s three in the morning, Keiran. Care to take a guess?”
A boyish grin tugged at the corner of his lips. “I never took you for a cranky sleeper.”