We’re screwed, all of us, screwed—
Ethan’s flying just a step ahead, but he won’t make it either—
And Ash blinks again. Maybe I’m too far to really see his eyes and I just imagine it, but they bottom out into black tar and a horrible shadow of inevitability swallows me. Blood Honey got to him; he’s going to stab Leo, who now writhes on the boiling sand.
A beat.
He lifts the knife.
We’re three paces away.
“No!” I scream at him.
Too late.
With a stunted cry of battle, he drives the blade backwards, straight into…Blood Honey’s thigh.
That’s my fucking boy!
Ethan and I land just as Blood Honey howls, backing away, the knife still lodged deep in the muscle of his thigh. Crimson soaks over his black pants while he staggers, and he tries to grip the handle, to yank it out.
“Daddy, I’m sorry!” Ash sobs, his bloodied hand outstretched toward us. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it, I just—I wanted—I’m sorry!”
“Finish him,” I roar.
Ethan’s already there.
Before Blood Honey can pull the knife from his thigh, Ethan and I grab him by the arms in a running tackle, and drag his thrashing form down into the hungry waves. There, I lift my own knife high enough to make my shoulders scream, but there’s no sun that can blind me.
I see everything I need to see.
“This is for Leo,” I seethe.
He knows what’s coming, and presses his lips together so hard that the edges turn white, but tough shit. I ram the blade through. The pain in his gums makes his teeth spring apart, and the blade sinks through tongue and sinew with a stomach-churning tear. “And this, you evil fucker…” I haul the knife out, spattering my cheeks and vision with hot blood, “this is for my mother.”
Blood Honey chokes. Gags. Squeals like a rodent. Foul music, a lullaby for the fallen.
Ethan stands back to let me work. There are no words between us; he is tainted now. He understands.
The next minute goes against everything I ever taught myself about cutting. I slash through the rules I’d made—no arteries, not there, no, never there, you’ll kill her—and before I know it, my hand falls through and his warm guts clutch at my wrist with the weak, slippery grip of the dying. Retching, I rip myself away and toss the knife into the blood-tinged froth of the waves.
Slowly, he floats away from me, his eyes still open and mouth still gaping with the ruined flesh of his tongue. All the truths he’ll never tell me bleed out into the water.
There are things you should know, and when I’m done, you’ll have earned them.
No. This is what I’ve earned.
Gravity washes forward and I lunge on to my knees, a low, inhuman sound rumbling from somewhere deep in my chest. Red waves spill over my thighs and hips; red sunset spews down to baptize me, blood and blood, crimson everywhere, gulping me down into the violet depths of the ocean in a legacy of ruptured veins.
When I open my eyes again, Blood Honey is washed ten feet away and Ethan plants a hand on my shoulder.
“He’s the one who killed your mother,” he says, matter-of-factly. His stubble face is marbled with blood-spatter, already drying in the tropical heat.
I nod.
Yes. Yes, this works nicely.
“We should go to them,” he murmurs.
I glance back at the beach, where Leo still lies motionless and bound, and Ash has thrown himself prostrate over her as if to protect her body from the glaring eye of the sun.
A quiet buzz grows louder. I jerk back around, expecting flies, but then a boat emerges on the horizon, spewing foam as it coasts around the neighboring islands. Help. Finally.
The fuckers.
“Wait for the cavalry,” I tell Ethan. “Somebody needs to explain what happened and I…” I gesture to myself. Though most of the blood has washed off, I’m lightheaded and my guts are all twisted, as if I’ve been shot all over again.
“Okay.” He gulps. God, he’s a state.