“And what’s that, Spider?” he asked, seeming enraptured by me.
“That nothing matters. None of it. If I walk down the street tomorrow wearing a huge crown, a bright pink ball gown, have my face painted up as a lizard and do a rumba for a mile, people will look and judge and maybe even laugh, they might even go home and tell all their boring little friends about it. But I won’t remember them, and not a single thought they think about me will ever affect me. See, we figured out the key to life, didn’t we? The second you stop giving a crap, it all slots together. Because in a hundred years we’ll all be dead and gone anyway and everything everyone thought was important wasn’t. It was all just a veil upon a veil of societal bullshit that suppressed generations of people who kept handing it down to each other time after time, blinding them to the truth. We might be cracked in the head, maybe even as crazy as a bag of coots. But when I die, I’ll know I burned every last drop of fuel in my soul and felt that fire blazing each day I drew breath on this earth. I’ll know I was real and never held myself in check for the sake of suiting someone else’s expectations. So please don’t pull away from me because you think I’m innocent. I’m not, Niall. I’m just free.”
He frowned, brushing his fingers along my arm, opening his mouth to speak but I kept going, unable to stop now that I was on a roll.
“After what happened when I was younger, I thought I’d never, ever want anyone to touch my naked flesh again. But after a while, I started thinking about it, dreaming up scenarios with the only person who I could imagine touching me like that. And he was the Devil.”
Niall released a breath of amusement, but his face soon fell flat again.
“Until I met you and Mateo…”
Niall’s eyes darkened at the mention of Mateo’s name, but I was baring my truth and it included my Dead Man. And maybe a side of AJ, but I hadn’t figured that out yet. “You gave me a home, and a space to be myself unconditionally, as crazy loo as I liked. I’ve never gotten to be me for so long without making everyone around me run away. Freedom is great, but it’s sure lonely. But now it’s like…like being me is finally acceptable. And not only that, but I think maybe, possibly, you and Mateo and Jack…”
“What, love?” Niall pushed when I faltered, his thumb moving to my chin and skimming along there in a slow line.
“Like me,” I whispered, not daring to say it too loud in case the moon listened and she decided to make it not true.
Niall’s jaw flexed and his fingers pushed into my hair, drawing me closer so we were eye to eye. “I don’t like ya, Brooklyn,” he said gruffly and Glenda twitched on the floor, her little duck feet flapping as she came alive long enough just to die all over again. “I fuckin’ adore ya.”
Glenda rose to her feet like a duck touched by an angel, a glow surrounding her and a choir singing her name as a happy quack burst from her beak.
“You do?” I breathed, not daring to blink away a single millisecond of this moment as I drank in those words, playing them on repeat in my mind, wanting to make sure I had them perfectly remembered for if I ever ended up back on the streets with nothing and no one for company.
“I do,” he answered. “I’ve met a lot of people in my line of work. And they tend to get real chatty when they’re gonna die. They start tellin’ me all sortsa things about themselves and I’ve come to realise I don’t relate to a single dot of it. I’m a different species to them, we’re speakin’ different languages, and that’s something I’ve known my whole life, Spider. It’s what makes me a powerful tool for my father to wield, and it’s why my siblings hate me down to my roots. Because I’m not one of them. I’m not the same as these other humans who go about feeling for things I have no care for. And I thought I was the only one of my kind until I met you.” His hand skimmed down to my throat, his fingers grazing my rampant pulse as he lowered his voice to a whisper. “We look like them outside, but on the inside we’re black as tar and full of ideas and desires they can never understand. We’re the point one percent. The reason people lock their doors at night and set up cameras on their property. We’re the unspoken fear that lives in the shadows of society, because there is nothing more terrifying to them than someone like us creeping in their window at night and playing butcher with them until dawn. Because everyone knows, deep down, once someone like us is in their house, it’s already too late. By the time the police arrive you’ll already be dead, and we’ll have taken our dose of pain from their flesh.”
I shivered, bloodlust rising in me at his words and a smile curled his lips as he saw that need in me reflected back at him.
“We aim to hurt before we kill, don’t we Spider?” he purred and I nodded breathily.
“Especially when they deserve it,” I said.
“Especially then,” he agreed and my forehead fell to his as we breathed heavily over the idea of the hunt, the splash of hot blood against our bodies, the screams and that final, euphoric end as their hearts stopped beating.
“Killing’s in our blood,” he said. “But it’s more than that. Killers come in brands just like cereals do. You and me are Coco Pops.”
“What’s Mateo?” I asked excitedly.
“Lucky Charms,” he grinned.
“And Jack?”
“I dunno, what’s the dumbest cereal? A Weetabix?”
“He’s not dumb,” I growled.
“Nothing goes on behind those eyes,” he said with a head shake.
I leaned back as I pouted at him and his hand dropped to my outer thigh. “Go back to your seat now, lass.”
I frowned at his dismissal, unsure what our chat had resolved, or if it hadn’t resolved anything. But before I left, I got the urge to do something a little crazy and as I always followed my crazy urges right to crazy town, I didn’t hesitate as I leaned in and pecked him on the lips.
A blush immediately rose in my cheeks as I moved back and he watched me with a riotous look as I dropped into my seat. We stared at each other for several seconds before I broke his gaze and turned to the window, painting mindless pictures on the glass with my finger as the best words I’d ever heard circled in my mind on repeat. I fuckin’ adore ya.
I didn’t know where we were going and I’d forgotten to ask anyway, happy to fly off on an adventure into the beyond, although I wished Mateo, Jack and Brutus could be here for the funsies. I did know that I was with a man who adored me, even if he wished he hadn’t taken my virginity. But I couldn’t have picked a more perfect way to lose it than tonight, and maybe Niall wouldn’t regret it forever. He’d said it was me and him now, and though I’d never had many promises kept to me in my life, I was really, really with cherries on top hoping this one would be.
D rool clung to the side of my cheek and I groaned as I finally managed to roll myself onto my back, the effects of the paralytic Niall had dosed me with beginning to wear off at last.
Using Jack’s crotch as a pillow for the last who knew how many hours while that rabid beast of a dog sniffed at my face and snarled at my throat like it was damn tempted to try and eat me alive had been among the lowest points of my life.
Thanks to Niall, I had plenty of low points to compare it to though, so I was fairly certain it hadn’t taken the top spot.
I stared up at the ceiling and began to count the whirls in the paint, my fingers twitching with the desire to wrap themselves around a cocky Irishman’s throat at the first possible convenience.