Page 101 of Tempt Me

I will have my answers soon.

“Hey, boys! Looky looky. We hear something, don’t we, Larry? Where are you, Larry? You naughty minx, stop hiding from me, asshole.”

I picked up my pace and headed to where my brother was skipping around near a tree. Randall had a knife poised in the direction of…laughter.

“Fallon! Taliah!” I yelled, pushing past my brother and heading toward the sound.

The cliff came into view, the drop leading into the rapids below. We used to throw all kinds of shit off this ledge as kids, never really knowing where it led. It made me sick to think I may have to find the path of the river…to find a body.

“Tal? Little Voyeur? Where are you?”

That hysterical laughter continued, the warped sounds of a monster growing as it ricocheted off the trees around us. I ran faster, trying to locate the sound. It was like a carnival ride, alluding to one spot, but then you heard it from an entirely different location.

“Fallon!” I screamed, getting more desperate by the second and sick to my stomach, listening to that damn laughter. He was related to Joe, all right. That haunted sound plagued my mind. The past and present combined together to create an echo of the same sound.

“Taliah?”

I couldn’t see my brothers behind me anymore. I had veered too far from the path we took together. Now, I was lost in this horror echo. I isolated myself. This was for the best. It was my fucking right to kill this asshole. My brothers would only get themselves hurt by being dumb heroes trying to save me. I didn’t want to be saved.

I only wanted to kill.

Justice for Ariah, for Xenia, and all those people he killed. How long had this gone on? Was he the one behind the murders at Hospital Twelve? Did he kill those people, too? It was known after the massacre that there were always two Reapers. Joe was just the first. Could his grandson have been the second? He said he didn’t kill Xenia.

Was that a lie?

And if he had been telling the truth…who did?

“I will find you, you fucking freak,” I threatened the air around me.

“I will stay out here all fucking night. I will not leave until you’re bleeding on this ground.”

The laughter shifted again as I moved closer to the cliff, and I could see the jagged cut-off. Ferdinand was leaning against a boulder by the edge. Fallon was laid down flat in the mud at his feet, and my sister was nowhere to be found.

Ferdinand was bleeding, but I couldn’t access the damage to Fallon. I couldn’t even see if she was breathing through the storm’s brutality.

“No…” I said, dropping to my knees beside her. “Please, no.”

She felt cold, but her chest was lightly rising and falling. Thank fuck there was a god somewhere.

“Poor pitiful Pharaoh Masters.” The monster laughed. “Tick-tock, Tick-Tock. You think you won, but you forget the most important thing of all. Whotook your little toy? The bundle of your pride and joy.”

I tried to ignore his fucking mindless babbling. He killed Xenia. He was just goading me, trying to taunt me about her death.

“Not I, not I! Oh, how I missed her lonely little cry. There has always been one, two, three. Too stupid, too stupid to suspect me!”

What was he saying? Three? Three what?

“Shut up, you fucking monster. You are going to die. You killed my daughter. Your riddles are meaningless!”

He laughed again, his mouth filled with blood that splattered to the ground. Taliah or Fallon had gotten to him. He was dying without the use of my hands. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to beg for his demise.

“Silly boy, silly boy. Tick-tock, Tick-tock. Another drops. The sleeping doll is one step ahead of you. You think you’ve won, buthe’sone of you!”

“Would you shut the fuck up!” I screamed, jumping up and emptying more than half the magazine into his body.

He coughed, the blood streaming down his mouth, his arm lifting to point behind me.

“Not me…not me…” he gurgled. “It is he... Soldier Two is who…did…this…to…you.”