Page 38 of The Blood we Crave

“When Silas is ready,” Alistair says, reaching forward and placing a large hand on Rook’s shoulder, “we will rip the fucking doors of this place to get him out. You can burn it down for all I care. When he’s ready, we’ll be here.”

I don’t say it out loud, but deep inside of me, sparked and twisted, I feel sick as it whispers into my soul,

Always.

a game of chess

EIGHT

thatcher

There’s nothing I love more than the smell of bleach and antiseptic. It makes my mouth water as it reminds me of one of my favorite parts of my routine.

Cleaning up.

My father despised cleaning up after the messes he made. So in order to teach me another one of his rules, and also avoid doing it himself, I was in charge of cleanup. When he’d let me inside the shed where he kept his victims hostage, it was always after he’d had his fill.

Their barren corpses were strung up from the rafters with massive chains that clicked together with the sway of the dead weight. Gaping slash marks were dispersed across their skin, still draining blood onto the ground.

I don’t remember ever being shocked or afraid. Those moments of emotion, if I ever felt any, are blurry in my mind. I can recall every single bucket of watered-down blood I poured down the drain, the sound of the mop sloshing the thick red liquid across the floor. Every ounce of bleach and every pair of gloves I went through. I remember what was expected of me, but that’s all.

I also know the only thing of importance I ever really paid attention to when it came to the bodies was how vastly different they were each time. There was never the same type of woman twice. Brown hair, blonde, red, black. Tall and short. They didn’t have any physical similarities, but they did have one singularly common trait.

They all bled the same.

Crimson liquid that oozed onto the floor in drips and thick streams, always carrying the same aroma of rust.

For hours, he’d leave me in there while he toted their bodies into the greenhouse to prepare them for disposal, something I didn’t witness for myself until I was nine. He’d been nice enough to spare me from the dismemberment until I started puberty.

The smell of all the chemicals swishing around made me dizzy the first time. Possibly because of the strength of the scent or because the first time, I’d taken hours to get every drop of evidence out of that room.

After a while though, I learned to enjoy it.

Not the feeling of him waking me from slumber, always a quarter past three. Or his spent and scratchy voice telling me to get dressed before guiding me to my night-shift job that I was underpaid for.

The scent is what I came to like.

Bleach is not enough, he used to say. It kills DNA, but it won’t remove the trace of blood beneath a forensic lens. So I’d have to mop with bleach, then with lye, before taking a steam cleaner to the entire stainless steel room.

Now, as an adult with my own method of evidence removal, I find I quite enjoy the silence and peace that settles into my body. After weeks of hunting down targets and hours of torture, purging my space of their existence sends ripples of power through my veins.

A sublime ending to another perfect kill.

“I hate the smell of hospitals,” Rook mutters next to me as he shuffles in his metal seat, struggling to sit still for longer than a few minutes.

I scoff at the private irony. “And I hate the smell of gasoline.”

He turns to look at me, eyes a little wide and eyebrow lifted in question, “That’s blasphemy, bro.”

“Wasn’t aware you were religious,” I hum, glancing down at my watch more out of habit than anything. “You find God in between Sage’s thighs recently?”

Flames and heat crackle inside his eyes at the sound of her name, and I have to hold myself back from gagging.

A devious smirk hits his lips as he clicks his tongue. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

I give him a blank look, one that suggests I’m not impressed by his sex life.

“No, actually, I wouldn’t,” I say before turning away from his eyes, not interested in continuing this conversation.