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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

AMbrOSE

I t’s too fucking hot to be out in the barn, but I’m out here anyway, slumped in an ancient lawn chair and smoking a cigarette, a vice I haven’t indulged in for a few years. But smoking helps calm me down, and I never have to worry about cancer anyway.

Right now, though, the smoke just tastes like ash.

Roxi and Max sit at my feet, the heat making them lazy. I haven’t bothered to wipe down their bloody muzzles after they tore apart Lakowski’s arm, and there’s a small, petty part of me that wants to send Max into the house to check on Mercy, bloody muzzle and all. A small, petty part of me that wants to hear her screams and smell her fear and jerk off to it.

Pathetic.

The cigarette is almost to its filter, and it’s doing fuck-all for me, so I stub it out on the metal cabinet where I keep my various torture devices and add it to the rest of the barn’s mess. Like the nail Mercy stepped on.

She doesn’t know it, but I licked my fingers clean of her blood after I left her alone in the living room, eyes closed as I ran my tongue around my fingers. She hurt the fuck out of me, saying she hated me the way she did, but tasting her blood was a small consolation. Reminded me, in that moment, of what I am, and what she is, and what creatures like me are supposed to do to humans like her.

It’d be easy, wouldn’t it? To grab one of my blades off the wall—the ax, maybe, the ax is always a classic—and stalk inside and swing it down to split her head open. I’d kill her fast, same as I did her precious Raul , and unlike Raul I’d eat her right away, cut big steaks off her gorgeous thighs and fry them in butter and garlic and rosemary.

The idea makes my cock swell, and I shift in the chair, angry at myself for wanting her so badly even when I’m fantasizing about destroying her. I shouldn’t be thinking about her at all. I shouldn’t have felt a stab of panic when I realized she’d stepped on that fucking nail and she might have tetanus and I can’t do a damn thing about it without the risk of exposure. I shouldn’t have wrapped her foot up so tenderly while she raged at me about what a monster I am, and I sure as shit shouldn’t have felt bad about it.

I shouldn’t feel pangs of jealousy every time she says Raul’s name.

I sigh, exasperated, and pull out another crumpled cigarette. The pack is almost five years old, an artifact I keep stashed next to a box of big metal hooks.

I light the cigarette with my old Zippo and draw the smoke in, leaning back in the chair. Even with the fan blowing on me, it feels like I’m simmering in an oven. Ironic, that.

Max whines and nudges at my foot.

“I’m not letting you go in there,” I mutter to him. “She hates us, remember?”

Max licks the sweat off my leg. I pet him and take another drag of my cigarette. Even though I shouldn’t, I put my senses out until I find Mercy. She hasn’t fled like I expected her to, which is kind of a relief, because I know I would chase her if she tried. Not just because I don’t want her going to the cops. But because?—

Because you want her , you fucking fool.

I suck down more acrid smoke like it’ll save me from myself. That’s the truth of it. I do want her. I also want her to be happy, which is the other reason I don’t want her to flee. I can hide from the cops easily enough. Go south to one of my houses down in the Rio Grande Valley, take on a new persona for a few years. It’s not like I haven’t done it before.

But what would happen to Mercy, then? She’d have to go back to that piece of shit Sterling Gunner. He doesn’t even have the decency to let her be a wife to some sad sack in the church. He had to claim her for himself.

You’re doing the same thing.

The thought hits me hard, and it burns as bad as the cigarette. Something like guilt pulses through me, and that’s an unfamiliar fucking emotion, let me tell you.

I seek out Mercy again. Seek out her terror and her sorrow. It’s the same intoxicating blend that I felt when I first glimpsed her by the Concho River, her hair almost silver in the early morning moonlight.

I’ve been chasing that beautiful fear since I heard her elegant scream. Chasing it all the way to this miserable moment, me smoking a crumbling cigarette with an insistent hard-on and the only woman I’ve wanted in years sobbing and cursing my name.

“I don’t know how to deal with this shit,” I say to the dogs. Max whines and cocks his head. Roxi ignores me.

I stand up, letting the cigarette burn between my fingers instead of smoking it. I mean to pace around, to try to work off some of this energy, but I find myself drifting over to the damn freezer, the lock still on the floor from where it must have dropped when Mercy opened up the lid .

I open up the lid now and sigh into the cold billowing air. Because there he is, right on top:

Raul.

I wish I hadn’t killed him, which is an unusual feeling for me. Wish I’d just talked myself into the Church of the Well without the chaos. Mercy knows I’m a killer, but Raul’s the only one she’s really angry about. All her rage and suffering and she’s never once thrown the others in my face—not that pissant guard and certainly not the asshole who assaulted her, Pierce or Price or whatever his name was.

I hoist out the sack containing Raul and drop it on the workbench. Close up the freezer. Lock it. I tell myself I’m going to cook him, that I’m going throw all his meat in the smoker and get a month’s worth of jerky for my trouble.

I tell myself that, but it’s a lie. What I want, what I really want, is to undo his death so Mercy will hate me just a little bit less. But Hunters can only revive ourselves, not our victims.

But I can not eat him. That’s something. I can wrap him up, give him a proper burial someplace. I’m not sure where they buried the remains of his they did find—not sure if they even buried him at all. I dragged Mercy away from the compound before the funeral service.

Christ. No wonder she hates me.

I take my phone out and turn it back on, ignoring the onslaught of messages from Charlotte. Instead, I do a quick search of Raul’s name. I’m surprised by what I find.

An obituary page—but not one put up by the Church of the Well. It was put up by his family, and it seems they’re the ones who buried him, not Reverend Gunner. Whether that’s because I was terrorizing the church this past week or because Reverend Gunner’s a hypocritical shithead, I don’t know.

But I do know that they laid Raul to rest in Cocana. Not the church compound.

And yeah, I’m jealous of him, even if he is a bag of meat. Mercy cared for him in a way she’ll never care for me. But maybe I can do this thing for her, put his body back together, so the last thing she remembers about me is that I tried. I tried to be good. Tried to act human.

And then I’ll let her go.