Page 18

Duke Dolce

As I hurry back to the car, I wonder if I just made a huge mistake, if I should have gone back with Baron. But I couldn’t have saved Jane. She doesn’t matter now anyway. She never mattered. We came for Mabel. Jane was just a distraction, a temporary inconvenience. She never factored into the decision to come and get Mabel. I didn’t even know she existed.

Except that’s not exactly true.

Because she is the sister Olive talked about.

Maybe I should have fought harder for her, saved her for the little girl back home.

She’ll never know , my demon whispers.

I wish that thought didn’t comfort me, but it does. He’s right. Olive will never know I met her sister, that I didn’t save her, didn’t send her home. To her, I’ll always be a hero.

Like Batman.

Except I’m not Batman. I’m the Joker, and like Jane said, the Joker and Harley Quinn belong together. What did she say? That they would kill Batman if they had a chance. That if they lived with him, it would be an act, and they’d be tricking him into thinking they were reformed before they betrayed him.

That’s crazy though.

I shake the thought away, but when I get to the cars, I check every seat and the trunk to make sure Mabel isn’t hiding there to ambush me. I can’t shake the feeling that she and Baron are the ones plotting, that they have something going on that doesn’t include me. What else did they talk about in the basement? Why did they pick me to kill Jane, knowing I wouldn’t be able? Did they just do it to make me look weak, so they’ll have an excuse to cut me out?

I decide to play along for now. Maybe I am Batman, but I won’t let them lure me into a false sense of security. They always had something together that I couldn’t be a part of. She always wanted Baron. I’m only here because he let me tag along, just like when we were kids, and when we were older, as a wingman, a sidekick. Sure, I got to participate, but only because he allowed it. If Baron wanted Mabel for himself, she’d be all too happy to oblige him.

Baron promised he would never leave me again, though, and he never lies to me.

As far as you know , my demon whispers.

I would know. He doesn’t lie to me.

That doesn’t mean he can’t.

My mind is still churning when I pull into the driveway and park in front of our rental. I sit for a minute, my heartbeat erratic. I should be excited to have a few moments alone with Mabel again, but I can’t even get hard thinking about fucking her. Instead, I find myself wishing I hadn’t given that gun to Jane.

What if I have it all wrong? What if Baron’s including me because he’s my twin and he loves me and he wants me with him? What if he was giving me a chance to prove myself because he hoped I’d succeed, and Mabel would be proud of me? What if Jane is more deadly than I gave her credit for, and she was just manipulating me so she’d have a chance for revenge?

I reluctantly drag myself out of the car. It’s too late now. He will have caught up with her, and whatever happened, it’s too late. He said if something happened, I’d have to live with that guilt, but I know better. I won’t live without Baron. I can’t. Not even if I didn’t cause his death. If he died, I would simply cease to exist. It wouldn’t even be suicide, not really. I’d just die.

But as long as he might be alive, I need to do what he asked. I failed with Jane, but I can still check on Mabel like he asked. I’m not surprised that he left her alone so soon. Baron likes tests, and as much as killing Jane was mine, being alone is Mabel’s. He has to know if he can trust her, if she’ll keep her word.

As I walk up the short steps to the front door, I wish I had the gun for another reason. Jane may or may not be lethal, but if Mabel is really the Black Widow Killer, then she definitely is. What did she go down in the basement to tell Jane, anyway?

“Honey, I’m home,” I call, throwing open the door and stepping inside, letting the screen door bang shut behind me. Seeley Boots leaps off the table and disappears down the hall. The metallic clang of the door echoes through the place, and I’m sure it’s empty besides the cat, that I’m alone here. Still, I don’t want to jump to conclusions and look like an ass after I’ve already fucked up tonight, so I comb through the house, searching and calling for her. At last, I’m satisfied that my first instinct was right. She’s gone.

I take a beer from the fridge and stand at the counter, leaning against it while I tip my head back and let the cold liquid gurgle down my open throat until the bottle is empty. Then I set it in the sink, wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, and let out a belch to release the carbonation. It echoes through the empty house, taunting me with my own aloneness.

Whenever I did that before, my sister would say I was sick, and my brothers would laugh and high-five me. If they weren’t around, like last semester, my friends would do it instead, and girls would squeal it was gross, but they didn’t really think so. Even Olive was always impressed. She said I sounded like a dinosaur, so I’d save them up for her as long as I could, sometimes chugging two or three beers until the bubble of air in my stomach made me feel sick before I’d let it out. She’d literally fall over and roll on the floor with laughter. It’s no fun when no one’s around to hear it.

Where is Mabel?

If I find her, maybe Baron won’t think I’m such a fuck up, and Mabel will know I care as much as he does. Or, I could just chill here, drink a few beers, and wait for Baron to get back and look up Mabel’s location on his tracker.

It’s shit like that , my demon whispers. Why doesn’t he share her location with you?

I try to push the thought away, but it won’t leave me alone. Once my demon is awake, he’s not going away until I do something to appease him, feed him with the chaos that nourishes his soul.

I grab the keys and head back out. I don’t know enough about Mabel. While Baron was busy looking into her coworker and her aunt and probably her boss and the CEO of the ice cream shop, I was having beers on the back deck with Jane. But I know she doesn’t have friends—she always said she didn’t understand other girls. Which means she’s either at work, or at her aunt’s house. On the off chance that she’s learned to understand other humans, I’d place my bet on her coworker being her new friend, and though I don’t remember her coworker’s name, I’m sure her aunt would be happy to share that and her address with me. I’m a very convincing person, after all.

While I drive, I calculate where Baron might be. By the time I walked back to the car and drove home, he’d probably found Jane. By the time I get to her aunt’s, he might be done with her. It depends, though. Maybe he’ll want to chase her through the woods for a while, play with her a little, scare her for his own amusement. That would give me an extra thirty minutes or so to find Mabel.

I pull up to her aunt’s place and flip down the visor. I smile at myself in the mirror, practicing one and then another, trying to find the one that might convince her.

That one, the demon says, my lips stretching into an affable, aw-shucks sort of grin, like I’m just a goofy guy who made a mistake. She can trust me, give me her niece’s friend’s name. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. Surely it wasn’t me the other night. It must have been a mistake, a joke I took too far. Maybe we were even flirting—I’m certainly flirting now, and she can’t help but respond. Maybe that’s what happened the other day. I’m a good-looking guy, after all. What divorcee wouldn’t respond to my advances?

I get out of the car and pause. The sliver of moon is overhead now, bright white and sharp as a dagger. I know I’ll never look at a crescent moon again without thinking of Jane. Little clouds hurtle over it and away, driven by the same wind that sings in the pines, its lonesome howl mourning her end. I’ll never hear that sound without thinking of her, either.

I can’t let that distract me, though. Even if I can’t see what’s important until it’s too late and I’ve fucked it all up, Baron can. That’s why I need him here to guide me, to tell me, so I don’t let people like Jane plant doubts in my head. This time, I won’t fuck up. I know what’s important. Mabel is endgame for both of us, the Harley Quinn to my Joker and Baron’s Batman. We don’t have to follow someone else’s story. We get to write our own ending, one in which we’re all happy, all together, all exactly what both the others need. Once we had Mabel, everything was supposed to be good again. So I need to make sure we still have her, that she didn’t take herself out of play like she tried to do before.

With that thought in mind, I head inside. The door isn’t locked. I’ll have to talk to her about that. She can’t just leave the door open when there’s a dead body being stored here.

When I walk in, though, I find Mabel sitting at the round kitchen table, a glass of soda in front of her, bubbles clinging to the square ice cubes filling it.

“Shouldn’t you be hiding?” I ask, stopping in the doorway and surveying her suspiciously. I check for a knife on the table, for blood, for any sign she’s been cutting again, but I find nothing.

“Why would I?” she asks. “Baron found me once. He’ll find me again.”

“More than once.”

“We have a problem.”

“You and me both,” I say, crossing the space and pulling out a chair. “We both failed our tests tonight.”

She nods, picking up her glass and sipping from the edge. It’s so full of ice that the brown liquid nearly spills over.

“Cherry Coke?” I ask, nodding at it.

She just looks at me.

“I remember,” I say, shrugging like it doesn’t matter. We watch each other across the table. I wonder if she remembers those little things about me, but I’m too proud to ask.

“My aunt’s not here,” she says after a minute.

“You think I came for your aunt?”

“You are at her house.”

“And? You think I fucked her once, and I’m so pathetic that now I’m attached, so I came back for more? For all you know, I came to apologize.”

“Did you?”

“No,” I say, scowling at her. “Obviously I came for you.”

“She already left,” Mabel says. “And I can’t find the body.”

“What?” I demand.

“That’s the problem,” she says.

“Fuck,” I say, jumping up. “Do you think she took it to the police?”

“No,” Mabel says, sipping her drink. “I think Baron took it. But if you don’t believe me, we can look.”

“Is this a trap?”

Now it’s her turn to scowl, but she doesn’t fool me. She’s not harmless. She’s a black widow, a panther slinking through the night, invisible but lethal.

She’s so much more than we ever gave her credit for.

“We can look together.”

We do, and each time we step into another empty room, I need a drink more than the last one. Finally, I admit she’s right. We’ve covered every inch of the house, and the body’s not here.

“He couldn’t have,” I say, slumping across the table from her again when we return to our starting place.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Of course I’m not sure,” I grumble. “We were in my room together for at least twenty-four hours after you came home with us. And he stays up all hours of the night. You know what he’s like. I just assumed he was with Jane or on his computer.”

“The question is, why would he do that?” she asks.

“To get rid of it for us,” I say. “To operate or experiment on… I don’t even know anymore.”

“You’re his twin.”

“I fucking know that,” I snap, and I reach to pull out my flask, because I really need a drink now. But it’s empty, and it clatters hollowly on the table when I toss it down. “Got anything stronger than Cherry Coke?”

She goes to the cabinet and starts rooting around. When she comes up with a half a bottle of vodka and a glass, though, I decide I don’t trust her enough to let her make my drink. I join her at the counter, and she studies me a long moment, like she knows what I’m doing, though neither of us will accuse the other.

“You’re different,” she says, going to the refrigerator.

“Yeah,” I say, opening the bottle and taking a shot. “So are you. Oh fuck, what is this shit? Vanilla?”

“You know why I’m different,” she says, ignoring my disgust at the liquor her aunt owns. “You changed me. What you did. You tore apart the molecules of Mabel, the formula that made me who I was. When I put myself back together, I combined the elements in a different sequence, created something entirely different out of the same building blocks.”

“Molecules of Mabel,” I say. “Cool band name.”

She sets a container of orange juice on the counter. “What happened to you?”

“You still don’t fuck around, do you?” I ask, busying myself with the drink. “That hasn’t changed.”

“What changed y’all?” she presses.

“Maybe your leaving changed us.”

“Did it?”

“I don’t know,” I admit, because Mabel won’t stop asking until I answer. She won’t be distracted by jokes or flirting like other girls might. “It was probably part of it. But not everyone has it as easy as you. I can’t point to one thing. It was everything. You leaving, and Crystal leaving, and King leaving, and Baron leaving. It was what happened to Royal, and what we did, and what Dad did. All of it.”

I could tell her that Dad dying probably changed me the most, but I don’t. She wouldn’t understand how I could still love him, how I could mourn him, after all he did. Even Baron doesn’t understand, though he loved him too. He wasn’t there. He didn’t stand there and make the choice not to save him, to let him burn to death. Everyone who did, we share some fucked up bond. And for once, Baron isn’t part of it.

“When did Baron leave?” Mabel asks, drawing me from my morbid thoughts.

I realize she doesn’t know this part, and that eases my mind a little. Maybe they weren’t plotting so much behind my back after all. We sit across the table from each other, drinks in front of us. I forgot how unnerving her stare was, how direct she was, how it always felt like she could see through every lie, through everything, even when she couldn’t. She didn’t, but it felt that way. Like she always knew when we were plotting against her, always knew when it was me and when it was Baron. But she didn’t. She’s no more special than me.

“Before Christmas,” I say, taking a gulp of my drink. “He tracked you, and he’s been watching you ever since.”

She takes this in, her grey-blue eyes unwavering, and then nods. I can see her calculating in her head, the numbers swirling, some formula that contains only her and Baron. I am a variable, a remainder.

“I thought so,” she says at last. “I knew someone was watching. And then when the men started dying… But I didn’t realize you’d split up. I never thought you’d leave each other.”

“He didn’t leave me,” I say, scowling at her. “I mean, he did, but we talked all the time. He wouldn’t ditch his brother like you did. I knew what he was doing, why he left. I knew what you were doing too. Not just him.”

She sits there sipping her drink, her expression contemplative, and I want to bend her over the table and shove a whole handful of Alice up her ass, make her stop thinking about Baron without me, considering that an option in a way she hasn’t done since the beginning. Remind her that he’s not the only one who can make her scream.

“Let’s go home,” I say, standing abruptly. “Baron will be back soon. We should be there when he does.”

“I am home,” she says. “My aunt left. She said I could have the house. She’s not coming back.”

I imagine it, moving out of the rental and into her place. I picture us sitting on the deck, sipping white wine, her smiling across the table at me and thanking me for picking up lobster. I picture her walking along the shoreline in the morning, picking up seashells at the water’s edge, bare feet dotted with droplets of saltwater, toes sprinkled with sand. I hear her shriek of surprise when I grab her around the waist and pick her up, toss her into the frothing, frigid water and dive in after her. I would go under and then come up with my cheeks ballooned, make a little whale spout like Dad used to do on vacation when we stayed at our beach house. I picture dragging our sleeping bags out under the stars, staring up at them like I did with Colt at the quarry that night.

But it wouldn’t be like that. In every shot, if you panned over, you would find my brother watching. Baron, lifting his glass to toast with us, clinking his glass against ours. Baron, watching from the balcony when we looked up from playing in the water. Baron, wiping the smile from her face when she remembered that he was above such things, and therefore, she should be too.

“This isn’t your home,” I say flatly. “Your home is in Tennessee.”

“I stay here in the summer.”

“You did,” I correct her, grabbing her arm and dragging her up. “Now, you stay with us. I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, if you’re trying to make me look bad. But I’ve had a hard fucking night, so just cooperate for once and don’t make it harder on me if you ever want to see your cat again.”

“You’re hurting me,” she protests, prying at my fingers.

I loosen my grip. “Sorry. Can we just go home? I really need you to take it easy on me this one time. Can you do that for me, and for little Seeley Boots? Please, baby?”

I give her my most beguiling smile, and her shoulders sag. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” I say, pulling her in and pressing my lips to her forehead before tilting her chin up. “Now go out and wait in the car. Your feet must hurt from walking all the way here. I’ll get you all your favorite things at the store on the way home. What do you say, little fairy?”

“What are you going to do?” she asks, her gaze searching mine as she stares up at me.

“I’m going to make sure you don’t have anywhere to run next time you get that crazy idea in your pretty little head.”

After a long moment, she steps back. When the door closes behind her, I wander through the kitchen, the living room, bottle of vodka in hand. I close the drapes, then light a candle and sit before it, watching the flame dance.

I remember touching the blue-hot bullet of flame from the blowtorch to Colt’s arm, watching his skin bubble and peel and smoke. My demon cackling while I turned it, so it wouldn’t bore too deep, cook his flesh. Letting the flame shoot up the inside of his arm, where his veins bulged in the flexing muscle, until he screamed. Mabel screamed too—a lot.

The flame begins to lick the edge of the fabric curtain, and eventually, to climb. I tip my head back to drink and then just to watch it, a sense of awe settling heavy in my limbs, washing over me with pure, childlike wonder.

This is the fire I love. Not the one that hurt Colt. I would never have done that if my brothers hadn’t come up with the idea. They handed me the torch because they knew I loved fire, forgetting that I don’t love pain. Not like they do, anyway. That wasn’t what I wanted to do, but what choice did I have? I made the burns as shallow as possible. He should see that, forgive me for it.

The flames bend and lick when they reach the ceiling, as if trying to find a way out. I like to watch fire spread, watch it move. It’s so alive.

I remember lighting Devlin’s house with Mabel, how we danced on the lawn in the firelight, our shadows looming and ghoulish. I remember how she laughed when I spun her around, how she fought when I pulled her down in my lap.

Gasoline isn’t the only way to light a fire, though it’s the most fun. I could throw the last of the vodka on it, but it doesn’t need help. It’s breathing now, blooming, eating .

Feasting.

I remember sitting outside the mall and watching it burn, knowing Dad was in there, that he was burning to death. I would have stopped it if I could, but it was too late. Not just because the fire paralyzed me, but because the rest of the group wouldn’t have let me. I knew some of them had hesitations too, but you had to go with the group or risk being cast into the fire too. That’s how herd mentality works.

It was something we did together, a horrible thing that bound us, like all horrible things, like the day Dad brought home the two girls from our school, or the Wednesday nights at church with Dad and the priest and that boy. Is that how Mabel felt, a helpless witness to her brother’s torment? Is that what changed her?

“Duke!”

I look up, and Mabel is standing there, a waifish figure in the smoke, ethereal and ghostly as her memory that haunted me for the past two years.

“What the hell?” she demands, waving a hand in front of her face.

The smoke billows and swirls.

She bends, coughing, and races toward me. Grabbing my arm, she drags at it with more force than I’ve ever felt her use. The empty vodka bottle tumbles from my hand to the floor, rolling away and disappearing into the vapors, swallowed up like the curtains and the wall.

“What are you doing?” Mabel demands, her voice a mixture of fury and panic. “We have to get out of here before the ceiling caves. Get up!”

I look around, startled, and see that she’s right. The fire spread further than I realized while I was watching it, lost in thought and admiration.

I scramble around, then start coughing and end up on my hands and knees. Mabel joins me, her shirt pulled up over her face, and together we crawl for the door. The next room is hardly smoky, though billowing clouds are churning into that room too. We stand anyway, holding our shirts over our mouth and nose, and run for the front door. When we’re outside, we both devolve into coughing fits, tears running down our cheeks.

When we’ve recovered, we climb into the car and back out of the drive.

“Were you trying to get yourself killed?” Mabel asks, sounding furious as she smacks my arm.

“No,” I say, glowering at her and leaning away. “Besides, what do you care? You tried to run away. You don’t want to be with me.”

“That doesn’t mean I want you dead.”

“What difference does it make?” I ask. “If you’re not with me, I might as well be dead. You’d never see me. You might even prefer it. That way, you’d know I’m never going to find you again. That I can’t come back.”

She just shakes her head and crosses her arms, staring out the window.

I swerve into the lot of the small convenience store on the corner, hopping a curb and scraping the bottom of the low car.

“You can’t go in like that,” Mabel says. “You reek of smoke, and they’ll know.”

“Know what?”

“That it’s arson,” she says. “If they can’t already figure it out.”

“It’s not illegal to burn down your own house,” I say. “It’s only illegal if you try to claim insurance. So don’t do that.”

I get out of the car and stumble inside. A few minutes later, I’m back with a bag of snacks.

She’s sitting in the driver’s seat.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re drunk,” she snaps. “I’m not letting you kill us both.”

I shake my head at her, but I can see there’s no use arguing, telling her I’ve driven when I was in much worse condition than this, and I haven’t killed anyone yet. This time, I let her have it and slide in, holding up the bag.

“I brought snacks,” I say, offering her my most winning smile. “Just like the first time we burned down a house together.”

“I didn’t help you burn this one,” she says, but when I hand her a cup of soda, she takes it.

“It’s diet,” I say. “You said it’s crisper.”

She won’t look at me, but she smiles and takes a sip before she pulls out of the lot. Then we’re on our way back, and even though she’s still mad, I know I can thaw her. I take out one item at a time, laying them on my lap and naming them as I go.

Lemon cake. A honey bun. Pretzels. A little red can of Pringles. A glass bottle of strawberry soda. Strawberry Pop Tarts. A Rice Crispie Treat. A Klondike bar.

“I’ll go into a sugar coma if I eat all that,” she says when we turn into our driveway.

“You don’t have to eat it all at once,” I say. “I want you to know your favorites are all here, so you don’t have to go anywhere else.”

She turns off the car, then sits staring at our rental for a minute.

Baron’s not home.

A little dart of panic goes through me—what if he never comes home? What if Jane shot him? What then?

“You talked to Jane,” I say. “What did she say?”

“What did she say to you?”

“That you talked.”

Mabel makes a noncommittal sound. “I’m going to take a shower,” she says. “I stink too.”

She gets out of the car, then leans down and snags her cup of soda from the holder. “Thanks, Duke.” This time, she smiles at me.

Baron comes in while she’s in the shower. He looks from me, to the pile of snacks on the table, to the hallway with the closed bathroom door.

“She ran, didn’t she?” he asks.

I shrug. “We went to the store. I wanted her to feel at home here, with all her favorite things.”

“You don’t have to protect her from me,” he says. “I’ll never go too far with Mabel. I have more self-control than that.”

“And with Jane?” I ask.

“There is no Jane,” he says simply, setting his gun on the table. “There never was.”

Mabel emerges then, fresh-faced and red-cheeked from the shower, a towel clutched around her. Her wet hair is pulled up into a tight bun, severe as the nuns’ at our private school in Manhattan, or at Thorncrown. I glance at Baron, wondering what he thought when I told him that. Why shouldn’t I fuck a nun, though? It’s something different, and he knows I need that. The girls all run together, and after a while it gets boring. It wasn’t even fun anymore. I got to a point where I was doing it for other guys, to say I did it and add another tally mark, more than for the girl.

That thought only fucks with my head more. If I said something like that to Baron, he’d take it the wrong way. Hell, probably anyone would. It sounds wrong even to me, and if I tried to explain, I’d just fuck it up worse.

Baron draws me down to reality with a single word, and my gaze snaps to the girl standing in the kitchen doorway.

She turns to run, but Baron leaps at her, grabbing her shoulder and dragging her back into the room. She shrieks, but his hand clamps around the front of her throat, and he crushes her back against him.

“You ran.” He grins over her shoulder at me before leaning in and whispering in her ear. “You knew there would be consequences.”

“I didn’t run,” she gasps out.

“Don’t lie,” he purrs. “I have your location. I know where you were. I always know where you are, Mabel Darling.”

When he releases her, she jumps forward, arching away from him like she used to when someone touched her. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m standing in the doorway, blocking her from the hall. My demon is crowding me out, writhing with happiness at the prospect of taking over. I feel him creeping in like the flames, eating up the frayed endings of my nerves, the blurred edges of my mind.

Mabel glances over her shoulder at Baron and then back to me. I grin at her, and she knows. She knows that once he’s in control, there’s no help for her in my arms. I don’t have the strength to wrestle them both, and I’ve been fighting him since I left Jane, trying to ignore his whispers, his urges.

It’s time to give in.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” I taunt. “Nowhere to run.”

Her eyes widen, and she casts her gaze around the small kitchen, searching for a way out. But she’d have to go by Baron to reach the front door, and she won’t do that. My cock stiffens in my jeans at the thought of touching her again, feeling her body squirming inside my grip, her heart hammering out its terrified rhythm against mine, her lips stretched wide while she screams.

Baron strolls over, unhurried, unconcerned. “Hold her still.”

I step forward and grab her. She shrieks and tries to break free, but I spin her around and hook my arms under hers, pinning her back to my chest so she’s facing Baron. My demon revels when Baron stops in front of her. He gives her towel one sharp tug, and it falls away, baring her scarred, trembling body. She looks even smaller and more fragile now, naked and cowering with fear while we stand over her, each of us fully clothed and fully capable of single-handedly overpowering her. Like a cornered animal just realizing it will never be anything but prey, she shrinks down, keening and helpless.

My demon wants it all, the screams and chaos, the blood and cum, the tears. He wants to see it all unfold, to see this polished stone of a girl fall apart, to witness her in all her glorious disarray. He wants her punishment as much as she does.

She must, or she wouldn’t have run, knowing the consequences as well as she does.

Baron stands before her, holding her gaze while he unbuckles his belt.

Her breath hitches, and she presses back into me, as if she can merge with me, disappear inside me. But my demon is already inhabiting my body, billowing up like smoke to cover my other senses, and he savors every moment of her trembling terror.

“No,” Mabel cries, starting to twist and shake harder in my grip. “Please, Baron, don’t. I’m not—I can’t—”

Before she can finish, he grips her thighs and lifts them around his hips, barreling into her without preamble. She screams, that ear-piercing wail of pure, raw agony, the one that feeds Baron’s soul.

My demon laughs.

“You can,” he growls. “And you will.”

When he drives deeper into her, she writhes in pain, her head falling back against my shoulder in a desperate attempt to rise off him, to spare herself the torture of taking his size. She claws frantically at him, at me, ugly sobs choking out of her.

In one bright flash, I see myself lifting her, turning her away, shielding her from his violence with my body. But as quickly as the thought “I can’t do this,” appears, it’s gone, replaced with the side of me that knows I can, and I will, just like Mabel. Just like I did the first time Dad brought me a girl, and the first time he brought me to Thorncrown, and the first time Baron told me what we’d do to break the girl in my arms. I’ll hate myself for it later, but I’ll do it, and I’ll love it. I just have to let myself.

The demon promises me that, his whispers as seductive as Mabel’s cries. So I slide down inside, let him rise like he’s wanted to for so long, take me over, show me the thrill in this. And he does, his relief washing over me, his wild hunger and manic joy filling the dead spaces that lay fallow for months. He’s making up for lost time now, glutting himself. But it’s not just his relief—it’s mine. Maybe Colt was right. The demon isn’t separate from me. In stifling him, I’ve fractured myself. He’s half of me, just like Baron. Mabel always understood that, accepted it, just as she accepted that my brother and I are a package deal.

Baron goes harder, knocking me against the counter as he slams into her. After a minute, her head falls forward, and her sobs abate, replaced with soft whimpers and groans and hiccups. I relish every one of them, rearranging my grip so I can hold both her arms in one of mine. I use my free hand to undo her hair, letting it tumble down, then wind my fingers through the warm, wet tangles. Gripping it, I pull her head back to see the splotchy, tear-stained mess of her face before I smash her lips with mine. I drink her cries of agony like the sweetest venom, feed them to my demon. He’s been hungry for so long, starving inside me. I lick her tears away, bite at her cheeks, her mouth, groaning as I grind my cock against her ass. Releasing her hair, I press one hand to her flat stomach until I can feel Baron’s cock nudging against my palm with every stroke.

With a last, crushing blow, Baron drives her against me, gripping her thighs to keep her in place while he spills into her, bringing a strangled cry and a fresh flood of tears from her.

“You’re ours,” he grunts out, wrapping a hand around her exposed throat and leaning in, until his nose skims her cheek. “Just like you promised. I hope that reminder was sufficient.”

“Let me go,” she cries, struggling to free herself from where she’s impaled on his punishing length.

“We could,” I muse. “But where’s the fun in that? No matter where you go, you’ll still be ours. If you run again, we’ll find you, and we’ll take what’s ours. And we’ll keep doing it until you accept that you were always ours, and you always will be.”

“I can’t,” she sobs, her voice cracking pitifully.

“That’s what you agreed to,” Baron reminds her. “We got rid of Jane. We’re all yours now.”

“No,” she cries. “Not again.”

“But there’s only you, Mabel,” I say, running a finger down her slender waist, her narrow hip. “There was only ever you.”

“This is your job now,” Baron says. “Your purpose. To take our cocks, and our cum, until we’re satisfied. Now get on your knees for my brother and show us how well your throat remembers its training.”

I release my grip on Mabel, and she crumples to the floor, quaking with fear.

I have one moment to feel pity for her before my demon breaks his last tethers and descends upon her.