Machete Read online

  That thing in my head knocked a little looser as something began to form inside of me. The whispers turned to muffled screams again as they desperately tried to tell me something I couldn’t quite hear. Soon, it told me then.

  “Becket doesn’t think I’m a burden,” I said honestly.

  “You are,” Dad assured me. “You can’t do anything for him, or anyone else. Now I need you to promise me that you won’t see him again, or I’ll have to do something you don’t like.”

  I didn’t get much of a chance to think that over for longer than a few seconds. Becket pushed the door open, and I gasped when I looked at him. Blood ran down his face and head, coating him. I could feel his split open skin, and I sealed it as quickly as I could. I couldn’t fix the damage to his skull if there was any but I could take care of a little. Better than nothing.

  Better than nothing...

  “Becket!” I yelled, and then a hand went to my throat. Not hard enough to choke me but enough to keep me still.

  “Get out,” my father growled at the boy I loved.

  “No,” he said simply. “Let her go. She told me I wasn’t allowed to kill you, so you need to let her go before I break a promise.”

  My father whipped back to me, ice in his eyes. “Oh, so you discussed our murder with your psychotic little boyfriend?”

  “No,” Becket said again. “That is not what happened. Let her go.”

  Suddenly, a smirk came over my father. He looked over at my brother, who kept taking hostile glances at Becket. “Son, I need you to do me a favor. Are you willing?”

  My brother grinned at the little show of respect my father gave him. They were few and far between, so I could understand the puppy-dog-like longing my big brother had. “Anything you need, Dad. Just ask.”

  “Good,” Dad said. And calmly, like it was nothing at all, he said, “Kill the boy.”

  With a grand snap, everything in my brain clicked into place. It exploded like lightning, casting light on all the shadows once in my mind. My father gave the kill order on the only person on this planet that I loved. The only one who loved me. My family did not love me.

  They don’t love me.

  I saw it all, and I felt so foolish. I let them hurt me. I let them hurt me for years because I thought that I mattered to them. It hadn’t looked like abuse from where I stood, and I realized just how much like Becket I really was. Only I understood now, while he still didn’t. I saw it. He didn’t.

  In the span of maybe five seconds, it all rushed through my head at once. I saw when I was small, and my father would tell me that I would grow up to be nothing if I wasn’t a good girl who obeyed. They drilled into my head all these lies that would take time to completely unweave from my soul. I may always feel worthless thanks to them, and I did not know how to fix it. Maybe I never would. I couldn’t be worth anything for myself but maybe I could be for Becket.

  My father gave the order, Lane took it, and my choice was made.

  Before Becket needed to defend himself, I pulled on the voice in my head, telling me how to do this. Six ankles opened up all at once, and my family went down. My father lost his hold on me, leaving my shoulders ached with the relieved pressure. I could push that to the back of my mind for now because it wasn’t important. That pain was only physical, and I had old scars in my body that needed healing.

  They didn’t scream, and that told me that they were not afraid. They should have been because I was something to fear. Where Becket was kind and soft, I was not. No part of me felt kind or warm. I hoped it would come back enough to give Becket what he needed in this life.

  “Manny?” he said, walking up to me. His hand found the small of my back.

  I smiled up at him. “Let me, please. I want to get myself free.”

  He nodded, and I got to work.

  First was my mother because she hurt Becket. For all my life, she let my father and my brother hurt me. She stood there, and she did nothing. Only watching, staying out of the way. She refused to speak up for me. So why not take her voice away?

  “Mann ” she got out before I sealed her lips together. Couldn’t scream, couldn’t fight. All she could do was lie there, watching me.

  With a tilt of my head, I made all of the flesh detach from her muscles, veins, and the things in between. I honestly didn’t know, and I didn’t care. She screamed in her throat but no one would be able to hear her. There was so much blood as I sliced her down the arms, legs, back, and front. Skin peeled off of her, falling to the floor.

  That was when Lane screamed but I took care of that quickly. I sealed his lips as well, and he laid there, bleeding, with muffled cries. I added in closing my father’s mouth for good measure. Wouldn’t want him to ruin this for me. Not when I’d been waiting so long.

  My mother was dead on the floor, a grim version of the woman who used to feed and bathe me. If only it had been enough.

  Such a choice, if it would be my brother next, or my father. While Lane’s hands had been the ones choking me, hitting me, and holding me, he was only part of the reason. Hate trickled down, bleeding into the people around it. He was not without blame but the blame was more on my father.

  So, he would be last.

  Slowly, I walked over to Lane, staring at him as he watched me. I smiled when I realize he was afraid. I liked it, and I wanted more. I wanted to taste it in the air.

  “Do you feel that?” I asked of him. “Do you understand what it’s like to be helpless? At the mercy of someone standing over you?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you want me to free you?”

  Another nod.

  I grinned. “Okay.”

  One by one, I tore his skin open. The slices varied in size, the entirety of his body. They crawled up his legs, and I would have seen them as well as felt them, if only the fabric wasn’t black. It was as if I was the one taking a blade to him, as each inch ripped open and he bled. I counted in my head as the ones on his hands and throat appeared. A thousand. I wanted a thousand cuts on his flesh, for the thousand times his hands wrapped around my neck. God, it had to have been more than that but his body only had so much space.

  Those muffled screams got louder when the slices decorated his face, then scalp. Hair fell out, and Lane made the most pathetic of sounds. Eventually, he stopped moving. So much of his blood was on the floor that I couldn’t imagine he survived.

  Then there was my father, who stared at me with wide open eyes on the floor. I went to him, walking slowly and stepping over the puddle of my mother. Wouldn’t want to ruin the dress. I made my way to him, and I knelt down.

  “Do you want to walk away from this?” I asked him.

  He managed a nod, and I opened up his mouth again. He gasped, breathing heavy. Dad looked at his dead family, and I really couldn’t tell what he felt. Fear, anger, grief? None of it? All of it? My father was not a man I could see through. I hardly cared.

  “Your family is dead,” I stated coldly.

  Dad swallowed. “You... you killed them. For him,” he spat the words with a glare to Becket.

  I smiled softly. “Oh no, not for him. Not because of him. I did this entirely for myself. I found something out today. Would you like to hear it?”

  My father said nothing.

  “I’m a lot more than you give me credit for.”

  I grabbed his hair roughly, pulling him up into a sitting position. “You still want to live?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Repeat after me. You are worthless.”

  Without pause, he did as I said. “I am worthless.”

  “You are unloved.”

  “I am unloved.”

  “You are nothing.”

  “I am nothing.”

  “Now, am I a good girl, Daddy?”

  He nodded. “You are a very good girl.”

  One more time, I let a wide grin steal my face. “Just checking.”

  I released him, stood up, and began tightening the skin around his throat as I walke
d back to Becket. His arm went around my waist as we watched my father, shocked as he suffocated to death. For a few minutes, he finally knew what it was like to be completely and utterly trapped.

  And then his heart stopped beating.

  I turned to Becket, heedless of the corpses in the room. My hands gently went to his face. “Are you okay? How bad is it?”

  “Manageable. There’s nothing I can do about it anyway.”

  I got mad all over again when I thought about my mother hurting him, and then being dragged away, unable to help. All I could do was hug him and listen to his heart beating in his chest. Everything was fine if Becket was alive.

  “Nothing will ever take me away from you,” I promised him. “Not ever. Okay?”

  Becket tucked loose hair behind my ear. “I know. I love you.”

  “I love you more than anything.”

  And I did. I would kill anything that decided to get in our way, or tried to harm him. I was a killer, and there would be no going back from here. We’d orphaned ourselves, which might have been the very best thing to ever happen to us.

  Wait... second best.

  I took Becket’s hand, unsure of where to go from here. We had no real home other than each other. So, what did we do?

  Then the door busted open, and my heart raced for a second before I saw two people rush in. The man from the woods, with a bat over his shoulder, and then Merry, with a tire iron. A... tire iron.

  “Goddammit,” the man said, looking around at the bodies. “They’re already dead...”

  Merry nodded. “Nothing gets by you, Dolan.”

  He glared down at her. “I was looking forward to this. You don’t have to be mean.”

  “Don’t I?”

  I waved my hands, getting their attention. “Um... what are you doing?”

  Merry cocked an eyebrow. “We were here to finish the job we’re getting paid for but you already did.”

  “You murder blocked us,” Dolan said, almost sad. “I wanted that money.”

  I shrugged. “No one is stopping you from collecting.” Then I looked at Merry. “You’re one of them?”

  “Obviously,” she responded. “How do you think I took care of all those bodies? I don’t eat them.” Her face went blank. “Or do I?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, a heads up would have been nice. I still wouldn’t have let you kill my family.”

  “Shucks,” she said, snapping her fingers.

  The man with her held his hands up. “Okay, okay. As fun as this all is, I’m keeping the cash, little miss.” He pointed to me. “Might have to parade you around as my employee for a couple minutes. You have anything less fancy to wear? Maybe own a meat cleaver?”

  “Not on me,” I said.

  “Balls...” he huffed.

  I was finished being in the same room as my former family, so I took Becket and started leading him out. He needed lots of rest, and maybe medical attention. My mother didn’t hit hard enough to kill, so I hoped she avoided any real damage.

  “Slow your roll there,” Dolan said, making Becket and I turn back around. They’d followed us out. “I wasn’t kidding. I need you for a few minutes. Please? I’ll give you candy.”

  Merry blocked the right side of her mouth and whispered, “He’s lying.”

  He shoved her lightly.

  If it meant ending this, then I would do it.

  Becket and I walked behind the noticeably underdressed mercenaries as we entered the ballroom again. People danced, drank, and were merry. I didn’t understand how so many people could walk through life with such lightness about them. I had been blind for a long time but I was never so blind that I thought I was happy. There was something off, and I knew it. It didn’t bother me anymore because I knew that even though my past was a pile of ashes and tears, my future could be something brighter. I had Becket. What else was there?

  Dolan led us to three people. A man, a woman, and another man. I knew of the men because they were fellow store owners who’d been at these events more times than I could count. We’d never met but their names were Marc and Al. Pretty sure Al was his assistant. The woman must have been a wife, or a new business partner.

  “Marc,” Dolan said with a smile. “May I speak with you?”

  The man looked surprised, gazing around the room and running a hand through dark hair. “You’re...here...”

  “Yes. And so are you!” Dolan’s expression flattened. “Job’s done. Pay me.”

  Marc cleared his throat, and we all moved a little farther from the crowd. Then he looked at me. “Manny Hodkin? What is this, Dolan?”

  Dolan lightly patted my back. “She did it. She works for me. Pay me,” he said, the last part not so nice.

  He leaned forward to him. “How do I know the job is done?”

  Dolan nodded to the way we came. “Go sneak a peek, buddy. Then give me money.”

  Marc looked to his assistant for a moment, and then back to Dolan. “I have no proof that anyone working for you did this. And I’m reluctant to believe that their own daughter would turn on them. What reason would she have for that?”

  “Boredom?” Merry suggested.

  “They were awful,” I said. “You should pay the man because I don’t want anything to do with this anymore. I quit.”

  He scoffed at me. “Yeah, I’m not buying any of this. Some little trust fund brat wouldn’t up and kill her means of survival.”

  “Do not call her a brat,” Becket said flatly. “Don’t call her anything. Just do as she says so that we can go home. Now.”

  The man stared at Becket. “No,” he said, and nothing more.

  Dolan sighed, tossing his head back. “I knew you would make this hard. They always do, and I always get annoyed. Remember that this is all your fault.”

  “What is?”

  Dolan took his baseball bat, then smacked Al in the head with it. Like... hit him in the head with a bat, bringing him down, making everyone else in the room scream. Becket reacted as if he was watching a leaf fall from a tree. Merry laughed. I just stood there.

  Then everyone seemed to notice the people with weapons, and they appeared worried. That was fair. After all, I felt like a lot of them were about to die, and that would scare most anyone. I didn’t fear death for any reason other than it would take me from Becket. So, I wouldn’t let death touch me.

  The main door busted open as more mercenaries casually strolled into the ballroom. Kentucky led them all, machete in her hand and a smile on her face.

  Dolan looked to Becket and I. “Might wanna scatter, kiddos. This is gonna get bloody.”

  Something made me smile. “Sounds fun.”

  The man smiled back at me. “I like you, ya little oddball.”

  “We should move,” Becket said when Marc took his girl and hurried off. The mercenaries looked around like they were lions seeing gazelles. “I would rather you not get injured.”

  “You’re so sweet,” I said.

  So, we found out what happened when you refused to pay murderers you hired. If people hadn’t screamed and alerted the rest, then maybe it would have ended better. But they didn’t, and it didn’t, and it wouldn’t, and I already had some blood on my dress.

  I took Becket to the side of the room as people ran or decided to stay and fight. We were in a damn museum for gems, yet it was about to become a bloodbath. Really... pay who you hire. It did occur to me that maybe I should have hated that Marc guy just a little for trying to kill my family but it only irritated me as far as it would have taken that joy out of my hands. I needed to be the one to kill them, and I was. Happy day.

  “How’s your head?” I checked again with Becket.

  “Throbbing,” he responded. “But I’ve had worse.”

  I winced before I let the fact that his father was dead in a river wash over me. No more pain for Becket, and that was good for both of us. Now that I was officially a killer, it would have been harder for me to hold back. Hell, it was hard before I did it.

&n
bsp; I think what Dolan was going for was to spook the man into paying him. That didn’t work because I had very little doubt that he would be dead before the party was over. Was it technically over now that there was a dead body on the floor, and three in the back? I wasn’t sure.

  “Don’t kill the one paying us!” Dolan shouted to his team as they all scattered. I hoped they would listen because someone deserved to make money off of those people.

  A man in a suit barely avoided getting his arm chopped off by a machete, and he fought back, throwing a punch in Kentucky’s direction. She dodged one, then sent another into his side. He fell back in our direction, and she took off to look for Marc, or so she said.

  Then an angry and large man stood up, and I pushed Becket back instinctually. He could protect himself but I wanted to be that for him. His safe place, his protector, and his best friend. It was all I really knew how to be.

  The man saw us, not seeming to care that we were teenagers caught in the middle of a mess. We had blood on us, and were seen with the people he’d decided were the bad guys. Maybe they were, since they were killers. I really couldn’t tell anymore. My world changed colors, and nothing was right or wrong anymore. I couldn’t tell what was what. There was me, Becket, and nothing else.

  When the man came at us, I did not stop to think. Becket was in danger, so I took care of it. In no time at all, I had the man’s skin shrink, crushing him from the outside in. He screamed for a few minutes, and then he dropped right to the ground.

  Just like that, I’d killed again.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Blood Soaked Gowns

  Becket

  Dolan groaned. “I hate when they run. Or refuse to pay. Or act surprised when it all blows up in their faces.” He shook his head, and then smashed his baseball bat into the head of a man wearing more jewelry than even Manny, albeit, his jewels were less bloody than hers.

  “Hey, everybody!” Merry shouted after she had hopped onto a table. “Please form an orderly line for your impending doom because guess what? No one gets out alive!” A strong wind rushed through the room, and all the doors slammed shut as one, so hard that the windows shook. She grinned wildly, then hopped off the table.