My heartbeat reaches an all-time high, making me feel like I might have a heart attack. Did he actually do it? Did he disturb his predictable pattern?
No, he didn’t. He did what he always does. I see him coming, and his body passes by me, close enough for me to reach and make my move.
One silenced shot, and he drops like a sack of meat, eyes wide open. The only expression I can read on his face is surprise, the surprise of suddenly feeling Death grabbing him by the throat.
I catch him under his arms and drag him deeper into the alley between the houses to clear the line of view from the street. Once his body hides in the shadows, I turn around and allow him a few last moments of peace alone. He deserves a quiet death, and my face should not be the last thing he sees. He should be alone. The irony.
“Forty-four,” I say, as I walk back to the hotel.
Ten seconds later, Alex’s voice breaks through the earpiece. “The cleaner is almost done.”
Silence. Breathe in, breathe out.
“Forty-four,” I repeat, more for myself, trying to wrap my head around the number.
Alex’s voice comes back after what feels like an eternity. “You’ve never needed Plan B before.”
And that monster, she’s mine now. You’re mine now. She’ll sleep in your skin, breathe through your ribs, and wake with you every morning. She’s never leaving. Not until the day you die.
I don’t check out of the hotel—another deviation from the plan. No polite ‘thank you’ to the front desk personnel, no trace-removal routine.
I let the “Do Not Disturb” sign hang like a limp flag of surrender and crawl back under the blankets in the same clothes now stained by his blood, still carrying the gunshot residue on my hands. My body and brain cannot process anything right now. I just…exist.
I couldn’t envision failure before, yet here it is.
There is no rage, no pleasure, no thrill, just a big nothing that silences everything. Void, emptiness, something that should have been here but isn’t.
Not thinking. Not not-thinking either. Void.
I’d never skipped a debrief before. Never left Alex hanging. But that doesn’t stop me from taking the earpiece out and throwing it in the toilet. I know he’ll call, repeatedly. He willtry to go by the book, ask the questions and comment on the results. But there is nothing I’d hate now more than hearing the consequences of the fragility Azrael inflicted on me with this stupid game we are—no, wewere—playing.
They say you don’t know when something big happens until the moment passes. Well, I can confidently say this is the precise moment my life got fucked up, and I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear myself explaining it or trying to come up with any made-up reason for tonight’s event unfolding the way it did.
There was no one else to blame.
No one but the pathetic, useless girl in a costume. And the monster, the one still curled up beneath my ribs, is purring softly, satisfied.
Instead, I open the safe and pull out my phone while staring at the unopened bottle of wine. A new video is still in the gallery, and I tap play. Cat is lying belly-up now, his paws flexing like he is dreaming about chasing something and not quite catching it. His ears twitch at some invisible threat before he blinks, confused, and runs, probably in the midst of getting the zoomies.
That stupid little blink.
I put the phone face down on the bed before it makes me do something stupid like call the Professor.
The wine bottle will stay sealed. I don’t deserve this kill or the ritual that follows.
I didn’t sleep. Not really.
I shut down for a couple of hours, eyes closed, but my mind is locked in some sort of purgatory between dreaming and awareness, not really resting.
I’m woken by the constant buzz of my phone. Alex’s name appears on the screen. Call denied. I’m not ready yet.
I stand here in silence for what felt like years or days or seconds. When I finally pick up my phone again, seven new missed calls are warning me from the other side of the screen. Seven times in two hours.
I open my thread with Azrael, not even realizing what I am doing. I hadn’t looked at it in days, not since that night. I wanted him to wait for my messages. I wanted him to crave my presence just as much as I was craving his.
But now, I cannot be more disgusted as I reread our past interactions. Messages, hundreds of them, all with me begging, asking for exactly this. What the fuck did I think would happen? That I would become like those idiotic people I see on the streets every Saturday? That I would have last night’s target’s pathetic life? He’s dead, fucking dead, and that’s because I said so. I decided the fate of his pathetic life and how it would end, when and where.Idid that.
Messages flow in front of my eyes, each more ten-year-old-vampire-obsessed deranged than the previous one.