Right.Mistake. Like everything else that involved him. Knowing him was a mistake, meeting him was even worse. And by asking him to help me, I signed my death sentence.
“This—we— are not a mistake.”
“My blade and my forty-four numbers tend to believe otherwise. Want a demonstration?”
I know it’s the adrenaline talking, but the next thing I see is myself in front of him with my hand holding the knife right at his throat.Stop lying to yourself, Victoria, you can’t. I will. I’ll kill him. Because nothing is worth losing myself again.
“Is this what you want, little ember? To kill me? Do it.” He doesn’t believe it, but he doesn’t need to. Neither do I, but I still will. I’ve never asked a target before if they want to be killed, yet here we are. Well…anyway.
“It will hurt, Professor. And unlike you, I’m not doing hypothetical shit. You played with me. You fucking played with me. My mind, my brain.”
“You asked for this!”
“I did not ask to become your fucking puppet!”
“Yes, you did. You fucking did! What was that? Oh, right. ‘Break me, fuck me.’ Sound familiar?”
He’s a fucking lunatic and turns out I’m just a fucking whore. God, we’re a match made in hell.
I take a couple of steps back and point the tip of the blade toward the wrecked door. “Leave. Get the fuck out now, before I show you who I really am.”
“You think I didn’t know? You think I came here and was surprised by this?”
“You came here to see how fucked up I am. Well, congratulations, dear Professor. I. Am. Fucked. So leave before I turn you into a number.”
I don’t like the way he’s looking at me, like he’s moments away from crumbling. This doesn’t look like the psychopathic Professor who took me to that warehouse. Or that room. Who left me as a victim to my own demons.
“You are fucked? You? Did you even look around for one second? Do you see me standing here?” The exasperation in his voice is palpable.
“Oh, what an honor. Want to play a game? It’s called leave now or feel my blade. I will surely enjoy it. Send my regards to hell.”
I raise my blade, and there is no hesitation when I slice it through the air toward him, but the fucker evades me.
“Fuck, Victoria!”
He’s saying something. The fucker is probably trying to beg for his life. He should have thought of this before he fucking played me. This is exactly what he wanted.
“You’re so down deep into your ass you can’t even see what’s around you.” Another cut through the air, another miss.Die! His words go right past my ear. All I can focus on is that I have a target. Azrael is my target. The Professor is my target, and I want him to be gone.
“Die, fucking die, Azrael, go to hell!”
If I had even the slightest sense of reality, my actions would probably disgust me, seeing how I’m succumbing to my inner demons. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid. Luckily, mylast drop of sanity abandoned me last night, and right now I’m on a blood spree. For his blood, specifically.
“Just fucking stop!”
“I will, after you arrive in fucking hell!”
I’m trying to stab, to slice, to hurt him somehow. Yet all I achieve is engaging in a sadistic dance, each of my steps being met by his retraction. We move around the kitchen island, and under normal circumstances this would look like foreplay, but even he knows I’m not playing this time.
“I’m already there!” His voice is getting louder and louder, almost matching mine. Because I am…screaming? Rage? No, I know what rage feels like, and this is something else. Fuck, another result of his experiment.
Another useless slash through the air, another step, and now we’re standing inches apart, him trapped between the fridge and my body.
I can smell the scent of his body wrapping around me with a subtle hint of mint as he levels his head to look me straight in the eyes while he’s talking.
“I’m the one who’s fucked. I’m the one who’s craving. I am the one who didn’t ask for it. Yet I am the one who’s here. But you? So poised. You stayed up there and pretended I did it all on my own.”
He keeps talking, and I want him to stop. I don’t want to hear it. “You did.”