I watch her crumple to the ground, her eyes rolling back, mouth slack. She doesn’t even moan anymore—just dead weight. The only sound is her daughter’s thin, piercing cry that breaks and chokes in her throat.
I glance at the man Gene killed earlier. Or what’s left of him. His head is unrecognizable, caved in like a rotten melon. Blue blood pools beneath it. I remember his face just before: low, angry eyes, thick brows, thin lips sneering at us. It’s all gone now.
I take in the room. A kitchen, a broken table in one corner, and chairs overturned. The walls are cracked but not ruined, curtains drawn tight against the outside world. No candlelight. It’s almost dark outside now, the sky is a bruise of purplish black, dull magenta. Faint stars flicker overhead, or at least they did before we broke in.
The girl tries not to cry anymore. She huddles deeper into the corner, face streaked with tears and filth. I see her eyes dart to Cham. He can’t look at her. He tries to, but his eyes slip away.
We took them as hostages. We needed supplies. Makeup to disguise ourselves as blue-blooded scum. Weapons. Food. Anything. We told the man of the house to go out and buy it. He’s been gone more than half an hour. Almost an hour now.
Gene grows impatient. He kills the woman.
I feel sick. I’m barely standing. My legs are numb. The blood I drank should give me strength, but I’m spent, my body screaming for rest. I lean heavily against the wall, the rough surface scraping my arm.
Gene hits the woman again, even though she’s limp. Her stomach is caved in, dark stains spreading. The girl in the corner sobs once, then clamps her hands over her mouth.
Cham shuffles his feet, looking for somewhere, anywhere else to put his gaze. He’s too pure for this. Too human. Ren would have tried to stop it. But I can’t. I won’t. My mercy died with my brother.
I watch Gene’s face as he hits her. He’s not angry. He’s not gleeful. He’s focused. Efficient. Like he’s killing a pig for meat. It’s easier that way. Cleaner.
A sound outside. Heavy, lumbering. The door creaks.
I turn my head just as light cuts through the darkness. I see him—the man who left, the husband. The father. He bursts in like a bomb going off, clutching bags to his chest. His eyes haven’t adjusted, he can’t see properly. He’s panting, sweat soaking through his shirt. His belly is round, fat from years of comfort while people like me had to suffer.
He drops to his knees immediately, the bags falling from limp fingers. I see them tumble—food, soap, maybe tools, I don’t care. He doesn’t look up. He just collapses forward, pressing his head to the floor.
His voice breaks. It’s raw, ragged. He sounds like someone dying of thirst in the desert. “Please, let my wife and child live!”
I hear his sobs catch in his throat. He sounds like the Golden Reaper from my visions, the voice I hear from time to time—a croaking death-rattle. But he’s no reaper. Just a man.
I glance at Gene. He’s walking toward the girl now. The mother is done, slumped in blood. The husband finally dares to lift his head, and when he does, he sees what we did.
His wife’s belly is torn and punctured. Blue blood pools around her. There’s so much of it that there’s no chance she’d survive even with help. He wails when he sees it, an inhuman sound ripped straight from his gut.
He tries to crawl forward. Tries to reach her. His tears drip from his chin to the filthy floor.
He did this. They all did. He reaped the rewards of selling people like me, of seeing us chained, of watching Ren die. And now he’s too slow, too fat to save the only things he claims to love.
Gene doesn’t hesitate. He reaches the girl, and she’s frozen, eyes wide. She makes a tiny, pitiful sound, like a trapped mouse, but Gene doesn’t say a word. He raises his fist and brings it down on her head.
Once. Twice. Three times.