And it’s true.
I am.
“Bernadette.” I hear my name being called from the shadows of the trees and my blood runs cold. It’s fucking Kali. She must know that there’s no hope for her, not anymore. She must know that she’s going to die.
My hands tighten into fists as Hael releases his hold on my mouth. He doesn’t, however, release the arm around my neck. With good reason, too. He must feel the way I’m trembling, must sense the violence in my veins. It percolates through me, a feud in need of an abrupt ending, a destiny begging to be shrouded in blood.
Kali Rose has lost. It’s over. I just need to go in for the killing blow; I just need to finish it.
“Bernie,” she coos again, but Hael keeps me close against him. I can hear his heart thundering like crazy behind me, but as we wait there in the dark and the cold, the distant edge of metal music making its way to us, he slows his breathing until it seems like he’s holding it. But no, Hael’s just a predator lying in wait. “I gotta say, I can understand why you forgave Aaron.” A pause. She sounds a bit louder now, like she’s moving closer. “Why you took him back. That cock is legendary.” Her laugh echoes through the trees, and I decide then that she’s much worse than I even imagined.
A liar, a cheater, a thief, yes. But a sociopath? That’s a new one. Good work, Kali, you managed to surprise even me, and I’m not so easily surprised. The one female rapist in the entire county and I managed to get on her bad side.
I grit my teeth so hard that my jaw aches.
“Keep it together, Blackbird,” Hael murmurs against my ear, stoking the fire burning in my belly. The beast inside of me writhes, mixed up in a dark space between love and hate. I love Hael. I hate Kali. The intensity levels are hard to separate. I feel both violent and horny at the same time.
“He didn’t seem to mind it either, me riding him into oblivion,” she muses, and a branch snaps nearby.
Hael shoves me forward so hard that I stumble, my knees hitting the dirt. And then he’s on this guy who’s dressed in all black and wearing a mask like covid-19 is making a comeback. I manage to get my feet just as I see Kali emerge from the edge of the trees.
Our eyes meet, and we both know that it’s time.
There’s no hesitation as she raises a gun with both hands and fires at me. She’s a crappy shot though, so the bullet lodges itself into the old wood of the playground structure instead. Kali fires off a second round as I take off, using the play equipment for cover. I go for Hael first because, like I said, I’ve finally realized what’s truly important, and it isn’t vengeance. It’s motherfucking family.
But then Kali aims at Hael instead, and my vision goes red.
I fire my own weapon at her, emptying the magazine as she ducks back into the trees and I follow after. I know that I probably shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself. We need to find Aaron. This might be my one and only chance to see what Kali really knows.
Bare feet pounding across the dirt, I take off in that stupid pink dress, running full tilt into the trees. Kali is expecting me. She appears from behind a wide trunk, gun in hand, but I’m moving too fast and she just isn’t good enough with that gun to get me before I slam into her.
We tumble into the bushes together, my pink flouncy skirts catching on blackberry thorns and tearing as we hit the ground hard. Kali lets out a grunt, her clawed hands scrabbling at me as I struggle to get my gun pressed to her skull. It’s empty, but she doesn’t know that.
“Where the fuck is Aaron?” I growl, and she laughs at me, actually laughs at me when I have a gun to her head.
“Like I’d tell you shit. You’re going to kill me either way.” Kali reaches up and curls her hand around the gun, forcing my finger to pull the trigger. The empty click makes her laugh, but I just pull back and pistol-whip her for the second time that night. She takes the opportunity to pull a knife on me, shoving the blade into my side before I can react. “You think you’re such a good person, Bernadette. It’s sad. You’re just as ugly and broken as the rest of us.”
Pain washes over me in a scalding wave as I choke and drop the empty pistol to the dirt. It suddenly feels like I can’t breathe, but I force my body to do it anyway and shudder with the effort. My hand grasps for the knife, fingers turning sticky with blood.
Kali wrenches the knife out as my mind explodes into splotches of white. I’ve never felt such pain before, but I can’t lose to her, this pathetic copycat. This nobody. She’s stolen from me for the last time; I will not let her have Aaron.
I will not let her win.
My bloody fingers wrap her wrist as she tries to stab me again. Not only do I have the advantage of gravity, but I’m also much, much stronger.
I’m also bleeding like fucking crazy.
But I can’t let things end this way.
I can’t let any of these sad, sorry, wretched people get to me.
Coraleigh was a bully with a narcissist complex. She was nothing; she died like nothing. Like a side character whose story was never all that interesting to begin with. Eric and his father were monsters, so they were put in the ground where they belong. The Thing … the beast responsible for taking away the most important person in my life, he was left to die alone in the dark.
I won’t let these people make me feel like shit, not anymore. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Well, guess what? I don’t consent to this shit, not anymore.
I manage to get the knife from Kali at about the same time that she shoves me off of her and into the blackberry bushes. I’m on my feet, quick. Too quick, maybe, because everything is spinning. When I look down, I see the pink dress is now almost entirely red. Crimson. Shrouded in death.
I look back up.
Kali swipes at her mouth with her hand, circling me. I keep her in my sights as she moves, her little mind working as those tiny, vicious eyes of hers narrow with spite. I briefly consider taking out my own knife, the one strapped to my thigh, but wielding a single blade is hard enough. Having two won’t help me.
“I wish I could describe the look of bliss on Aaron’s face when I sunk that big dick of his into me,” she says, and I grit my teeth, fingers tightening around the hilt of the knife. When I slit her throat, that second bloody smile that opens up on her neck will mirror my own grin of triumph.
I never thought I’d be the sort of person who revels in bloodshed and pain, but life gave me both of those things in spades. My choice was to return it quid pro quo or let it consume me. I’ve chosen the former.
“You only wish you’d been able to snag a man like Aaron Fadler,” I tell her, standing up straight. Blood drip, drip, drops onto the leaves near my bare feet. I ignore it. Might pay for that later, but I’m too wrapped up in my own finale to pay attention to my fragile mortality. “And yet, here I am with not one, not two, but five men at my beck and call.” I lift the knife up for inspection, pressing a finger to the tip until a drop of ruby red wells up.
Kali has a poor estimation of self-worth, one framed by men with greedy hands and hungry lips. She craves attention and affection, even if it’s all bullshit, even if it’s bought with a tight, wet pussy and a face that’s just a tad on the young side. She sidled up to a pedophile because she was so greedy and desperate. She’s tried—on more than one occasion—to wear my skin like a suit.
Tonight, she pays for pushing too hard.
Some things break when you put too much pressure on them, but those shards they break into can be twice as deadly.
“You think I’m jealous that you’ve made a whore out of yourself?” Kali asks, but I just look up and smile at her through moonlight and bullshit. I’m worried about Hael, but only in the way that someone who’s just freshly fallen in love might feel. Of course I’m worried about him, but I know he can handle his own shit.
And me, I can handle mine.
“You can slut-shame me all you want, Kali. That’s okay. You’re a mean girl, that’s your identity. You’re a fucked-up narcissist with a troubled past. But I don’t make allowances for past wrongs; you are what you’ve become. And that, my dear, is nothing short of monstrous.”
Kali laughs, harsh and raucous, coming to a stop beside a sapling. It’s as skinny as she is, and just as likely to suffocate down here in the shadows of the larger trees. Some of them are over a hundred years old, just barely managing to escape the logger’s axe. In the last few years, wildfires have ravaged this area, creeping closer and closer to town. They’ve escaped that, too, but only by the grace of some unforgiving god.
Once, when one of the fires got really, really bad, and the entire eastern half of Springfield was told to evacuate, I came out here and put my feet in the stream. The sky was orange, and the ash fell like snow. I could smell the charred remains of the forest, the remnants of broken, shattered lives.
And I was surprised to find that, despite the fact that I’d never been so close to a fire before, I recognized that smell. It’d been a near permanent fixture of my life for years.
“You are so fucking full of yourself!” Kali shouts at me, her voice breaking just a little. In the moonlight like this, her eighties-inspired makeup doesn’t seem quite so dark, quite so harsh. She looks less like a woman of the night and more like a fragile, lost, little girl.
Some strange part of me wishes I could help her.
The rest of me knows that sometimes people are wicked, through and through.
Kali is one of those people.
Coraleigh, on the other hand … she was merely pathetic. She hurt people because that was the only way she could ever feel powerful, the only way she could take control. She was never truly wicked; she wasn’t strong enough for that. She was just a blind sheep in a bad flock.
Kali is a whole different animal.
“Full of myself?” I echo as she steps toward me, her green party dress catching the light. It looks awful on her. It clings in all the wrong places, emphasizing the bony structure of her body. If she really is pregnant, then she isn’t showing.