Her eyes are the brightest blue, and in this moment, full of fucking horror. My hand around her throat feels good, and so does the way she scratches at me, struggling beneath my body.
So much bigger than hers.
There’s nothing she can do to get me off of her.
But there’re a few things she can do to get me off.
“Look at me, bitch.”
She swallows beneath my hand, her face slowly turning pink, tears welling up behind those ocean eyes as she averts her gaze. She’s the ugliest one between the two of them, but her eyes are hard to look away from. Especially when they’re full of so much goddamn pain.
Reluctantly, she stares up at me, stilling beneath me, her nails still dug into my forearm. My hand starts to shake around her throat, and another wave of rage crashes over me, my adrenaline spiking all over again.
I try to tame it back, try to draw this out.
I smile down at her, my knees on either side of her hips, one hand planted beside her head.
Glancing past her, I see her father trying to crawl to her. Crawl to me. But I broke his fucking legs, and that pain renders him nearly mute, small whimpers clawing their way up his fucking throat like his bones are piercing their way through his pant leg.
The smell of iron and gasoline is sharp down here in the basement, and I can almost taste the fucking fear. This girl’s mother and her sister are dead now, naked and on their backs just past her father, in a dark corner of the basement, lit only by the light spilling down the stairs.
I’ve lived in this darkness for two weeks.
And it’s not the first time.
My throat tightens as my grip loosens on the girl beneath me and I close my eyes tight, breathing in and out through my nose, trying to keep it together.
“Jeremiah,” her father croaks out, and I know he’s almost gone. He won’t make it over here in time to save his daughter because he’s got a goddamn bullet lodged somewhere near his heart, but he’s going to watch me fucking defile her.
It’s the least he could do.
My stomach growls, hunger groaning through me painfully. I take a sharp breath in, forcing back the feeling. The ache.
“Jeremiah,” my sister whispers beneath me, “I’m so sorry.”
My eyes fly open with those words, surprise steeling through me. She rarely spoke to me, save for one thing. One thing she said over and over, and I’ve known her since I was eight. Nearly a fucking decade. I tighten my fingers around her throat and reposition myself between her thighs. She’s wearing a white dress like she’s a fucking angel, but we both know that isn’t true. I’m going to stain it with red to show her just what she really is.
A demon, like the rest of them. Like what they forced me to be.
“Why didn’t you help me?” I ask her, and I hate that the words come up at all. I hate that I’m asking. That I want an answer. I jerk my head toward her father, still struggling to get to us, to her. My throat is so fucking dry from dehydration, I don’t know how I manage to get my next words out, but I do, because my hand is shaking around her throat and it won’t be long before I eat her a-fucking-live. “He never loved you.”
A crease forms between her brows, her fingers loosening on my forearm.
“They never fucking loved you. Why didn’t you help me?” My words are jagged, hoarse, and I close my eyes again as I lean down toward her, pressing my forehead to hers. “You could’ve saved me. You could’ve…”
She lets go of my forearm, brings her small hands to my back, almost as if she’s holding me close. As if she wants to comfort me, when I’m about to kill her.
“Sicher,” she whispers, her breath soft against my dry, cracked lips. “Sicher.”
My heart twists with that one word. The only word she ever consistently spoke to me, all these fucking years.
“Sicher,” she says again, choking on it, and as I open my eyes to meet hers, I see the tears pouring down her face, her nostrils flaring as she chokes up. “Sicher.”
A lie.
It was always a fucking lie.
I pull my head back to take her in, feel her pulse point flying beneath my index finger, but she doesn’t stop hugging me. Doesn’t stop holding my gaze.