finger against the middle of my chest. “If you hate him, you will get in that car. If you love him, you will understand that his work here is too important, and you create for him both a liability and a distraction, and you will get in that car.”
“I-I…” My words trail off. If there is one thing Baron taught me, it’s not to speak until you know what you’re going to say.
Except I still don’t know what I’m going to say.
This is everything I wanted. I’ve spent the entire time here trying to find out if there is a place that’s better than this, better than the carnival, better than a constant cycle of being used and played with at the behest of men.
And now I know there is.
All I have to do is get in that car.
But something is stopping me, and I know exactly what it is. An enormous figure in a terrifying mask that has never made me feel so wanted. So needed. So frightened and euphoric.
And now I know he’s not wholly the monster I thought he was. There is good in there, buried under twisted layers of deception and trickery.
“I don’t think I can leave him,” I tell her. “I don’t think I want to.”
Celeste lets out a sigh. “What is one person’s wants in comparison with the ashes of the world?”
The woman makes a point, but she misses one key detail.
I’m not only one person anymore.
30
Baron
The sun doesn’t have long left in the sky, the chance of a clean shot setting with it. Not that a clean shot is always easy with this godforsaken mask covering my face, but still. It’s damn near impossible in the dark.
“We should call it a night,” Andrei shouts from the tree line. He has to shout because the wind is blasting the trees into a hundred thousand leaves.
I spin around to face him and shake my head.
Not yet.
We’ve only made three kills, losing two of them to the dogs before we could catch up. I like to keep the dogs hungry when I know there’s a car bound for the port.
And three kills aren’t enough.
Three is abnormally low.
Three either means that the fences I have slashed across my part of the island have suddenly become impregnable, or it means we haven’t found all the rats yet.
If I was a gambling man, I’d bet my part of the island on the latter.
And I don’t like rats scuttling around my part. Especially on a night like this one.
Andrei trudges over, every step exaggerated because of the thigh-high grass that’ll soon fade away with the autumn. These hunts are always easier in winter. More enjoyable too, even with the cold. Far fewer places to hide when everything is coated in snow, and there’s nothing like seeing dark crimson seeping into pure, untouched white.
It only adds to the amusement, in my humble opinion.
Andrei’s surrounded by our newest litter of pups, whistling occasionally when one takes it upon himself to go for a wander. There was a runt in this litter, a blue female who’ll probably never have enough stamina to keep up with the pack, but I brought her along regardless. It’s important to expose them—like humans—to all sorts when they’re young and impressionable. Doubly so when they’ll grow up to be one-hundred pounds of sheer muscle. Even a runt Cane Corso is still a Cane Corso, and it’ll knock you off your feet if it grows up to be skittish at the sound of a gunshot.
I reach down into the grass and pick her up, tucking the little thing under my arm while I rest my rifle on my shoulder.
“There should be more.”
“Might be on the other side tonight,” Andrei suggests with a shrug. “There’s a storm coming in, any man with wits would stay as far away from the coast as possible.”
I let out a hollow laugh. “You’re presuming these men have wits.”
“I sent six of our own down to the quarry and told them not to stop until they reached the road. For all we know, they might have caught twenty.”
I start walking parallel to the road, and Andrei falls into step beside me, the dogs bouncing around at our ankles. If they knew I couldn’t see a fucking thing other than what was directly in front of my face, they’d think twice about that. I’m going to end up stepping on one of the little shits. “True. Still, I want to be sure.”
Before I’ve finished my sentence,