Page 2 of Rogue

Ten years ago, he was a serial killer, who had just graduated from murdering prostitutes to preying on Catholic school girls before anyone but us knew he existed. We’d suspected he was finding his victims around our old high school, the Sacred Heart Academy. But we weren’t sure until he snatched our friend, Blade’s girlfriend Isabella.

We wanted to save her so we went after him. But he knew we were coming. He followed Angel into an abandoned movie theatre where she thought he was hiding. She never made it out of that theatre. I found her in a pool of her own blood on the stage, her beautiful face gone. Her life gone.

The cops believed us after that.

But Ghost was gone by then. He slinked into the shadows and never resurfaced again. Until Devil’s Nightmare MC did the impossible and found him in the middle of this desert. I just wish we had found him sooner, because he looks like he’s on his way out naturally.

The Santa Ana winds are picking up. This is where they originate from. And they’re telling me it’s time to go. Time to lay Angel to rest. Finally.

The two gold crucifixes, mine and Angel’s, that I always wear around my neck have been singing my skin all day even though they’re cool to the touch. That’s how I know we’re on the right path here.

“He’s alone, Rogue. No one’s anywhere near,” Blade says softly in his deep bass voice as the last of the sun’s light fades to blue. “Let’s go down and say hello.”

“Let’s,” I say and check that all my knives are where I put them before we came out here—one on my belt, one up my sleeve and another in my right boot. The one on my belt belonged to Angel. It has the Bleeding Heart carved into the handle. And it’s the one I will kill Ghost with.

Twilight has fallen, the sky painted in dark shades of indigo and orange as we walk across the sand to the small wooden shack Ghost calls home. It will burn well. He’s long since gone inside. The day is ending. His life is ending. A decade of regret, sorrow and pain is finally ending.

We spread out as we approach his home. Alice, Creed and Blade will make sure he doesn’t escape through any of the hut’s three small windows. I will walk in through the front door.

Yellow desert sand is swirling around us in the gusting wind, glowing in the day’s last light as we walk. I smell gasoline that’s wafting from the can Blade is carrying. But mostly I smell the fresh core of the Santa Ana wind. It whispers to me as it did on the day I buried Angel. Quieter and calmer now. Because I am about to give her the revenge I vowed I would one day give her.

The gate in the bent and broken fence surrounding the hut creaks as I slide it open.

And then there he is, standing in the doorway, only darkness behind him. And in his eyes as he grins at me, revealing a mouth full of missing teeth.

“You,” he says and chuckles. “I wondered when you’d come. You took your sweet time.”

“But I’m here now,” I tell him.

There’s always this strange cold that hangs around the most depraved killers and it’s hanging thick around Ghost. The desert heat rising from the ground can’t touch it. But fire and blood can.

“Well, you’ve come to kill an old, infirm man,” he says and steps outside, spreading his arms wide. “Hope it was worth the wait.”

“Not gonna lie,” I say and grin at him as I take out Angel’s knife. “I wish I’d gotten here sooner too. But this will do.”

The smell of gasoline grows stronger as Blade begins dousing the hut with it.

“Go ahead,” he says walking towards me, arms still spread wide. “Get your revenge for that pretty, bright-eyed girl of yours. End my life for hers. You’re not ending much.”

I already came to terms with that watching him all day. Perhaps living this sorry, sad, lonely existence in the desert heat,surrounded by sand and brittle rock, while he hid here, already took care of some of the revenge he’s owed. But I gave up that hope hours ago. He wanted to be here. He likes it here. Alone. Probably spends his days reminiscing on the good old days when he still had the strength to kill innocent young girls.

For years, I fantasized about all the ways I will kill this man when I found him. From gouging out his eyes and cutting off all that I could before sitting back and watching him bleed to death.

But that made sense to themeI used to be. The me who burned for revenge. All that fire has long since turned to sticky, black ash in my chest and in my blood. It has grown cold. Almost as cold as the air around him.

He’s a beast.

His own kind will take care of him better than I ever could.

I’ve long since stopped trying to get answers from killers like him. They have none. What they do only makes sense to them. It will never make sense to anyone else.

We’re done talking.

I stride towards him, stun him with a fist to the nose, hearing his satisfying yelp of pain as the bone crunches under my knuckles.

His knees crunch louder as I break those too.

His screams rent the air then.

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