Page 77 of Turn That River Red

I scream and slam forward, hitting my head against thefloorboards. The world blinks. Distantly, I hear someone curse behind me.

“I told you to stay.” Ambrose’s hands are on my waist again, pulling me up. “I didn’t want to take the nail out until I had bandages.”

“You’re going to eat him,” I whisper, tears streaming down my cheeks.

Ambrose situates me on the couch and puts his attention on my foot. “This is going to hurt,” he says, right before he pulls the nail out.

I scream. The pain is so much more blinding, so much more sudden, than I was expecting, even with the warning and even with my frenzied grief. But it only lasts a second. Ambrose presses a pad of gauze against my sole, stopping the blood.

“I need to clean this and hope for the best.” He peers up at me. “I’m guessing you’ve never had a tetanus shot.”

“What do you care?” I try to kick my leg into his face, but his arms flex, pinning me in place.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he snaps, “and I don’t want you to die some other way, either. Hold still.”

“Did Raulhold still?” I snarl at him. The question surprises me. Mostly because I don’t actually want him to answer.

Ambrose dabs the blood away from my foot, then rubs a smear of antiseptic across the wound, the cream cool and burning all at once. I gasp a little, sliding back into the couch.

“Stings, doesn’t it?” he says amicably.

“You’re acannibal.”

“I know.” He wraps clean gauze around my foot, securing it with tape. Then he gently lowers my foot to the ground, his hands still wrapped loosely around my ankle. I’m terrified and sickened and I hatehim, but the way he’s touching me reminds me of our time together at the Church of the Well, how he pried my legs open and kissed the pleasure into me.

“I told you, though,” he says. “I didn’t let him suffer.”

“What?”

“Raul.” Ambrose stands up, towering over me. “I severed his spine before I killed him. He didn’t feel anything.”

The low-simmering nausea in my stomach surges upward; I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to. The cup of coffee I drank before coming to the barn explodes out of me, splattering across Ambrose’s black cowboy boots.

I freeze, expecting him to attack me. To kill me like he did Raul. But instead, he pushes my hair away from my face and sidesteps the mess. “Let me get you some water,” he murmurs.

“I hate you.” Tears tremble through my lashes.

He doesn’t respond, just gets the water like he said. I know I shouldn’t, but I drink it, telling myself I want to wash the taste out of my mouth. Ambrose disappears again and comes back with an old towel that he drapes across my mess. “I’ll clean it up later,” he says, sinking down on the couch beside me.

I instinctually recoil from him.

“I didn’t mean for you to find that,” he says, after a few moments of agonizing silence. “I should have locked the barn door.”

“You shouldn’tkillpeople,” I hiss.

Ambrose laughs darkly. “Well, humanita, I’m afraid that’s non-negotiable. I never claimed to be anything but a monster.” He turns toward me. “But I could have done more to protect you from my, ah, darker urges.”

I glare at him. “Why do you care?”

Something flickers across his face—a kind of discomfort. “Because I care for you,” he says stiffly. “Against my better judgment.”

My heart flutters at that, as if it still doesn’t understand what Ambrose is.

“If you care for me so much, then let me go.”

As soon as I say it, I’m not sure that’s even what I want. But how can that not be what I want? He’s a killer and a cannibal.He has a barn clearly designed to torture people. He covered me in his blood and then licked it away.

And you liked it.

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