Page 96 of Red Rabbit
He looked back at me and I pulled the trigger. There was no satisfaction in watching him fall. I had cared about him once. We went through some deep, dark shit together. But that man I knew was gone, replaced by something even more evil and depraved. It was better this way.
North grabbed a vial that I was sure was the only piece of glass not broken in this room and going over to Cooper’s body, took his knife and drew it across his throat, catching some in the vial and sealing it. He wiped it clean on his pants and then tossed it to me.
“Every hunter needs a trophy. Take that back to our girl.”
“Our girl?”
He stood up and fixed me with a calculating look.
“You didn’t think I came here for justice and the good of mankind did you?”
I laughed. “Fair.”
Our reasons were the same. I could respect that.
“Don’t tell Kaelin,” North said. “I think she’s expecting us to be heroes.”
“I don’t think our girl is under any illusions that we’re good men.”
We looked at each other. I realized I didn’t mind sharing her with him. I wasn’t usually like that but I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d trust more with her life—besides me of course. While what he had done in the Warren was fucked up he’d taken care of her in there so if my girl wanted to spare him, I’d spare him.
“She seems partial to the villains,” North said dryly.
“I prefer antihero,” I said, moving towards the door.
“Funny, that’s what I always say.”
“All clear,” I said.
“Copy,” Ghost said. “Detonation in three—two—one—”
North and I were jogging through the trees outside the radius when the ground trembled beneath us. The rumbling got louder and when I turned I saw the forest in chaos as the ground roiled and sank. It was surprisingly anticlimactic and while the blast took seconds, the earth continued to settle and rumble for a few minutes afterwards, leaving a sink hole behind. We jogged into the staging area to the bustling activity of medics treating both the victims we pulled out and our men.
“You should probably get that looked at,” I said to North. His face was a bleeding mess but it didn’t look like it did too much damage.
“Hopefully it doesn’t spoil my good looks,” he said and winked at me before strolling off.
I stood in the middle of the busy staging area and a sense of relief flowed over me. With it came the aches and pains of my own injuries. None were serious, just a few cuts and scratches. My body would hurt everywhere tomorrow but that was to be expected and nothing I couldn’t endure.
It was over.
The Warren was gone.
Cooper was dead.
And all I wanted to do was see Kaelin.
39
GRAHAM
ONE MONTH LATER
When I broke into Kaelin’s studio, I was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of paintings. I wandered around, looking at them all. I found ones she hastily painted and I got the feeling she’d been trying to get her emotions out as fast as possible. Then there were others that were meticulously done. Every detail accounted for. So real they looked like photographs. Her two main mediums were charcoal and acrylic paints.
Most of the paintings were of the forest or animals but many of them were dark themes. Those were the ones I found hiding behind the rest where they sat in the shadows. I knew she didn’t want anyone to see them but I couldn’t help but feel my heart lurch at the emotional scenes she painted. One of them in particular stopped me in my tracks and I pulled it out and set it in the forefront of the pile. I stepped back to look at it and I suddenly found it hard to breathe.
It was of a woman, naked, huddled in a puddle of blood, crouched in on herself with her arms wrapped tightly around her battered body. Her hair fell over her face, obscuring those details. She had made it purposefully blurry there as though she didn’t want to claim the woman as herself. From the shadowsbehind the woman were multiple pairs of black hands with claw-like fingers reaching out of the darkness towards her. I stared at it until I found I wasn’t breathing properly and had to walk away. But that wasn’t the only one like it I found. There was an entire collection of what I can only describe as self portraits. It was all women in various stages of deep and dark emotional turmoil.
