Page 8 of Cruel Vows
With a grunt of frustration and a slight rebel yell, I launched myself at him, toppling him to the ground, relishing the stuck pig noises he made as he writhed beneath me. I brought the cleaver's handle down on his temple, laughing as he brought up those meaty fists of his in an attempt to block my blows. He could have easily put hands on me to stop me, could have wrestled the knife from my grip, but instead, he relished the cuts and scrapes I offered him, only hoping to ward off the deadliest of blows.
His cock hardened underneath me, and my lips turned down in disgust but twitched at the edges at his plight.
"That poor thing is so unimpressive I feel bad for laughing."
Rage filled his features, flooding his body with adrenaline as I cackled at his embarrassment and shame. I was ready for his next move, though, and easily dodged the incoming fist. He growled and snarled like a rabid dog, but I had a few legs up on him, and with a final squeak of conquest, I threw him back and tossed the blade aside, my hands going for his ears. The whites of his eyes roiled as I lifted him by the ears, slamming his head against the tile. Still he fought me, so I switched to dirtier tactics, shoving my thumbs in his eyes with a wetsquelch.
The screams that left him as I lifted him again and slammed him back down, painted now with the blood and liquefied eyeball as my war cries echoed off the silent hallway, were soulful and agonized and filled me with a sick sort of glee. I would make an example of this cretin, one these fuckers in hereweren't likely to forget any time soon. He was still alive, though, and I hadn't given him the comeuppance he deserved. I left him there, writhing on the floor, crying and clutching his head as blood pooled beneath him, so I could retrieve my trusty cleaver, and then, with a twisted sense of justice, I yanked his pants open and chopped his cock clean off.
The sounds that escaped him weren't human.
Chopping a man's dick off was really quite satisfying, too. Especially when he'd knowingly used it to defile an innocent. Karma was coming back to bite him in the ass, and it felt phenomenal to be her instrument of death.
I stuffed the offensive appendage in his mouth and watched him suffocate on it, the life draining from his body as he shuddered his last breath.
And then I turned to Jack, rising off the now-silent body of former guild member Angus O'Leary, lifting the cleaver off the floor out of his puddle of blood as I went.
"Jack, be nimble, Jack, be quick. You think you can escape me, but you'd be wrong, prick."
SIX
LILLY ST. CLAIR
Cleaningup the mess left behind from the murder of the girl and two guild members had been time-consuming and irritating. I used my poor fucking cleaver to chop through the corpses, singing Christmas Carols under my breath as I went, oblivious to the audience I'd drawn with my noisy cleanup job. Some of the nosier guild members came, spotted my mood from a mile away, and promptly walked right the fuck off in the other direction. They knew well enough that with the attitude I was sporting right now, it would be wise not to irritate me further.
None of them offered to help me, either. Also not surprising.
Three hours it took me to dismember and relocate three bodies, hauling them to the truck I kept in the back garage for just such an occasion. Nobody would miss these two cretins, but someone would probably miss the girl. She was too well-cared for to be homeless or a vagrant, and she was too pretty to be a runaway. Runaways didn't have bleached blonde hair maintained this well. Runaways didn't have manicured nails.
And she didn't look used. She wasdefinitelynot a streetwalker.
I dumped the guys in the fucking swamps, counting on the gators to take care of any evidence left on their bones. Fromeach man, I kept a souvenir—Jack's rings, which he'd been so proud of, slipping them off his wealthier targets before he took their lives; and Angus's belt buckle, the only thing about the man that hadn't been appalling, thanks to the multitude of legitimate, high-quality jewels in its' metal embrace.
And then I tied the bags holding the remains of the dead girl to some concrete bricks, shoved her off the end of the pier in the river, and prayed the holes I'd made in her lungs would be enough to keep her from swelling and rising to the surface.
A week went by,Christmas behind us for no more than a few days, when I woke to the sound of insistent knocking on my fucking front doors. There was no time to get dressed or run a brush through my hair, and with a groan, I rolled out of bed, threw on a robe and some fuzzy pink slippers one of the girls had thought was a hilarious joke, and yanked the door wide open.
And my mood instantly soured.
Standing at my suite door was none other than the police chief of Port Wylde, shadowed by an ex of mine—Keehn McCoy. He wore a sour expression on an otherwise handsome face, one hand on the butt of his pistol, the other picking absently at his teeth. We'd dated when I first started getting in trouble, and when I rose to the ranks of leader of this fucking hodgepodge of killers, he and I had split because he'd finally realized I didn't plan to let him turn me into some homey housewife. I had a job to do in this town, and since the police couldn't reach the corners and heights we could, it was up to my merry men—and women—to clean it up for them.
They could take all the credit; most of us were used to operating in the shadows for far longer than Keehn had been alive.
His smug sense of superiority had been part of what I hated about him. There wasn't much to love, but boy, did I admire that fucking monster between his legs. He could ruin your life with that dick, and the only downside to leaving him was losing that sore feeling between my legs every night. I relished the pain when he'd brought such pleasure with it.
Now, I was flying solo most nights. By choice, not by necessity.
I leaned against the left side of my doorjamb and frowned as menacingly as I could, trying hard to stifle the inherent instinct to smooth out my hair and make myself more presentable. To keep my hands from doing just that, I crossed the fuckers and tucked them under my armpits.
"What the fuck did I do to deserve such a wonderful wake-up call?"
Keehn grunted his displeasure; he'd always hated my mouth. Unless, of course, it was around his dick. "You haven't changed a bit, have you, Lilly?"
My eyes narrowed at his little power play. "That's Miss St. Clair to you,officer."
His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and good lord, but I missed watching those eyes watch me. He wasn't good for me long-term, but I could appreciate a pretty man, and Keehn had looks in spades.
His captain cleared his throat and stepped forward. "Miss St. Clair, we were called to the scene of a body dumping this morning in the wee hours of dawn. Witnesses put your old, beat-up Chevy at the scene, and several traffic cameras have you tracked in the direction it would take to get there from here, at approximately the same time." His brows waggled pointedly,and I had to fight off a sudden fit of giggles when I realized how much they looked like caterpillars out of season. "I don't suppose you'd know anything about the half-eaten bodies we found in the mud?"
