Page 100 of Worse Than Wicked
I hate him.
I asked for help, and he laughed in my face.
He laughed when I told him what Mabel was doing. He probably thinks Baron will protect me. But he doesn’t know Mabel, how deep she got into us, infecting us with her toxic Darling blood that poisons everything like Black Widow venom. Everyone thinks Baron is immune, but he’s not.
I’m the only one who can stop her.
I stare at my phone, and then I make some calls.
You can stop her.
I don’t know who’s whispering to me now, if it’s me or Baron, the demon or Dad. He always wanted the Darlings gonefrom this town. My family forgot that. Crystal married one. Even Royal’s cozied up with them now. And Baron’s too far gone.
But I can do something. I can make Dad proud at last, something I never did in life.
I can make sure Mabel leaves and never comes back. I can make sure there’s nothing for her to come back to after she signs those papers.
I can make Baron leave too. I couldn’t save anyone from Baron, but I can save him from her.
The kid gets there with his truck filled with five-gallon containers a while later. He asks what they’re for, and I tell him to shut his mouth if he knows what’s good for him.
“If you’re smart, you were never here,” I tell him.
He looks at me funny, probably because I’m still fucking naked, but he helps me haul them onto the porch. I hand him all the cash in my wallet.
He looks at it, then back at me. “That’s not even enough for the gas!”
I grab my bag and tear it open, pawing through the clothes. I shove a bag of Alice into his hands—hundreds of pearls, maybe more. His eyes widen, and he takes off before I can change my mind. But I don’t need it anymore. I’m fucking done with all of it—murder, and Mabel, and Alice. I’m done with everything.
I uncap the first jug and inhale. The fumes feed the demon, wake him. He’s happy, thirsty, excited. I stand and slosh it over the floor, my open bag, Mabel’s bag by the stairs, Baron’s bag with his laptop where he looked for Blue and never found her. He probably never really tried. I hope he didn’t. No matter what he says, Baron doesn’t make mistakes. If he let her live, it’s because he couldn’t bear to kill her.
He won’t be able to kill me either. And I can’t kill him.
But one of us has to go, to make her happy.
I back through the room, then the living room. I stop and drink a beer. The fumes are making me sick. I take the next one, open it, and go to the top of the stairs. I watch it flow down like a waterfall. My eyes are watering, but I don’t know if it’s the fumes or if I got gasoline in them. I take out my contacts and put on my glasses and keep working.
When I’m done, I lie down on the bed. My stomach is churning, and my limbs are buzzing but limp, as if I drained my own lifeblood. In a way, I did.
For them, for all of them, I bled myself dry. It was never enough. But maybe this is.
When people talk about love, they make it sound like this great thing. They say you never forget your first love. That love makes life worth living. That it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.
They’re right about one thing. I will never forget my first love as long as I live. I won’t forget my second love, either—the brother of my beloved, my monster.
I’ll never forget the way they became fuel for my nightmares. They dragged me to the depths of hell and made me confront the twin faces of evil.Their faces.
Loving them didn’t give me a reason to live.
It gave me a reason to die.
I hate them both. Not because they can’t give me what I want, but because they won’t. They refuse. They will always be there, reminding me of my worst days, my worst self. They will never forgive, never let me forget. I can’t undo what I’ve done. All I can do to make it better for any of them, is to be gone. I have to stop fucking up, to stop hurting people. And there’s only one way to guarantee I’ll never do that again.
I take out a pack of matches from the drawer beside the bed. I want a cigarette, but I left them downstairs, and it’s too much work to go down. I think about how bright I’ll burn out.How the last thing I see will be fire, how it will consume me from the outside like the demon has been consuming me from the inside.
Do it,he whispers.It’s the last thing you have to do.
I believe in you, Colt whispers.
