Page 8 of Like Grim Death: Part One
Suddenly, I feel very differently than I did a moment ago. It’s like I’m a little high, which is something I’ve been struggling withnotbeing for months now.
Diapers and bottles and lullabies. Coming off of coke, and desperately craving it. Sleepless nights and a despondent wife struggling with the realities of a child.
I’m not dealing with any of that right now.
Tonight, I’m not a father.
Tonight,I’m a fucking demon.
“By your hand…” A voice in my ear. I know this one very well.Intimately.I turn my head, looking over my shoulder. The candelabras glow over the sharp planes of Mav’s face, most of him hidden by the robe’s hood over his head, but his pale blue eyes are alight, locked onto mine. He looks for a moment as if he’s searching for something in my gaze.
For a second, I think of all we’ve been through together. My mouth on his. His body on top of mine. The way he hasalwayshad my back.
I think of loyalty to the grave. Bones buried with secrets.
It’s this.It’s him.
Then he reaches around me and puts something in my hand. It’s leather and solid and I know it instantly as the hilt of a knife when my fingertips graze the leather handle. My wife carries so many around, I’d recognize the feel of them in any room, darkened for ritual or not.
“He is ours.” Mav whispers the words, his lips an inch from mine. I can smell his breath, clean, like mint, tinged with the softest herbal scent of marijuana.
I close my fingers around the grip of the knife. He releases it, then covers his hand with my own, holding onto me. His touch is cold even through the fabric of my gloves, and we don’t look away from one another as silence fills the room.
His jaw is clenched, his lips pressed together. His eyes dip down to my mouth, and it seems as if he might say something else. Something beyond the standard initiation lines. But a second passes and he releases me, retreating into the darkness, the line of eleven standing around me.
Thirteen people breathing in this room, minus the pianist.
But that number might dwindle very soon.
I swallow the sudden knot in my throat. Now is not the time to grow a fucking conscience or consider what Maverick’s lingering gaze means.
I turn to the person in the body bag at my feet. Heavy, nearly opaque plastic, yet the man—and it must be a man, because this is the 6 after all, and just like the mafia, they’ve made zero strides toward inclusivity because it’s the very thing they fight against—is sitting up.
The light from the flames flicker over the curve of his head, his shoulders, and I think his arms are behind his back, from what I can see. He’s dressed all in black. Perhaps a plain black robe of his own, without the silver snake on the hood, or the purple skull.
He won’t have that yet.
But maybe, for reasons I don’t understand, when I’m done with him, he will.
Maybe.If he survives.
He shuffles a little, a movement which gets him nowhere, only succeeding in rumpling the bag. He’s awake. Drugged, likely, and bound with a gag to save us all the annoyance of hearing him beg and plead. Although if he’s 6 material like my uncles seem to believe he is, he’d do none of that.
Then again, a knife through muscle hurts no matter who the fuck you are.
I squat down on one knee, the other bent as I rest my wrist on it, twirling the knife between my fingers.
There’s quiet around us all, and I can’t even hear my heart beating. It’s steady in my chest.
I was born from evil, bred in darkness, baptized in cruelty.
I am Lucifer fucking Malikov, and I was created to do this.
My blood warms, and I think of my stepmother again. My father’s blind eye, the smirk on his face when I told him. His taunts. Hits. Bruises.
A rope around my throat. Spinning in a dark forest. Shadowy memories that never become opaque.
Lilith fucking a man who haunted my childhood, a man whose very existence mocked me with all the ways my life could get that much fuckingworse.
