Page 2 of Beautiful Sinners

Rage burns my vision as I launch myself at the green-eyed man. Everything becomes pure instinct when my training takes over as primal energy crackles through me with unstoppable force. Muscle memory flares to life and manifests into a wild, deranged violence that I unleash upon the intruder. My only coherent thought is to protect my parents. It pulses like a siren in my brain, blocking out everything else.

Kill them all.

“Fuck!” the guy shouts just as I wrench his arm to the side when his finger pulls the trigger. I don’t react to the loud bang when it discharges near my ear or the heat that burns my left hand when I grab the barrel.

With an animalistic savagery, my fist punches into the underside of his arm, and he releases the gun completely when his hand goes numb. There is no mercy in my gaze as I turn the gun in my hand, point it at his chest, and fire. Point-blank range to the sweet spot straight through his heart. Thick bloody droplets shower down on me, decorating my pale skin with its sticky warmth.

“Aoife, move!”

I drop and roll just as a blur flies by me when Papa barrels into the second man. They crash over the small coffee table and tumble to the floor with a jolting thud. Mama whimpers as she pulls herself into a sitting position with her back against the wall. There’s so much blood, her clothes are drenched in it.

I don’t have time to go and help Papa because another man runs into the room. He must have come in through the back door. He hears Mama’s raspy cry and turns toward her, a sick smile spreading across his face.

Kill them all.

Thigh and calf muscles bunch like spring-loaded coils, then release as I run at the man. Falling to the floor, I elongate my thin body and slide between his legs, grabbing at his right ankle. My momentum pulls him off his feet, and he timbers like a tree to the floor. There’s a satisfying crunch of bone when he slams face-first onto the hard wood. My body collides with the baseboard, and I use my legs to kick off it and scramble up. I grapple onto the man’s back in an instant.

His head explodes like a gory piñata when I pull the trigger, and his legs and arms twitch violently for a few seconds as phantom electrical signals from what remains of his mind fight to communicate with his corpse.

Holding the large, heavy pistol with a steady, white-knuckled grip, I take merciless strides toward my father and his assailant. Papa lets the man pin him to the floor, which gives me a clear and unobstructed line of sight to unload the rest of the magazine into his skull. The man becomes dead weight and collapses forward on top of Papa.

Our gazes meet across the carnage and pride fills my father’s eyes. That pride quickly transforms into a warning that comes too late.

My father’s enraged shout disintegrates in my ears as pain detonates across the back of my head and dark oblivion quickly follows.

I’m not here.

I’m not here.

I’m not here.

I am no one.

The scream that fills my ears is unworldly, like the gates of hell have opened up, letting loose the demons to rip flesh from human bone. My hands grip the sides of my head until it feels like I’m trying to crush in my own skull.

Block out the sounds.

Block out the screams.

But the screams are coming from me. And they won’t stop.

“Shut the fuck up!” the man snarls in my face, his spit splashing across my nose and mouth.

A harsh hand grips my long hair and wrenches my head back. I couldn’t look anymore as the man, the other one with a jagged red line down the left side of his face, defiled my mother in the cruelest of ways.

When my eyes find her again, her body is unnaturally contorted, bent at an odd angle on the living room’s red floral Château rug. Her head is turned in my direction, her once beautiful, clover-green irises are black, like a doll’s soulless eyes. I think she’s dead.

They already killed Papa. They killed him first. And I’m next.

Because the Society demands it. That’s what the guy with the constellations drawn on his neck said right before he shot my father in the head.

A strange odor, both acrid and sweet, assaults my nose, but I’m not able to process it over the searing pain of the knife being shoved in my side. The pain comes again and again, each time hurting a little less until there’s no pain at all.

A whoosh whispers in my ear as a bright light erupts behind my closed eyelids. Heat scorches all around me, tiny licks of fire dancing across my body like magical forest sprites.

I wonder if I’ll become a phoenix once the fire burns me to ash, like the one in the story Papa reads to me at bedtime. I’d like that. I’d like to be able to spread my wings and fly.

I feel like I’m flying now. Higher and higher toward a bright light. It’s beautiful. Peaceful. I am the phoenix.

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