“I don’t use a knife,” he says, giving me that blinding white smile, bracketed on both sides by boyish dimples. “Why would I need one, when I’ve got fingernails and teeth? I’m gonna rip you apart with my bare hands. That’s what I like Mara—I like the taste of your throat tearing against my tongue. I like the feel of your eyeballs giving way under my thumbs. I want to feel you breaking, cracking, ripping. I want your warm blood pumping down my arms.”
I’m so afraid that I’ve passed right through to the other side.
A deathly clarity settles over me.
This is it. This is the end.
Whatever happens, I won’t give in. If he kills me, I’m going to take some pieces of Shaw with me.
I slip out of my heavy coat, letting it fall behind me. Allowing the soft flakes of snow to settle in my hair and on my bare shoulders. Feeling their cool kiss one last time.
“You tried to murder me before,” I tell Shaw. “As a killer and an artist … you’re mediocre.”
Shaw’s upper lip twists from a grin into a snarl. His teeth clench so hard I can almost hear them cracking, and his fists shake. With a howl, he charges down the alley.
He’s running right at me, getting bigger and bigger, until his shoulders almost touch both walls.
He’s a wrecking ball swinging right at me. There’s nowhere to run.
Out of a passageway in the dark glass, Cole barrels into Shaw, diving at his legs, sending them both tumbling end over end, until they slam into the opposite wall.
There is no strategy. There is no plan.
Cole is already gasping and sweating and bleeding everywhere before the fight has even begun. He grapples with Shaw, no element of surprise on his side. From the second they make contact, it’s a melee of madness: desperate, bloody, and brutal.
The men fight and claw, biting, punching, and kicking, rolling over and over in the snow. The ground becomes a morass of churned-up mud and bloody slush.
This is like no fight I’ve ever seen, wildly hectic, viciously brutal. I can hardly tell one man from another as they punch at each other’s throats and gouge at each other’s eyes. This is how predators fight: not to win, but to kill.
Shaw is bigger, stronger. Cole is faster, but that’s of limited use now that they’re already on the ground. Cole gave up all the advantage when he tackled Shaw, taking him down before he could plough into me.
Cole turns, wild-eyed, mouth bloody.
“Mara RUN!” he shouts.
I’ve never seen him scared. He thinks he’s going to lose. He thinks we’re both going to die.
I’ve been trapped in the dead end, pressed up against the cold glass, unable to move because the fight is too wild, I don’t know to help.
But now I know what to do.
I dart forward, leaping over the men’s churning legs, running away from them down the narrow passageway.
Shaw gives a strangled yell of range, thinking I’m escaping. Cole is silent, focused only on Shaw, keeping him right where he is.
So much snow has fallen that for a moment I can’t find it. Then I see the glint of steel, and I dive my frozen fingers down into the ice, closing my hand around the handle. I pull out the knife, already stained with Shaw’s blood.
My fingers are so cold that I can hardly feel them, but I grip the handle tight all the same.
“COLE!” I shout.
He gives me one swift look, and in that moment, the terrifying computer in his head runs a thousand calculations.
He rolls over onto his back, letting Shaw take the advantage straddling him, throttling him. Cole puts himself in the vulnerable position, Shaw’s hands around his throat.
With his own hands, Cole grips a fistful of Shaw’s hair and jerks it back, while shoving the heel of his palm against Shaw’s jaw, wrenching his head to the side, exposing his throat.
Our eyes meet. Everything that needs to be said passes between us.
I’m holding the knife, sharp as a fang, dark on its point like venom.
Shaw is the spider, but I’m the snake.
I never saw a spider kill a snake.
Sprinting forward, I raise the knife.
I slash it across Shaw’s throat in one perfect swinging arc.
Blood scythes across the snow, a parabola of crimson on the blank white canvas.
Shaw sinks to his knees, lips parting in stunned surprise.
He can’t even raise his hand to stem the flow.
The blood pumps from his throat, a fresh spurt with every heartbeat, each more vivid than the last.
I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.
I watch him die, the snow drifting down, his last breath hanging like smoke in the air before dissolving into nothingness.
He slumps over and falls. His body hits the ground, heavy and dull. Not a man anymore, or even a monster—just a sack of meat.
Cole rises from the ground.
He’s covered in Shaw’s blood and his own, his skin wetly gleaming in the moonlight.
I look at my own hands, drenched in blood. Droplets patter down on the pristine snow.
Then I look at Cole again, and his face breaks into a grin of relief.
Always Forever – Cults
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We run to each other, Cole sweeping me up in his arms. He spins me around, snow spiraling around us. He kisses me, his mouth warm and wet in the coldness, sweet and salty, with the taste of copper on his tongue.
Our breath mixes silvery between us. His wet hands slide over my skin, leaving red streaks vivid as paint.
He kisses and kisses me, both of us warm and alive, Shaw cooling on the ground.
Distantly, I hear the sound of sirens.
I don’t care who it is, or how long until they find us. I don’t care what happens when they do.
All I care about is Cole, and his arms wrapped tight around me.
He saved me, and I saved him. Not just from Shaw, but from everything else in this world that wants to destroy us—the demons outside, and the ones within.
I don’t need anyone else.
I just need one person to make me the center of their universe. I want to be two stars locked in orbit, burning bright in the blackness of space.
The snow reflects on the glossy black walls, thousands of flakes swirling all around us.
Cole whirls me around and around, his mouth locked on mine.
He presses me against a cold black wall, lifting the long, sparkling skirt of my gown up around my waist. I’m yanking at the waistband of his trousers, ripping off the button, pulling them open.
He thrusts inside of me, his cock blazing hot, our gasps puffing into the air, steam rising off our skin. The cold can’t touch me. I’m pure fire, burning and burning, but never consumed.
I’m floating outside my own body, watching us from a distance. I see us entwined, my legs around his waist, arms around his neck, his tongue in my mouth and his hands gripping me tight.
We’re wrapped together, twisted up. Not one snake but two, the black and the white.
We are the same.
And I like what we are.
20
Cole
I fuck Mara in the snow, in the cold, like she’s the only warmth in the universe, and I have to stay inside her to keep warm.
The scent of her skin fills my lungs, rich and alive.