SWNOVELS Vicious Hearts: Chapter 32
The driver looks unsure as we pull up in front of an especially seedy looking, dark building way out in East Brooklyn.
“Lady, whatever this is, I don’t think you should be going out—”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
I give him the cash for the ride and open the door.
“Sweetheart—”
“I’m not a sweetheart.”
I shut the door with a thunk and watch the cab pull a hasty U-turn and slip away into the night.
What the fuck are you doing?
I glance over to where Cillian’s GTO is parked and then peek down the side of the dark building in the direction I saw him head about four minutes ago.
Based on where we are, I’m willing to bet that my ragingly jealous ideas that Cillian’s going out to meet some other girl are probably very incorrect. But he’s here for a reason, and I’m not leaving until I find out why the fuck he’s been sneaking out so much late at night.
I have to know. I’ll go insane otherwise.
I creep down the side of the building. With every step, I frown as some kind of dull, quiet thwacking sound fills my ears. It gets louder the closer I get to the far corner of the building, and suddenly I shiver when the sound is punctuated by a cry of pain.
My head peeks around the corner of the building…
…And my world goes still.
Cillian is moving like some sort of demonic creature of the night. The man in front of him cries out as something glinting and metallic flashes in Cillian’s hand. When the geyser of red explodes out of the man’s throat, I gag, pulling back and retreating around the corner, slamming a hand over my mouth.
Holy fuck. Holy. FUCK.
I hear the dull thud of a dead body hitting the ground. Then another man’s snarl. Steeling myself, I peek around again, and my eyes go wide as I fully drink in the scene.
There are two bodies lying lifeless in rapidly-spreading puddles of blood. A third man groans, trying to claw and drag himself across the filthy ground, his legs broken and limp, trailing long streaks of red behind him.
Cillian grins like a maniac and hisses like an animal as a fourth man charges him, brandishing a baseball bat. In one fluid motion, Cillian catches it on the downswing, wrenches it out of the man’s hand, and then shoves the blade in his other hand up hard into the man’s belly.
Bile swirls in my stomach as I watch the man I’ve been sharing a bed and my body with jerk his arm violently. The man impaled on his knife chokes and gurgles as Cillian literally disem-fucking-bowels him right there in front of me.
Holy fucking Christ.
I whirl, trying to clamp my mouth shut. But there’s no stopping the vomit.
There’s no stopping the sound it makes, either.
I bend forward, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I go to peer around the corner again…
…and fucking scream when I come face to face with Cillian—grim, brandishing the knife in his hand, blood that clearly isn’t his soaking the front of his shirt. Dripping off his hands. Spattering his shoes.
Speckling his jaw.
“Una,” he chokes, his eyes flickering as the malevolence I just saw in them morphs into something more familiar but still cataclysmically furious. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I—I—!”
My eyes dart past him to the three dead men. To the fourth, who looks like he won’t last another five minutes.
“What the fuck—”
“This is who I am,” Cillian snarls viciously. I shudder, whimpering as he grabs the front of my hoodie and yanks me close to sneer down into my stricken, terrified face. “You want darkness, Una?! You think what’s inside you comes even close to resembling the poison in me?”
I quail under the snarled words and cold look.
“Here!”
I shudder when he shoves the hilt of the knife into my numb hands. Suddenly, he’s pulling me out of the shadows and over to the mayhem.
I’ve seen blood. I’ve seen death. My father made sure of both of those things. But this is…something else.
This is beyond horrific.
Cillian storms us over to the guy whimpering and dragging himself across the filthy ground, then yanks him up and shoves him back against the brick wall next to us.
“Please…” the man chokes and gurgles, his eyes pure terror as blood trickles from his mouth. “Please…don’t…”
“This is it, Una,” Cillian snarls.
I choke as he grabs my hand holding the knife and suddenly yanks it close to the man. The guy sobs as the point of the knife presses against his jugular, a hair’s breadth away from piercing the skin.
“Cillian…”
My pulse is roaring in my ears so loud it’s almost all I can hear. My vision tunnels, my skin crawls, and then all I see is me, Cillian, the man, and the knife in my hand that Cillian is pressing into the guy’s throat.
“This is my darkness, Una,” Cillian growls, making me shudder as he pushes the knife even harder.
Then, he lets go. My hands shake, but they don’t remove the knife.
“There. That’s the fucker who hurt you.”
I blanch, shivering as my head shakes side to side. “He’s not—”
“But he can be. He can be whatever monster won’t let you go.”
My world narrows to a point, until all I can see is Cillian’s bloody hand holding mine. And the knife, with the tip of it pressed against this man’s throat, just piercing the skin now.
“This piece of shit’s a murderer and a child rapist,” Cillian hisses. “So you can lose whatever guilt you might have.”
He leans close, his eyes stabbing into mine as my breath comes fast and shallow, my gaze locked on the prick of red just under the tip of the blade at the man’s throat.
“Do it,” Cillian snarls. “If you want to know the monster living in me, then fucking do—”
That’s when I break. I choke out a sob, my body shuddering and convulsing as the tears flood my face.
“I can’t!” I cry. “I can’t because I’m not you!”
I gasp the second I say it, my free hand slamming over my mouth as my eyes dart, horrified, to his.
But whatever devil was there before, snarling at me so full of viciousness and venom, all I see now is him—the Cillian I know.
“I know you’re not,” he murmurs softly, pulling my hand and the blade away from the dying man’s neck. “Come with me.”
I’m crying and shaking as he gently leads me away until I’m leaning against a brick wall about ten feet away.
“Wait here.”
“Wait, Cillian—”
Without blinking, Cillian whips around, strides back over to the pleading, screaming man, and grabs a fistful of his hair at the front. My eyes bulge in horror as he yanks the man’s head back. With one clean stroke, the blade slices open his larynx.
He does it all with the ease, practice, and nonchalance of ordering a turkey sandwich on rye.
Holy fuck.
Cillian drops to his haunches, neatly wiping the blade clean on the man’s shirt before he slips it back inside his own jacket—all while I debate if I’m going to run until I can’t run anymore.
That is, if I can even move at all.
Then he turns, and I’m pinned to the wall by those piercing green eyes. A wrenched sob escapes from my lips, and I flinch as he strides right up to me and suddenly grabs my chin in his hand, jamming me against the wall as he forces me to look at him.
“I—I won’t tell—”
“This is ME, Una,” he rasps darkly, his voice like steaming ice as his eyes eviscerate me. “This is the me no one needs to see. The me you don’t want to know.”
I’m still shaking with fear. But when I look into his eyes, even behind the monstrous mask twisting his face right now, I see him.
The Cillian I know.
“What if I do? Want to know that version of you, I mean?” I croak.
Cillian’s eyes narrow to mere slits. “Careful—”
“I asked you a question,” I spit, grabbing his wrist.
“And I told you to be ca—”
He flinches briefly when my hand reaches up and cups his face gently. I swallow, a tear tricking down my face as our eyes lock.
“I want to know you. All of you.”
“I promise you,” he growls. “You do not.”
“Try me.”
I shudder as his eyes burn with a green fire that both terrifies and captivates me.
That both scares me away and brings me running back for more, every time.
“You’ll regret this,” he murmurs.
“Let’s find out.”