CHAPTER NINE
The city had become a hunting ground where I was no longer the apex predator.
I was failing. The need to kill was a physical, agonizing itch under my skin, a static building in my skull. But she was always there first.
I stalked a man leaving a late-night diner. He fumbled for his keys under a flickering streetlamp. I moved from the shadows, my knife already in hand. A blur of black, a whisper of displaced air, and the man was on the ground, a blade in his throat, before I had taken two steps. The Clean Killer was gone.
I ran, frantic, to another neighborhood. A woman walking her dog. I measured the distance, the angle of attack. She was faster.
The woman and her dog were both dead in the alley before I even turned the corner.
It happened four more times. Each failure was a spike of adrenaline with no release, and I could feel, miles away, the corresponding spike of chaos in my home.
The house was vibrating. I knew it.
I finally got lucky. A young stockbroker, drunk, stumbling into a parking garage. I didn't wait. I didn't plan. I sprinted, fueled by sheer desperation, and tackled him. The kill was messy, brutal, and fast. As his body went limp, the static in my head quieted. One. Just one.
Back at home, Elara was watching Lily, who had been vibrating in the corner, her humming a low, discordant thrum. Suddenly, Lily went still. She looked up, smiled sweetly, and walked to her drawing table. She picked up a black crayon and a red one. She drew a tall building with a small, stick-figure man lying on the ground next to a car. The link.
The single kill bought me an hour. It wasn't enough. The pressure returned, the need magnified by the Quiet Man's hunger and my own boiling frustration. She was poaching my sacrifices. She was starving the beast, and my family was paying the price.
My target changed. It wasn't about the sacrifice anymore. It was about the rival. The Clean Killer.
I found a transient sleeping on a bench, a perfect, vulnerable target. I stepped into the open, my knife visible. I made noise. I was baiting the trap.
The air grew cold.
She moved from the darkness of a side street, a fluid shadow. She saw me, paused for a heartbeat, and then, ignoring me, moved to kill the transient. She saw me as an irrelevance.
I lunged. "You!"
The chase was immediate. She abandoned the kill and fled. She was impossibly fast, a parkour master, vaulting fences, scrambling up fire escapes, her movements precise and economical. I was stronger, but she was quicker, flowing over the urban landscape like water.
I followed her over a chain-link fence, across a rooftop, and down into a narrow alley. She was just a flicker of black cloth ahead. I pushed myself, my lungs burning, and dove, my fingers just brushing the back of her hoodie.
I had her.
My fingers closed on the fabric. She didn't slow. There was a shhhnk—the sound of a blade cutting fabric with surgical precision. She cut the part of her own jacket I was holding, and the momentum of my lunge sent me sprawling onto the wet pavement.
I was left holding a useless scrap of black cloth. She was gone.
"I will catch you," I serfed, pushing myself up. "I will catch you."
The vibration in the house had become a low-frequency earthquake. Books flew from the shelves, and a hairline crack snaked its way up the living room wall. Elara was huddled on the stairs, trying to get to her room, when Lily appeared at the bottom, blocking her path.
Lily's face was pale, her eyes vacant. "Mom. I'm hungry."
"Okay, baby," Elara stammered, trying to edge around her. "I'll... I'll get you a snack."
"Mom. I'm hungry." The voice was flat.
"Lily, please, just let me..."
"Mom. I'm hungry. Mom, I'm hungry!" Lily's voice began to rise. "MOM, I'M HUNGRY!"
She slammed her small fist onto the solid oak dining table. The wood didn't just break; it detonated, exploding into a cloud of fine ash and splintered fragments.
"MOM, I SAID I'M HUNGRY!"
Elara screamed and tried to bolt up the stairs. In a blur, Lily was in front of her, her small hand clamping around Elara's throat.
Elara was lifted from her feet, her back slamming against the wall. She gagged, clawing uselessly at Lily's iron grip.
"Lily... please..." Elara choked.
Lily's nails elongated, turning black and sharp, digging into Elara's skin. Blood welled up, trickling down her neck. Elara's face began to turn a deep, terrifying purple, her eyes bulging.
"You... didn't... feed me..." Lily whispered.
With Elara still in her grasp, Lily floated into the air. She burst straight through the ceiling, a rain of plaster and splintered lath crashing down. Elara screamed as they shot through the second floor, then through the attic, and finally burst through the roof into the night air.
They hovered high above the house, the rain lashing at them. Lily's voice was now a distorted, echoing chorus. "MOMMY, I'M HUNGRY! MOMMY, I'M HUNGRY!"
Elara was suffocating, her vision tunneling to a pinprick. She begged, but only a wet, gurgling sound escaped. Lily's grip tightened, her sharp nails slicing deeper.
Then, she let go.
Elara fell. She screamed, a raw sound of pure terror, flailing in the empty air. Her hand snagged, catching the metal bracket of the satellite dish on the side of the building. The impact was agonizing, nearly dislocating her shoulder, but she held on, dangling precariously three stories above the driveway.
Lily floated down, landing silently on the bracket beside her, her small feet balancing perfectly. Her white eyes glowed. "Naughty, Mommy."
As Lily reached a bloody hand toward her, Elara, acting on pure, primal terror, kicked out with both feet, slamming them into Lily's chest.
The impact was solid. Lily, light as a phantom, was knocked backward, her eyes wide with surprise. She fell, silent and straight, down, down, down.
She hit the concrete driveway with a sickening, definitive CRACK that echoed through the street. The ground around her fractured, a spiderweb of cracks radiating from her small, still form.
Elara sobbed, dangling from the bracket. She looked at the nearest window—her bedroom. She began to swing, her body aching, her throat raw. She swung back and forth, gaining momentum, until she finally crashed feet-first through the glass. She tumbled into the room, landing in a shower of broken shards, bleeding and broken, but alive.
She stood up gradually, panting and craving for air, she grabbed the jug and drank from it. She ran downstairs, looking for me.
"David! David, honey!" Her voice vibrating, mixture of fear and frustration. She couldn't find me. She opened the door and walked out. "David!"
Still nothing, she walked forward, avoiding the hold in the road that Lily made as she fell from the sky. She saw dead bodies and blood everywhere. The Clean killer's crimes "What is going on here? Where's David?" She said, whimpering.
The sirens were everywhere. The killing spree—hers, not mine—had finally triggered a full-scale response. Helicopters chopped the air, their spotlights cutting the darkness.
I found her again, in an industrial park, stalking a night watchman. This time, I didn't wait. I attacked from behind, a full-body tackle that sent us both sprawling.
The fight was brutal. She was all precise, technical skill; I was raw, desperate rage. She buried a thin blade into my side. I ignored it, landing a heavy fist to her jaw that sent her reeling. She recovered, slashing my arm open to the bone.
She was fast, ducking under my guard and driving her knife deep into my right shoulder. The blade stuck, the pain a white-hot explosion. She left it there.
I roared, grabbing her with my good arm. I used my own knife, a short, vicious thrust into her stomach.
She gasped, her eyes wide behind her mask. The pain registered.
I pulled it out and stabbed again. And again. And again. The hunger of the Quiet Man, my own frustration, the terror for my family—it all poured out with each thrust.
She slumped in my arms. I held her, breathing heavily, the adrenaline fading, leaving only the screaming pain in my shoulder. I reached for her mask.
I pulled it off.
Miranda.
Her sharp, analytical eyes stared at nothing. My mind fractured. Miranda. She knew. She saw the link. She was... like me. She was protecting her family by poaching my kills, trying to starve the entity I was feeding. Or was she just a competitor?
I dropped her body in shock.
WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP.
A spotlight pinned me. "I FOUND THE KILLER!" a voice boomed from a police helicopter. "HE'S IN THE WAREHOUSE DISTRICT! I'VE GOT HIM!"
Red and blue lights converged from every street.
I grabbed Miranda's body, driven by an instinct I didn't understand, and ran. I plunged into a maze of dark alleys, my shoulder on fire, my mind screaming.
I found a derelict storage unit, kicked the rusted door in, and collapsed inside, dragging her with me. I slid to the floor, my back against the wall, Miranda's body in my lap.
I killed her. I killed Elara's sister.
I thought of Nathan, walking into that police car to save me. His sacrifice. It was all in vain. I was always the monster.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Loud, heavy fists hammered on the metal door.
This was it. My time. I closed my eyes and lifted my hands in surrender, the guilt a crushing weight. A single tear cut a path through the grime on my cheek.
The door didn't just open; it exploded inward, the rusted lock bursting.
A loud, piercing scream followed the crash.
I snapped my eyes open. It wasn't the police.
It was Elara.
She stood in the doorway, framed by the flashing police lights behind her, her throat a bloody mess, her clothes soaked and torn. She stared at me. She stared at the pool of blood. She stared at the face of her dead sister lying in my lap.
The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her husband, the man she was searching for, was the killer. And he had just murdered her sister.
She trembled, her eyes locked on nothing. She couldn't process it. She couldn't release a word.
She fainted, collapsing cold onto the filthy concrete floor.