Chapter Twelve - Good Boys Don't Bite

Desperation and fear cling to the fern leaves, the bitter tang leading Rowdy deeper and deeper into the woods. Based on how far off the lake water smells, she guesses she makes it a few miles out from the main camp before the smell starts to get stronger.

Every few feet burns her nose more. With each step, she guesses what she’s about to come upon.

The clearing is small, barely eight feet across, and the outcropping of lava rocks are smooth, worn down by the rain and wind. She pauses at the edge, still under the cover of the ferns and trees, and waits.

Up on the rocks, Benny, Hannah, Jen, the twins, and Jackie are waiting. Their eyes glow in the low light, all angled downward. Rowdy follows their collective gaze and stares.

At their feet, Etienne du Bois lays prostrate and naked. His usually dazzling hair is matted and gray, rusty red in some places.

“Rowdy,” the twins sing. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

She walks up to them as Etienne shifts his head. He tries to speak, but Hannah sets her bare foot over his throat and balances on him.

“We saved you the honor,” she says.

Under her foot, Etienne makes a gargling noise.

“Can you get him up? We need to have a little chat.”

Hannah and Justice grab Etienne under the arms. His legs flop uselessly against the rocks, and Rowdy tilts her head as one of his bones pokes out from behind his knee.

“You had some fun,” she muses.

“We got bored,” Justice says. “You and Benny made us wait a really long time.”

“How did you get away from them?” Rowdy asks, eyeing Benny affectionately.

She shrugs. “They were still working on you and said I could go back to Curie since I got cleared, but then I saw Jackie sneaking around so we ran together.”

“Hi, Rowdy,” Jackie says as she leans around Benny’s other side. “You look really good for somebody who’s been tortured more than once in the last two nights.”

“Thanks,” Rowdy deadpans.

Jen also gives her a weak smile. “I’ll keep watch for us. Don’t have too much of a good time without me.”

“I’ll call for you when it’s time,” Rowdy promises.

Rowdy focuses her attention back onto Etienne as Jen disappears out into the dark. His head is lolling, but he’s mostly conscious. Her fingers find his hair, and she yanks his face up to look at her.

The bugs stop making noise as if they’re preparing themselves to bear witness. Even with the rush of the wind between the two peaks, Rowdy thinks she can clearly hear the lake against the shore.

His eyes, one half swollen shut, land and pin themselves to her. Even though she’s furious, there’s still the same pang of fear she always felt toward him after Leena explained all the terrible things he did to her. Then, the images that bleed into her mind send the fear scampering. Knowing how many times he left Leena hurt, with bruises and bite marks all over her body, relights the fire within her and draws the memory of Leena back to her.

As soon as she reaches for it, Leena materializes inside of her again. The pressure on her lungs is the same. The hunger in her teeth too.

Rowdy hands over control of her body without question.

“Admit what you did to her,” Rowdy says, her voice twisting with Leena’s. In the back of her mind, she wonders if this is the reason the twins speak together so often, if it made them feel more powerful to be two instead of one.

Etienne tries to spit at her, but it dribbles down his face instead when his lip gets caught on his fangs.

Her hand cracks across his face before she swipes his spit away with her thumb and rubs it into his lips.

“How many times did you do this to her, huh?” Rowdy and Leena ask. “How many times did you wipe your fucking filth on her?”

His answer is garbled, but she knows he can speak. She knows it so surely that her bones vibrate.

“I won’t ask you twice. Tell everyone what you did to her.”

All it takes is her raising her palm again for him to wither and shrink from her. His hands try to raise in defense, but the girls’ hold on him keeps him from doing anything more than flailing his wrists.

“Okay,” he chokes. “I’ll say.”

He whimpers and his chin wobbles, and Rowdy’s expression pulls tight as she stares at the revolting mess he turns himself into.

Etienne du Bois crumbles. Pink tears streak down his face. Rowdy slams her senses off as his desires, flashing with bitter shame, start pouring out of him.

He accuses Leena of wanting what he did, all the lavish trips and gifts were only at her request. How all he wanted was to make her happy. Every word that comes out of Etienne’s mouth is more vicious than the next, thick and rounded.

The longer he goes on, the sicker Rowdy starts to feel. Her rage braids itself together with nausea as her mind, or maybe Leena’s, shows her everything from his perspective immediately. Instead of crying in fear or pain, Leena is crying with joy. Her strained, anxious smile relaxes. It’s so wrong that Rowdy punches the outside of her thigh to break whatever spell he’s trying to put her under.

“You’re wrong.” Rowdy doesn’t know how she gets the words out without vomiting first, but even over Etienne’s sobbing, they find their way.

The noises stops. Etienne’s scrunched expression smooths all at once. His voice, though still bloated from the skewed angle of his nose, is even.

“Excuse me?”

“I said you’re wrong. I’ve felt the things you want, and there hasn’t been a single time when you actually wanted what was best for her or anyone else.”

The light in Etienne’s eyes slowly fades. His eyebrows sink, and his upper lip lifts just enough to flare his nostrils.

Rowdy holds his gaze as the cold seeps deeper.

“The old way is the only way,” she and Leena tell him.

There’s no fear in his eyes, though the understanding is plain. His face twists into smug satisfaction when she doesn’t back down.

“Then, you are no better than me.”

Her acceptance is light on her shoulders. Leena, inside her, bubbles with anticipatory joy as she nods her agreement. “That could be. But torturing and ending one monster seems a lot less terrible than anything you’ve ever done.”

Justice tightens her grip and shudders. Her eyes go milky white and her jaw opens wide. “The Guard just changed their search direction for him. We have extra time before they loop around, I think.”

“You think?” Benny asks.

“The future is liquid. I see what I see when I see it.”

Rowdy’s eyes flicker back to Etienne. “What to do with you.”

“You won’t do a thing,” he taunts. “A little girl like you?”

“Little girl? I’m almost thirty.”

“And still no closer to the goal you’ve been chasing for how many years now?”

Rowdy hums as she pulls his head from side to side. “I suppose we could keep you as alive as you can be and let the Guard have you. I found your little trophies, by the way. How are you going to explain that?”

Etienne’s laugh is hardly more than a cough. “It won’t matter. I will continue to get what I want regardless.”

A weight sinks down through Rowdy’s stomach. She stops playing with him.

“I guess you leave us no choice then. If that’s really how you feel.”

“How I feel doesn’t matter,” Etienne spits at her. “You cannot stop me. I am doing nothing wrong with these—”

Leena surges through her, and Rowdy watches as her hands wrap around Etienne’s neck. Her thumbs dig into the hollow at the base of his throat until she can feel the air fighting against her touch.

His gurgling chokes ignite a sick motivation in her. The darkness returns, all of its power and desire strong enough to relieve the burden of hunger. Rowdy’s eyes narrow on him, watching as his face pales and his eyes bulge.

Justice and Hannah keep him pinned between them. When he tries to wriggle free, Hannah snaps his arm with a twist of her wrist. The scream he tries to make gets caught under Rowdy’s fingers, and she forces him to swallow it back down. The sickness deepens into something shakier and more feral than joy.

Jackie’s hand slides over hers and Rowdy startles.

“I’ll help,” Jackie says. “Press harder here.”

Frustration wells up behind Rowdy’s eyes, and she presses harder. Etienne’s eyes are glassy, but he still looks slightly too amused by her.

Rowdy takes her hands away and forces his chin back. It doesn’t seem right letting him see the sky. It’s too beautiful, more than he deserves.

“Rowdy—”

“Call Jen back over here.”

She doesn’t wait to hear if Benny agrees or argues. Her teeth find skin, and she rips.

The world turns small and red around her as the taste of him washes across her tongue: battery acid and creme brûlée. Something sticky like sap. She can’t tell if that’s just the night air mixing with him or if somehow the forest has started to grow inside him after all his time in it.

Somebody says her name, but then Jackie’s mouth is near hers. There’s a flash of teeth and a hiss, and Rowdy curves her upper body to the left to make room for her.

There’s a ripple of tension as Benny and Jen come clambering back up onto the rocks, melting back into the group.

As soon as Jackie bites the other side of Etienne’s neck, it seems like whatever hesitation the other girls had cracks. The last grips of their shared humanity slip, and the remaining four of them descend.

They rely on scent alone as they begin to devour him. Rowdy never goes too close to the smoky incense of the twins, but allows her shoulders to brush against the lavender Hannah and the sugar-sweet strawberry Jen. Even with the small touches, Rowdy has her own agenda, the same way the others seem to. Nobody crosses the unspoken boundaries to get in the way of what another is working on.

Skin scrapes unmarred against the lava rock as they each pull and roll the various parts of him. The tangle of their bodies writhes together back and forth. Rowdy, teeth somewhere between his fifth and sixth neck bones, finally feels the thing she’s been waiting for as Etienne tries to scream again. His vocal cords pop apart under her teeth. The sudden release reminds her of eating cherry tomatoes off the vine as a child, a memory that she finds only exists in sensation. A gush of blood showers most of her and half of Benny, who’s taken up on her other side.

Etienne’s last desire is for them to hurry, for the pain to end quickly.

Somewhere between spitting out bits of him and tearing his skin away from his bones and muscles, Rowdy starts to laugh. For him to want mercy sends her over the edge.

Her own hysteria echoes off the trees and the side of the large hill a half mile to the west. The shrieking cries of her laughter cut the silence of the night.

With each crunch of sinew coming apart and the odd, uneven glug-whoosh of his heart, his want frays, though it doesn’t change. He begs for mercy silently until the desire turns to ash.

Leena is inside her ribcage beating on her bones in triumph and victory, and she finally feels like the world is right again.

When the frenzy is over, and the girls sit back amongst the only things left of Etienne du Bois, Rowdy doesn’t wipe her face or reach to wipe Benny’s or Jackie’s. All of them are stained and disheveled, and Leena is right there with them, practically purring in her chest. Rowdy pictures her covered in blood from the nose down like the rest of them, a pretty disaster satisfied by their carnal offering for her.

“What do we do now?” Jen asks after a couple of minutes. She’s using her thumb to pick flesh out from between her teeth.

The group shares a glance, and Jackie holds up her hand.

“You don’t have to raise your hand,” Hannah says.

“Oh, right. I think we should probably figure out what to do when the Guard finds us. They’re still trying to find him, right?” She toes at his exposed tibia.

Muse and Justice nod in sync, their eyes going hazy for a few seconds.

“So . . .what do we do with him?”

They look around as a group. Most of his limbs are still recognizably intact, but his torso is barely a glob of red, purple, and white.

Rowdy points toward his head as the earlier pit in her stomach reopens itself with a vengeance. “I think we should rip him up into little pieces and spread him around the woods.”

Everyone looks at her and waits.

“He’s got hair from everyone he’s ever—” Her throat spasms. Rowdy has to physically shake herself before she can try again. “He took trophies from each victim.”

A chorus of groans and gags takes over the night air for a few seconds. Hannah and Jen ask her with different words how she found it.

Knowing it’ll make her sound crazy if she tells them the full truth, Rowdy gives them an abridged version that includes following Leena’s smell instead of visions.

“I think he must have opened it recently or something, because I never smelled it before,” she finishes. The blood on her face starts to itch the longer she talks, so she keeps it short.

“Total destruction seems almost too nice now,” Jackie says. “I wish we could have fed him to a bear or something.”

“That’s too nice. We should have chained him to the side of the mountain and got the buzzards to eat him alive.” Benny’s eyes stay down as she talks, her chin wobbling despite her voice staying perfectly calm and even.

Rowdy bumps her knee, “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” Benny says.

“What are we actually going to do with him? We don’t have much time.” Hannah interrupts.

“Everyone grab a piece, run a few miles, meet back here when you throw your piece up in a tree or something?” Muse offers.

“I call his head,” Rowdy says. The others are in the process of separating the body when she grabs it by the hair. It only takes her two tugs before the neck bones come apart. Whatever dangles from between them dribbles.

Benny whistles low. “He sure knows how to make a mess.”

“Even in death, he can’t keep it together,” Justice says as she shakes her head. In one hand, she holds what Rowdy thinks might be Etienne’s ankle and foot but it’s so mangled she’s not sure.

Rowdy leaves first. She goes further south for about two and a half miles before she finds a deep wash. The sandy bottom is thick with gravel and silt. Cloven deer prints litter the muddier banks and islands along the path the water’s carved out. She thinks this is a good spot—the gamey, earthy smell will keep curious Guards from getting too close to for the time being.

She wanders for a moment, light enough on her feet to barely leave evidence of her visit, until she finds a tree. The roots jutting out in a sharp tangle from the wall of the wash is where Rowdy decides she will hide Etienne du Bois’s head.

The thick weave of roots is excellent cover for him. She pushes him face first through the knots, having to twist and angle him around until she’s elbow deep.

As she starts to pull her hand back, she pauses. His hair, even more matted than it was when she first arrived at the lava rock, flops against her fingers. A lock of it, caught on the offshoots of some unseen part of root system, flashes at her in the low moonlight as a cloud sweeps past the waning gibbous.

Rowdy stares at it, her head slowly tilting as she considers several things. The first being the risk of somebody else catching sight of such a brilliant, strange color in the otherwise darkness of the system. She lifts her knuckle and watches the shine disappear before reappearing as she moves again.

The second thing she considers is if she should take it. Her tongue finds the sharp end of her right fang and she rubs the point.

Leena, still satisfied in her chest, doesn’t make any of her own feelings known, so Rowdy switches her approach and wonders for herself. If she’s already as bad as he is, as he’d said, surely this would cement that.

Rowdy’s already reaching with her other hand before she can stop herself.