34. Mina

THIRTY-FOUR

mina

Something isn’t right about Brian. And I’m not too proud to admit that I’m a little scared right now. Maybe it’s spillover from his very convincing performance, but I feel like there’s more to it than that. After that moment where he held me and expressed probably as much emotion as Brian is capable of, he shut down again, and the wall was back firmly in place. He was all business, barking out orders.

I helped him with all the parts I could do and tried not to let it disturb me. After all, the plan once again has gone south, and we’re left having to form a new plan mid-game.

By the time he wakes Gregor, I don’t think he even realizes I’m here. I melt into the shadows, quietly watching the exchange. I feel a jolt of terror as he puts the hockey mask on and picks up the chainsaw. His eyes meet mine through the mask for the briefest moment, and I go back in time to my childhood and all the scary movies that looked very much like this.

It’s easy to forget sometimes what Brian is. It’s a combination of the way he treats me and how we’re always a team—on the same side. But he’s the horror movie monster calmly and relentlessly stalking his prey. There’s no doubt about that right now.

Ever since that switch flipped in me, and I became so much more like Brian than I want to admit, none of this has bothered me. The blood. The gore. The sadism. Unless it’s one of the girls at the house, it doesn’t affect me, and more often than not, I want to join in on the fun.

But tonight, everything feels different. It’s as though this night where the veil is thin has allowed a piece of the old me to rise from the dead, dragging and pulling itself out of the grave to walk for this one final night. Parts of that scared girl are working to fight their way to the surface, and now is a really bad time for that. I feel like I’m hovering just above myself watching this scene play out because it’s too hard to stand in this room with such a dark swirling energy of death and destruction as Brian.

I flinch when the chainsaw starts up.

The screams don’t last long. It’s hard to stretch that out with Brian’s weapon of choice. He’s only lopped off the first arm when Gregor goes into shock, and then he’s quickly gone as Brian hacks the body into more pieces than it probably needs to be in.

Windsor’s body is too close to where Brian is working and is now covered with Gregor’s blood.

“That’s enough!” I shout. I don’t know what possesses me to interrupt him, but he’s out of control. This isn’t Brian. This isn’t how he normally is. Gregor is in far more pieces than he needs to be in, and I’m sure if I don’t break through to him and stop him, he’ll just keep going until the chainsaw doesn’t have a piece of flesh and bone big enough to cut through. I am keenly aware of how much mess this is to clean up, and how much evidence is filling up this small space with each passing second.

He turns slowly back toward me, the mask still in place, the chainsaw still running. He’s covered in so much blood, and then he starts to walk toward me with purpose. And I panic.

I turn, and run. I hear the chainsaw revving behind me as he chases me. Is he even still in there at all? Is he going to hack me up, too? Ordinarily such a thought would never enter my mind, but he’s gone somewhere inside himself. Is he even in control at all? Who or what is in the driver’s seat right now? Is he in some kind of trance he can’t break free from? What does that mean for me?

This is the first night in longer than I can remember that I have actually been scared of Brian. Not just scared—bone chillingly terrified of him. Am I really about to be hacked up in the middle of a pumpkin patch on Halloween?

What a tragic end to our story.

The pumpkin patch goes on forever, and I’m weaving in and out of the largest pumpkins I’ve ever seen. The sound of the saw gets closer and closer until it goes silent. I hear the now quiet weapon land on the ground a moment before Brian is on me. We fall together in the fat leaves between the pumpkins.

I look up at him. He’s covered in blood, still wearing the hockey mask. His gloved hand strays to my throat, and I feel the wetness of his victim’s blood against my skin. I can barely breathe, and it’s not because he’s squeezing, he isn’t. It’s that I’m not sure if I remember how to breathe. He pulls his hand back and tilts his head to the side like a curious puppy.

Did he just intentionally leave a bloody handprint on me? Did he just mark me with his prey’s blood? What in the fuck is going on right now?

“Brian?” I say, my voice wavering, hoping he’ll snap out of whatever the hell this is.

But he doesn’t. He just flips me over onto my hands and knees and pulls down my pants and panties. A moment later, his hand cracks hard against my ass, and then I hear the zipper of his own pants. I grab at the ground to steady myself in this surreal moment. He doesn’t trust himself to fuck me, and yet… here he is. He really has lost himself.

I gasp when he grips my hips and thrusts into me. And then I start to cry, but it’s relief—not fear or pain. Because when his body is seated deep inside of mine, everything feels right in the world again. I feel that connection between us reforming, the threads weaving back together. He rips my corset off, and his gloved hand presses against my back as he drives into me harder. The warmth of his body steadies me and helps me breathe again.

And then he’s pulling me back against him, his hands coming around me to cup and stroke my breasts. I must be covered in Gregor’s blood by now. A needy moan leaves me. He only fucks me harder in response.

I feel his mouth on my throat, kissing and sucking and biting at the tender flesh, like some wild animal with a meaty bone. Then his mouth is at my ear and he says the first words he’s said to me since this sequence of terror began.

“This is what my mouth on you feels like, Mina. Remember it for next time.”

My only reply is a whimper as he continues to drive into me. We are rutting like two animals out under the stars and full moon, both of our pleasure climbing higher and higher until it explodes. If his groan is any indication, he comes right after me. And then we collapse together.

I pant, trying to catch my breath, then I pull myself up and lean against one of the pumpkins. Brian moves closer to me, his arms wrapped around me, his head pressed against the center of my chest, no doubt listening to my raging heart as it gallops along like a wild horse. I’m not sure when he took the mask off, but it’s on the ground near the chainsaw.

We stay together like this for a long time, until finally, I break the silence.

“Brian?”

“Yeah?” he says quietly.

The anger I thought he had toward me left him in the frantic primal nature of our coupling.

“How are we going to clean all this up?”

“We aren’t. Come with me.” He stands and helps me up, then he picks up my clothes and hands them to me.

I dress quietly as he retrieves the mask and chainsaw. I watch as he inspects the leaves we were in and tears off a few covered in blood. He buries those in the dirt and rearranges everything so it doesn’t look like anyone was ever here.

I follow him back to the conservatory. He takes a cloth and wipes down some things. I watch as he puts the hockey mask on Windsor’s face and gets the man’s fingerprints on the chainsaw before dropping it near the pieces of Gregor.

“Where’s the knife you stabbed Windsor with? This will never work,” I say.

He chuckles. “It’s in its holster. I’m just sowing confusion, Killer.”

“Why not just clean up and get rid of the bodies? Why leave a scene to be discovered at all?”

Brian looks up sharply at me. “Because while the police may not know who Gregor is, the underworld circles I run in, do. They need to know there are consequences to trying to pull a contract out from under me. I told Dante it would get done. Besides, Windsor has underage porn all over his computer. The police will at least find that, and then it won’t seem so strange that he’d do something so monstrous as this even if nothing about it looks quite right. Are we done with the Q&A portion of the evening?”

I nod while Brian takes care of the last remaining details to set the scene and wipes down a few more things we may have touched.

He leads me around to the side of the building outside and turns on a water hose.

“Strip,” he says.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am. We need to get out of these clothes and clean up if we’re going to leave without drawing suspicion.”

There is a crisp chill in the air, but I know he’s right. I strip and he hoses me down, careful not to get my hair wet. I’m surprised when he tosses me a towel.

“Where did you get this?”

“One of the hall bathrooms when I was getting the rolling cart.”

“What about the cart?”

“I’ll handle it.”

By the time I’m dry, Brian has removed his own clothes. “Now do me.”

I spray him clean. The hockey mask protected his face from blood, so it’s just his body we have to worry about. I try not to ogle and wonder if he ogled me when our positions were reversed. He’s in mission mode, so probably not, but I do appreciate the view of water sliding down all those perfectly formed muscles even if they are the muscles of an unrepentant killer.

I toss him my towel to dry off. He changes back into the staff uniform and takes the rolling cart back to the house. I put my masquerade mask and evening gown back on and carry our bags. One of the bags has Brian’s tux and mask, the other contains the clothes from tonight we’ll have to incinerate.

By the time he’s returned the cart and changed clothes, the party is winding down. We blend into the throng of people leaving, and get into Brian’s nondescript black sedan parked in a row of other nondescript black sedans.

No one seems to have yet missed their host. By the time they realize he’s gone, we’ll be back at the house burning the last of the evidence.