Chapter 22

Alexzander

The girl in front of me wasn't the same girl I'd seen in my house. Not even at her weakest was she as shook up as she was in that moment. Was it worse than what Gunnir had put her through? Or was it worse because the assault came from someone related to her? Family never felt like family in our home. It just meant we shared the same blood, and as The Man used to always say, come is thicker than blood.

"Is he in the living room?" I asked.

She closed her eyes, and a tear shimmied down her cheek and leapt from her jaw. I'd seen enough. I took a few steps around the corner and wondered if she found it odd that I knew the layout of her house. If she realized I'd stalked her long before I took her. I'd soon be out of her life forever, so it didn't matter.

But first, I had to make sure she was safe.

The back of the chair faced me, and a half-empty bottle of rum stood beside it. A man's head peeked just above the back of the chair, his attention focused on a grainy program flickering across a television's dusty screen. Every now and again he'd reach down, gulp a swig of liquor, and put the bottle back in its place. Had he noticed she was gone? Did he even fucking care? What kind of father continued to drink himself into oblivion while his daughter was missing? My father did a lot of terrible shit, but he never forgot about me. But my father also didn't sexually assault me. Not directly, at least.

I shuffled forward a step, and the floor groaned beneath me.

"Baby girl? Is that you?" his deep, watery voice called out. The way he said the pet name made my body react in ways I'd never felt. "Grab me a beer from the fridge and come sit on my lap." He spoke in a tone that no father should use toward their kin. His creepy voice crawled through my veins like sludge, and I could only imagine how it affected Ophelia. I looked back at her. Her legs pressed together, and I knew what was happening to her body. I knew what happened when genuine, deeply ingrained, mind-altering fear squeezes your insides and fills you with the urge to piss. When you can't even see what's in front of you or draw a breath because you're in a blind panic. I knew that look on her face and the tremble in her limbs and the way she clenched her knees together, because I had felt that kind of fear myself.

It broke me to see her experiencing it. Ophelia's reaction to the mere sound of her father's voice made me fucking homicidal. Made me rabid for her revenge.

I reached behind me and pulled my hunting knife from the holder on my belt. I took a step forward, but a hand on my shoulder stopped me.

"Alex..." she whispered with a weak shake of her head. Her father didn't even hear her over the sound of the TV show and the deafening effect of alcohol.

I guided her backward until her spine met with the wall. "Don't try to stop me. He deserves to rot in hell with my father."

Her eyes searched mine, and the trembling stilled. "Why would you be the one to do it? I'm the one he's touched."

I smirked at her words and leaned in to plant a kiss on the mouth that spoke them. Atta girl. She was speaking a language I could understand. I had been the one to take my father's life because I harbored the most hurt. I had poisoned him and watched life leave his eyes with the marks from a whipping still fresh and oozing on my back. Everyone has a limit, and he'd reached mine. Her father surpassed hers the first time he touched her. Even so, I wasn't willing to put her in harm's way. I only had the one knife. If he disarmed her, I had no way of effectively protecting her.

"I won't risk him hurting you more than he already has," I said. Her eyes pleaded with me to hand her the knife, but she didn't argue with words.

With the confidence of a man who has killed before, I marched toward the chair in the living room. "Hello, father of the year," I said, circling into his view.

He looked pathetic. A puddle of vomit had dried on his ripped undershirt, and the flannel over it hung off his too-slim frame. He probably hadn't eaten much since Ophelia left. Well...since she was taken. He wiped crumbs off his beard and tried to stand, but he flopped back twice before finally finding his feet. It almost seemed unfair to attack a man so helplessly drunk. Then again, he'd had no problems attacking a helpless child, so that evened things out a bit.

"Who the fuck are you?" he snarled. A vapor cloud of old liquor crashed into my face. He smelled like a fermented batch of whiskey in a brewery, and it was nearly enough to make me cough.

I felt Ophelia's presence behind me, so I reached back and pulled her to my side. She kept her eyes pinned to the ground in front of us, focused on the bourbon bottle. "You don't need to know who I am, but you know who this is, right?"

He coughed. "Yeah, that's my little girl."

"You don't have the right to call her that. If she was your little girl, you shouldn't have touched—"

"I don't touch my daughter!" he yelled, stumbling forward a step.

Ophelia's eyes shot up to him, and a bolt of anger rushed onto her face and twisted her beautiful features into something sinister. "Yes you do!" she said. "How dare you deny it! How dare you—" Her chest hitched and cut off her sentence.

"If I ever touched you wrong, it's because I mistook you for your mother," he said, and it was the lamest fucking excuse I'd ever heard. "It's not my fault."

Her lower jaw quivered, but she found her voice. "When I was eight, Dad?"

"Don't fucking call him that," I said. "The men who contributed to our DNA don't have the privilege of being called Dad because they never earned it. They were never fathers. That's why I called mine The Man. Call yours whatever you'd like. Shit bag. Sperm donor. Filthy goddamn pedo. Call him whatever you want, but do not call him Dad."

Her father's attention jumped to me. "She's lying to you. She's an attention-seeking brat. She always has been."

If he thought I would turn on Ophelia over some haggard drunk's words, he had a nice surprise coming to him. Something really humbling.

Rage flashed across his face when I didn't buy the bullshit he'd tried to shovel down my throat. He took a step toward Ophelia, but I got between them and lifted my knife into view. "What are you gonna do, punk? Stab me?"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do, you sick fuck." I thrust the knife into his gut, and he fell into me. Blood crept from a darkening spot in his undershirt and slid around my hand. I ripped the knife backward and pushed him off me. He fell onto his recliner with a heavy thud, and even mortally wounded, he reached for his bottle. I steadied my grip on the knife, assuming he'd try to use the bottle as a weapon, but he only twisted off the cap and tilted the bottle's mouth toward his lips. "What the fuck is wrong with you, old man?"

"There ain't nothing right about me," he wheezed. "Better make amends with the lord now, I guess."

"The lord doesn't want your amends," I said as I handed the knife to Ophelia. She looked at me for permission as she wrapped her fingers around the handle. She didn't need permission to get the vengeance she deserved, and now that he was too weak to fight back, she could safely get it.

She stepped toward him and leaned forward, the knife at her side. "Admit you touched me."

"I'm not admitting shit," he snarled back, a trail of blood falling from the side of his mouth as he talked.

"Admit it!" she screamed, tears strangling her words.

I grabbed her shoulder. "There are two types of evil men in this world. One brags about what they've done, and one denies it." I wasn't sure which was scarier or more sinister. Her father or mine. Two people who destroyed their family and built a world around them that fueled only pain. My father was fucking evil. This man was evil in a different way. Regardless, the devil would fuck both their asses equally for all of eternity. "This man is a pussy, O. He'll never admit what he's done to you. If you want your vengeance, take it now, before it's too late. My father yelled his evils from the rooftops, but yours will take his vile secret to the grave. Saying it out loud means acknowledging his sick lust for children. His own fucking child. Admitting it means it wasn't some drunk stupor he made up to rationalize what he'd done." I turned my attention to him. "There's not enough alcohol in the world to drink away those desires, you sick fuck." I promised her vengeance, but I couldn't help taking a swing at him. I hauled my fist forward, knocking his head into the headrest.

Ophelia followed my jab by stabbing the knife into his chest. She ripped it out and plunged it in again. His eyes widened in a look of shocked betrayal. He'd never expected her to fight back, but she was stronger than he'd realized. Stronger than I'd realized.

Ophelia released the knife's handle and turned toward me. Blood mixed with the tears on her face and ran in faded rivers toward her jaw. Her chest heaved and I knew she needed comfort, but I had no idea how to comfort another person. Even with my mother, the best I could do was to make sure she knew she wasn't alone. I was just present. I knew how to do that. I sure as hell wasn't the empathetic person she probably needed right then.

I put my arms around her and held her awkwardly, and she started sobbing, her whole body lurching from the power behind her pain. Her knees gave way, and I caught her and lowered her to the ground. She curled up on herself, and I sat behind her and rubbed her back as her heaving sobs turned into numb and broken whimpers. She needed more, and I wanted to give her more, but I just didn't know how to help someone who was this upset.

I laid her on her back and climbed over her, pinning her with some of my weight until her heaving chest slowed beneath me. She dug her nails into my outstretched arms, and I just made myself present. I was just a thing she could dig and claw into as she fought off the man who would always haunt her. Her hands left my arms and pressed against my chest. A guttural scream left her mouth as she balled up her hands and sent weak punches into my sides.

"Fuck you!" she yelled as her hands fell to the wooden floor. She'd run out of fight in front of my eyes. She landed a final kick that knocked the bourbon bottle onto its side, and the smell wrapped around us.

"Get it out," I told her.

"That fuck you wasn't toward you," she said with a deflated breath.

I smirked. "Some of it might have been." We stared at each other as the silence hung between us. "Sorry I don't know how to do this better. I'm not used to dealing with trauma I didn't cause." I released her and she sat up beside me.

"What did we do?" she asked, her shoulders finally relaxing.

"This was nothing. At least he deserved it."

"Even if he deserved it, we just took a life. I don't even know how to cover up something like this." She gestured toward her father's body.

"I'll handle that part. I'll wrap him in something, toss him in the back of the truck, and drop him into the pit with all the other demons. Does he have any friends? Anyone that might come looking for him?"

She shook her head. "I usually buy everything he needs. He just sits in that chair and drinks himself stupid. He rarely leaves the house."

"That's convenient for you, then. Just keep shopping as if you're buying for two people."

Her gaze snapped to me. "I will be buying for two people. You'll be here."

"I can't stay here, O. I've made sure you'll be safe, and I'll stick around long enough to help out around here for a bit, but then I need to move on. I don't know how to live a normal life, and I can't guarantee I won't hurt you again. I don't know how to be a human being."

"How can you say you don't know how to be a human being?" she said as I pulled away from her.

"Because I wasn't raised like a human being." I was mildly annoyed with her statement. How human had I been to her?

"You want affection, you feel bad when you see someone hurting, and you want to love. You're human."

"I want your affection. I feel bad when you hurt. I've never felt this way about anyone else. I've felt some levels of bad when horrible things happened to girls because of me or Gunnir, but with you, it makes my heart actually feel heavy. Like, real low in my chest." I held my hand level with my chest and pushed it down. "I'm only human for you, O."

"If you aren't human, what do you see yourself as?"

"The devil," I said, much too sure of my words.

She dropped her gaze. "Well, I don't feel too human either. I'm just a ghost hanging around the empty shell of what I was." She raised her eyes to mine. "But you make me feel alive. Even in the worst moments with you, I was glad I could finally feel something again." Her cheeks flushed and I worried she would cry again. I leaned into her and kissed her, drawing away enough to touch my forehead to hers.

"Then I guess we can be inhuman together. For a little while, at least."