Page 48 of Serpentine Valentine
I paused to stand up and take a step closer, planting my black booton the soft swell of his groin before I leaned forward into his face. The pressure made him whimper like a stuck pig.
It felt good and right.
He was a monstrous animal. I was only peeling back the layers of disguise. If I let myself lose the taut hold I had on my anger, this wouldn’t be enough. Nothing would be, short of real torture, flaying and quartering and staking him. Until he was a mess of bloody, pulpy flesh. Until he was no longer human because he didn’t have a right to the term.
I sucked in a deep breath that tasted of stale beer and acrid male sweat.
Then I ground my foot harder into his soft flesh. How strange, I thought, that something so soft and repulsive could be such a formidable, horrible weapon.
“All I know,” I told Mitchell as I sneered into his face. He couldn’t see my expression through the mask, but disgust layered my saccharine tone. “Is that in order to take your kind down, I have to be willing to do things some people might call barbaric or evil. But you know what? That’s okay with me. Someone did something to me like you’ve done to women in this basement, and it changed me. It turned my heart to stone. I don’t care anymore if I’m evil or monstrous, Mitchell. I’ll be both those things if it means taking men like you to your fuckingknees.”
I reared back, cocking my arm, and then landed a brutal blow with the metal knuckles built into my gloves against the side of Mitchell’s objectively attractive face.
And then I did it again.
And again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Until Mitchell’s face wasn’t even close to pretty anymore, objectivelyor not.
“Now,” I said sweetly as I kneeled before him and opened his computer. His blood dripped off the cover and onto the beer-stained floor, poppies blooming in memory of the virtues lost here. “Tell me your password, or your frat brothers get the same treatment.”
It only took four men to get Mitchell to capitulate, but I let Juno, Effie, and Grace have fun with the rest.
After all, we were a team.
And in the end, those bastards got a little taste of what they deserved.
I didn’t stayfor the setup.
Once the computer was unlocked, it was easy enough to find the hidden folders containing the forced pornos they’d made of five different girls over the past three years. Juno brought each video up on a different computer from the men tied up in the room, wrapped them with red ribbons, and attached a note for the Acheron PD to find when they arrived after Effie called them just as they readied to leave.
We’ll continue to do your job for you if you insist on keeping your heads buried in the sand. Do better for the women on this campus.
Xoxo,
The Man Eater Crew
I wasthe one under suspicion, and I’d already been gone twenty minutes. It was stretching my breath of fresh air a bit long, but I’d texted Bryn to let her know, and thankfully, the Penny was close to Greek Row. I entered through the back entrance again and went to the last bathroom stall. I’d already ditched my blood-stained hoodie and gloves in Effie’s Bronco,but I still had to change back into my date night clothes and wash my upper chest in case there was blood residue as there had been after I’d beaten Jerrod.
There was no Luna there tonight to clean it off for me.
Something moved in my chest, a stretching or a yawning like I was coming awake at the thought of her.
I ignored it.
Instead, I stared at my reflection in the small mirror, yellow light spilling down my face. All my life, people had told me I was beautiful, but looking at myself, I could only see all the pain I refused to let myself feel. It settled in the tight line of my pursed mouth, in the strain beside my eyes, the color once bright as a new nickel now dull, stained concrete on the floor of a dirty bar. I felt used up and old, but I was only twenty-one.
A small part of me wondered if the anger wasn’t making it worse. I knew the incident had started the erosion, but the rage that hammered against me every day like waves crashing the rocky shore had to be taking effect.
I looked as battered as I felt.
Ironically, Bryn smiled hugely when I rejoined her with an apology and said, “You look better. Always beautiful, but lighter, now.”
