Page 14 of Headcase
Asa grimaced, bringing the blade down again, this time separating the shoulder from the torso, hissing as beads of sweat rolled down his back and into the open wounds left by his little reporter.
“You good?” Jericho asked at Asa’s pained sound.
“Yeah, fine,” he said dismissively. “I would have thought Dad would have made murder part of the Mulvaney wedding vows? For better or worse. To kill and dismember? Forever and ever, amen.”
Jericho shook his head. “We didn’t consult him on our wedding vows.”
Asa looked around the tiny cabin. Calling it rustic would have been generous. It was essentially a large empty room with a sturdy wooden table, a kitchen sink set into a wooden slab, and a bathroom in the corner that was only recently inhabitable. That was it.
“Didn’t Atticus buy you this murder cabin—where you two first tortured and killed somebody together—as an anniversary present? Doesn’t that sort of imply the blood and guts part of your marriage?”
Jericho chuckled, severing the man’s other leg below the knee. “No. He bought me the cabin where we first hooked up afterI’dtortured and killed a man. He just ate a granola bar. Besides, a cabin in the middle of nowhere stocked with a lake full of flesh-eating fish is the gift that keeps on giving in this family. And he still kills with me on date nights.”
Asa snickered, watching Jericho heave the man’s meaty calf into another garbage bag. “How’d you even get this guy out here?”
Jericho shrugged. “You promise a piece of shit like this a bag full of guns and money and he’s more than happy to drive his ass right to your front door.”
Asa wiped his brow with his forearm. “Okay, but did it not occur to you that you’d need help to get him out of here?”
Jericho shot Asa a look like he was stupid. “Of course, it did. August was on the roster. He was en route when he got a call from Lucas and had to turn around.”
Asa frowned. “Why? What’s wrong with Lucas? Another psychic vision?”
Asa never thought they would have a psychic in their midst, but Lucas was the real deal and had proven to be invaluable. Unfortunately, those visions often came with a pretty severe emotional side effect.
Jericho shook his head. “Adelyn sneezed and Arabella had a runny nose. August had to go talk Lucas off a ledge before he called the CDC or sent the cops after the college daycare for giving the girls the plague.”
If anybody had told him five years ago that August would be the first of them to have kids, Asa would have laughed himself sick. His older brother was the most twisted and depraved of them all. He loved killing more than Asa or Avi. More than that, he loved torturing them. Reveled in it, even. And now, he had babies. Tiny human babies, who gazed up at him with huge green eyes, implicitly trusting his maniac brother to care for them.
And he did.
Hell, they all did. The girls had a veritable army at their disposal between the Mulvaneys and Jericho’s boys. Not that they’d need an army. They’d been on this planet for less than six months and were already proving to take after August. The thought of babies with his brother’s spooky high IQ was a terrifying prospect. Still, family was family, and Asa would protect the little snot faucets with his life.
“Aren’t all babies just naturally drippy? Can’t Lucas, like, psychically tell if there’s something actually wrong with the little crotch goblins?”
Jericho shrugged. “Babies are scary, man. And these babies are only a few months old.”
“Yeah, they’re babies being raised by a psychic and a serial killer,” Asa reminded, eyes widening as something occurred to him. “Oh, God. And the serial killer is the voice of reason.”
Jericho grinned. “You know he hates when you call him that.”
Asa rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, I hate my brothers becoming domesticated.”
Jericho took off another arm, tossing it in the bag, giving Asa a smirk. “Domesticated?”
Asa nodded. “Yeah, Noah practically neutered Adam. They have a fucking dog. A dog Noah treats better than an actual human. Atticus obsesses over that dumb cat of yours—”
Jericho pointed the ax at him. “That cat is his. One hundred percent. Every time I come home, that fuzzy little shit is sleeping on my fucking pillow now.”
Asa continued his diatribe as if Jericho hadn’t broken in. “And now, August and Lucas areliterallybreeding.”
“So what?”
“So what?” Asa repeated, exasperated. “Soon, Dad’s going to get ideas. He’ll want us all to find mates so he can find new ways to test and study us. And if that happens, we’re fucked. The holidays will be a goddamn bloodbath.”
Jericho dropped his ax on the tarp, then leaned against the counter. “Speaking of fucked…did your hookup give you that?”
Asa reached up and touched his swollen nose, wincing. Yeah, he wasn’t going there.
