Page 43 of Demon Valley Marked

“We all do! Fuck. What is that?!”

The moment I narrowed my eyes and focused on what they were speaking about, I felt a glimpse of hope in the depths of my broken heart.

A needle. A fucking needle.

“VIVIVO!” The voodoo doll fleet didn’t just poof into existence, they swung from the second floor thanks to the red ropes they clung to. Like a planned effort, all twenty-one of them came landing on the center table—the act distracting Momo enough to stop her from crying.

“BiBiBo?” She seemed surprised by their dramatic display before she put her hands up. “BIBIBO!”

“VIVIVO!” they cheered and ran up to her to enjoy a group hug.

Then they started to dance like a bomb wasn’t ticking away.

“Stop dancing!” Laura screeched, which cut short the celebratory reunion. “This place is about to blow up and your dolls are fucking dancing?! Why don’t you be fucking useful and—”

She didn’t finish because a butcher knife cut right through her neck, leaving us all speechless as we watched Laura’s body simply stay in place, even as spurts of blood began to burst from her obvious slice wound.

“Wha… wha… did… something cut… through my throat?”

“ViViVo?” Zasper questioned as he pulled back from Momo to look at her.

The doll in question looked around nervously before she pulled out her own butcher knife to show she still had hers.

“BiBiBo!” That proved it wasn’t her.

“W-Why isn’t her body dropping?” Lauren questioned in horror. Her face was literally pale as if she’d never seen something so horrifying. “And if the doll didn’t cut her, who did?”

“Kikikikikikiki.”

The foreign laughter was haunting as it echoed through the hollow restaurant, which made it impossible to know where to look.

Approaching steps came from the way Travis had come from, but I still couldn’t see the culprit in question.

The voodoo fleet protectively made a circle around Momo—new sets of needles in their grasps as they waited for this unexpected turn of events. All of us nervously waited for the great reveal, but I did catch one thing.

Momo’s happy smile.

“BiBiBo!” she cheered just as strings so thin that I hadn’t noticed their existence until now began to pull upward from the ceiling and reveal the culprit of the approaching steps.

A… penguin.

The way I frowned with Nathan while Lauren pouted her lips in pure disappointment was a sight to see.

“Alright. I’m clearly hallucinating because no one is going to tell me that a fucking penguin is hanging from a set of strings like a fucking puppet, and that that was the culprit of slicing through that bitch’s neck. Which, by the way, I’m happy about because you’re a piece of shit.”

“F-From the using… imposter of… a bitch!” Laura stuttered right back as she struggled to speak.

“FUCK! We only have a minute before the bomb explodes!”

“Boss, we’re going to die!”

“That fucker lied! He said this was some easy mafia cleanup shit! Not this!”

“So… we’re going to die and not find out if that’s a demonic penguin?” one of the guards dared to ask.

“Are you fucking stupid?” another tossed back. “Who gives a shit about a penguin?”

“Bruh. It's a demon penguin. When do you see that shit?”

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