SLOANE
Being a serial killer who kills serial killers is a great hobby…
Until you find yourself locked in a cage.
For three days.
With a dead body.
In the Louisiana summer.
With no air conditioning.
I glare at the fly-riddled corpse laying beyond the locked door of my cage. The buttons of Albert Briscoe’s shirt strain against the bloat of his distended, green-gray stomach. His moving stomach, the thin skin undulating over the gasses and maggots that chew through the flesh beneath. The stench of decay, the buzz of insects, the smell of shit and piss that have vacated his body, it’s fucking revolting. And I’m not squeamish. But I have standards. I prefer my corpses fresh. I just want to take my trophies and stage my scene and go, not hang around and watch as they liquefy.
As if on cue, there’s a quiet tearing sound, like wet paper ripping apart.
“No…”
I can almost hear Albert from beyond the grave: Yes.
“Oh no no no…”
It’s happening. This is for killing me, you fucking bitch.
The skin splits open and a white mass of maggots tumbles out, like little orzo pastas. Except a significant number of those pastas are crawling toward me at a glacial pace, looking for a quiet place to complete the next stage of their maggoty lifecycle.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” I schooch on my bum across the grimy stone floor of my cage to curl myself into a ball. My forehead presses to my knees until my brain aches. I start to hum in the hope I’ll drown out the sounds that are suddenly too loud around me. My melody grows louder, and louder, until my chapped lips start to form the occasional word. No one here can love or understand me… Blackbird, bye, bye … I hum and sing until the words fade away, and the melody too.
“I renounce my wicked ways,” I say after the song disintegrates among the dust motes and the hum of opalescent insect wings.
“That’s a shame. I bet I would like your wicked ways.”
I startle at the sound of a man’s deep, smooth voice, the cadence of a faint Irish accent warming every note. My curses cut the humid air when my head smashes against an iron cross-bar of my small cell as I scurry out of reach of the man who saunters into the thin thread of light from the narrow window, the glass opaque with fly shit.
“You seem to be in a predicament,” he says. A lopsided grin sneaks across his face, the rest of his features sheathed in shadow. He takes a few steps into the room to stare down at the corpse, bending to get a closer look. “What’s your name?”
I’m on day three of no coffee. No food. My stomach has probably imploded and sucked other organs into the void. A loud chorus of desperately hungry internal monologue is trying to convince me that those are, in fact, little orzo pastas marching toward me, and they might just be edible.
I can’t deal with this shit.
“I don’t think he’s going to answer you,” I say.
The man chuckles. “No shit. I already know who he is anyway. Albert Briscoe, the Beast of the Bayou.” The man’s gaze lingers on the corpse for a long moment before he shifts his attention to me. “But who are you?”
I don’t answer, remaining still as the man takes careful, measured steps around the corner of the cage to get a better look at me where I’m huddled in the shadows. When he’s as close as the bars will allow, he crouches down. I try to hide beneath my tangled hair and folded limbs, giving him only my eyes.
And because my luck is the worst, he, of course, is stunning.
Short brown hair, artfully disheveled. Strong features, but not severe. A sly smile with perfect teeth and a straight scar that cuts through his top lip, lips that are far too inviting given my current state of captivity, the bottom one a little fuller than the top. I shouldn’t be thinking about how I would like to bite it. Not at all.
But I am.
And for my part, I’m fucking disgusting.
Knotted hair. Stained, bloodied clothes. The worst breath ever to be breathed in the history of breathing.
“You’re not Albert’s usual type,” he says.
“What do you know about his usual type?”
“That you’re too old to be it.”
He’s right. Not that I’m old, at a mere twenty-three. But this guy knows it as much as I do, that I’m far too old for Albert’s tastes.
“And how would you know that, exactly?”
The man’s gaze slides to the corpse as a faint look of disgust passes over his shadowed features. “Because I’ve made it my business to know.” He looks at me once more and smiles. “I’m guessing you made it your business too, judging by the quality of the hunting knife stuck in his throat. Handmade Damascus steel. Where’d you get it?”
I sigh. My gaze lingers on the body and my favorite blade before I press my cheeks to my drawn-up knees. “Etsy.”
The guy chuckles and I pick up a little pebble in my enclosure just to drop it on the floor.
“I’m Rowan,” he says as he extends a hand into the cage. I look at it and toss another pebble, and though I make no move to accept his gesture, he still keeps his hand lifted toward me. “You might know me as the Boston Butcher.”
I shake my head.
“The Massacre of Mass…?”
I shake my head again.
“The Ghost of the East Coast…?”
I sigh.
I’ve totally heard of all those names, even though I’m not telling him that.
But on the inside, my heart hammers my blood through my veins. I’m just glad he can’t see it ignite my cheeks with crimson flame. I know exactly the names he’s called by, and that he’s not all that different from me—a hunter who favors the worst that society can dredge up from the pits of hell.
Rowan finally removes his hand from my cage, his smile taking on a dejected quality. “Shame, I thought you might recognize my little nicknames.” He slaps his hands to his knees and rises. “Well, I’d best be going. Pleasure to almost meet you, nameless captive. Best of luck.”
With a final, fleeting smile, Rowan turns and strides toward the door.
“Wait! Wait. Please.” I clamor to my feet to grip the cold bars just as he reaches the threshold. “Sloane. My name is Sloane. The Orb Weaver.”
There’s a moment of stillness between us. The only sound to fill the space is the buzz of flies and the steady work of maggots as they consume decaying flesh.
Rowan turns his head, casting a single eye over his shoulder.
And in a heartbeat he’s there, right in front of me, his motion so fast it startles me back from the bars but not before he grabs my hand to shake it vigorously.
“Oh my God. I knew it. I fucking knew they had it wrong. It had to be a woman. The Orb Weaver! Such a cool name. The intricate fishing line, the fucking eyeballs. Amazing. I’m such a huge fan.”
“Uhh…” Rowan continues to shake my hand despite my effort to pull it away. “Thanks… I guess…?”
“Did you come up with that name? The Orb Weaver?”
“Yeah…” I snatch my hand free so I can step away from this strangely enthusiastic Irishman. He grins at me as though awestruck and if I wasn’t wearing sixty layers of grime on my skin, I’m sure he’d be able to see the blush flame in my cheeks for the second time. “You don’t think it’s dumb?”
“No, it’s so great. The Massacre of Mass is dumb. The Orb Weaver is pretty kickass.”
I shrug. “I kind of think it sounds like a lame superhero.”
“Better that than the authorities making something up for you. Trust me.” Rowan’s gaze shifts to the corpse and back again, his head tilting as he regards me. He jerks a nod once in Albert’s direction. “He must have been really acting the maggot. Get it?”
There’s a long pause, the silence between us punctuated by the hum of insect wings.
“No. I don’t.”
Rowan waves a hand. “Irish saying, meaning he was up to mischief. But it was a pretty clever joke, given the circumstances,” he says, his chest puffed with pride as he hooks a thumb toward the corpse. “Begs the question, though—how’d you wind up in the cage while he’s dead with your blade out there? Did you knife him through the bars?”
I glance down at my formerly white shirt and the dirty boot print that hides beneath the splash of blood. “I guess you could say it was a moment of bad timing.”
“Hmm,” Rowan says with a sage nod. “I might have had one or two of those myself in the past.”
“You mean you’ve been locked in a cage with a dead body and a little infantry of orzo pastas marching your way?”
Rowan looks down across the space around us and frowns. “No. Can’t say that I have.”
“Didn’t think so,” I mutter with a weary sigh. I dust off my hands on my grimy denim shorts and take a final step back as I cock a hip. I’m starting to become annoyed at this interloper who seems to be doing nothing more than delaying my slow death by starvation. I’m pretty sure he’s a bit nuts and I don’t get the impression he’s that keen on actually letting me out of here.
Might as well just get on with it.
“Well…?”
“They’re making decent progress, the little orzos,” Rowan says, more to himself than to me as his gaze remains trapped on the trail of tiny white worms heading my way. When his eyes lift from the floor, they meet mine with an eager smile. “Want to get lunch?”
I level this stranger with a flat glare as I motion to my bloody, boot-printed shirt. “Unless you want to send us both to jail immediately…no…?”
“Right,” he says with a frown before striding toward Albert’s corpse. He rifles through the pockets, coming up empty. When he looks up to the bloated neck, he lets out a little sound of triumph, pulling my blade free before he yanks on a silver chain, the links snapping with the swift assault of his strong grip. He turns his smile toward me as he rises, his fingers unfurling around the key that rests in his palm.
“Have a shower. I’ll find you some clothes. Then we’ll burn the house down.”
Rowan unlocks the door and extends a hand into the shadows of my cage.
“Come on, Blackbird. I’m in the mood for barbecue. What do you say?”
