Like me, then. All of us in here murderers, for the most part. Intentional or not, they liked to group us together so we only hurt each other. My eyes darted to those on the other side of the wire fence, protected by Darling, petty crimes, less than a year old sentences.
They never looked back through the fence.
I reached Mandy and her friends, and before any of them could react, I yanked her red hair back and shoved the playing card down her shrieking throat. My fingers squeezed into her mouth as she gagged and squirmed, desperately trying to fight me off, but I just pushed the card in harder, trying to jam the whole fucking thing in her throat before she could take another gasp of air.
I’d never killed a woman before, but in here was slim pickings and my heart hurt with the need to do something, to itch my skin. And dying with your breath constricted — that was the worst way to go.
“Swallow, bitch!” I shouted with a cackle, climbing onto her when fingers grasped at me to push me away. Mandy was turning purple, her eyes bulging, but I didn’t let her hands free, not even when some asshole pulled a fistful of my hair back, making my scalp strain and my eyes water, my stomach heated, angry and churning. I kept going. Always did. I locked in like a snake coiling around Mandy’s flailing body, fingers in her mouth, stretching her jaw.
She had all these people close by, and hardly any of them were taking me on, all her friends backing up,getting distance, apart from whoever had my hair. I laughed again when Mandy wiggled one hand free, her claws coming up to attack my face, deep sharp nails digging into my cheek as I pushed and held on.
Blood poured right away, coating my lips, dripping from my chin, but I didn’t try to get myself free; I just jammed my fingers into her mouth deeper. The capillaries in her eyes burst, and the sound she made was fucking immense, like a choking, gagging wheeze.
Nothing was getting through to me, until warm, thick arms banded around me and heaved me away. My fingers freed from her mouth as I tried to curl into her teeth and yank a few out.
“Get the fuck off me!” I shrieked, fighting against whoever the hell had me. They were male. Sturdy and bigger than me. Strong, big and tall — he held me with my feet off the ground, and his breathing was steady like it was no hardship at all.
The intensity within me shifted from anger to panic, and I tried to fight him off.
“Calm down, inmate,” Darling’s voice growled in my ear as I started losing myself even more.
No. Even though it was him, even though I had his attention. No. Not like this.
Using my feet, I slammed into his shins, hammering at them and twisting my arms behind me to fight back at him.
He couldn’t hold me like this. No one could hold me like this, not a man. Definitely not a man. I battled, wishing I had more cards I could shove into his unmentionable places instead of down Mandy’s throat.
With annoying ease, he fought with me, managing to get an arm around mine again, pinning my elbows to my waist. I saw red, nothing else, and after a beat, let my body weight drop. As I slid down his front, surprising him with the move, I sank my teeth into his arm. Hard.
“Fuck!” he barked when I broke his skin, blood dripping down my chin, mixing with my own. God, it was delicious. Not the metallic twang of it, but that it was his lifeblood, the stuff keeping his heart beating, coating my teeth. He was human. Bleedable.
I bit down harder as he yelled, wanting more of it — his pain, his life, his attention — until he released me. I dropped all the way to the floor with a limbbending crash, then scrambled to stand, holding my hands out in front of me like I had a weapon. My heart raced in my chest, my stomach squeezed. But inside? Everything was calming down. Gentle.
CO Darling glared at me, blood dripping down his arm, soaking his gray shirt. The other COs were circling, some crowd handling, some coming for me.
I looked at all of them, all for me, and grinned. I must have seemed wicked, red coated teeth, hair a mess and clothes askew.
But when I met Darling’s eyes, expecting horror, anger or something worse, I was shocked. It wasn’t any of those things. He seemed pleased. Just for a second, something flickered over his eyes. A kindred kind of glimmer that made me pause.
Then I was on the floor, a knee at my back and hands squeezing into cable ties.
Fun over.
Five
“Lacey?” I murmured my sister’s name, soft, scared of what she might say.
She’d called me, in the middle of the night, sobbing, asked me to pick her up from her friend’s house. I didn’t hesitate, showing up only ten minutes later. But she wasn’t where she said she would be.
It took me fifteen minutes of storming around the strange house to find her tucked up in the pool house bathroom. It was dirty, dark and cold, used for storage. Cluttered and messy. And that’s where I found my gorgeous sister, shattered, broken.
“Lacey?” I said her name again, sinking to my knees in front of her. She gasped and sobbed, clawing at her arms to pull herself deeper into her cocoon. “Hey.”
She was shaking. Afraid. And not responding. I leaned back and took more of her in. Shredded clothes,a smear of blood on her arm, her hair looked matted, tugged at.
A shift.
Something shifted in my belly when I realized what had happened. What was so evident before me.
