Page 85 of Death Rydes Shotgun

I nod toward the broken branches ahead.

“I stabbed him in the leg.” Harmony lets out a ruthless scoff. “He can’t move that fast.”

She glances up at me, a dark, probing curiosity gleaming in her eyes. “Since we’re sharing murder stories... how’d you kill my best friend?”

A slow smile touches my lips as I recall the memory.

“As soon as you went into the bathroom at the carnival, I spotted Blaire near the game booths. I flirted with her. Of course, she didn’t recognize me, just as you didn’t. It didn’t take much to convince her to follow me out into the woods. Once we were away from the crowd, I gutted her in pretty much the exact same fashion I killed the masked man on the porch.”

Harmony glares at me, her brow furrowing. “You flirted with her?”

Genuine anger… Or is that jealousy that flashes in her eyes?

“Did you want to fuck her?”

I laugh.

Definitely jealousy.

“If I wanted to fuck her, I would’ve. I would rather slide my knife in her cunt than my dick.”

“And did you?”

I frown at her.

“Slide your knife in her cunt?”

I glare at her. “I already told you what I did.”

“And you just left her there?”

“I left her in the open so she would be found.” I tilt my chin up. “I wanted her family to have closure. I’m a murderer not a monster.”

Before Harmony can respond to my warped logic, a loud, ragged sob echoes through the fog just twenty feet ahead.

I want to rip Xander’s heart out for interrupting our heart-felt confessions.

We break through a thick patch of briars into a small, muddy ravine beneath a massive, lightning-struck oak tree.

There, dragging his bloody, ruined body through the mud, is Xander.

His face is pale as bone, smeared with dirt and tears, his hands slippery with his own blood as he desperately tries to pull himself toward the trunk of the tree. He reaches the rough bark and turns around, sliding his back up against the wood, coughing hard as he stares up at us with wide eyes.

Harmony and I step out of the mist together, stepping side by side into the ravine.

We tower over him like dark, twin gods of retribution, our shadows stretching across his mangled, bleeding frame in the dim amber light filtering through the canopy.

Harmony’s hunting knife drips steadily onto the wet moss, while the dark leather of my gloves glistens with rain.

Xander weeps violently, his hands rising in a desperate, trembling plea as his eyes dart frantically between the two of us. “Please… Please, God... don’t do this! I won’t tell anyone! I swear to God I won’t say a word! Please... just let me go…”

“Did you hear that, Harm? He called us God.”

Harmony tilts her head, a terrifyingly beautiful, hollow smile cutting across her lips as she steps closer to him. “Except, we’re not God.”

Harmony points to me with her crimson-streaked knife. “He’s Death.” She points to herself. “And, I’m the Grim Reaper. And I’m owed a soul.”

Shit. This wicked creature is going to make me come in my pants.