Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A tale of Atomic Love (10 page)

“Don’t go nuclear on me, Lulu.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to you knowing what I’m thinking.”

“You will, darling.”

She stood in her house one last time. Thought of her things, none of which meant anything. Thought of the bodies in the bedroom, which meant even less. She took a deep breath. She took Lu’s hand.

They left the house without a word. She didn’t look back, but held tightly to her bag and to Lu. She heard the rumble of flames as they erupted behind her. Knew the fire was gnawing at the bones of the place, at the skeleton of its structure. She bit her lip, concentrating, and called up a
ferocious wind that blew, feeding the fire. She felt the heat at her back, saw her shadow dance before her. Wild and free and fierce. Her shadow had a knife in its hand that glowed like the divine guiding star.

She had never known shadows could smile before.

Lu’s shadow grinned and writhed as well, every bit the demon his father always said he was. A demon of beauty. A demon of deliverance. She watched their unholy celebration, shadow hands and fate intertwined.

She didn’t have much t
o say. Lu drove and Montessa sat quietly, playing with his First Kill knife, which had now become her First Kill knife as well.

Finally, he broke the silence.

“Doing okay?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

He remembered stabbing his father, over and over and over, that primal sound he had made, the sweet, unfamiliar-now-familiar feel of flesh and bone and muscle give, give, giving under the blade.

“It was that good,” Montessa said. It wasn’t a question.

“It was. Yours?”

“I’m still processing.”

“Of course.”

He drove through most of the night without a word. His knee jiggled. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.

He was afraid he
had lost her.

They pulled over and both crawled int
o the tiny built-in bed. He wrapped his arms around her, and she threw her leg over his, her arm over his chest.

“Just a little warmer, please?”

The room heated up immediately. She heard the currents of electricity and fire zipping through his veins. Much more heat and her clothes would begin to steam, her skin would sizzle and char, her hair singeing. It felt good. It felt so very, very good.

“Goodnight, Nuclear Lulu.”

“Sleep sweet, Apocalyptic Montessa.”

She fell
into sleep like she was diving off a cliff and slamming face first into pavement. Dreams of blood coated her tongue. She wore a fine red dress that used to be white once, she thought, and long gloves of crimson coated her arms past her elbow. Renan and her father and her cousins and everybody else turned into paper dolls that burst into the most gorgeous of flames.

Lu didn’t sleep. He buried his face in Montessa’s hair and listened to every gasp, to every murmur and cry she made. He licked her tears away and wondered why he had met her now, when everything was reaching its conclusion. He didn’t have much longer, he knew. And now he had brought her with him.

She could still claim to be a victim. That’s what she should do. Come screaming out of the wilderness one day, wild-eyed and ragged, telling how the man had taken her and murdered her lover. Burned her place to the ground while she was tied up and forced to watch. It would be hard to start over, but she would be able to do it. Montessa was beautiful and soft and fragile, but she had a core made of steel. Made of sterner stuff than most people would believe.

Besides, her mama always said she was special.
It was time for her to prove it.

~

“Lu, I’m starving. Let’s find somewhere for breakfast. Come on!”

She was aglow. Alight. A nuclear holocaust of delicious energy. She flitted around the cab like a butterfly on speed, a firefly on crack. The air fairly buzzed with her delight.

“You woke up perky.”

“And you didn’t wake up at all. But we’ll talk about that later. Now feed me!”

She knelt down beside the bed, kissed his mouth. His cheeks and chin and mouth again.

“I have plans, Lu.”

“Tell me.”

“Food first.”

They found a tiny little diner in a worn-out town. Lu drowned himself in coffee while Montessa sipped a Diet Coke. When breakfast came, she ate like she’d been starved for years.

“Montessa, I know how to get you out of this.”

“I don’t want to get out of it.”

“I know what
to do. You’re strong enough to—”

“I said no, Lu.”

“I can’t lose you. Now that I have you, I can’t let you go.”

She smiled at him.

“So don’t. And listen. You’re a terrible listener.”

She slapped a piece of paper on the table. And then a map.

“Tell me where your next deliveries are? What routes you’ll take?”

He pointed.

“Here. Here to here. And then most likely this way, though I’m not sure yet. Why?”

Her smile, it was
charming. It was sweet and very nearly sanctified, and it burned with demon fire at the same time.

“I have a kill here. A few in this area. Some people that I want to see…gone.”

Their eyes met over the breakfast table. Intense. Burning. A force of nature meets a force of nature and turns into an irrevocable storm. The lights flickered in the diner.

“I can save you from this,” Lu said one more time. “I’ll go down. It’s my time. You can distance yourself from me.”

“And live what kind of life? I see it. I See it. I know how it’s going to end. And we’ll be together. Isn’t that what you want? It’s what I want.”

She smiled again, and it was disarming. He wondered how she had been as a very little girl, asking for sweets or playing with her doll or…

Most likely none of those things had happened. Her childhood was too similar to his. No candies. No toys. Just games that needed to be played with people stronger than they were. Doors that shut with that horrifying
click
when nobody else was around. Feelings of confusion and shame and that pain, pain, pain that never fully went away, that made it difficult to sit and walk.

There was a sound, a hissing sound, and Lu realized his hand was burning into the wooden table.
He pulled it back quickly.

“Yes,” she said, and her
witchy eyes went dark. “Them. That’s who I’m going after. All of them. Will you help me?”

“I will.”

She laughed, and it was bubbles. Pixie dust and the genuine delight of a girl who had been given the most precious of gifts. She ran around the table and threw her arms around Lu.

“Thank you. Thank you,” she said, and Lu held her, ran his hands over her hair and the scabs on her wrists. He kissed her collarbone and scooted over so she could sit beside him.

“I could hold you forever,” he said, and blushed. Words never said before. Feelings never felt before. His emotions had been char and ash, but suddenly there was something shiny in the world. Innocent.

“I’m not innocent.”

“You’re innocent.”

And today would be one of the best days of their lives. He’d think back to this moment in the diner, when she laughed and spread an unsightly amount of orange ma
rmalade on her toast, and they murmured and planned and plotted. What to wear. How to find their new victims. How to hunt down and stalk each and every last one.

“I was careful at first,” Lu admitted.
“Took a lot of time and attention. Pick up the victim here, kill her in the truck, drop the pieces off somewhere else. Mostly people nobody would miss. Kept things clean. But lately, it hasn’t been that way.”

“How’s it been?”

“See a girl and grab her. Kill her and dump her. You were different, though. I watched you. Knew you. Came in and watched you dance, saw the way you treated your coworkers.”

“Did you like watching me dance?”

He frowned.

“I didn’t l
ike watching other guys watch you dance.”

“They’re harmless. Just men and wom
en out for a good time, someplace they can forget and be forgotten.”

“Doesn’t matter. I still didn’t like it.” He leaned back in the booth. Stretched. “That’s funny, too, because I usually don’t care. You’re a mark. You have nothing to do with me.”

“Maybe you knew, even then. That we were meant to be together.”

“Maybe.”

They paid their tab and gathered up her list.

“My Kill List,” she said, and they both smiled, both grinned, both felt like children standing in front of the witch’s gingerbread and peppermint-stick house.

“Your Kill List,” he agreed.

They made love in the cab. Refueled and set off into the bright, bright morning.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

They dropped their next load off. Spent a day playing in the sunshine, hiking through the forest. Montessa pointed at the birds and squirrels and marveled at the beauty of it all.

Tiny hearts. Tiny blood vessels. Tiny, tiny veins.

“Does it ever get old?” she asked. “Do you ever get tired of killing?”

“No,” he said, and the sound of his voice, the weight of his words, told her he was speaking truth. Their next kill would be tonight. One of her cousins, Emmanuel, a devil with an angel’s name. He had a squeaky voice and hands too large for his body.

“I’m going to cut his hands off and stuff them in his mouth,” she said. “Make him bite down on every finger until they break.”

“You can do that, but he’ll bleed out pretty quick.”

Montessa looked at him, and he shrugged.

“Just saying, Montessa. You can do all of these things. Kill and then dismember. Dismember then kill. Whatever you choose.”

She was thoughtful about this.

“Just kill,” she said about two hours later. “I don’t want to lose myself in all of this. Do you ever lose yourself, Lu?”

“No. I just find myself.”

He smiled with those wicked white teeth, and her heart bounced in her chest. Shuddered like a heart that had not yet felt steel under the ribcage, but had come close.

“How would you have killed me?” she asked.

“You really want to talk about it?”

“I want to know.”

“Softly, I think. Like I said, you weren’t like the others.”

“With your knife?”

“Probably.”

“Tell me.”

Lu wondered. Wondered why she wanted to know, why it was important. Maybe she wanted to know if he thought about it still. If he regretted not taking the chance while he had it. Maybe this was what love was to her: pain and abuse. Maybe she wasn’t used to the softness. He wasn’t used to it, either.

“I would have kept your mouth duct taped so you wouldn’t scream.”

“Okay.”

“And…I don’t know. Maybe I’d pull the truck over and take you outside. Probably. It depends on how much you would have fought.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere with trees. Remember where we stopped back with the pines? Where you got tired and fell down? Somewhere like that.”

“Or there?”

“Or there.”

His voice, it was soft. Lyrical. A voice that was created to sing songs with a guitar, to hush babies to sleep in the middle of the night. The universe knew these things, even if Lu didn’t.

“I’d take you outside, and I’d hold you so close to me.”

“Yes?”

“I’d take my knife…”

“The First Kill knife?”

“Yes. The First Kill knife. I’d slip it under your ribs into your heart, like you did to Renan.”

Her lips made an O.

“Or perhaps into your lungs from b
ehind. Hold you in my arms and—”

“Stab me in the back?”

“It doesn’t sound nearly as romantic that way.”

“It isn’t.”

“But the way you’d fall,” he explained, and hoped she understood. Prayed she would. Send the vision rolling from his brain to hers in waves, pushed it into her skull with all of the force of his mental hands. “You’d go limp in my arms, looking into my eyes, and it would be the most…intimate thing that ever happened to you. The last thing you’d see is me. The last gaze you hold would be mine. And my attention would be totally, 100% focused on you, my love.”

She frowned.

“I almost feel like I’m disappointing you by living.”

“Never. I want you to live forever. With me, always.”

Night fell and they crept toward the apartment. It was in a bad part of a bad city. Montessa picked her way through trash and wrinkled her nose at the smell of urine in the gutter.