Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A tale of Atomic Love (8 page)

He saw a place he recognized up ahead. The most spirit-crushing of motels, painted in what had once been beige, with an empty swimming pool in front.

“Here. We’ll stop here. It’s better than it looks. And I bet nothing sounds better than a hot shower.”

“And food,” she agreed. “I could eat until I die.”

“I’m sorry if I starved you.”

“It’s okay, Lu.”

He paid for the room, a cheap place with horrifyingly garish carpet and tacky woodland animal pictures on the wall, but the rooms were clean and the tub was spotless. Lu tried to doze on the bed (one of two. He wasn’t about to be presumptuous) while Montessa soaped and scrubbed and washed her hair and body with the economy shampoo.

Water never felt so good. Soap never felt so decadent. This shower was a sin, and the water running down her face and body felt better than the hands of any lover.

This was the shower she was never supposed to have. The shower that dead women didn’t get to enjoy. It was earned back somehow with her life.

It hit her then, that her life was supposed to
stop,
to
end
, and through a whim of Lu’s, this stranger, she was still alive. Could still breathe. Sleep. Make love and enjoy chocolate again and sit through another terrible B-grade monster movie because she loved them so.

It was a second chance. Everything. Montessa could become something, somebody, else. Somebody worthwhile. Maybe she could become the kind of woman
Lu would want to live for.

Her shower turned salty, and she realized she was crying. It was like the ocean. A
second baptism of salt. Salt water healed everything, yes?

She wept until she wept everything out. Her bitterness. Her hate. The feelings that she was
ruined, used up. These feelings needed to go. Lu, her lovely, broken, crazy, and wonderful Nuclear Lulu had chosen her. Was willing to die for her, in order to free her. And that meant something. Meant
she
meant something, and she hadn’t meant something before. She was going to live up to it.

She stepped out of the shower feeling fresh and clean and new. A new Montessa. Full of energy and something that felt like hope.

She toweled off, dressed in a pair of Lu’s shorts and an old tee. Her clothes were torn and bloodied. They’d dispose of them later.

“I feel different,” she said to Lu
, closing the bathroom door behind her. “Like things are magical somehow. Like there’s so much hope that I could just burst. Just burst from it, Lu!”

He spoke and it was almost reverent. Yes,
reverent
would be the word she would use.

“You’re Apocalyptic, Montessa. Apocalyptic Montessa.”

She smiled at him, and she could feel the radiance from it.

“And you’re my Nuclear Lulu.
We’re meant to be, my love.”

He held out his hand. She walked over and took it. Sparks flew. Magic happened. Nuclear reactors melted down in joy. The world combusted.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

She spent the night in Lu’s bed because she didn’t want to be alone. It was a new thing to feel lips without fists and feel her hair pulled without hatred.

“Renan is going to come for me, you know,” she told him. She traced his ribs, found a couple that stuck out farther than they should have. Broken how many times? Maybe one day she’d ask. Most likely she wouldn’t get the chance.

“Think I’m scared of him?”

Lu had one hand under his head, the other around Montessa. He studied the ceiling, and it was beautiful. Beautiful plaster, beautiful lighting. Funny how he’d never noticed it before.

“I’m just telling you, Lu. He doesn’t like to lose things.”

“You’re not a thing.”

She sighed. Sat up and pulled his t-shirt on.

“You’re the only one who seems to think that.”

“Once you think it, everybody else will follow suit.”

She padded to the window and looked out. Highway. A gas station with a fast food joint inside. So unlovely.

She wanted to stay here forever.

“Tell me what the rest of our lives are going to be like,” she said
, and traced her name on the glass with a finger.

“Short. Violent. Full of fear.”

“Is that all?”

“Full of love and beauty and adventure.”

“I have to ask you something.”

He heard the change in her voice, heard that she was being
serious
, and it made his lungs squeeze together. His fists did the same thing, and he breathed out slowly and tried to relax.

“What?”

She turned toward him, pulling his t-shirt down around her thighs and shuffled her feet nervously.

“You didn’t kill me.”

“Astute girl.”

“And you’re not going to.”

“Not unless you ask me to.”

“So do you…” S
he didn’t know how to ask it. What to say, really. “Are you still unsatisfied? Since you didn’t kill me, do you need to go out and find another girl?”

The words came out in a rush, too close together, cuffed around the wrists and ankles like Lu’s Other Girls had been. And she realized she felt a sick stab of jealousy for each one of them, for the pleasure and joy and release they had been able to give him. A sense of peace. A sense of peace that she couldn’t.

What kind of woman feels jealous of murdered girls?

Lu saw the conflict. Saw the emotions swing over her features like a bar light. And his heart, it hurt. His eyes, they burned with the heat behind them. His fingers longed to trace his knife over her vertebrae, but with tenderness and care, teasing the skin but not tearing it. Not at all.

I don’t want to slice you,
he thought to her, and it was perhaps the most tender thought of his entire life.

“Come here,” he said, and held out his arms. She walked into them like it was the most normal of things, like they had done it a million times before the world was. Perhaps they had. Perhaps the god that she had always prayed to had really been Lu, and he should have been praying to her. Perhaps they fell, as gods and goddesses so often fell in myth, and only now were they allowed to find each other.

“I want you, okay? Just you. Only you.”

The words came so easily to his tongue. To his mouth. The truth shouldn’t be so accessible, but there it was.

There it was.

“But there are going to be more girls, aren’t there? More kills? I mean, you’re not going to be able to turn it off like a switch.”

She didn’t want to make trouble or borrow it, but it was something she needed to know, deep in her little-girl-turned-woman-turned-frightened-little-girl-again heart. Better to face it than wonder. Better to ask than to guess.

“I’ll still need to kill, yes.”

The air whooshed out of her as though she had been punched. She knew it. Expected it. Expectation didn’t make a difference, though. She was still rocked. Still trampled.

“I see,” she said. Her voice sounded stable and strong. It didn’t betray her at all.

“Don’t be like that, baby.”

“I know. I’m not trying to. I just feel…replaced.”

He laughed, flashing his teeth, and Montessa wondered how many of those lucky murdered girls he’d bitten.

“Baby. Montessa. I wish I was better with words, but I’m not. You can’t be replaced, do you understand? You’re the only thing I want. I don’t know how I lived without you.”

“But you still need to kill.”

“I do. I wish I didn’t. I can’t seem to help it.”

She knew. Nobody wakes up and says, “Why, I think today I will become a predator. A serial killer.” She wasn’t that naïve. There was a need there. A pull. What were the exact words he used?

“A calling,” she said aloud, and Lu nodded.

“A calling, sweetheart. Doing something holy. Taking the evil from the world.”

She frowned.

“Why me, Lu? Did you think I was evil somehow?”

He started.

“No. Not evil. Different. That’s all. You were different.”

“You watched me and were still going to kill me.”

He shrugged.

“Them’s the breaks, baby. But you know what I think?”

He took her by the hand. Kissed her fingers, her ruined wrists.

“What?”

“I think you were a gift from the universe.”

“You don’t believe in such things.”

“I do now.”

He kissed her, hard, and then stood up.

“Let’s shower and drop the supply off. Promise me you won’t run screaming from the truck as soon as I pull in. That’s why I kill the girls first.”

“I don’t want to get away, Lu.”

“All right then.”

It was like a first date. They held hands and talked about silly things. Light things. Things like bubbles and wind chimes, things they almost thought didn’t exist in their souls anymore. Lu dropped everything off and filled out his paperwork. Montessa lounged about in the cab and went for a walk around the grounds.

“Where to now?” she asked, and Lu grinned at her.

“Your place.”

“My…back home?”

His face went serious, but his eyes still danced in the way that reminded her of gypsies twisting and burning at the stake. Dangerous. Riveting.

“Yes.”

“Why would we go back there? Don’t you know Renan
—”

Lu kissed her fingers.

“I think you put too much stock in that man. Give him too much power.”

Her face had gone completely translucent. All of the blood had bled out through her tears, flowed from her cuts and bruises and wounds. Years of them.

“Baby,” he said, and there was a tone in his voice that told her to look at him. She did, and her eyes were wide with circles of deadness inside.

“Baby,” he said again, softer.
“Do you think I’ll let him hurt you?”

“I don’t think you’d mean to.”

“Montessa. I won’t. I promise. But more than that, you won’t.”

“Lu.”

“His time is over, Montessa. You need to let him go. Erase that evil from the world.”

Her eyes locked with his, and Lu nodded before turning his attention back to the road.

“You’ll see,” he said. He turned slowly on the winding road, following a path he knew was unfamiliar to Montessa. “It’ll be like magic. It’ll be holy. It’ll be one of the best experiences of your life.”

She didn’t know what to say, but her heart swelled and burst. It kept trying to race, but she blinked and breathed and pulled her knees up to her chest. Wrapped her fingers around her seatbelt.

She didn’t speak for two more states.

“Will you help me?” she asked. They were only a few hours from her home.

“Of course I will. I’ll always help you. Keep you safe. As safe as I can, anyway. I’ll be by your side forever.”

“Forever,” she repeated and swallowed.

“Until the end of time. For as long as we have.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lu handed her the knife, and she took it with a respect that made her even more stunning in his eyes. She held it gently, ran her finger carefully across the blade, and held it to her face to inspect it. Her breath fogged up the metal and Lu grit his teeth to keep from moaning.

“From your father to you. And now you’ll let me use it?”

“For your first kill. For any kill you want. Until you find something that you like better. Or always.”

They parked far away, walking to her house. It was dark. The gravel crunched beneath their feet. Montessa held Lu’s hand and ran her finger across the bones of his knuckles.

“This is…crazy,” she said, keeping her voice low.

“This is what is meant to be,” he answered back.

How many times had he prowled this area? He knew it backward and forward. Inside and out. But Montessa still knew it better. They strolled under streetlights, through darkness. Past addicts and drunks and frightened runaways. Through alleys and parks and cemeteries.

“This is a long way to walk alone. Dangerous, too. I can’t believe he made you do it so often.”

“Oh, don’t be so harsh,” she said, her voice light. “Really, what could happen?”

She laughed but Lu didn’t. He remembered beating her in the head with the wrench and felt a punch in his gut, his muscles pulling together too tightly.

He grabbed her, pulled her to him, and kissed her hard.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He held her close, nipped her ear. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

She held him back.

“I know, baby. I know.”

She smiled at him, and it was real. Fear and joy and the sorrow were erased from her face, everywhere but her eyes. He feared she’d always hold it in her eyes.