Wicked Hunger (24 page)

“What do you mean you could taste it? What did it taste like?”

Oscar’s face screws up, as if he’s tasting death right now. “Every time he comes near me, I can taste it. It doesn’t taste like pain. Pain tastes like truffles to me. Not the chocolate kind, the prized fungus only the most refined restaurants use. The earthy, meaty exquisiteness of them are exactly how pain tastes to me, the most beautiful sensation. Death tastes different, stale and bitter. And it never seems to leave. It clings to Zander still. I hate the taste of death. I hate that he brings it here.”

I want to argue with him. I want to believe that if Zander did kill someone, it was someone bad, and for a good reason. I don’t want to believe it was Lisa. Lisa was such a sweet girl. She cared about Zander, and he cared about her. At the time, the guilt that poured out with his tears seemed too much for the enjoyment I know his hunger must have gotten out of her death. I’d wondered that night if something was wrong. The look on my grandma’s face said the same, but I never let myself question him. Zander was my brother. I didn’t want to believe something like that about him.

I know Oscar is telling the truth. I don’t know what to do with that knowledge, though. So, I do what I did last time. I stuff it down deep, and ask the next question I don’t really want the answer to.

“Why…why can’t I taste it on him all the time like you can?”

Oscar’s interest perks up. “All the time? Does that mean you taste it some of the time?”

“It’s really random,” I admit quietly. Oscar nods slowly.

“You’re too young to taste it all the time. Van, Nessa, Nessie, Vanessa, you’re still too small, just a baby hunter with chaotic, crazy hunger. But you’ll mature. You’ll turn sixteen and you’ll be able to taste the real pleasures and evils of this world.” His hands tighten into fists and pull at the shackles that won’t let him go. “Just wait until you turn sixteen, and then you’ll taste Zander’s secrets all the time too.”

My head drops down. I was already worried enough about my birthday. Ketchup shifts in his chair, reminding me of his presence. I glance over at him with hooded eyes. His hand is still in mine, but his body is rigid. Everything Oscar just said rings in my ears. Tasting, pain, death, even me turning sixteen and changing, I can’t imagine how that must have sounded to him.

He let me slide on the bare minimum before, but I think he just got a lot more in the way of answers than he wanted. Seeing the familiar indicators, I relax my fingers and attempt sliding them out of his grip. I get about half way before he grabs me back and holds me tighter than before. He doesn’t look at me, though.

There’s nothing to do but let Ketchup make his decision and get on with what I came here for.

“Oscar, I need you to tell me what it was like before you came here. What changed? Did Mom and Dad say anything to you about how you were acting?”

Oscar’s face screws up in disgust. “I don’t want to talk about that. Why do you want know?”

“Zander’s been acting strange,” I say after a moment’s pause. “I think he’s going to get in trouble.”

“I told him. Told him. Told him. I would see him here soon.”

“Oscar,” I snap. His mouth stops blabbering and he looks up at me. “I need to know if Zander’s in trouble.”

“Trouble,” Oscar says. He nods deeply. “Tell me everything.”

So I do.

I force myself not to look over at Ketchup once during my explanation. I hadn’t been planning on letting him in on the secrets of our family right now, or any time, to be perfectly honest, but what else was I going to do. There was no chance I was going to ask him to step out. Not only would that be incredibly unfair after I forced him to bring me here, but also, as much as I love Oscar, I do not want to be left alone with him. My mouth spills out the details of Ivy and Zander’s bizarre relationship as I pretend Ketchup isn’t listening to a word of it. I tell him about our hunger reactions, my suspicions, Zander’s love, his likely confession, and his slip that Ivy was somehow going to help him.

At that last part, Oscar’s entire body goes rigid. His eyes latch onto me like a barbed dart, painful and difficult to be free of. “She thinks she can help him?” Oscar says. “She won’t. She won’t help him. She doesn’t really want to. Ivy, Ivy. Ivy is lying. Ivy Guerra. I don’t like her name. Vines and War, that’s what her name means. She will wrap herself around Zander and strangle the life out of him, start a war that none of us can win. Ivy Guerra can’t be trusted.”

“I…what? Her name means war? What are you talking about?”

Oscar tsks at me, one finger of his bound hand bobbing up and down. “I told you to keep up with your Spanish, Van. It’s always useful to know languages. Shows you things that others miss. Guerra means war. Ivy is here to start a war.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Not that I disagree with him, but he’s actually crazy. I suspect Ivy is trouble because of what I’ve seen. I want to stop her, but I’m not going to launch a full out campaign against her on the word of my murdering, psychotic brother.

The dull thud of Oscar’s head hitting the metal table startles me. I look down at him. Panic creeps under my skin. Is this the end of his lucidity? It can’t be. I have more questions still. “Oscar. Oscar! How do you know Ivy is here to start a war? You have to tell me or Zander might get hurt.”

“Oh, Zander will get hurt.” The muffled slur of his words makes them even more ominous. “That girl is no good. If you want to save Zander, you have to stop her, but he’ll still get hurt. Save him and hurt him, don’t save him and hurt him. Pain, either way. Delicious pain. Hunger will be the only one that wins. Hunger always wins.”

My fingernails are digging into Ketchup’s skin. Pain ripples around his wrist, but I pay it no mind. All my focus is on Oscar. “How do you know about any of this, Oscar?”

“They didn’t want me to know, but I found out. Someone tried to help me, and I didn’t believe them. I searched and asked and demanded and screamed until someone told me. They didn’t want me to know, but I found out. I found out, and it made me angry. So, so angry. Furious. Irate. I wanted blood and pain and death when I found out. Nothing could feed my hunger enough, not after being starved for so long. I found out, and they paid for it. I made them pay.”

“Oscar,” I whisper, his words making more sense to me than I wish they would. He made them pay. They didn’t want him to know. He made them pay. My shaking rattles the uneven legs of my chair against the floor, a skittering noise that fries the last of my barriers. I ask my last, most frightening question. “Oscar, why did you kill Mom and Dad?”

“Because,” he hisses, “because, because they lied to us. They knew. All along they knew who we were, what we were, but they tried to pretend, change us, turn us into something we aren’t, starve us, deny us, make us suffer for years and years and years! They said they loved us, but they lied! They lied! They lied! THEY LIED!”

I’m almost running as I drag Ketchup down the concrete stairs of Peak View Hospital. The orderlies dragging Oscar out of the room and down the hall when he wouldn’t stop screaming topped off an already disturbing experience. I wanted to ask him more, find out what my parents lied about, but there was no more talking to Oscar at that point. Admitting it hurts, but part of me was glad they drug him away. Do I really want to know what lies I’ve been told since birth?

When I reach Ketchup’s car, I finally find the strength to drop his hand. He doesn’t move, but I sag against the back of his car and hang my head. The silence of the parking lot is soothing after Oscar’s outburst. At least for a few minutes it is. Then my floundering brain nudges me, reminds me that Ketchup is still standing next to me, not speaking a word. I know I need to say something.

“Ketchup, I…” That’s as far as I get.

I work to find something, anything, but before I can, Ketchup’s hands are suddenly on my face, pulling me toward him. His lips press against mine fiercely, crushing me, and sending a rush every bit as strong as my hunger coursing through my body. The last hour evaporates from my mind. The last two years are forgotten entirely, and I’m suddenly back on my porch with Ketchup, a silly girl with unrealistic dreams. Except my dreams don’t seem so far away now. My hands slide around his neck and pull him closer. He deepens the kiss hungrily. I want more. I want nothing else in this world.

Ketchup shoves me away from him without warning. The angry glare on his face knocks me back. “You should have told me!” he snaps. “The hunger, the urges, the fact that your brother wants to kill me! You should have told me, Van. You shouldn’t have run away from me. You should have given me the chance to understand and help you. I wouldn’t have run. I wouldn’t have left you.”

“Will you now?” I ask, barely managing to make myself heard.

His anger holds for a few more seconds. In that brief moment, I fear my heart will explode. Then his shoulders slump and he pulls me against his chest. As his arms wrap around me, I know I will never feel safer than I do in his arms. He leans down next to my ear and says, “I’m not going anywhere, Van.”

For the first time in two years, I give in to him completely. I cinch my arms around him and bury my face in his chest. “Ketchup, I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” he says. “It’s okay.”

There’s so much more I want to say to him right now. I want to tell him how much I love him, how I’ve loved him this whole time. I want to tell him to kiss me again, but this time, in the way I always imagined our first kiss would be. My heart is begging me to tell him it will be like this forever.

Reality keeps my mouth shut tight. There’s still Zander. If he gets too close to Ketchup, there won’t be any forever. There will only be death. As he holds me, I can’t bear to say anything of the kind. So I don’t let myself speak at all. The wishes and the truth both stay buried until I can figure things out.

Ketchup is the first to break the silence. “Did you understand any of what Oscar told you today, because I didn’t. I’m not even sure we should believe him.”

“We should definitely believe him.” I may not have understood half of what he said, but this is one thing I’m sure of. Ketchup isn’t.

“Why? Just because Ivy’s last name is Guerra doesn’t mean she’s here to start a war. It sounded crazy, Van.”

Pulling away from Ketchup enough to look him in the eye, I say, “I know Oscar is nuts, but he isn’t a liar. You saw how upset he got when he talked about my parents lying to us. That’s always been a huge deal for him. He’s never once told a lie to anybody.”

“Still
…”

“Ketchup, please. I know what I’m talking about.”

He shakes his head. “Fine, what are we going to do about Ivy?”

“We’re going to find out what’s in Ivy’s garage and why she spends her Sundays locked up in there,” I say.

“When?”

I take a deep breath, knowing this might be a huge mistake. “Now. Let’s go.”

***

Climbing over Ivy’s wooden fence proves easy enough. Making sure nobody was home before we could hop over the fence was the trickier part. When we first arrived, there weren’t any cars in the driveway, but neither of us knew for sure whether or not her mom worked during the day. We had to watch the house for a long time, eating lunch as we did, and wait for some sign that anyone was inside. Eventually, we decided it was safe enough to get started and made our move.

Ketchup and I stand at the door to the converted garage, my hand on the locked doorknob. I jiggle it again just for good measure. Not discouraged yet, I look around for other options. There aren’t any windows, which seems a little odd. I slip around each side. Nothing. My hope for a backdoor that isn’t locked is foiled too. There isn’t even a door. I head back to the front of the garage, but Ketchup stops me halfway. He points up. My eyes follow, and I groan.

“Seriously?”

He nods, “Sorry, but it looks like that’s our only way in.”

The skylight on the roof is one of several. “They look like they’re screwed down. How are we going to get them open? I don’t want to break anything or she’ll know someone was here.”

“How about we get up there, and then try using these,” Ketchup says, holding up a pair of screwdrivers.

“Where did those come from?” I ask.

He shrugs. “My car. I have a tool set in the trunk that my uncle gave me.”

Hmm. The longer I watch him, the guiltier he looks. Ketchup sucks at fixing cars. His uncle wouldn’t even think of letting him try to tighten a screw for fear of the whole car exploding. We’ll come back to this later.

“So, are you going to boost me up, or what?”

A few seconds later, we’re both on top of the roof twisting out screws as fast as we can. We’re much more exposed up here. Even still, as I’m unscrewing the second to last screw on my side, I look over at Ketchup and ask, “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“Breaking into a garage? Can’t say that I have.” He pauses. “Well, I did have to break into our garage once when the garage door opener jammed.”

“Ketchup
…”

“What?” He pretends for a moment longer, but then he sighs. “Okay, breaking into things isn’t exactly a new thing for me,” he admits, “but it’s not like I steal stuff. I just practice. It’s a useful skill to have.”

“Where do you practice?”

He shrugs. “Houses in my neighborhood mostly. Cars too.”

“Have you ever come to my house at night?”

The squeaky noise of his screw fighting to get loose is suddenly the only sound. I don’t push him, but I wait. Finally, he gets the screw loose and looks up at me. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“That I peek at you through your windows, or something,” he says. “I just get really worried sometimes, Van. After what Oscar did
…well, sometimes I can’t sleep knowing you’re there with only Zander and your grandma. What’s your grandma gonna do? And Zander, with the way he’s looked at me since that day on the porch, I’m not always sure he’s going to protect you either.”

He looks back down at the remaining screws. I want to reach across the half-loosened skylight and kiss him. I don’t. I wonder if he’s trying not to do the same thing, because he doesn’t look at me when he speaks again. “I’ve never broken into your house, though.”

“Then why?”

“Just in case I ever need to.”

I know Zander would never hurt me. Regardless, a little dash of reassurance that Ketchup will be there if I ever need him lightens my mood. We finish our work quickly after that, and Ketchup lowers me down. I land badly because of the strangely uneven floor and stumble. Ketchup lands right behind me, and steadies me. My eyes linger on the warmth of his smile for just a moment before turning away and staring wide-eyed at the room around me.

Crimson drapes coat the walls in an alternating pattern of thick velvet fabric and bare, black walls. The floor is black, too, all but a thick band of white running down the center of the room that leads to the low platform I fell on. Inside the white band are symbols and words that have no meaning to me. I step back as I realize they continue up onto the raised platform. I still have no idea what they say, but my eyes follow the pattern to an even more incredible sight. There’s an…altar at the back of the platform. An ornately carved table of the blackest wood I’ve ever seen stands sentinel on the very center of the back wall. Here the drapes are farther apart, leaving a wide expanse of black wall. This wall isn’t bare. It’s filled with weapons.

And I’m not talking about guns. Swords, knives, things I’m not even sure what they are, all hold places of honor on the wall. They look old, too. Really old. The detailing on the handles is incredible, and some of them even have designs on the actual blades. They’re gorgeous, but very, very creepy. The book on the altar is freaking me out, too. It’s just a book, but the picture painted on the front makes both of us cringe.

A person—I can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be a man or woman, or something else entirely—is standing in a pool of blood. The creature’s mouth is open, caught mid-scream with a look of pure agony on its face. At first, it looks like the blood is pouring out of the creature. When I look closer, I see that the blood droplets are running up the person’s body toward its mouth. Like it’s eating it.

My own blood seems to run and hide in my core, my fingers and toes going icy cold. The similarity certainly isn’t lost on me. Kneeling in front of the blood-eater is a young woman. She’s the most disturbing of the pair. Dark, wavy hair frames a peaceful face. Her quiet smile in the face of what is standing behind her doesn’t make sense. The knife she’s holding to her own throat makes even less sense.

“What is this place?” Ketchup asks.

“I don’t know, but it’s beyond freaky.”

He nods. “If I had any doubts before, I don’t anymore. Something is definitely wrong with Ivy. I mean, what does she do in here? Swords, weird writing all over the floor, some bloody guy on a book. What is she messed up in?”

“What is Zander messed up in?” I ask.

We’re here in her dojo from Hell, and I still have no idea what’s going on. Reluctantly, my fingers stretch toward the book. I know the blood eater must be someone like me, someone who feeds on pain and anguish, but what could this book possibly say? Does it hold whatever answers Oscar found? Is the reason behind his murder of our parents hidden within its pages? My hand shakes as I flip open the cover.

Sei stato scelto. Solo coloro che hanno dimostrato…

“I have no idea what any of this means, do you?” I ask.

Ketchup scans the passage at the front of the book and shakes his head. “I’m sure we can find out, though. Give me a minute.”

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and has a translation app open a few seconds later. “Why do you have that on your phone?” I ask despite the serendipitous usefulness of it.

“I suck at Spanish.”

“You cheat on your Spanish homework?” I’m actually kind of shocked. Ketchup has the scoundrel act down pat because of the way everyone treats him, but I know he’s a pretty straight laced guy.

“Not all the time. The instructions on our homework are always written in Spanish. How am I supposed to do it if I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do?”

I roll my eyes. “I don’t think this is Spanish.”

“No problem. This translator can do a bunch of languages. It’ll even identify the language if you type in a few words.” His thumbs start tapping away like mad. He gets the first sentence down and the app immediately comes back with an answer of Italian. Kind of surprising, since with a last name like Guerra, I didn’t figure Ivy for having Italian ancestors. As Ketchup starts typing in the passage, I wonder whether Guerra is her real last name.

“Okay, I got it,” Ketchup says. “Here, take a look.”

You have been chosen. Only those who have shown courage and strength are chosen for our most sacred of missions. The trials of your choosing have proven your worth, but you must endure one last tribulation. You must sacrifice for your beliefs one final time. The rewards for your sacrifice will be the highest possible. Blessed eternity will be yours, but not without your final contribution. Your life is the price of this honor. Open the book and begin your journey to eternal happiness, your journey to vanquish the assassin.