Slay Bells Ring

Chapter Ten – Kane

I don’t pull the knife out until after the body is outside. I dragged him through the snow, around to the back of the cabin, and I piled some fresh snow on top of him after yanking out the knife. Pretty sure we’re in for a constant snowfall until after Christmas, so keeping the corpse hidden shouldn’t be an issue.

If there are more out there, they won’t see the body, but they will know their predecessor failed.

I don’t go inside right away. After depositing the body, I straighten up and look to the nighttime sky. It’s dark. Clouds cover the stars. I can smell the smoke from the chimney, but that’s it. Everything else is quiet and natural, so much so that you’d think the world stopped.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This cabin was meant to be the place where I lost myself for good. I wasn’t supposed to use my skills in any capacity. Drink and die; the only two steps of my plan.

But I’m not alone anymore. The kid I didn’t kill all those years ago is here, wanting vengeance. She’s not a kid anymore, though, and if I have to guess I’d say someone wants her dead.

The same person who hired me through the Guild thirteen years ago, or someone else? Does it even matter?

No, it doesn’t. Not to me. Holly’s in there, bundled up in front of the fire, having nearly been killed. She’s an heiress to a large fortune, and probably by now the head of the company her parents vacated thirteen years ago. There must be a lot of people who’d like to see her dead.

And you know what? It shouldn’t be my fucking problem. None of this should be my problem. I shouldn’t have to deal with any of this—not with her, not with the other hitmen, not with one single thing.

All I wanted to do this Christmas season was die. Simple. It should be fucking simple.

I close my eyes for a few seconds, sigh, and then turn away from the snow-covered corpse. Trudging through the snow, I walk around the cabin to its only entrance, and I shake myself off as best I can before I step inside.

Holly didn’t lay down. She still sits up near the fire, her arms limp on her lap, the blankets on her sofa bed pulled around her. She doesn’t look at me when I enter, nor does she say a word. Still traumatized either by almost dying or from having to dig that bullet out of me.

I take off my boots and my coat. I go for the bottle I used for disinfectant, but I don’t sit near the girl. I take to the kitchen and pull out one of the wooden chairs, groaning slightly as I collapse.

This really is turning into some deep shit, isn’t it? I really just wanted to be left alone. The memory of that kill is still so vibrant in my mind, I don’t need Holly here to look at me with those green eyes and make me relive the job when everything changed, the first night I started to wonder if I was really cut out for Guildwork.

I take a sip from the bottle, but I hardly taste it as the liquid falls down my throat.

Goddamn it. Killing myself shouldn’t be this difficult.

Minutes tick by, or maybe it’s longer. Hard to tell when neither of us move or say a single word. I don’t know where she’s at, mentally, but it’s far from here. I stare at the bottle in front of me for a long, long time, so long the details on it begin to blur.

The person who breaks the silence of the cabin is me.

“You want to hear something funny?” I don’t give her a chance to answer, instead plowing on, “I came here with a plan. There’s a reason I only brought the strong stuff. I’ve been planning it for a while. Leave everything behind, go to a cabin in the woods, drink myself into a stupor every single night, and then… and then just leave.”

Even though she’s not looking at me, I wave a hand through the air like I’m marching out as I speak. “I was gonna go out there and not look back. I’ve seen what guns do. I know what knives do. They make messes, and they can be quick. I didn’t want that. I wanted to feel it as it was happening. I wanted nature to do what it does best: wipe the slate clean and make me nothing but bones and meat.”

My chest heaves with a heavy sigh. “It’s not like I have anyone who’d miss me. No friends. No family left. It’s just me. It’s been just me for a while. I thought I could handle it.” A dark chuckle escapes me. “I thought I could handle a lot of things. Turns out, all it takes to break me is a pair of green eyes that are filled with such terror they make me rethink every single choice I’ve ever made in my life.”

On the sofa bed, Holly finally pulls her gaze away from the fire, glancing over her shoulder at me, but she doesn’t say a word.

“It’s ironic. If you wouldn’t have shown up,” I tell her, pausing to take a swig from the bottle before me, “wanting revenge for your murdered parents, I would’ve done it for you. I would’ve marched right out that door and never came back. Told you it was funny.”

Funny, miserable, depressing; they’re all synonyms in this case.

“No,” Holly says, breaking her silence. “Mine is funnier. I came here with one goal: to kill you. And the entire time I was planning and searching for you, I knew if I ever found you, I might not survive. I knew there was a chance that you would… you’re a trained assassin and I’m just a girl who wants justice. What hope did I really have of succeeding?”

She looks at the fire again, her figure slumping. “I knew I might die, and I was okay with it. I don’t have anything left to lose. You took my family from me and I shut myself off from the world. I pushed away the friends I had. I’ve been alone the last thirteen years. Death has been on my mind constantly since the night I saw you over the barrel of that gun, so it shouldn’t scare me—but it does.”

Her voice trembles as she goes on, “It scares me so fucking much. I don’t want to die. Now that I’m finally here, now that some random other guy almost killed me, I realize I don’t want to die yet. I want to live… but the shitty thing is, even if by some miracle I make it out of th is, I don’t think I know how to.” Now it’s her turn to let out a bitter chuckle. “Told you mine was funnier. Man, we’re just two severely fucked up individuals, aren’t we?”

I speak nothing but the truth when I say, “You’re fucked up ‘cause of me.”

Holly’s comeback is immediate: “And you’re fucked up because of me.”

While it is true, while she is the reason I began to doubt, the first crack in my mind, I don’t blame her. There’s the difference. I blame myself for all of it. I fucked her up by killing her parents. If I was never there, if I wouldn’t have heard something in the other room… at least I might’ve been unaware of her presence that night. I could’ve pretended.

But I saw her, and she saw me, and that night both our lives were irrevocably changed.

I’m about to tell her she should go to sleep when I hear her sniff, and it occurs to me that she might be crying. I… I don’t know what to do, what to say. I’m not a man who’s used to giving comfort—or receiving it, for that matter.

“I don’t want to die. God, I really don’t want to die,” she whispers to herself.

Her problems aren’t mine, and yet I feel responsible. I don’t know what makes me do it, but I get up and wander toward her sofa bed, carefully avoiding the bloodstain on the floor from our would-be hitman. Once I reach her, I kneel in front of her, and I can tell she doesn’t want to look at me right now, but she begrudgingly does so, anyway.

A single tear has escaped, trailing down her cheek. Never has a tear made me feel like something’s twisting inside of me, making me hurt somewhere deep.

“You’re not going to die,” I tell her. “You’re not. Know why? I won’t let it happen. You’re not alone here. You have me. Every single hitman in the world could try to waltz in through that door and I would take them all down. I wouldn’t let any of them get to you.”

Keeping her safe… it’s the least I could do for her, considering. I don’t know that there’s a single man in the world who’d be better up to the task of protecting her than me.

“I’ll protect you,” I whisper. “I’ll keep you safe.”

“Why? Why do you care what happens to me?”

I reach for her face, and Holly’s eyes flutter closed when the back of my fingers run along her cheek, wiping away the wetness from her single tear. “Because,” I say, the weight of what I’m about to tell her bearing down on me full-force, “you’re my problem now, Holly fucking Cooper.”

And it’s true. This girl is my problem. My business. She came here to kill me, not to die. I won’t let anyone hurt her. If they want her, they’ll have to go through me—and they’ll find, as the first had, that I’m not so easily taken down.

No, the only thing that can take me down is a pair of green eyes.

As my hand falls from her face, Holly glances behind her, at the small pull-out bed. I hear her swallow before she asks quietly, “Um, do you think… maybe you can, uh—” It becomes very clear to me she’s not accustomed to asking for help of any kind. “—lay here? With me?” Th e last two words are spoken so quickly, like she wasn’t sure I could understand her question without those added to it.

How could I say no while she looks at me with those emerald eyes so full of concern? I guess life-and-death situations really do change things fast; something I should already know.

I give her a nod. “Sure. Give me a moment.”

I get up and go to bolster the front door. Our last hitman picked the outer lock. It isn’t exactly top of the line hardware here, but that’s fine. I re-lock it and pull the chair I was sitting in before towards it, leaning it underneath the handle. If someone tries to come in again, they’ll make a hell of a lot more noise.

Of course, there are ways to kill her without ever entering the cabin, but the snowstorm outside should prevent any snipers. It seems as though whoever wants her dead wants to be sure she’s dead, therefore a close-up kill is necessary.

Doesn’t matter. Nobody’s going to put a bullet in Holly while I’m standing. Protecting her is a better way to go than getting lost in a snowstorm. And besides, maybe helping her will put my soul at peace before I go.

When I return to the sofa bed, I see Holly moved toward the top of the bed, where it still looks like half a sofa. She fixed the blankets so it’s easy for me to crawl in. Only problem is, well, being made out of a small sofa, the pull-out is also pretty damn small. I’ll need to lay on my side with my knees bent to fit.

As I sit down on the edge, I ask her, “Do you want to put anything between us, or—”

“What are we, five?” Her question comes with an attitude, telling me she’s at least snapped out of her morose mood. “I think we’re both old enough that we can sleep on the same bed without touching each other.”

“Right.” I lower myself down, giving Holly my back. The sofa bed truly is the most uncomfortable place I’ve laid down in my entire life. Suddenly I feel a little bad for forcing her to sleep out here while I claimed the real bed of the cabin.

We could go to the bedroom, but I’d rather be here to hear the first signs of anyone trying to come in. With the knife in my pocket, I’m ready for action.

I just hope this damned sofa bed doesn’t give me a crick in my back or something.

After everything, I honestly don’t expect sleep to come, let alone anticipate it coming so easily, but it does come, and it is effortless as it sweeps over me. It’s almost like I feel lighter, freer, now that I admitted the truth to someone else.

Holly Cooper, as short as the time we’ve spent together is, knows more about me than anyone else in the world—and I have the feeling it’s the same for her with me.