Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

They dropped their next load off, and 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, a devil named Emmanuel, with 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 it breaks.”

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

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