Page 29 of Hellebore

“Why are you here?” I grit out against his ear, my breath hot through the mask.

I release the knife, leaving it buried deep in his side, and yank the balaclava up over his face. This motherfucker looks high. Pupils blown wide, skin pale and clammy, sweat mixing with the blood already streaking down his neck and soaking into his collar.

“They paid me—” he blurts out, words slurring through the pain.

“Who?” My rage hangs by a thread now, straining against my control.

“I don’t know. A man caught me on the street, gave me two hundred dollars, an address, and a key. His face was covered with a scarf. Told me to take pics of the desk next to the window. Search for any diary or journal.” He cries out, the words tumbling over each other in desperation. “That’s it, I promise.”

“How were you going to deliver these?” I ask, nodding toward the phone lying on the floor near his feet.

“There’s an email saved… I would send everything.” He sobs, snot and tears mixing with the blood on his chin. “Please, I wasn’t going to hurt anyone.”

Yeah. Too bad. I do not fucking care.

I pick up the knife again and slam it upward under his chin, twisting hard until his eyes roll back and his body sags against the wall like a puppet with its strings cut. Blood bubbles up around the blade and spills from his mouth in thick, dark rivulets, running down his chest and joining the widening pool on the tiles.

I step back.

His body slides slowly down the wall, leaving a smeared trail of red on the paint, and collapses into the growing lake of blood spreading across the floor.

“Fuck,” I grunt, wiping the blade clean on his jacket. “Now I have to clean all this shit.”

So someone paid this pathetic amateur to photograph Briar’s things. To look for a diary. Why? Does she have another shadow following her? Because I do not share.

I need to tear this place apart again, and her apartment too. I need to make sure no one else has planted anything to spy on her.

Fuck, Briar. What the hell did you get yourself into?

Chapter Ten

DRYSTAN

Iwas bleeding too much to make the drive back to Hellebore, so I pulled into the parking lot of a shitty motel on the outskirts of town, the kind that doesn’t ask questions as long as you pay in cash. I stopped at a 24-hour gas station first and grabbed what I needed: a cheap first-aid kit, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, sterile gauze, medical tape, and a small tube of antibiotic ointment.

I give the bored clerk my fake ID and walk into the room, locking the door behind me with a heavy click. The place smells exactly how it looks, stale cigarette smoke, old carpet, and the faint musty tang of mildew. I can practically feel sepsis creeping in just from breathing the air.

I throw my duffel bag onto the sagging bed and head straight for the bathroom. The fluorescent light buzzes overhead. I pull my hoodie over my head, the fabric sticking to the wound where the blood has already begun to dry. Fresh crimson wells up and drips onto the cracked tiles.

I stare at the shower. The curtain is gray with grime, and something tiny and many-legged crawls along the bottom edge.

Fuck me.

I shake my head and walk back into the bedroom, refusing to let that filthy stall touch my skin. I open the duffel and retrieve the supplies, laying them out on the bed like instruments on an operating table.

The cut is not deep, a shallow slice across my left side, just below the ribs. It stings like hell, but it hasn’t hit anything vital. Still, blood keeps running down my hip and soaking into the waistband of my jeans.

I sit on the edge of the bed, strip off the rest of my upper clothes, and twist to get a better look in the mirror on the wall. The wound is angry-red, about four inches long, the edges already puffy. I pour a generous amount of isopropyl alcohol directly onto a thick pad of gauze. The strong medicinal smell cuts through the stale motel air.

I press the soaked gauze against the cut and hiss through my teeth as the alcohol burns. The sting is immediate and vicious, but I hold it there, letting it disinfect every millimeter of the gash. Blood and alcohol mix, turning pink and dripping onto the ugly brown carpet. I watch it soak in, counting slowly to thirty, forcing myself to keep the pressure steady even as the pain flares hotter.

When I finally pull the gauze away, the bleeding has slowed to a sluggish ooze. I tear open the tube of antibiotic ointment and squeeze a thick ribbon along the length of the cut, spreading it carefully with a clean finger. The ointment is cool against the inflamed skin, a small mercy after the alcohol’s bite. I layer several sterile gauze pads over the wound, pressing them down firmly, then wrap medical tape around my torso in tight, overlapping bands until the dressing is secure and won’t shift.

I stand up slowly, testing the bandage. It holds. The pain is a dull, constant throb now but it’s manageable. I wipe the excess blood from my side with another alcohol-soaked pad, the sting flaring again but weaker this time.

I pull a clean black shirt from the duffel and shrug it on, the fabric cool against my heated skin. Then I sit back down on the edge of the bed, staring at the bloody gauze and discarded wrappers scattered across the cheap comforter.

I will live, but the real wound is not on my body, it is the knowledge that someone else is circling Briar. Someone else sent that pathetic fucker to photograph her things, to look for a diary, to dig into her life.