Six Guardians of the Underworld

Chapter 27

I patted her back and rubbed it, trying to calm her down with some good old-fashioned shushing, but it wasn't doing much good. She kept on crying, her tiny, skinny body trembling with emotio

n. "It's going to be fine," I said. "There's nothing you could do that would make him not want to be with you. He's a lifer, Beck, you know that. Team Water Sprite, all the way."

She shook her head against my shoulder. "No, he would hate me."

I pulled back and wiped her tears off. "Come on. How bad could it be? Seriously. It's not like you killed puppies or anything. And s**t, he hunts animals and eats them, so I'm not sure he'd be all that worried about puppies." That wasn't exactly true; Finn had a heart of gold and would probably bawl like a baby if he found out Becky was a puppy-killer, but I was pretty sure we weren't talking about anything that bad.

"Jayne…I killed someone," she said in a whisper.

Or maybe we are.

I took a deep breath in and let it out. "Tell me. And hurry up, before everyone gets here."

She let out a long sigh and flopped down into her chair. Her arms fell to her sides like they were on a dead person. She stared at the floor as she spoke. "I grew up in some foster homes. The last one was the dead worst. There were three other kids in there with me, and one of them was almost eighteen." She looked up at me. "Do you know what that means?"

I shook my head. "He can vote?"

"Yes, he could vote when he turned eighteen. But the bad news is, he would no longer be a part of the system. The State kicks you out."

"And you felt bad for him?" So you killed him? This wasn't making any sense yet, but I tried like hell to find patience I didn't normally have.

"No. Not him. With most kids I would, but not him. He was pure evil." Her voice dropped. "He did things. To other kids. And animals."

My skin crawled. Now we were seriously talking about a puppy-killer. I wanted to run away and not hear the rest of the story, but she was my friend and I had a commitment to that friendship. For better or for worse, I had a feeling that I was about to hear a story that would become a regular showing on my nightmare reel. "That's awful," I said.

"You have no idea. The foster system tells parents to be careful of family pets, because there are some kids who can get really angry and upset and they sometimes take their emotions out on people and animals and property…but with this guy, you just would never suspect it. He looked like a nice person. And he could fake it really well."

"A demon, basically."

She nodded. "A real demon. And one day I caught him with our little foster sister. He was…hurting her."

I was instantly sick to my stomach. "Oh geez," was all I could say.

"I warned him, but he didn't listen. I warned him more than once, but he just laughed in my face and did what he wanted."

"Did you tell the parents?"

"Of course I did. But he always convinced them that I was the problem."

"How could anyone think even for a single second that you were the problem?" I laughed at the idea.

"Jayne, you met the better version of me in Miami, and you've known only the best version of me as a fae. When I lived in the system, I wasn't the same person. I was hard. I was rude."

"You were a survivor. Don't act like there was anything wrong with how you were. I'm proud of you."

"Don't be." Her voice dropped to a tortured whisper. "I took a human life. I killed him. I literally killed him with my bare hands."

"Tell me the story. I think you'll feel better." I looked at her computer. "And what does this have to do with your emails?"

She glanced at the dark screen before coming back to me. "One day, he was in his bedroom with the door locked. And Binkley was crying in there. I could hear him."

"And Binkley is…"

"Binkley was the family dog. A terrier mix."

The nausea I was feeling ratcheted up another several notches. "Okay."

"I knocked on the door and told him to let me in. I knew he was doing something bad in there, but he refused to open the door. So I got the little lock popper thing our foster parents would use to force open the lock, and I forced his door open."

I could feel myself getting dizzy as I imagined what was coming.

"And when I got in there, I found the dog on the floor breathing really hard and D.J. just standing over him smiling. It was the most evil expression I have ever seen in my life, and I've seen live demons now, Jayne. Live ones. And none that ever looked like this guy did in that moment. He was happy." Her face twisted up into one of pure misery.

I swallowed with difficulty, my throat totally dry. "So, what did you do?"

"I wanted to kill him, but I was more worried about Binkley, so I grabbed the little guy and ran out of the room with him."

"Oh my god." I could totally see her doing that too. Becky to the rescuuue!

"Yeah. But of course D.J. was worried I was going to rat him out, which I absolutely was going to do, so he chased after me. He tripped me just as I got to the top of the stairs."

"Holy s**t, Becky!" My heart was pounding and my flesh was crawling.

"I know!" She was crying again and so was I.

"What did you do?"

"Well, I fell down those dang stairs first. And poor Binkley went right with me. We went all the way to the bottom. By the time we got there, he wasn't breathing anymore and I had a broken wrist."

"That is…just…ridiculously, terribly awful." I wiped at the tears on both our faces.

"D.J. came running down after us, yelling the whole time that I'd killed the dog."

"Jesus, what a piece of s**t he is," I said.

"Was. Was, Jayne."

I stopped breathing for a few seconds. "Was?"

"Our parents were out in the backyard. They didn't hear him at first, so he went running towards the back of the house to tell them. I chased after him, and I guess as we ran through the kitchen, I grabbed a knife that was on the counter."

My hand went to my heart and I could feel it beating like it was trying to escape my chest. "What happened then?" I asked in a near whisper.

"I wish I could say that I forgot, but I didn't forget. I'll never forget it for as long as I live. I ran up behind him as he tried to work the back door—it always got stuck—and I stabbed him right in the back."

"Oh damn."

"Yeah. Damn. I'm damned. I sunk that thing to the hilt and then I took it out and stabbed him again. And again."

My jaw fell open. I couldn't speak.

"I thought about Binkley. Did I mention that I called him The Binkster? Mister Binkle Buns? Binkley Dinkley? Did I mention that?" Her voice was going shrill. "He was the coolest dog ever. Part poodle, part shitzu, part terrier, and all heart. He was the world's worst pest control. He never caught a single mouse or rat or whatever those dogs are supposed to do. He just loved. That's all he ever did was love and love and love." Her voice was raw with anger and sadness. "And his last moments on earth were spent being tortured by that piece of demon slime!"

I reached out and placed my hand on the side of her face, gently wiping angry tears from her cheek with my thumb. "No, sweetie. His last moments on earth were in your arms, as you raced him away from evil to protect him."