Angry God by L.J. Shen

“Holy shit, this place is colder than Vaughn’s heart,” Knight complained, pretending to rub his arms, even though he was clad in a pea coat that probably cost more than a Fairhurst painting.

Hunter, a Boston native, wore a light bomber jacket and a patronizing smirk, wheeling the one suitcase they’d brought with them.

“Did you bring what I asked you for?” I hissed, flipping the keys of the rental car I’d picked them up with from Heathrow.

Dad had asked if I wanted him to do it—he was staying at the same cottage Mom and he had rented when I’d moved in here—but I’d told him I didn’t want him to get involved. Unlike Knight and Hunter, he asked questions. My friends were another story altogether. Knight had trashed art worth millions of dollars, burning it to the ground, and didn’t even wonder why. That’s why they were perfect for this job.

The automatic doors of the airport opened, and we all walked across to the Vauxhall Astra I had waiting. My friends looked at the silver car with a mixture of disgust and horror.

“Shit, man, you really don’t want to get laid here.” Hunter shook his head. “Do you have something against British girls, or…?”

“It’s a rental,” I barked, grabbing his suitcase and hurling it into the open trunk of the car. “And chasing tail is not an Olympic sport for me as it is for you. Now, I’ll ask again—did you bring it?”

He knew exactly what I meant. It was too specific for me to buy here, in the UK. It could be traced back to me, and that was a risk I couldn’t take. Hunter, on the other hand, had no problem buying it from a Canadian dude who drove all the way to Boston to hand it to him in person. Untraceable.

“Of course we brought it, fucker.” Knight laughed, tapping the roof of the car and sliding into the passenger seat. “Why else would we bring a half-empty suitcase? So we can shop at goddamn Primark?”

I slid into the driver’s seat, buckling up. Hunter got in the back.

“Tell me you don’t shop at Primark,” Knight said, dead serious, after a beat.

I shrugged. “They have good socks and jeans.”

“Jesus.” Knight dug his palms into his eye sockets at the same time Hunter laughed and said, “Goddamn, you are something else.”

We spent the rest of the drive catching up. Knight seemed genuinely happy, which didn’t surprise me, because he’d finally gotten what he always wanted: Luna Rexroth. Hunter lived in Boston and seemed mysterious about his time in college. I knew he had a job lined up, working for his family’s business once he graduated, and that his future had been written in blood the day he was born, but he never seemed to want to talk about it. And naturally, I wasn’t one to poke.

When we got to their Airbnb condo in Reading, everything had already been readied. The security cameras upfront were working, blinking their red dots at us and recording everything. I slid into the garage, took the thing I needed from their suitcase, and drove back to Carlisle.

I couldn’t help but make a stop at Lenora’s room. I got as far as her door before pressing my forehead to it and taking a deep breath.

There wasn’t any point in seeing her again.

It would just make shit harder.

I knew she was on the other side.

Alone. Soft. Beautiful. Mine, for now.

I turned and walked away, feeling for the first time what it meant to have a hungry heart.

Harry Fairhurst wasn’t born yesterday.

Shortly after I broke his arm, he’d booked a ticket to Brunei, in Southeast Asia, known for its beautiful beaches, exotic rainforest, and ability to hide there without a trace—the perfect haven for a child molester. Luckily, I’d calculated his moves, no matter how fast, swift, and smart. Right now he was still in his St. Albans house, packing up and getting ready to leave for the airport.

The first thing I’d done today was slide a letter under Len’s door. I wasn’t dumb enough to discuss what I was about to do in said letter—I trusted her, but how was I to know it wasn’t going to find its way to unfriendly hands? The second was to head to my cellar and pretend to work as if nothing had happened.

When the clock hit three, I went to Hunter and Knight’s apartment, passing the security cameras and making sure my face was visible. The perfect alibi. Once inside, I jumped out the back window, ran across the street to another rental car—this time a Kia—and drove to Harry’s.

I parked at the fringe of the neighborhood, where the houses kissed the woods, took out what Hunter had gotten for me, and walked the rest of the way to Harry’s house. Rather than open the door with the key I’d gotten my hands on, I jabbed my elbow through one of the windows, making it look like burglary. I stepped through the shards of glass, a replica of Tutankhamun’s Death Mask on my face and shoulders—the mask my friends had brought from the US—gloves on my hands, and my weapon dangling from my fingertips.

Harry was standing in the hallway, surrounded by three suitcases.

“Christ!” he yelped, immediately backing himself against the wall.

He was such easy prey. If I hadn’t been so young, so impressionable, and such a fuck-up, maybe all of this could have been prevented when I was a kid.

Maybe I could be with Lenora now the way I wanted to.

Maybe I’d have a future that wasn’t all bleak.

“Vaughn?” he asked. “Is that you? How did you get your hands on that mask? This is… Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“God’s not going to save you.” I tsked, well aware of how creepy I looked with the mask.

This was one for the fucking books. If nothing else, the great Harry Fairhurst, creator of the most human-like eyes in the history of art, was going to go out in style.

“What is in your hand?” he gasped, wincing visibly. “God, I don’t want to die. Vaughn, I was young. I did some horrible things, but I…I…stopped. You know I did. You saw me with Dominic Maple. I haven’t done those other things in nearly five years.”

I lifted the khopesh—an Egyptian sickle-sword—examining it from all angles. I’d forged it myself in my cellar afterhours. It took me weeks to get it just right. It was small and sharp. I looked down, examining it through the slits my mask provided, feeling hot and sweaty under it.

“Let’s talk about the heartless prince,” I said with a calm I couldn’t really feel. Not killing him wasn’t an option. This was what I’d been waiting for since I was eight. But it wasn’t as climactic as I’d thought it would be.

He was sweating and shaking, his back against the wall, but seeing his fear didn’t bring me as much pleasure as seeing Len’s face when she opened the door for me.

Harry pissed his pants just then. He couldn’t even cover it, because one of his hands was stretched up, begging me not to hurt him, while the other was still in a cast and a sling. Also my doing.

“I just said some things. I didn’t mean them…” he started.

“Remember our conversation that day?” I strode to him purposefully, ignoring his words. “Because I do, very damn well. According to one researcher, the death mask was originally intended for someone else, not the young prince. The artistic accuracy and skill is so precise, people find it hard to believe it was made in such a rush.” I took another step, watching him collapse on the floor, against the wall. “They think it was intended for his stepmother, Queen Neferneferuaten. So really, it was someone else who should have died and put on a mask.”

I carefully removed the mask from my face, waiting for the sick pleasure to kick in.

But it wasn’t there.

I went through the motions, cradling the mask against my waist. My hair stuck to my forehead, and when I looked down and saw Harry weeping, all I wanted to do was kick his face, turn around, and go straight back to Lenora.

It was frustrating as shit, because there was nothing I craved more than to be present in this moment, which I had planned for over a decade.

I put the mask on his face, and he was so scared, he didn’t even try to struggle. With his face covered, he squeezed his eyes shut, sobbing, in hysterics.

“Please. I know you’re not a murderer. Please, Vaughn, please.”

I stared at him, clutching my weapon, turned off by the idea of slitting his throat and letting him bleed dry. I was going to make it look like burglary. I did have the perfect alibi.

“Lenora will loathe you,” he spat, trying another tactic.

“Lenora knows,” I corrected. “She understands me.”

He laughed humorlessly, shaking to the core. “That doesn’t mean she’d ever look at you the same way. You think she’d want to be touched by a murderer? Kissed by a cold-blooded killer? You think she’s going to marry one? Have his children? Do you think my sweet, beautiful niece is able to fall in love with the man who killed her uncle?”

When I remained silent, debating whether this question was even relevant, he took it as a sign of my weakness, regaining some of his confidence.

“We can make this all go away. I sucked your cock and came into your hand. Big fucking deal. I didn’t sodomize you. You didn’t fuck me. Other boys had it a lot worse, Vaughn, so stop being such a bitch about it. Let me go, and I promise to stay in Brunei for the remainder of my life. I have the means to sustain myself there.”

“You’ll just harass other boys.”

That was part of why I wanted to kill him. Not only because of all the things he did to me, but because of the prospect he might do them to others. He’d said he hadn’t touched an unwilling victim in five years. I had no reason to take his word for it.

“Can’t.” He shook his head in the mask violently, probably making himself dizzy. “Not in Brunei. I won’t even be able to have a relationship. It’s strict over there. They would kill me if they find out I’m gay.”

“You’re not gay; you’re a pedophile.”

“That’s illegal there all the same.” He didn’t try to deny it.

I knew it was stupid to stand here and listen to him. If he didn’t follow through with his promises, I was going to be in deep shit for attempted murder, no matter how solid my alibi was.

Besides, I wanted him dead.

I did.

I just didn’t want Lenora to be secretly appalled by me, and I didn’t understand why I cared so much. I knew she would understand, but I could already feel her disappointment everywhere. It scorched my skin.

It seemed like I couldn’t will my heart to stop wanting her any more than I could will it to stop beating. They had a word for what I was feeling, but I didn’t want to say it. Think it. Consider it.

Love. I was in love with Lenora Astalis. Had been from the goddamn get-go.

I’d offered her a brownie because I wanted to talk to her.

I’d followed her back to her room at Carlisle after she’d entered the darkroom because I wanted to thrust myself into her life with a dirty pact. A bargain. A silent contract.

I bullied her because I loved her.

I loved her because she was the only girl who looked at me and didn’t see money or status or violence or a heartless prince.

She saw me.

I took a step back. Harry saw it. I hated myself for choosing love over hate. I hated myself for fucking myself over, for not going through with it because of a pussy.

But she wasn’t just a pussy, was she?

“That’s it, lad. That’s it. Do the right thing.”

As he said it, the front door opened and closed behind me. I turned around, my eyes widening in horror when I saw who stood on the other side.

My father walked in, his face a blank mask of death.

“Vaughn, go back to Berkshire and call my PA on your way home. Tell her to get someone to come fix that window. Today,” he enunciated, his voice steadfast.

I jerked my chin up. “I don’t want you to interfe—” I started.

He plucked the weapon from my hand and pressed it to the base of my neck, exactly on my vein. “I don’t care what you want. Go.”

I did the thing I should have done when I was eight.

When I was ten.

When I was thirteen.

For the first time in my life, I let my father take care of me. Deal with my bullshit. Help me.

I closed the door behind me, shaking my head.

Family is destiny.