Everything was so crystal clear, the memories like the glare of chrome, making her eyes and her head hurt even though this was all just a tape played backward, a book’s passage being read instead of written.
“I dematerialized behind him after he got out of his car. I don’t know how I did it. My plan had been to slit his throat before he knew I was there, but he sensed me immediately and wheeled around. His eyes were wide and glassy—he was clearly high and that’s the only reason I got the job done. He was sloppy with his defenses. I was sloppy with the attack. I stabbed at air instead of his chest because he jerked to the left, and then I sliced his shoulder. He went for his gun. I caught him in the forearm . . .”
She closed her eyes. Reopened them immediately. “I dropped the knife. It just popped out of my hand because of the sweat. As it turned out, that was how I took him down. My hands functioned better when there was nothing in them. I punched him in the side of the head. Then I broke his nose. There was blood everywhere. I kicked him in the groin. As soon as he fell facedown on the ground, I got on his back and I didn’t let him up. My body . . . it knew what to do.”
Ahmare looked at the Shadow. “I watched me submit him. I know that sounds weird, but I swear, I was standing five feet away from myself when I got his throat in the crook of my elbow and started strangling him.” She moved her arm into that position, pulling up her sleeve, clasping her wrist, and making like she was pulling back. Then she released the hold on herself and looked at where she had just gripped. “I have bruises right here.”
She turned her arm around so the Shadow could see the purple and blue marks. “When I was driving down here, my wrist ached and I couldn’t figure out why. But I have my own handprint in my flesh.”
Dimly, she was aware that the Shadow wasn’t tossing the gun anymore.
“I think he was still alive when I rolled off of him.” Ahmare put her arm behind her back, hiding her wrist like that could erase what she’d done. “I mean, he was breathing or at least seemed to be, but he was limp and both of his pupils were fixed and dilated when I turned him over. I sat back in the dusty dirt and caught my breath. Something told me I had to decide what I was going to do then, which was nuts. I had already decided what I had to do. I had spent all day thinking about the steps I needed to take. Yet I hesitated.”
She curled her nose. “He smelled bad. His blood was flowing down the lower part of his face and all over his T-shirt, and it was like rotten eggs, all sulfur and rot from the drugs. I told myself he wasn’t going to survive long anyway. I told myself that he sold shit to kids that, even though they were only humans, didn’t need that kind of thing anywhere near them. I told myself . . . that he was the reason my brother was in Chalen’s custody. That what the two of them stole from the conqueror was this male’s fault, not Ahlan’s.
“None of that seemed to matter when it came down to it. I still don’t think I had a right to take his life. A person’s heartbeat is their own property. Even thieves and murderers get that gift from the Creator. And I knew . . .” She touched her sternum. “I knew, deep in here, that if I killed him, I was no better than he was. I was the drug dealer to children. I was a corrupter, too.”
“So what made you follow through on it?” the Shadow prompted.
Ahmare shivered and put her arms around herself even though the air inside the cabin was warm and a little stale.
“That’s the scariest part,” she said.
“How so.”
She met the other female in the eye. “I don’t know what made me do it, and that is terrifying because it makes me think there’s something ugly inside of me that I can’t control. I tell myself, so I don’t get scared I’m a monster, that maybe destiny was using my body as a tool, that the human was somehow getting his due. Or that maybe it was only because I had practiced things so many times in my head, and as long as I never think like that again, I’ll never do something like that again. All I know for sure is that I watched my hand reach out and pick up my knife from the dirt. I didn’t even wipe the hilt or the blade off. I left all the grit that clung to my sweat on the rubber and the blood on the metal where it was. It helped my grip, I guess, and what did it matter whether the steel was clean or not?” Her lids went down again, but she couldn’t bear the images she saw. “I only needed one hand for the front of the throat, but getting through the spinal cord required two and all my strength. Stupid me, I was trying to cut bone instead of finding the juncture between two vertebra. I fixed that by angling the blade differently. And then I felt the knife go into the soft earth on the far side.”