Chapter 3: My Sister's Killer

Chapter 3: My Sister's Killer

The scream from the kitchen wasn't one of surprise or simple fear. It was a wet, final sound, cut short by a sickening tear. For a paralyzing instant, Valentine was trapped between two impossible worlds: the majestic, terrifying moth-creature at the window whispering prophecies into her soul, and the primal, visceral horror erupting from behind the swinging doors.

The immediate threat won.

Marked One. The words echoed in her skull, but the scream drowned them out. She broke her gaze from the shimmering wings and spun toward the kitchen. Tom was already moving, but not towards the danger. He methodically picked up a heavy-duty mop and bucket from a supply closet, his face a mask of grim procedure. He didn't even look at her. His message was clear, colder than any verbal command: This is your mess.

Adrenaline surged, a bitter, familiar taste. She shoved the swinging door open and plunged into the kitchen.

It was a cavern of stainless steel and white tile, unnaturally clean and silent. The air was thick with the cloying sweetness of bleach and something else, something metallic and raw. In the center of the room, a tall, lanky figure in a cook's uniform and a stained white hat stood hunched over a butcher's block, its back to her. A large cleaver was still in its hand. There was no sign of anyone else.

"Hey!" Valentine's voice was a ragged croak. "Did you hear that? Who screamed?"

The figure didn't turn. It simply straightened, its movements jerky and disjointed, like a marionette with tangled strings. It was too tall, the proportions all wrong. Its arms were too long, the knuckles of its gloved hands almost brushing the floor.

"Shift change," it rasped, its voice a dry, sibilant whisper that scraped at her nerves. "The last cook... clocked out."

It turned, and Valentine's breath caught in her throat. The cook's hat was perched on a head that had no face. Where eyes, a nose, and a mouth should have been, there was only a smooth, unbroken canvas of pale, waxy skin. It was a horrifying blank slate, yet she felt a gaze on her, an intense and malevolent pressure that was worse than any pair of eyes.

Before she could process the sheer wrongness of it, it moved. It wasn't a walk or a run; it was a lunge, a fluid uncoiling of limbs that covered the space between them in a blink. The cleaver whistled through the air, and Valentine threw herself sideways, crashing painfully against a steel prep table. The cleaver embedded itself in the metal with a deafening clang, inches from where her head had been.

The creature didn't pause. It was on her, its weight immense, pinning her against the table. One of its too-long arms pressed down on her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. The other hand, now stripped of its glove, reached for her face. It was a pale, five-fingered claw, tipped with razored keratin that looked like shards of obsidian.

Pain exploded across her shoulder as the claws tore through her uniform and into her flesh. It was a deep, searing agony, a gruesome echo of the scar that already marred her face. She cried out, struggling against its impossible strength, her mind screaming, her body failing.

It leaned in close, the blank expanse of its face just inches from hers. The sibilant whisper slithered directly into her ear, intimate and poisonous.

"You feel familiar," it hissed, the sound vibrating through her bones. "You have the same scent... the same terror... as the little bird in the house with the blue door. She broke so easily."

The house with the blue door. Her house.

"She screamed, too," the monster whispered, a phantom mockery of a smile in its voice. "Just like that. A sweet, snapping sound. Miley."

The name struck Valentine like a physical blow. The world tilted, the searing pain in her shoulder, the crushing weight on her chest, the sterile horror of the kitchen—it all faded to a single, white-hot point of focus. The static-filled silence of her sister's room. The shattered window. The coppery smell of blood. This... this was it. Not a monster. The monster.

Grief was a cold, deep ocean. Terror was a paralyzing frost. But this new feeling was a supernova. A rage so pure and absolute it burned away everything else. The guilt, the fear, the sorrow—all of it became fuel for an inferno that roared to life in the core of her being.

Her right hand, which had been scrabbling uselessly at the monster's arm, instinctively dropped to her hip. To the empty holster. It was a desperate, hopeless gesture born of a life she no longer had.

But the holster wasn't empty anymore.

Her fingers closed around the cold, checkered grip of a pistol. It was heavy, real, and humming with a faint, imperceptible energy. There was no flash of light, no sound. It was simply not there, and then it was. She didn't have time to question it, to wonder at the impossibility. It was an extension of her will, a physical manifestation of her murderous rage.

With a guttural roar that was torn from the depths of her soul, she yanked the gun free. The monster, sensing the shift, recoiled slightly, its claws digging deeper. It wasn't enough. She shoved the barrel of the gun hard against the creature's side, right into the soft space below its ribs.

She pulled the trigger.

The explosion was deafening in the enclosed space, a brutal, concussive blast that made the steel tables ring. The gun kicked violently in her hand, but she held on, her entire arm locked by the force of her hatred. The monster shrieked, a high, thin sound of static and pain, and its grip loosened.

She shoved it back, scrambling for footing on the slick floor. The creature staggered, a ragged, smoking hole oozing thick, black ichor onto the white tiles. Its blank face turned to her, radiating a sense of utter shock and fury.

It lunged again. She fired twice more. The shots slammed into its chest, throwing it back against the butcher's block. It clawed at the wounds, its movements becoming frantic, but it didn't fall. It was wounded, enraged, and coming for her.

Valentine scrambled backwards, firing again and again. One shot went wide, shattering a stack of plates. Another ricocheted off a hanging pot with a scream of metal. The final bullet in the clip struck the creature in the center of its featureless head.

There was a sickening, wet crunch. The monster froze. It stood there for a long, silent moment, trembling. Then, like a collapsing puppet, it crumpled to the floor, landing in a boneless heap amidst the spreading pool of its own black blood.

Silence crashed down, broken only by the ringing in Valentine's ears and her own harsh, ragged breathing. The gun in her hand was still smoking. It felt like it had been welded to her palm. She stared at the unmoving thing on the floor, the killer of her sister, a secret horror the world would never know.

A wave of dizziness washed over her as the adrenaline began its treacherous retreat. Her shoulder was on fire, blood soaking through the torn fabric of her uniform. She was bleeding, but she was alive.

She had done it. She had avenged Miley.

But as she stood there, trembling in the sterile silence of the blood-spattered kitchen, she knew this wasn't an ending. It was a beginning. The monster was dead, and its secret—its connection to her, to her family—was dead with it. The knowledge was hers alone to carry now, a cold, heavy stone in the pit of her stomach. She looked from the corpse to the gun, and a single, terrifying thought surfaced through the pain and rage.

Rule four. Clean up your own messes. All of them.