Up and down, up and down, my arm’s getting tired.

“He’s still gurgling, Hex.” She’s ten feet away and judging me. Breathing heavy. She doesn’t work out like I do, so when they fight back, she just gets pissed off.

“I know, I know.” I try to adjust my aim, get it right down at the mark, but the motherfucker keeps moving. “If you want the pain to stop, you better hold the fuck still.” He shudders, collapses, shudders again. Half of the blood here has come straight from his ugly mouth.

“Move. Let me do it.” Alice stomps over, blackened sword in hand. I stumble back right as she drives it so violently into his chest it buries itself into the carpet beneath him with a little crunch. She smiles to herself, admiring her work, then looks at me. Her face deadens. “Clean yourself up. You’re disgusting.”

“Right.” I won’t lie. I’m a little shaken by this one. He fought like hell.

I stumble to the bathroom, letting my knife drop quietly to the floor. I flick the light on, slam the door, check the damage in the mirror. I hate when she’s right. Not only am I covered in blood, but there’s some gut too. Chunks of mystery meat. A year ago, I would have thrown myself at the toilet, puking like a drunk, questioning everything. Now I just grab a towel.

When you don’t own anything, you don’t really care what gets dirty or “ruined.” Like they even know the meaning. I start with my hands, my arms, chest, neck, and pause. I’m sort of just moving shit around, leaving specks of red in every pore, and now the towel is drenched. All that’s left is my face, still dripping.

I kind of like how it looks, almost like face paint, or war paint. I hear our mother’s words in my head. Red sinks to black. I grab a new towel and wipe away all but a bright red bar across my nose. It runs from ear to ear, like a smile. I smile. Killer looks good on me. Momma would be so proud.

Alice’s fist thunders against the bathroom door. “I need your help. The fuck are you doing in there?”

“What?” I turn my chin up at my reflection, hit a nice little side angle. “I look fucking awesome.” I run a single finger across my own jawline and can’t help grinning harder.

I used to hate how I looked. Too soft. Too like prey. A lot has changed since then. For one, I shaved my head.

“Get out here! Hex!”

I take my time. One more wink for the killer in the mirror. Then I turn and push open the door. “You know it was unlocked, right?”

Alice can’t hear me. She’s focused. She’s got both hands on the grip of her sword and she’s yanking to no avail. I can’t help but laugh. She still has the lanky arms we were born with, bless her, and without gravity on her side, she’s weak. Her head snaps up so she can give me the glare she thinks I deserve, but my new look distracts her, and she lets go of the sword.

“Really?”

“You don’t like it?”

Alice spits a wad of blood onto the ground next to the living room corpse. Her blonde hair, painted black from violence, runs red lines down her face. Sweat and someone else’s blood. Dripping. “Just help me.”

I grin, take a breath, wind back my arms a little bit, roll the shoulders out. “Now move, little girl.”

Alice scoffs, obeys. I kick my knife to the side and approach the sword. It’s going in at a slight angle. I turn my body to match it. “Sloppy.”

“At least I’m not soft.”

“Let’s see about that.” I put both hands on the taped up hilt, give it a slight jiggle, and pull back as hard as I can. It gives easily. I laugh again and give Alice a look she won’t return, slap my rock hard bicep, and agree: “Soft.”

Just as my grip starts to loosen, she snatches Ches from me. I let her have it. It is hers after all.

“We’ve gotta keep moving. The next one is in the same neighborhood, so let’s try to get there before twelve arrives, hm?” She sheaths the sword without even wiping it down. “Where’s the gun?”

“Which one?”

“Right. I’ll get his. You get yours.”

“Already done.” I lift my shirt a bit so she can see the nine tucked in my pants. Alice huffs. Now she’s got to go on a little shotgun search and rescue.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Where did he drop it?”

I roll my eyes. “Follow the holes in the wall.”

“Fuck you. I’ll be right back.”

It’s not that there isn’t love between us. Of course there is. Our bond is unbreakable. But the last time we held hands was probably in the womb. Now we’re a little too busy for the sweet stuff. No more matching dresses. No more little bows.

“Got it!” She points the double-barreled shotty at me from the doorway, taunts me with a little grin. She must have passed a mirror on her way there, because her face is now clean of blood spatter and her hair is tied back.

I stare down the barrel. Red sinks to black. “Let’s go then.”

“Don’t forget your knife!”

“Right.” Unlike Alice, I wipe that shit down before I sheath it. One of these days her sword is going to snap in half.

But what does it matter? It’s not like we’re going to do this forever. We’re just going to do it until it’s done.

Alice trots over to me, cradling the gun in her little hands. She hustles past me, out the door into the blue dawn, and I follow quietly, shutting the door behind us with a satisfying click.

“So the other guy,” Alice says, “lives just down the street. Isn’t that crazy? And what a view.” She waves her hand at the city below.

We’re about halfway through our list now. Who knew a company could have so many board members? And that they’d all live in mansions on top of beautiful rolling hills. Isolated and vulnerable.

Alice is dripping blood from her hair, leaving a perfect little trail for the police to follow. At this point, we’re both past caring about being caught. If anything, it’s a little stupid that we haven’t been caught already. That the connection hasn’t been made. A lot of the board members did go on to do other things, bigger more impressive things, so their connection to RSTB goes a little too far back. Plus, some of our murders were misclassified as murder suicides, back when we didn’t know what we were doing. I don’t know how. Cops are dumb as hell.

“Here we are. Stop number two on our exclusive tour!” Alice does a little spin with the shotty as her dance partner and lands with it aimed straight at the front door of yet another mansion. This one’s got a fountain out front. Corny. “Let’s make it quick. That last guy was way too much. Like, it wasn’t even fun.”

“Fine by me.” We walk right up to the front door and Alice scoots to the side so I can get a good angle on it. She doesn’t need to say a thing; I know what we’re getting into here. This is one house in particular that I’ve been looking forward to.

But Alice is a talker, so she does what she does best. “No hidden key this time. Big kick from the big sibling?”

In one try, I break the door down with the bottom of my boot, the wood from the doorframe splintering all over the marble floors. Alice squeals a little.

We enter, one at a time, our shoes squelching loudly, to find absolutely no one. Per usual.

Alice has done her research, of course. “Bedroom upstairs. They love to sleep in.”

We jog up the stairs like we’ve done it a million times before and find our new friends exactly where we expect them: in a corner, phone in hand.

“Recognize me?” Alice says.

The color drains from the man’s face; his wife sees the blood on us and starts screaming.

How annoying. I pull out my glock in one swift movement and fire. The room explodes with sound, then falls silent. A low moan croaks out of the old man’s throat as his wife’s body crashes to the floor. Her phone clatters to the ground too, slides a little our way. She never completed the call. Too bad.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Callahan, but I don’t think I heard you answer my question.”

The man wipes some of his wife’s blood from his eye and gives us a long look before stuttering out: “Alice. And… Melanie.”

Alice gives him her classic scrunch-nosed grin. “Their name is Hex now, actually. I guess you would know that if you ever checked in.”

“Hex… ain?” His mouth falls open as he makes the connection. “So it’s been you… killing us. Over hexain?”

“Because of hexain.” Alice’s smile is fading. “Have you seen how hexain kills? It’s a lot… less kind than we are. But I’m sure you know all about that.”

“It was supposed to help people!”

Alice gives me an “impressed” glance that reads: look at the balls on this guy!

“Help who?” I cut in. “Your wallet? Our parents? Us?”

“I remember meeting you gir… you two when you were so little. You were such happy children. We don’t have to do this.” He’s shaking now, begging. Just how we like ’em.

“Ohhh,” Alice jeers. “That’s right. When you told us our father killed himself? That was such a happy time for all of us.”

“Is that what you want? The truth?” Alice starts lifting the shotgun, and he raises his hands up in front of him, as if that’ll do anything. “I wasn’t allowed to say what really happened, okay? But clearly you know already. It was hexain. It was an accident.”

“What a happy accident for you,” Alice says cheerily, motioning to the opulent master bedroom all around us. “Just another innocent man who made the mistake of covering up multiple deaths for his own benefit! Our bad. We thought you were proud of what you did. But now that we know you’re not, well, I guess you’re free to go.”

He’s crying now. Like a child at the funeral of their father. And the funeral of their mother. He’s just a living ghost to us.

“Close your eyes,” Alice says, “and tell me what you see.”

He obeys, his raised hands trembling. “Red?” he whispers. His eyes flash open, glittering with fear. He knows now that it’s over. That it’s all finally caught up with him. He knows how it goes. He was there for it. He saw it all. And he just watched.

Alice slides the shotgun onto the bed, just out of his reach. He’s too old, anyway. He could never reach it in time. She starts to draw her sword. “And how do we know when hexain has infected its host?”

“Red… sinks to black.”

“Raze Solutions Technology and Biowarfare. No—sorry, Freudian slip. Biometrics. I won’t lie; it’s pretty clever.” Ches is fully unsheathed now. I keep my gun trained on him. This is Alice’s game, making them hurt, watching them bleed. I just want them gone. “Like a nursery rhyme!” Alice continues. “So memorable.”

“Please,” he begs one last time. “It was an accident.”

Alice ignores him, cocks her head to the side. “I think we’ll start with your hands.” And the sword comes swinging down.