Chapter 144 – Cat Out of the Bag – Holly Hayfield

After going through such lengths to hide my identity, even after tightening the straps uncomfortably on my mask, the mask still managed to come off in the end. Of all the times for the mask to fail me, it had to happen now? It would’ve been easy to secure this kill as the anonymous Killing Cat, but now? Now things were going to get complicated.

“Identify yourself!” Angel shouted, panic laced in her voice. “Who are you? Why are you hunting down my friends? Show me your face or I’ll slice your accomplice’s throat!”

I began to stand up from where I landed. My bones were still rattling from landing so heavily like that. It was a miracle that the ice didn’t give way when I fell.

“You want to see my face?” I asked, adjusting my posture to face Angel. “That’s fine. My face will be the last you ever see.”

Perhaps she couldn’t see who it was at first, or maybe she didn’t want to believe, but she stared at me intensely as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. We weren’t that far apart and it wasn’t that dark in the bright of the moonlight. She removed her knife from Silver’s neck and pointed it towards me.

“You…?” She asked in a trembling voice, unsure how to process this. “That… That’s not possible!”

Now that the knife wasn’t being held to her neck, Silver was able to turn this direction too. Silver’s eyes widened like something out of a cartoon. This came as much of a shock to her as it did to Angel. Just great. There was no playing this off. The cat was officially out of the bag.

“Oh, it’s possible. Think about it!” I said, taking a step forward to face them fully. “You’ve known me since even before I started attending this new school. Don’t look so hurt to see me standing here! You’re almost making me feel sad. Almost.”

“But… But…” Angel said vacantly, like she was trying to come up with a reason against my being here. She couldn’t come up with one and instead settled for a one-word question. “Why?”

“There was a time not long ago that I didn’t have many friends, and was treated poorly by my fellow students. When I read Malorie’s diary I realized just how much I wasn’t alone in my experience. Malorie, in all her wisdom, helped me across time and space to transform me into what I am today.”

“A killer!” Angel shouted viciously, shaking Silver’s hair in her grip. “You were better than that! You weren’t supposed to be like this! You weren’t like all the other girls from that damned school! The Holly I know…”

I interrupted her rant with a crude laugh.

“The Holly you know was always a killer.” I said flatly. “And worst of all, unlike Silver here, you always knew it.”

Angel and Silver both stared at me, dumbfounded. This was a surprise to Silver to be certain, but Angel’s expression was torn. She still couldn’t believe the sight before her eyes.

“You… You nursed me back to health over the summer!” She said.

“And I lived to regret it once I learned how involved you were with Malorie’s murder.” I said. “More than that, you are the one who went through the greatest lengths to keep the conspiracy hidden from the police! In actuality, I should’ve come after you first but I was still too naïve back then. I thought that maybe I was mistaken. Maybe you weren’t as involved as I suspected you were. Alas…”

I gestured over to Silver and Angel’s grip on her hair. Angel tightened her grip on Silver’s hair in an act of defiance. She wasn’t going to be convinced to let her go. My true identity aside, she still wanted to clean up this mess. Was she confident that she could salvage things from here? She did manage to draw me all the way out to the middle of nowhere, after all.

“That doesn’t explain why you felt the need to get involved with this!” Angel said. “You didn’t know Malorie like I did! What does she mean to you?”

“Everything!” I shouted, my voice carrying greatly over the ice. “She was me, but in another lifetime. She was all of my friends. I dare say that she was all of the girls from Meredith’s School for Troubled Girls. The storm of life brought her to that school, same as the rest of us. Her struggle embodies us all! It was you though… It was you and your friends that conspired to kill her for speaking the truth!”

“You didn’t have to become like this!”

“I didn’t have to.” I agreed. “But I wasn’t the only one yearning for vengeance. My friends were plotting radical action of their own. I took their place by taking up the mask of the Killing Cat myself! Now they are placated, and only my hands are bloody, as they have always been.”

“For your friends…?” She asked in a mix of anger and disgust. “You did this… to impress your friends?”

“I did this to protect them!” I assured her. “Not only would they no longer risk themselves with deadly plots of their own, but I’ll be protecting my friends from people like you and Ms. Sampson. It was Ms. Logan that lectured to me about the value of protecting my friends. Can you believe it? Isn’t it comical that she taught me that when she failed so spectacularly to protect her own best friend?”

“How dare you bring her up…!” Angel said. “You were the very one who…!”

“I mourned her death!” I shouted at her. “I won’t mourn yours.”

Angel’s face was scrunched into a tight grimace as she glared intensely at me. The time for talking was over. She wasn’t going to let go of Silver, and I wasn’t going to let her get away with this. My mind was made up on dealing with her long before this night. She might hesitate to kill me, but I never hesitated to kill anyone on my list.

“I notice that you didn’t have time to restock your knives since our last fight! You’ve got one dagger left on your belt.” She warned. “You won’t be able to beat me in a fair one-on-one fight, even if I’m keeping this stupid girl held down.”

She punctuated her statement by knocking Silver back down to the ice with one hand. Silver yelped in pain. She pinned Silver in place by keeping one foot planted on her.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Holly?” Angel asked challengingly, “You’ve got no more tricks up your sleeves!”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I grinned.

“Oh,” I said mockingly, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

I raised my hand into the air, giving the signal. In response, a dagger flew through the air from far behind me. The dagger landed on the ice behind me and slid right up to my side. Angel and Silver were both suddenly shocked by the additional weapon landing near me. Then Angel realized it.

“Someone else is working with you?! Who is working with…”

She didn’t get the chance to finish her question. I whipped the knife from my belt and threw it directly at her. She was forced to feint back greatly to dodge it, resulting in her falling backwards. Her hold on Silver was temporarily broken as she scrambled to grab hold of her again.

Silver wasn’t passive as this happened. She tried to use the moment as a chance to escape. Angel barely managed to catch her by the leg, but this came at a cost. She was late to realize that the dagger I threw at her was just a distraction. After picking up the new dagger that was thrown to me, I was sprinting straight for her.

Angel responded by trying to guard herself from my upcoming attack with her knife. She couldn’t defend and hold onto Silver at the same time. Instead, she decided to let go of Silver in order to protect herself. It was a good thing for her too, because she only barely managed to save herself from being stabbed in the neck.

The blow scraped against her uninjured shoulder before planting into her vest. She knew that she had a massive advantage here due to that vest. It saved her from my ambush back at Cora’s place, and it was saving her now out here on the ice.

She tried to strike back at me but I was agile enough to dodge her blows. My footing on the ice was making things difficult, but she was suffering the same drawback. The fact that I was quicker on my toes meant that I could recover from imbalance faster than she could.

Her greater size and weight was turning into a disadvantage the longer this went on, and she was starting to realize it. After a full 60 seconds of trying to hit me and failing repeatedly, she was beginning to wear out. Not because of my poison, but because she lacked the stamina for this type of prolonged hand-to-hand combat.

My poison, an improvised concoction meant to debilitate an opponent’s cardiovascular system, didn’t work at these subfreezing temperatures. The poison was an unstable mixture of two separate liquids that disassociated quickly in these conditions. I normally didn’t rely on my physical skills alone to win a fight.

Like she said, I’d never beat her in a fair fight. That’s why I wanted to stay out of her reach and wait for her to tire herself out completely. Dancing and dodging out of an opponent’s reach was something I typically did as the poison took effect, but this was different. This was a stamina battle of attrition.

It was working. She was becoming more and more self-aware as she panted heavily. However, I was thrown off guard when she suddenly threw her knife to the ground, far away from her. Was she giving up? No! She was changing tactics! Instead of trying to swipe at me with the knife, she dived straight at me, capturing me in a tackle.

I was so surprised by the desperate attack that there was little I could do as we went down together. The ice cracked dramatically beneath where we landed and my vision flashed as I hit the back of my head. She put a hand on my neck and began to press down. I brought my knife up to stab her in the leg.

She was able to swipe my knife away before it made contact. The knife went flying out of my hand and sliding across the ice. I tried to break her hold and get up, but was overpowered when she put her entire body weight down on me and choked me with both hands.

“Why did you make me do this, Holly?!” She said, anguish laden in her voice. “Why did you go down this path?!”

I struggled to pull her hands away from my neck, desperate to break free and get a breath in.

“I loved you so much!” She said sorrowfully, “So… So much, Holly! I can’t believe you…”

When it was clear that I couldn’t pull her hands away I began flailing at her, trying to get her to loosen her grip.

“What the hell am I going to say to your mother…?” She asked. “She has no idea what her daughter has got herself into… This is such a tragedy…”

My vision was beginning to go black around the edges and my attempts at struggling out of her hold were weakening. I scratched at her, kicked my legs, and rolled from side to side. It was in vain. She was too strong for me to break loose.

That’s when the loud and unmistakable sound of a gunshot rang out from behind me.

Angel’s eyes widened and shock and suddenly her hold on me went limp. I was then able to easily push her off. After drawing in a deep breath, I could finally see in clear detail what happened. She was shot almost in the left of her chest. It wasn’t right on top of her heart, but it looked like it was in a vital area.

I turned to look behind me. Silver was standing on the ice a few feet away from me, shivering in her pajamas. She was holding Angel’s pistol, her hold on the gun trembling and shaking dramatically. She gave me a fearful look of dire anxiety.

“I… I…” She started to say in an unsteady voice.

Angel stirred in place, and tried to get back up. Silver pointed the gun at her again, ready to fire another shot. The vest she was wearing must’ve absorbed some of the bullet’s force, but not enough to keep it from penetrating at this range. She was still alive, but bleeding heavily.

Silver readied her finger on the trigger and prepared to shoot again.

“Silver, wait…!” I said as I got up.

She looked at me indecisively and took a step back when I approached.

“Silver,” I said self-assuredly, “It’s still me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I put my hand out towards her, asking her to hand over the gun. She had an emotional and indecisive look on her face, but still released the gun over to me.

“Holly!” Another voice called out as a new person joined us on the ice.

Silver and I both turned to see Alyssa approaching. Silver looked between the two of us in confusion. She was holding herself and shaking intensely. After being out here in the cold for so long in only her pajamas she had to be freezing.

“Your face is bleeding!” Alyssa noted.

I put a hand up to the cut on my cheek. It must’ve happened back when Angel used her knife to knock my mask off.

“That’s going to be an annoying one to explain to people.” I said. “Oh well, things could’ve turned out worse. I’m only alive right now because Silver here decided to save me. If she had decided to just run off instead of staying to help… Well…”

Silver’s face was turning red, although that could’ve just have been from the cold. I turned towards Alyssa.

“Alyssa, take Silver back to the hideout. We’ll have her contact her parents so that they know she’s alright. We’ll choose a spot to drop her off at later.”

“What about you?” Alyssa asked.

“You’ll have to come back for me. Only one additional rider can fit on your scooter at once.” I said, before turning back towards Angel. “Besides, I’ve still got things to finish here.”

Alyssa nodded and took Silver by the hand. Silver was reluctant to follow, but followed through with it in the end.

“H-… Holly…” Angel said in a pained voice.

She was still trying to rise up off the ground, but failing. Her bright red, warm blood was heating the already cracked ice just beneath her. I backpedaled a few feet away and stared down at her in pity. This woman was once my friend, regardless of how I felt about her now. It was a sad sight to see.

“I wish things didn’t have to end this way, but they do.” I said. “You signed your death warrant the moment you got involved with Ms. Sampson’s conspiracy. I’m sorry to say that this is the end of the road for you.”

“You…” She said angrily. “What… About… You…?”

“Me…?” I asked. “Well… There are still three more targets on my list. I won’t lay down the mask of the Killing Cat until then. There were a few of your former comrades that I chose to let live. I’m not completely heartless. I’m only targeting those of you who still actively suppressed Malorie’s case.”

“W-… Why…?” She asked in a whisper, clutching her bleeding chest in pain.

“Didn’t I tell you before? Who else would serve so well as judge, jury, and executioner? Speaking of which…”

I backed away from her some more and aimed the gun at her. She flinched back, but seemed ready to accept the bullet. That wasn’t what I had in mind. Instead of shooting her directly, I shot the cracked ice around her, emptying the entire magazine and causing a chasm to open up into the lake below.

She splashed into the water as the ice gave way. She was too weak to swim effectively, but still struggled. I walked back up to her and kneeled down. I took her by the hair, much in the same way that she had hold of Silver’s hair earlier.

“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me where you buried Malorie Noelle’s corpse and I’ll pull you out and let you die in peace. What will I find if I go investigate that house across the lake that you were heading to?”