Butcher & Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy #1)

by Brynne Weaver

For those of you who read the trigger warnings and said, “Accidental cannibalism?! Count me in!”This one’s for you.

Being a serial killer who kills serial killers is a great hobby

I’m not squeamish. But I have standards. I prefer my corpses fresh.

“I renounce my wicked ways,” I say after the song disintegrates among the dust motes and the hum of opalescent insect wings. “That’s a shame. I bet I would like your wicked ways.”

I’m fucking disgusting. Knotted hair. Stained, bloodied clothes. The worst breath ever to be breathed in the history of breathing.

Handmade Damascus steel. Where’d you get it?” I sigh. My gaze lingers on the body and my favorite blade before I press my cheeks to my drawn-up knees. “Etsy.”

There’s a moment of stillness between us. The only sound to fill the space is the buzz of flies and the steady work of maggots as they consume decaying flesh.

The Orb Weaver. I’m sitting across the table from the fucking Orb Weaver. And she’s fucking beautiful.

A drop of barbecue sauce gathers at the corner of her lips and her tongue darts out to claim it, and I want to fucking die.

It’s the first time her gaze has really settled on me, and it burrows right into my skull.

“I came to hack off his limbs and enjoy his agonizingly slow death.”

From the second we met, she sparked my curiosity, fanning banked embers into glowing coals, and now she’s ignited the first thread of flame.

It wasn’t a pretty kill. It wasn’t elegant. There was nothing staged or clever about it. It was visceral and raw. And I enjoyed every fucking second.

“I didn’t gouge them out, Butcher. I plucked them. Delicately. Like a lady.”

The need. It starts like an itch. Irritation beneath my skin. Nothing I do releases the constant whisper of it in my flesh. It crawls into my mind and doesn’t let go. It becomes pain. The longer I deny it, the more it drags me into the abyss. I must stop it. I’ll do anything. And there’s only one thing that works. Killing.

“Beta-carotene, motherfucker. Antioxidants. I’m helping my body eliminate free radicals.” “Take a vitamin. You look like a douche.”

He’s probably assigning numeric values to knowing the gossip versus being out of the loop, and is weighing the statistical probability of his happiness divided by pi. Fucking nerd.

If the razor-sharp blade wasn’t clutched in his hand, I’d already be punching his fucking smug face.

There’s a photo of Sloane’s delicate fingers wrapped around a glass of champagne in business class on a plane, her blood-red manicure shining in the artificial cabin light. My heart knocks against my ribs.

“I figured that was how you acquired your freckles. Stealing souls.”

He lures me in, a pinprick of steady light in the static darkness.

He looks at me in a way that no one else does, as though he’s not just trying to decipher my thoughts and motivations. It’s as if he’s trying to memorize the smallest details in my skin, to uncover every secret trapped behind my flesh.

“What the hell are you doing?” “I’m going to steal your e-reader. I want to read about the two-dick dragonman.”

Nighty night. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. I’m pretty sure there are bedbugs.

I barely temper the urge to hurtle my phone against the wall, electing to clutch it in an iron grip and punch the mattress instead. It’s wildly unsatisfying to punch a fucking mattress, by the way.

I’m about to step back from the wall. I really am. I’m starting to lean away when I hear a single word pass her lips. Rowan. Or maybe sewin’. Or Cohen. Or Samoan. Can’t really be sure. I’ll just go with Rowan.

“What are you doing?” “I’m boobing boobily, Rowan. What does it look like?” “You’re … what?” “Chasing that motherfucker down, that’s what.”

I push away and run, the delicious sound of her frustrated protest the most beautiful melody behind me.

the garage door slides open and the car barrels out of the building. So I do what any sane person would do. I jump on the fucking hood.

The delicate column of her throat shifts beneath my bloody palm. “Rowan,” she whispers. “Mine.”

I clutch his hideous pink tie in my fist to strangle him with it but it pulls free of his neck. I glare at the fabric balled in my fist. Then at Francis. Then back again. “A fucking clip-on? What are you, twelve?”

“Second, and this is the most important part, so listen up, motherfucker.” I raise his trembling body off the asphalt until his ear is next to my lips. “That woman you were watching …?” My fingers tighten around his throat as he desperately nods. “She is mine.”

It’s fucking fuel. I think of him watching her. I think of her face. And I keep hitting. Even when he seizes. Even when he drowns in his blood. Even when he dies.

Breaths saw from my lungs as I place one hand on the warm asphalt and stare down at my knuckles where pain throbs with every heartbeat. It’s a welcome sensation. Not because I deserve it, but because he did, and I fucking delivered.

We’re both monsters, after all. Different monsters, thrust together in the cage I’ve created.

“He looks like a Picasso,” she continues as she nods toward Francis’s destroyed face. Her hand flows in his direction with birdlike grace. “Eyes over here, nose over there. Very artsy, Butcher. Embracing your cubism era. Cool.”

I fold a lock of her hair behind her ear so I can see her freckles. “I have no regrets about where I am.”

And there it is. That blush. A pink so addictive that it haunts me. I want to hoard these images of Sloane, her face flushed, her eyes dancing, her smile desperate to be freed.

Lark giggles and settles back into the couch as Constantine plays on my TV, a familiar backdrop in our limited roster of comfort movies. We watch for a moment in silence as Keanu traps a spider under a glass. “He could come to my house and catch spiders any day,” she says as she twinkles her fingers toward the screen. “Dark and broody and grumpy? Sign me up.”

ME

I make it halfway to the door with hurried steps before a single word stops me dead. “Blackbird.”

Giggling and kicking my feet rn

Rowan’s eyes darken, but they never leave mine. Even when my gaze darts around, every time it lands on him, he’s there, waiting.

“I’m supposed to grate this whole block of cheese? It’s the size of a small baby.” I know I must look ridiculous, grinning like a fucking lunatic next to a tree, but I don’t give a shit. “How much do you like cheese?” “A lot.” “Grate enough to make a baby head.” “Are you serious?” “You said you like cheese. Get to work, Blackbird.”

The thought of Professional Sloane in a fucking curve-hugging pencil skirt and a Madonna mic, standing on stage as she bosses around a bunch of doctors with her raspy lounge-singer voice is the fantasy I never knew I needed. I’m a fucking goner.

I smile as I think about her face today as she stood on her front porch and looked in both directions for the delivery that didn’t come. Disappointment has never looked so damn sweet.

“Well, it’s hard to compete with the stunning waitstaff and Rowan’s adoring socialite regulars,” I say with a sickly sweet smile. “No one competes with Sloane.” Rowan’s eyes anchor on mine, dragging me into the depths of a navy sea. “She just hasn’t realized it yet.”

Lo-bo-to-my. Rowan’s head tilts in the other direction, his brow still furrowed but a hint of a grin playing at his lips. He subtly points at me, and then at himself. You love me? he mouths. I smack my head.

“You look so pretty, Blackbird,”

“Did you know it was a rump roast? I tortured Thorsten until he told me. I had to dig human ass out of your mouth.”

I would do anything to keep her around, even if it means taking a hammer to my own heart.

I’ll never forget the way her skin flushed such a pretty shade of pink when I said she was beautiful. I would have crawled across the table to kiss those plump lips when they pursed as I spilled my secrets between us.