A Hand in Hell

Chapter 6

"I'm not pretending, baby girl," I said coolly, making my way over to the desk and pulling a couple of tissues from the box. "There really isn't a problem."

"Do you not have feelings at all?" she asked, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks and drip onto the table below as I returned to her side.

I wiped at her eyes, and the little bell on the new collar around her neck jingled as she twisted her head in an attempt to escape my assistance. I smiled at the sound and gripped her chin tightly, holding her head still and more thoroughly dabbing at her tears. "I have all of the feelings the world requires me to have and none of the ones that the world finds extraneous," I said simply. "You, my dear, are the one with the wrong emotions here." I began to wipe at her nose, but she suddenly leaned up and sank her teeth into my hand. With a cry, I backhanded her with my free hand, and she fell back onto the table with a hollow thud.

"Fuck you, you stupid, demonic, evil whore!" she screamed, seeming completely oblivious to the blood that poured from her nose and the tears that still flowed from her eyes. I could only blink down at her as I rubbed my throbbing hand, fully taken aback by her outburst. "You killed my best friend, and you think that I'm the one who's not feeling the right things? I hope that council kills you! I hope they torture you worse than you've ever tortured any human! I hope they tear everything you love away from you and make you watch! I hope you burn in Hell forever! I hope…!" But she fell into a fit of sobbing, then, loud and noisy and messy and pathetic, and I pursed my lips and glared down at her.

"You really should watch how you talk to me," I said coldly. "Your life is still in my hands, you know." But the truth was, she'd shaken me, and she'd shaken me to my very core. Had I broken her or hadn't I? Was this show of rage a sign that I'd won or that I'd lost? And what was all of this she said about her feelings, about my feelings? Was she in the wrong or was I? I was a demon, and of course that meant I was right…right?

Her bell jingled weakly as her body gave an exceptionally strong jerk, and my eyes dropped to the deep purple collar around her neck. She was inferior to me, of course, as any human is inferior to a demon. She was wrong, I was right. End of story. So why did I feel so…so…confused?

"So kill me," she said once she'd managed to get her sobs half-assed under control. Tears streaked her cheeks, snot poured from her nose to mix with the blood, but I didn't dare try to clean her up again. I would probably snap her neck if she bit me again, and what fun would it be to give her just what she wanted? "Torture me. Do whatever you want. I don't care anymore."

"Does that mean you'll give me more names so that I can kill more of your loved ones?" I asked, more curious than nasty as I normally would have been.

"No," she said with a sniffle, leveling me with a glare that lost most of its edge because of her runny nose. "You said you would stop after the one. You promised."

I smiled cruelly. "No, now, remember how I said that promises weren't on the table? I wasn't kidding, you know."

"I won't let you kill anyone else!" she yelled, her ragged voice echoing through the room. "I won't let you kill any more of my friends!"

"Do you not care about the men I killed, then?" I asked curiously as I rested my elbows on the table, bending over her and almost daring her to try something.

She pressed her lips together and turned her eyes to the ceiling, and it took her a moment to answer. "It wasn't right for you to kill them, either."

"But you don't care, do you?" I pointed out, giving her nose another light prod. "You don't care about the people you didn't know — same as me."

She offered me another hard glare. "I'm not like you," she growled. "In any way. I'll never be like you, and I never have been. I may not care about strangers as much as I do about my own friends, but I do care. They were innocent, and they deserved to live as much as Vicky did."