Page 16 of Beautiful Chaos
We all shudder.Blech.
The giant bellows in pain, and Mav resets. Double-handing the axe, Mav takes a swing at the man’s other Achilles, this time slicing through it cleanly.
The giant goes to all fours, and Mav climbs onto his back, holding the axe in a reverse grip. He reaches around the man’s veiny neck and draws the sharp blade across his throat. A fountain of blood stains the mat and the surrounding concrete. But the man isn’t down just yet.
The giant, still on his knees, swings around, spraying blood everywhere. Mav holds on, riding him like a bull. The man continues to lash out, trying to reach behind him, making a bigger and bigger mess with each wild attempt to unseat Mav.
Finally, he slows. Mav, still on the man’s back, takes another two-fisted swing of the axe, this time down through the base of the giant’s skull. Right through his first vertebrae.
The giant goes lax, slumping into his own small lake of blood. We start making our way over, but Mav holdsup his fist. He isn’t taking his victory lap. Not yet. Instead, he stares at Edison. Tilts his head. Decides…something.
Our contingent pauses simultaneously, as if one brain. Waiting.
Mav appears to recenter, nodding to himself before he returns his focus to the inert giant beneath him. With a mighty swing, he starts hacking away at the giant’s neck until his head is separated from his body. Mav kicks the head away, a slow, wet tumbling sound filling the space.
Only then does he saunter toward us, covered in blood, twirling the axe in one hand.
“Why’d you behead him?” Hedy asks.
She sounds horrified. Which, considering, is kinda funny. I’ve learned that most people don’t laugh in these situations, so I bite my tongue.
Maverick purses his lips. “I dunno. Why is Uncle Eddie’s chin already healed?”
There’s a sharpness to his ask that forces us to all look in Edison’s direction. And…yes. Edison’s chin is healed. As we knew it would be. It’s one of the few ways in which Edison and I are different.
It’s how I know he’s more than just a genetic experiment gone wrong. He’s something else. Somethingother.
Whatever he is, I don’t have the clearance.
Hedy presses her lips into a hard line.
Maverick doesn’t wait for her to tell whatever lie she has waiting on her tongue.
“Maybe I’m reading into things, but I’m starting to suspect that not everything knows how to die.” He lifts a shoulder, as if his entire worldview hasn’t just shifted three degrees to the left. The hollow look in his eyes, however, betrays the cost of knowing the truth. “Figured I should cover my bases.”
“Makes sense to me,” Oakley says, and I jump at his low, confident timbre.
He strides in from the side, his face impassive.
Did he see…everything?
Did he see me?
He turns his body to Hedy, even as his eyes find mine. “I understand why you wanted me to observe Mav’s initiation.” Finally, a break in his expression. A brief—warm—smile in my direction. “In fact, there’s a lot I’m beginning to understand.”
5
OAKLEY
In reality,I understand far too much, and then again, not a damned thing.
I don’t know if Aunt Hedy had me watch from that dorm room to prevent me from clocking the details or if she wanted me to observe them from a safe space.
Only when Uncle Edison landed on his back and was looking straight up did I catch on. Even from the third floor, he looked like… I don’t know. A Hollywood monster? I already knew he and Silas have a really hard time with sunlight. It’s not that they burn, vampire style, but their eyes are extra photosensitive.
Which…ah…is why they wear such dark sunglasses.
I’d stood from the chair as if I’d been hit with a cattle prod before quietly making my way down the stairs, needing to verify if I’d seen what I thought I saw.
