Switch Blade Romance

Hunters and Prey.

February 23rd. 2:30pm

Sneedville Tennessee.

“Charles… we don’t have to do this.”
Andrew’s voice sounded thin to his own ears, like it had already started pulling away from him, retreating somewhere safer. He sat on the sagging couch in the cabin’s living room, hands locked together so tightly his knuckles burned. “We don’t have to go out looking for people to kill.”
“Yes,” Charles said pleasantly, almost kindly. “Yes, we do. The fire needs them.”
He stood near the hearth, where the embers still glowed faintly, their dull red light licking at the walls. He looked at Andrew the way a teacher looks at a slow student—patient, indulgent, already certain of the answer.
“Just a few more times,” Charles continued. “Then you’ll be ready.”
“Ready?” Andrew echoed. The word tasted wrong. Rotten. “Ready for what?”
“To be okay with it,” Charles said, excitement creeping into his voice now, quickening it. “To stop fighting the bloodlust. To let the kill happen. To give yourself over.”
Andrew shook his head, a small, helpless motion. “No.”
“But the demon has to take you first,” Charles went on, as if Andrew hadn’t spoken. “Not all of you. Just a piece. A little part. Enough.”
Andrew’s mind slipped backward, uninvited, dragged by memory. Micha. Patrick. The night soaked in blood and screaming. Technically, Charles had killed Micha—but only technically. Andrew could still hear the words Charles had forced him to repeat, feel them scrape their way out of his throat like broken glass. He could still see the fire in the furnace shifting, swelling, forming something like a face.
A face that reminded him of the Rag Man mask Charles had worn back in Annabelle.
A demon. Real. Watching.
And now Andrew was supposed to let that thing crawl inside him.
Become it.
Could he let this happen? Could he let himself be responsible for more bodies, more empty chairs at dinner tables, more families staring at phones that would never ring again?
Seven people, at least. That was the number that haunted him. He hadn’t killed them—not directly—but he had brought Charles into their lives. That was enough. Blood by association. Blood that didn’t wash off.
Charles stepped closer and rested a hand on Andrew’s shoulder. The touch made his skin crawl.
“After the next sacrifice,” Charles said calmly, “the darkness will live in you. Like it does in me. And then you’ll never have to do it again.”
He smiled. “Unless you want to.”
He said it the way someone explained the offside rule in football—simple, obvious, unquestionable.
Andrew felt something shift inside him then. Not fear. Revulsion. Pure and sudden.
“So after this,” Charles continued, “we leave. Go somewhere else. Anywhere you want, Andrew.”
Andrew swallowed hard. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t kill anyone. I can’t give my soul to some fucking demon. Why does it have to be this way?”
His voice rose despite him. “When you came to my apartment in Annabelle—after you killed Deira—you said you wouldn’t kill anyone else. You said that.”
Charles grunted and straightened, his pleasant mask slipping just enough to show the teeth beneath. “I lied. Yes. I did.”
He leaned forward. “I did it for you. You were weak when I met you. God, you were weak. But now? Now you’re getting there. And this last thing—this one last sacrifice—will make sure you’re never weak again.”
Andrew looked up at him, something hard and cold settling into his chest.
“How?” he asked quietly. “How am I strong because of anything you’ve done to me?”
His voice steadied as the words came. “Half the people I knew are dead. Most of them because of you. I said I’d go with you because I thought you’d stop. I thought maybe I could help you.”
Charles stood abruptly and walked into the bedroom.
For a moment, Andrew wondered if he was getting a weapon. A knife. A gun. Something to end it.
I wouldn’t even care, Andrew realized. Let him do it.
The thought surprised him with its calm.
He wasn’t afraid to die anymore.
Death had terrified him since he was a kid—since his grandmother passed and left behind that awful question mark. Oblivion. Heaven. Hell. Eternal fire. The same fire Charles worshipped.
But anything—anything—had to be better than this.
Then the thought snapped sharp and furious.
No. Fuck no.
He wanted to live. Really live. Have a life that didn’t smell like blood and fear and cheap whiskey. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know if it was even possible.
But this—this—might be his chance.
Charles returned and tossed a towel and clothes at him.
“Shower,” he said. “Get dressed. We’re going to a bar in the next town over.”
“We’re—?” Andrew stammered.
“Yes. And while we’re there, you don’t try anything. Understand?”
Andrew nodded. “Yes.”
And he meant it.
Because he understood something now.
This was it.
His last chance to escape the nightmare.