Dark Stars by John F.D. Taff

Author:John F.D. Taff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

I didn’t think Sarah would find out about what I’d done. It was a private matter between the master and me. But the next day, she pounds furiously on the door to my room, forcing me awake. She doesn’t wait for me to answer but throws the door back and barges in. “What the hell did you do last night?” she demands, standing at the foot of the bed.

I pull a tatty old blanket over my head but she rips it aside. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

“Bullshit. You can’t hide anything from me. I know everything he does—everything. You had him take care of the guy who came looking for you.” I say nothing, unable to think quickly of a way to clear myself. She fills the awkward silence with another roar. “Are you insane? That guy worked for some criminal, didn’t he?”

I roll my eyes and fall back onto the mattress. “Don’t be so dramatic. These guys come and go all the time … He won’t be missed.”

“You’re delusional, you know that?” She has grabbed my shirt and shakes me. “You’re bringing trouble right to our door—big trouble, things we can’t explain. I warned you … We don’t need this … What the fuck is wrong with you?”

There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m perfect.

It happens quickly. I strangle her right there on the bed. I’m so much taller and stronger than her that it’s over in no time. She stares at me with bulging eyes and I swear I see acceptance there, if not gratitude. She had to know it would end like this once she’d taken up with the master. You can’t accept a monster in your life and think that you’re safe. That you’ll be able to control him.

I don’t feel bad for killing her. At this point, eliminating her is completely logical. She’s pathetic. She doesn’t deserve to be the master’s familiar; she doesn’t even enjoy her position anymore. In the few months I’ve been in this household, she has changed, probably becoming more like the person she was before the master chose her. He wouldn’t want that.

Just to be on the safe side—and because I’m feeling a bit squeamish—I put a plastic bag over her head and tape it tight. I wait outside the door, one eye on the darkening sky, and at the end of an hour, I go back inside to make sure the deed is done. I nudge her foot, lift an arm and let it drop to the mattress. There is no reaction.

I take the plastic bag off her head. Her eyes are riddled with burst blood vessels. A thin rivulet of red trickles from her nose. Does the smell of blood wake him, I wonder? She said she knows everything that the master does, like there’s some connection between them. Up in the rafters, he lies in wait for the night to welcome him. What I did to Sarah—was he jolted awake by her

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