By Frenzy I Ruin: Chapter 1

Nevio 19 years old I’m not sure who started calling Massimo, Alessio, and me the Unholy Trinity. Maybe Savio. He had a canny talent to come up with nicknames. For as long as I could remember, my twin Greta had been Dollface, and I had been PIA (pain in the ass—naturally). And that was long before I’d made good on the name and taken the first girl anally.

I suppose the name was fitting, though any comparison to anything church-related was certainly classified blasphemy, considering what the three of us were up to at night.

Music blasted from the speakers of my all-black Dodge Ram. All black like our clothes, from our steel-toed boots to black cargo pants, leather cuffs, bandannas, balaclavas to our weapons, even up to the blades.

All black like our souls. Though I loved the flash of a silver blade and how it mirrored our victims’ panic on occasion.

The inside glowed red from the dashboard and the small LEDs in the center console and doors. Even my headlights had a red tinge.

The red because of the blood that would soon stain our skin and clothes. My pulse sped up in eagerness, thinking of the scent and soft texture.

Massimo often rolled his eyes at the excessive symbolism, as he called it, something he attributed to the institutional church as a way to mesmerize the masses. Still, he’d never worn anything but black on our raids, and it certainly wasn’t because of peer pressure. He wasn’t receptive to that shit.

I turned off the asphalt road onto a long dirt driveway. Huge signs that said “No trespassing,” “Armed response,” and “Spring-Guns” welcomed us. Hell yes.

Massimo tossed his balaclava onto the back seat. His dark brown hair, several shades lighter than mine, was pressed against his forehead. He gave it a quick toss so it fell more freely. I stifled laughter. Not vain, my ass. “Out here, we won’t need to hide our faces, I reckon,” he said.

My own balaclava was pushed up on my head, keeping my hair out of my face. Unlike Massimo, I fucking hated it if I had strands in my eyes, which was why I kept it shorter than his, though we both kept our sides and back trimmed. “It’s not a matter of need but fun. People freak out when they don’t see our faces.”

“They freak out when they see your face. It screams crazy-murdering motherfucker. That doesn’t leave anyone unaffected,” Alessio said from his spot beside me. One of his legs was propped up on my headboard. His hair was as long as Massimo’s, but because of the wave in his, it always piled atop his head in a fucking surfer-boy style. As if emo boy would ever use a surfboard—except perhaps to smash in someone’s head with it. “Who is it tonight?”

Alessio had a Robin Hood complex. While he liked the hunt and kill, he needed a reason for it to make peace with his conscience. He was always wary when it was my turn to pick our targets, though I mostly made sure that they had a track record.

“Killing them will give you all the cozy feelings. Don’t worry.”

“Meth house,” Alessio said the moment I parked the car in front of the hut. It really wasn’t more than that anymore. Through the open windows, the stench of cat urine and rotten eggs was a clear giveaway of what the house occupants were up to.

One of the half-ripped-off shutters of the window on the left moved. I hit the gas, and the car jerked forward. A round of shots hit my truck bed, and from the sound of it, it was bird shot. That would cost a fortune to fix.

I gritted my teeth. “Next time we visit meth heads, we’re taking your car. The nice victims don’t try to tear your car apart when you pay them a visit.”

Alessio rolled his eyes at me before he aimed out of the car and fired a few shots with his semi-automatic. I hadn’t come here to shoot someone by accident. The fun was over too quickly.

Guns had their time and place, but not during our nightly raids. That was pure sensation. I needed to feel and smell blood, not fucking gunpowder.

I parked the car around the corner, then pushed open my door and got out. With my head ducked, balaclava still on top, I ran along the building wall until I reached a back door. A glance over my shoulder confirmed that Alessio and Massimo were on my heels. They both had their guns drawn, but I only had my sawtooth combat knife in my hand. It was my newest purchase, and I was eager to try it out. I kicked in the back door. Stealth didn’t make sense anymore.

Now, maximum fun was to be had.

I stepped into a filthy kitchen where nobody had cooked anything in a while, considering the dirty pots piled high on the stove. Moldy sandwich bread and processed cheese were the only food items in the place, and I had a feeling these assholes were still eating them. Since they were high on drugs, mold probably was the least of their worries. The stench was a nuisance; garbage, mold, something sweetly rotten. I probably had to drag these assholes out for the torture, or I wouldn’t even smell their dirty blood.

Something creaked to my right, and a narrow door to a storage chamber swung open. What looked like a zombie with missing teeth and frizzy bleached hair staggered toward me with an ax. Grinning, I ducked under the dismal swing of the ax, then rammed my knife upward into the rib cage of my attacker and ripped it out after a twist of my wrist for maximum damage. Blood spurted out, and I jerked back to avoid it—there was good blood and bad blood, and this was the latter—but droplets still hit my throat and chest. The body staggered toward me in its death-fight. I pushed to my feet and shoved it away from me. It toppled backward and onto the floor with the sound of crushing bones and a wheezing kettle.

Now that it wasn’t in motion, I could see my attacker was a woman, her age hard to guess because of the state her body was in from years of drug consumption. Her bathrobe opened wide, laying her bare. Her tits and pussy lips looked like the floppy ears of a basset hound, and most of her skin was covered in blisters I very much guessed were some kind of sexually transmitted disease. “Fuck,” I muttered and quickly moved to the sink to wash the blood off my throat. I didn’t have any open wounds yet and hadn’t touched her blisters, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Then I rushed into the doorway, which led to a hallway with a staircase leading down into a dark basement.

“Genital herpes and syphilis. Don’t touch her,” Massimo said.

“Thanks for the advice,” I muttered and motioned at the blood all over my clothes. Uncle Nino would have to do my blood work later. Again.

It would require plenty of additional blood spill to get me into the mood for after-torture sex, which was a long-established tradition I’d hate to part with only because of saggy crack-whore tits.

“I meant Alessio.”

Alessio gave us both the finger before he draped the rug over her body. I shook my head but didn’t comment. I was used to this by now. If he started saying a prayer for our victims, he could go on solo killing sprees.

“You shouldn’t have killed her. She’s probably a victim of circumstances.”

I snorted. “She was trying to split my skull with an ax. Every perpetrator has a sob story in their past, so cry me a river. Fuck, even I’m probably a victim of circumstances. Promise me you won’t cover me with a dirty rug if I get killed.” Alessio stared down at the body. “And she’s too young to be the crack-whore you want to find.”

Massimo gave me a wary look. Since Alessio had found out that Kiara and Nino weren’t his biological parents, he’d been staring at every junkie as if she might be his mother. My guess was she was rotting somewhere in the desert.

A shotgun slug tore away pieces of the wooden doorframe with an earsplitting bang right beside me. Massimo and I dropped to our knees, and Alessio threw himself into the storage chamber. At least he had enough sense not to throw himself on the corpse. Kiara wouldn’t be impressed if he got syphilis.

“Now stop mourning the whore and help us catch these assholes so the fun can get started,” I snarled, losing my fucking patience. He’d always been more compassionate than Massimo and me, but the news about the whore who pushed him out of her vagina had really set him off.

I crawled toward the doorframe and poked my head into the hallway. The shot couldn’t have come from the basement, even if the rummaging suggested people were down there. A head peeked out of the doorway across from us. An ugly-ass redheaded guy with the same blisters all over his face like the dead crack whore. I really hoped these idiots hadn’t all inter-bred like fucking rabbits. If they all had syphilis, I’d have to wear a full-body condom to torture them. What a waste of opportunity.

That was the problem if you picked the lowest scum of society as your victims. Fuck Alessio’s conscience. Next time, we’d hunt someone who knew the basic rules of hygiene.

I wanted to feel blood on my skin and not smell like a rubber duck for hours. Alessio barreled past us. I tried to reach for his leg to stop his manic move—those were usually my specialty—but missed him. Redheaded guy stepped out and aimed a shotgun at him. Alessio threw his cyclone knife at the guy, which pierced his eyeball. He tipped backward and fired a shot that tore a hole in the ceiling. More splinters rained down on us.

“Fuck it, Alessio. That’s one less to torture. I’m not the one who’ll share a victim. You and Massimo can do that,” I growled.

“Cry me a river,” Alessio said with a laugh. “Wasn’t that what you said?”

I shoved to my feet and checked the guy, but of course, he was definitely dead. Alessio pulled out his knife, and blood shot out of the eye cavity. Clanking from downstairs distracted me from my disappointment. Massimo, Alessio, and I crowded around the steep staircase leading down into a basement. Judging from the rough walls, it had been hammered into the ground by someone who didn’t do this professionally.

“Seems like a tomb,” Alessio said.

Massimo put on his thinker face. “Could be a trap. And we’re making us vulnerable by climbing down the ladder.”

“We could try to drive them out with teargas,” Alessio suggested. “There’s still some in the trunk.”

“We don’t know if there’s a second exit. There could be a flap door, and they could get away,” I said.

“What’s your suggestion?” Massimo asked warily.

I peered down into the basement. The staircase was so steep, it was practically a ladder, and the floor wasn’t too far down.

“Don’t—” Massimo began, but I didn’t let him finish. I squatted down and jumped into the basement.

With a grunt, I landed on my feet, stirring up dirt. Two guys stared at me dumbfounded, the same ugly fuckfaces as the guy from above. They had been busy packing up their drugs. I flung my smallest knife at the one closest to me and impaled his right hand, which had been going for the gun on the table in front of him. Then I pushed to my feet and barreled toward them, colliding with the second. I heard another thud suggesting Massimo or Alessio had jumped after me. I knocked the guy out and heard another grunt behind me. Massimo had knocked out the other guy.

Commotion in the back of the basement set me in motion. A third victim. Tonight was Alessio’s lucky night. He wouldn’t have to share.

When I reached the end of the basement, I saw long legs disappear through a flap door, then the rope-ladder vanished too. I sped up and catapulted myself up so my fingers grabbed the wooden frame of the flap door.

Another ugly redhead stared at me with wide, stunned eyes. Those stupid brothers had definitely all banged flappy-pussy-zombie. He clutched the rope-ladder in his blistered hands, then his gaze darted to the shotgun at his feet.

“I skewered the ugly bitch from above. I hope she wasn’t your squeeze.” His head shot up, and I gave him my most manic grin.

He reached for the gun, and I hoisted myself up. The moment I was above ground, I aimed a kick up. The shotgun flew from redneck’s hand, and a shot barely missed his head.

Phew.

He stared at me panicky, his mouth ajar.

“Run.”

He staggered back, almost stumbled over the ladder, before he dropped it and fled. I shook my head. Next time, I’d pick decent victims. These motherfuckers were so pitiful. Where was the challenge?

“What are you doing?” Massimo called up from below, dark brows drooping in disapproval.

“Trying to have some fun.”

“Don’t let him escape. There are booby traps down here. He could ignite them from afar.”

I sighed but sprinted after the guy. Within a minute, I had caught up with him. No fucking challenge. I kicked him to the ground and dragged his dizzy ass back to the meth hut. By now, Alessio and Massimo waited in front of the house with the two other assholes at their feet.

“We’ll torture them here. I don’t want their diseased corpses in my car,” I said.

Two hours later, I got my predicted outcome. Cutting them up was hardly any fun. And on Massimo’s insistence, we’d covered up with protective suits.

When we were done, I perched on the truck bed and smoked my usual after-torture cigarette. It didn’t have the intended effect. I still felt restless.

“Don’t mope around,” Massimo said.

I glowered. “This was a mess. I’m not a fucking crime scene cleaner.” I motioned at the blood-covered protective suit I’d tossed to the ground.

“Let’s go grab some tacos. I’m starving,” Alessio said.

I threw the cigarette on the ground and stomped it out. “I don’t know about you, but the only thing I’m hungry for is a decent kill. You can bury your faces in guacamole if you want, but I’m going to find another motherfucker to kill.”

Alessio and Massimo exchanged an exasperated look.

“You need to learn when it’s enough,” Massimo said, sounding like our fathers.

“Not in this lifetime. I want blood, and I’ll get it. You can come along, or I’ll drop you off at Taco Bell. I don’t fucking care.”

I climbed into the car. I knew where I was going. I’d had a backup kill on tonight’s list anyway because I’d anticipated this miserable kill-fest.

I put the address into the GPS while Massimo and Alessio argued. When they got into the car, I knew they’d come along.

“We’ll join you,” Massimo clipped.

Alessio looked pissed.

“It’ll be fun. He’s a former prize boxer turned attorney causing trouble for the Camorra.”

“We’re not in it for the fun but because Massimo wants to keep you in check. We’re your babysitters.”

I grinned. “Good luck.”