Darren’s hand felt as comfortable on her body as a tarantula. Moni couldn’t rip it off and stomp it to death-not if she wanted Mariella to walk away from this. The girl wouldn’t get very far in a parking lot by herself in the middle of the night. She had to stop this.
“Darren…” Moni winced as he pinched her nipple as if he were trying to crush a grape. When he finally released it, she exhaled and continued on. “The girl can’t stay in this parking lot all night.”
“Give her your room key,” he said without even looking at the child.
Mariella curled up against the door with half her fist in her mouth and her eyes verging on tears.
“They won’t let an eight-year-old walk into the hotel alone without asking her questions. The girl can’t talk. Let me just drop her off in her room and then we can… you know.” She couldn’t even fake enthusiasm anymore-not with his sleazy paws violating her.
“I don’t care about the damn girl.” This time Darren noticed Mariella. Moni wished that he hadn’t. He aimed the gun square at her forehead. The girl drew up her knees and ducked her face behind them as if that could shield her from a bullet. “This is about you and me. It ain’t about her. I didn’t agree to you bringing a child into our lives.”
“This isn’t about our lives. This is my life,” Moni protested. “You ain’t part of it no more. You cheated on me. You hit me. So you lost the right to tell me what to do.”
“What? Hell no. Yo’ still my bitch.” The hand that had been molesting her body slid up and pinched her throat between its massive thumb and forefingers. She had seen the oxygen-starved purple faces he had given ex-cons and drug dealers with that hold. On her delicate neck, it could inflict much more damage. A few pounds of pressure from his fingers would end her life, but that thought barely registered in Moni’s mind as she saw Mariella tremble behind her knees while Darren’s gun pointed at the girl.
“I’ll be whatever you want me to be,” Moni croaked from her constricted throat. “Please don’t punish her. I’m all she has.”
“So that’s what’s been keep’n you from seeing me and returning my calls, huh?” Darren sharpened his glare on the girl. “Now, how can I take care of that problem? Oh, I know. Like this.”
The blood froze in Moni’s veins as she watched it unfold. Darren wrapped his finger around the trigger of the gun that aimed point-blank at Mariella’s forehead. She was a flick of his finger away from death. Darren let the weapon drop from his hand before he could fire. The dumbfounded expression on his face only lasted a second and then he reached for his gun on the floor. Moni quickly seized her pistol on the seat beside her. Darren saw it coming. Throttling her throat with one hand so she could hardly breathe, Darren sent his other hand after Moni’s gun instead of his own. He caught her wrist before she could aim it at him. Her strongest grip couldn’t withstand the way Darren bent and twisted her wrist. He snatched the gun from her contorted hand, and brought it up against her temple.
In an instant, Moni’s vision was clouded with blood.
Chapter 38
Moni wiped the blood from her eyes. Her sight became transfixed on the bizarre and gruesome scene in the back seat. Darren glared at her with his mouth agape. He still held Moni’s pistol to her temple, but his wobbly hand couldn’t fire it. Dark red blood spurted from the hole gorged into his neck. It bubbled out of his severed trachea and throat, both of which Mariella held between her slender fingers.
Directing a stone-cold gaze at the thug as he expired, the girl dropped the chunk of his neck from her hand. It splattered on the seat between them. The pistol lowered from Moni’s forehead as Darren’s hand went limp, along with the rest of his body.
Moni had seen what happened out of the corner of her eye. Mariella had sprung out of her corner and dug her fingers into the man’s neck. She had ripped it open as easily as peeling a banana. It happened so fast that Moni didn’t understand what she had seen until she saw Darren’s warm corpse gushing blood all over her back seat.
Without thinking, Moni started the car and sped out of the parking lot. Her hand reached for her cell phone. She stopped herself. If she reported this, Mariella would end up caged inside a government lab for the rest of her life. The girl-if she truly was a girl — deserved better than that after saving her.
I never got her tested for the bacteria. I shielded her from answering any questions. What kind of child have I been raising all this time?
Moni abruptly pulled the car over onto a dark shoulder of the road. She got out and walked around to Mariella’s door. She opened it. The girl got out obediently. She immediately snuggled up against Moni as if she had just witnessed a brutal killing rather than committed it.
No, Mariella didn’t kill Darren, Moni thought. She had saved both of their lives.
“You shouldn’t have to sit back there in that icky mess, baby,” Moni said. “Come up front with me.”
Moni got back behind the wheel with Mariella at her side. When she reached for the ignition, her hand trembled. She didn’t know where she should drive. All this time, she thought she had found a daughter. This poor innocent creature couldn’t defend herself, she had assumed. She needed her. Yet, Mariella more than defended herself against Darren. Someone capable of ripping a throat out couldn’t be a real child or a real daughter.
Tears streamed down Moni’s face. She bottled them up behind her hand, which screened out her view of the beautiful thing that resembled a child sitting beside her.
Nina told me something was wrong with her. I should have listened. Of course she’s not human. No human child would ever love a mess like me.
Tiny fingers gently, yet firmly removed Moni’s hand from her eyes. Mariella took Moni’s hands in both of hers as if she were channeling a dual electrical current through them. Moni’s head warped like the deck of the sinking Titanic. Through the thunder ringing inside her skull she understood a message. Mariella loved her more than any human child could. And she desperately needed her help.
Moni drew her hands away from the girl. The buzzing in her head faded into the background as if she had gone outside the arena during a hip hop show. The thoughts she just had weren’t hers, Moni realized. Mariella had planted them inside her head, but they sounded so much like her own thoughts that she couldn’t tell the difference. Even without talking, Mariella spoke louder than anyone.
She still felt the love radiating into her brain from Mariella. In her heart, she knew she loved the girl too. Whether human or not, the Mariella that had emerged from the mangroves was the only Mariella she knew. Still, she felt the sting of betrayal. The girl had impersonated Moni’s thoughts. How many times had Mariella “suggested” that she do something out of her character? She wondered whether it was her or the girl that had made the decisions that left Nina in the hospital and both Tanya Roberts and Clyde Harrison missing their heads. Mariella had survived the attacks and so did she, but why? Had she been protecting Mariella from the Lagoon Watcher and his minors like she thought, or did the girl’s drawings really represent death warrants written out in marker and crayon? She had sketched a boater tossed overboard like Kane, a cruel gator like the one who bit Robbie Cooper, a beheaded dog like what happened in the twins’ backyard and a burning man that resembled the teenager in the marina fire. Moni had ignored it all.
When she looked at that sweet face, Moni saw the same girl who had smiled with glee as she rode a horse for the first time. Her adorable expression completely masked what lay beneath. It didn’t work anymore. Moni knew it lurked inside the girl. She couldn’t drive on and pretend that part of Mariella didn’t just tear apart her ex-boyfriend’s throat. Moni didn’t feel threatened in the least by her, but she couldn’t say that she didn’t feel worried for other people. By the way she had killed so casually, she had a feeling that Darren hadn’t been her first victim.