The woman emerged into the flickering light of the hotel, her hood falling to reveal a face etched with pain and venom-his mother. She bore a dagger in her hand, its blade glinting like a traitor's smile while her grip held steady, dry with the years. "You stole my daughter," she spat, that voice an evil lullaby, treading lightly over the bodies. "I bury you both."
After the fight, he knelt beside her fallen body, blood oozing from a shallow cut she received saving him, a thin shredded line across her forearm where the dagger had nipped. "Meri casstte, love should cradle, not claw," he said, pulling her mother's severed head by the hair, blood still dripping from the jagged neck. Deeply bitten, with a wet *thwack*, the machete severed her bone, with blood flooding the floor like a burst dam in her wake. "She sold you to those dogs-I gave you wings with her blood."
It all happened in a haze. She lunged at him, dagger stabbing toward his heart, a mother's twisted fury in her blazing eyes, but he had sidestepped and twisted her arm until it sounded brittle, her scream sharp and short. "You birthed her but caged her!" he had roared as he shoved her down, her head cracking on the pavement. With gruesome finality, the machete swept down, cleaving through her neck; blood erupted and splattered all across the room in a chaotic ballet as her head fell away from her twitching body. Chopping through her torso with sinister abandon, the machete fell with a *thud* after each contact, cracking her ribs and mashing the flesh beneath the blade until all that was left was a mass of gore and bones. "You traded her soul for gold," he spat and kicked into the remains, pushing his boot deep into the fluid. "I burned you, so she would fly."
Stumbling to her feet, she stared at the head, eyes forever frozen in shock; then she spat on it, her voice breaking. "She never loved me-just her greed." He pulled her in tight as they watched the petrol-soaked pyre crackle as they torched the body in the back lot of the hotel, flames roaring against torrents of rain, swallowing the betrayal. "Meri casstte, she was a knife in your back-I killed her so that you would never feel that sting again," he said, his voice trembling under the weight of this. The tears spilled from her eyes, and he kissed them away, leaving red over her cheeks. "You're my everything-every drop I spill sings your name."
But the flames dwindled, and a phone buzzed somewhere in her mother's ashes, the voice low and menacing: "You can't hide forever." He tightened his grip on her, feeling his pulse quicken. The hunt was far from over.