“Why?” She sniffs
“I like to listen to your heartbeat because it plays the only music I can understand and also because it is the only way I will ever know how to feel the love you speak of, the thump against my ear from your heart is all I will feel. I cannot feel the warmth or comfort others claim to feel from someone loving them, and for once in my life I actually envy them,” I tell her and mean it. I want to feel this thing called love that must be something powerful because everyone longs for it, searches for it and would die for it. I think I can, in some small form, understand it for once in my life, even if I can’t feel it.
CEREUS IS IN THE SHOWER getting warm. Her lips had turned blue from the cold rain and her clothes are hanging over a radiator in the bathroom. I’m fixing her a sandwich to eat in the car when I drop her home. My cell lights up with a call and I answer it, hoping it’s not Isabella.
“Ryan.”
It’s Blake. I peek over to make sure the bathroom door is closed and answer, “What do you want to accuse me of now? Did a bird urinate for the first time in history and you think it must be my fault for being evil?”
“Shut the fuck up. It’s Jenna.”
“Clarify.”
“The murders, Ry. She’s Cordell’s little sister, she or someone she has working with her killed Sean.”
What the actual fuck? Jenna?
“I’m a little lost, Blake.”
“Jenna manipulated everything. She wants you to pay for her brother. She’s as crazy as you are and she or whoever the fuck she has killing for her may be heading here. I want you to come to the station and wait there.”
I end the call. Jenna.
The power cuts and all my killer senses spike. I rush to the bathroom still brandishing the knife I was using, and open the door just as Cereus is coming out to see what happened. I hear the front door open and I push her back inside the bathroom and warn her to lock the door and not open it for anyone but me. I lay my body flat against the wall and listen for the light footsteps tiptoeing around my apartment. How dare this cunt think she can kill me? I grip the knife tight in my fist and wait. I can hear her breathing; she’s right around the corner. I turn the corner straight into her and the blade slips into her skin like butter. Her gargle is music to my ears. Small hands drop against my chest and something heavy drops to the floor with a clank, a familiar scent explodes in my nose. The lights flick back on with the power and green shiny orbs search the dark depths of my own eyes. “Why?”
I lower her to the floor and watch all kinds of emotion play like a story in her eyes. The blood from the stomach wound covers my hand; I pull the knife free and put both my hands over the entry. I can feel her dying, her essence flowing from her, coating me in her soul.
Jenna is going to die for this; I need her to fucking die. “I’m sorry. You were supposed to be her.”
MY HEART IS GOING TO combust inside my chest. I’m outside his front door and the adrenaline pumping though my system isn’t enough to counteract the nervous fear crippling me. I need to confront this. I need to protect my family. I pull the gun from my purse and drop the purse to the floor. Trying the handle, it gives under my hand and clicks open. My pulse stampedes in my ears as I’m greeted with sudden darkness. I hear footfalls rush across the bare floors. I tiptoe my way inside, praying for the courage I need to get through this. I quietly creep up a small passage and just as I come to the end, the devil’s silhouette appears in front of me. My gun clatters to the floor when severe pain registers in my abdomen; my hands come up automatically to stop myself from falling. I’m gasping for air and tears build and fall from my eyes. I failed Blake and Cereus. I was foolish and reckless to come here and now he’s taken me from them. He finally finished the job. I gaze into the eyes of the man who my mother and father saw before their hearts stopped. He doesn’t look pleased or turned on by his victory; he looks almost shocked and . . . guilty? He lowers me to the floor and the words I never thought I would hear from him spill free from his lips. “I’m sorry, I thought you were her.”
He tugs at the thing in my stomach and I feel my life fading. Lights have come back on and they’re hurting my eyes and forcing me to close them. His hands leave my wound and the cold icy breath of death creeps over me, lacing me in fear and regrets. My mind is closing down with my body and I faintly hear Cereus crying, calling me Mommy and telling someone where we are. I think it’s a memory when another voice of a woman I don’t recognize joins her. “Your mother wasn’t part of the plan, but it was too perfect not to let it play out.” She laughs and I hear a struggle before the world disappears and the luring darkness absorbs me.
I LOOK DOWN AT THE red stains on my clothes. The soul that withered and died by my hands leaving its memory imprinted inside me was just that now; a reminiscence of a life I stole.
The rush of her depleting pulse didn’t feel as therapeutic as the others, she was different but I wasn’t. I still took her life.
“The blood is so red on my hands,” I murmur, holding them up to the light seeping through the curtains from a streetlight outside. The soft glow highlights the crimson painting my palms, the blood long since dried and sticky on my skin.
“It never bothered me before, but her blood was so . . . red. The warm flow trickled through my fingers as the knife buried into her flesh. I felt her life fade. For the first time I felt something other than the darkness. Something other than the satisfaction of the kill. I felt disappointment,” I whisper into the night, surprised by my own revelation.
“Ryan. Tell me why you’re here. What happened? Why do you have blood on you?”
I look up into the soft, worried eyes of my psychiatrist, Jenna. I came straight here using the key I had made from her set. I let myself in, making enough noise to alert her to an arrival, but not enough to call the police; not that it matters much anyway, she won’t get the chance now.
“I killed her! The light died in her eyes as the knife sliced into her, her shock making her breathe ‘why?’ as the blood leaked from her wound, her green eyes so expressive, so confused.” I look up at Jenna to Gauge her reaction.
“Ryan,” she breathes, holding up her hands and starting to take a step towards me. I point the knife in her direction, halting her. I must have woken her because her hair is in disarray. She’s wearing a white silk nightgown hanging to mid-thigh and I know she’s bare beneath it; her nipples are hard and pushing through the fabric from the chills racing through her body. She’s trembling, and she should be scared. I want to strip her naked and make shallow cuts in her skin, drawing the kill out, replacing the blood already on my hands with hers.
“Start from the beginning, Ryan. Start from when you were released.”
I smirk in her direction. She’s using stall tactics like a pro. I will start from the beginning but I already know what the ending will be.
Her white gown tainted red.
“I was released after Dr. Leighton showed me how pathetic he was to have others and himself stroke his ego. He believed he could fix the broken boy inside me so I let him.”
“You let him believe he had?” she asks, taking a step to the side.
I point the knife at her and motion to the chair placed at a breakfast table in the far corner of her house. “Sit your ass down.” I stalk her to the seat and then pull my belt free to tie across her. She squirms, asking me why I’m tying her up but I don’t need to explain myself to her, and she’s not fucking dumb. She knew whom she was fucking with; someone capable of more than anything she could ever dream up. I run the blade up her thigh and I’m hypnotized for a second at the sight of her blood
“Stop it. Untie me, Ryan. What are doing? Why are you doing this to me?”
“You don’t fool me, Danielle.” I smirk.