“Just when you thought things were going so good, here they are suddenly going oh so wrong. Right, Owen?”
Angela yanked the knife out and held the double-edged blade up before his eyes. She didn’t ever want to have to worry in an emergency if she had the knife turned the right way. With a double-edged blade, that was never a problem. There was always a cutting edge ready to serve her wishes.
“The secret to a good flesh knife is not using it for anything else,” she explained to him. “I never so much as open an envelope with my flesh knives. I save them for men like you. That way they effortlessly slice through flesh. I think you can tell that I take exceptionally good care of my blades. Right, Owen?”
As she was talking, at the same time she was gripping the handle of the knife, she reached around him. Using two fingers on his lower spine, she felt for the gap below the L3 vertebra. It was somewhat difficult with the way his legs were beginning to flail.
“What you’re thinking right now is ‘This is it. It’s either me or her.’ Right, Owen?” She leaned closer and whispered into his ear. “Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Owen? Well, I’ve got to tell you, ever since you came into the bar, I’ve known all along that one way or another it was going to be you.”
Once she found the area of the disk between the L3 and L4 vertebrae, she swept her left arm around his thick neck and pulled his head toward her as she pushed a knee into his gut. Bending him forward arched his back, opening the space between the vertebrae. She plunged the knife between them.
With all the fibrous sinew around that area of the spine it took committed force, but such a sharp, double-edged blade punched right through. She levered the knife handle from side to side. With each sweep, the blade scraped against the bone of vertebrae as it sliced apart the disk and severed his spinal cord.
Owen’s legs flopped down, at last motionless.
Each huffing breath as he gasped in pain and shock expelled droplets of blood all over her. She could see in his eyes that he was stunned by how fast it had all happened.
“Do you know what my name means, Owen?”
He looked at her, dumbfounded, unable to answer.
“Do you!” she screamed. “Do you know what it means?”
Terrified, he shook his head, never taking his gaze from her. Owen was not at all used to being on the wrong end of terror. She knew he was trying to assess the damage, trying to figure out if he could still make it out of this alive.
“I told you that my name means ‘angel’ in Italian? Remember?”
He nodded, panic-stricken at what she might do next.
“Good.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “But do you know what ‘angel’ means?”
Eyes wide, he quivered as he shook his head, unable to give any answer without his tongue except a groaning moan she couldn’t understand.
Angela abruptly pushed the knife in just below his rib cage until it found his liver.
Owen gasped, his eyes watering and going even wider as the pain of it reached his brain. He let out a high-pitched, falsetto squeal.
“Angela—Angel—means ‘messenger from God,’ ” she patiently explained to him. “So you see, Owen, you can’t really blame me for this, now can you? After all, I’m just the messenger. Right?”
As he struggled, twisting his torso, he only succeeded in slicing up his own liver on the double-edged blade, increasing his level of pain. Blood ran over her fist holding the knife and down her arm. She could feel it dripping off her elbow.
“You asked me before if the tattoo across my throat was some kind of joke. Remember? I told you that maybe one day you could answer that question yourself. I think that you ought to understand the meaning, now. Right, Owen? The meaning of my tattoo? The meaning of ‘Dark Angel’?
“So, you see, maybe I really am a messenger from God. An angel. But now you know that some angels are dark angels. Get it, now, Owen?”
“Peege opt.” Tears streamed from his eyes. “Peege opt.”
Without his tongue, that was the best he could do to form the words he so desperately wanted to get out.
“Please stop?” She cocked her head as she looked at him from under her brow. “Is that what you’re saying, Owen? Please stop? You are asking a dark angel for mercy, then?”
He nodded, relieved that she had understood the words.
Angela glared at him a moment before speaking in a soft voice. “That was what Carrie said when you were using your knife on her, isn’t it, Owen? When you were raping her? Isn’t that what she said to you? Please stop?”
He cried out in agony at understanding.
He may have thought it was revenge for Carrie.
Angela considered it more than that. A great deal more.
Angela considered it justice. Not justice in some abstract legal sense, but human justice.
Clear, cold, unflinching justice.
“There is no leeway for mercy in this, Owen. None.”
She slipped the blade in between two ribs, into his left lung. When she withdrew the knife, air hissed out, bubbling blood from the wound as his lung collapsed.
“You’re an aberration, Owen. A fucking monster living among normal people. You shouldn’t be allowed to live so you can hurt innocent people, like Carrie, or the other three women you murdered. It was their terrible misfortune to have crossed paths with you.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m an anomaly, too. A freak of nature. Maybe I really am a messenger from God sent to eliminate fucking aberrations like you. What do you think, Owen?
“I can’t seem to have a normal life, a happy life, like other people. Maybe I’m not meant to. Maybe I’m only meant to kill lunatics like you before they can hurt anyone else. What do you think?
“I mean, I do seem to have a knack for attracting psychos. Seems like I’m a lunatic magnet.” She grinned at him. “Maybe that’s my reason to exist.
“Then again, maybe I’m just a freak of nature. Know what I mean, Owen? After all, I do so fucking enjoy the hell out of this. I live for it. Kind of like you, Owen. I think only a guy like you could truly understand the pleasure I get from inflicting this kind of suffering and terror, from the blood, from the act of killing another human being.”
Owen gasped for air. He had lost a lot of blood. Those gasps hissed and wheezed through the knife wound in his collapsed lung.
By the icy dread in his eyes, she could tell that Owen understood he had run across that rare someone just as twisted as him.
He had encountered the flip side of his own coin.
Angela smiled as she pushed the blade into his gut, slicing through muscle and intestines. Owen stiffened, holding his breath, immobilized by the agony. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
His warm, slippery blood was still running all over the front of her. It felt good. It felt glorious. It made her feel alive.
Angela was in her element. She had this monster right where she wanted him and she was tripping on it the way her mother tripped on drugs. She didn’t want it to ever end.
Her mother often told her—Angela thought as a way of somehow justifying what she did—that when you do a line you live forever. That’s what Angela was feeling—like she was living forever in that moment.
Every synapse in her brain was firing to pull it all in so she could savor it, remember it. She wanted the feeling to last forever. Just like her mother when she was rolling.
Angela slammed the full length of the double-edged blade into another spot. It went in effortlessly, deliciously. Her head tipped back as her eyes rolled up in ecstasy at the feeling. She could sense the tip of the blade finding a vital, tender spot inside him.
The pleasure of it ran a shiver up her spine.
Her head came back down. “I have some bad news for you, Owen,” she murmured as she pushed the blade in again, just for the exquisite pleasure of feeling it slide through his flesh, muscle, and viscera. “I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to be an organ donor. You’re not going to have anything left worth donating.”