His (5 page)

The man finished patting me down and then took my arm.

“Look what you’ve caught, kitten,” he said, smiling. “Come here.”

His arm came around my waist again and I walked with him for a few steps before realizing that he was taking me to the kitchen. The man inside on the table moaned.

“No,” I cried. “I don’t want to see—”

“Too bad, little kitten,” he said, pulling me along with him. I stopped walking at the doorway but he was too strong: he simply dragged me the rest of the way. He pulled me inside and dropped me next to the radiator in the corner before rummaging through a kitchen drawer. I clutched my bad leg and stared at the man on the table.

It was the professor; I could see him clearly now that I was close. There were straps holding him down at the neck and arms and ankles. His shirt had been sliced open and he had three long cuts running up and down his chest from his bellybutton to his collarbone. He moaned again and then opened his eyes. His mustache was gone, shaved off.

He had dark brown eyes, eyes like prey. They found me in the corner, and he twisted his head, as shocked as I was that I was here. He opened his mouth, and blood ran down his bottom lip.

“
Run
,” he said hoarsely.

A new wash of fear swept through me, and I would have run if I had a leg to do it with. But before I could do anything, Fabio stepped over and grabbed my wrist. He snapped a handcuff on me and snapped the other half of the handcuff onto the radiator.

“What are you—”

“I’m glad you’re so curious, little kitten,” he said. He went back to the man on the table and shoved a dishcloth into his mouth just as he began to scream. The screams turned to muffled chokes as he pressed his hand over the dishcloth to hold it in place. “You’ll get to see everything much better from inside, I promise. It’s almost confession time. And we have a lot to confess, don’t we?”

He picked up the knife from the table and drew it up along the edge of the mustache man’s jawline. The man’s muffled scream turned to a high pitch, and I watched in horror. The handsome man lifted the knife up into the air.

He smiled. Dear god, he smiled.

CHAPTER FOUR

     Gav    

There’s something about killing that soothes me. And after such a harrowing night, I needed to be soothed.

I took the knife and slid it down to the man’s chest. He was bawling behind the dishrag. Behind me, the girl was crying, her eyes clenched shut. Stupid girl. She told me she was curious.

Licking my lips, I took my time. My favorite is the skin on the chest, when it opens up in nice thick slices. Almost like bacon.

I’m not like Hannibal Lector, don’t worry. Human flesh doesn’t interest me, not in a culinary way. I do enjoy watching people realize that they are all flesh, though. It’s something I’ve always known about myself, but most other humans have the mistaken idea that they’re
people
, not just animals. They think that there’s something separate from their bodies, something different and disconnected from the tissues and tendons that take them from place to place in the world.

They’re no different, though, when they start to die. Like this man, for instance. I slipped my knife under his skin and he howled behind the dishrag. Blood welled up from under my knife and dripped down his side. In the corner, the girl was speaking.

“Don’t do it, please don’t do it,” she said. “Please, don’t hurt him anymore.”

“Shut up,” I said, not looking at her. I still had to decide what to do with her, but I didn’t want a distraction. Not now. “You have no idea how much he deserves this.”

My knife sliced down the man’s chest, down to his stomach. His screams softened the edges of the world. He sounded so much like an animal now, so very much. I took out the dishrag and his howls filled the room.

The girl clapped her hands over her ears. Silly girl. This was the sound of living. This was suffering at its purest. It was beautiful, really. Justice for the innocent. Pain to pay for the pain he had caused.

The howls increased as I tapped the knife’s edge on the man’s hand, just at his knuckle. He balled his hands into fists.

“How did you hurt her?” I whispered to the man. The point of my knife pushed down into the first knuckle of his index finger.

“No,” the man gasped. “No.”

“I didn’t ask if, I asked how,” I said calmly. The man’s eyes sought mine, but there was nothing in them but fear. He was an animal now, and the only thing he cared about was surviving. “Did you hit her?”

“No!”

My knife punctured the skin and I drove the point into the knuckle.

“I saw you,” I said, my voice a sing-song. It wouldn’t be long now. He would confess. “I saw you.”

“No—”

I twisted the knife and the bone popped. The man’s scream brightened the room.

“I saw you.” The calm came over me. It would be soon. The world brightened with color already. “I saw you.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t, I’ll never do it again, please, no, no, no—”

The girl in the corner was crying, her face buried in her arms. I was sorry that she had to miss this. I looked into the man’s eyes. When I first caught him, he was arrogant. His eyes were full of hate and power, and he thought he could get away with hurting people. Now all there was in his eyes was hurt and pain and terror.

A monster for a monster. Something to feed the shadow.

The fear of death was a powerful emotion. It dropped away everything else and cleansed people of their sins. Nobody, not even the cruelest man, can hold onto their cruelty in the face of death. It takes away their power, makes them humble. It was a blessing to them, I thought, that they died in such purity. And it was this purity that fought away the shadow inside of me.

“You can’t get away this time,” I said to the man. He had stopped pleading—all that came from his throat were whimpering sobs. Beautiful, beautiful. The world was bright again. He was ready for death. I was ready, too.

“Kitten,” I said, placing the tip of my knife at the base of the creature’s throat. “Look here. Look here, kitten.”

The girl raised her head, and I plunged the knife deep.

     Kat    

I closed my eyes but I could still hear the man dying. His throat gurgled with liquid, and then silence.

Tears ran hot down my cheeks.

“I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here.”

I thought maybe if I said it enough times, it would be true. I could click my ruby slippers together and teleport back to the library, where Jules would convince me that I should shelve another section for her. I would be back in my boring life, doing boring things in a boring place. I’d be
safe
.

Then I opened my eyes and saw the blood puddling on the floor under the table. I was a long way from home.

The man had gotten out an electric saw, and I turned away as he lowered the saw to the body, sending a spray of blood over the front of his shirt. My stomach heaved and I gagged, dry retches that scratched my throat.
No. I’m not seeing this. No.

I closed my eyes. My palms pressed hard against my ears but the sick buzzing noise still came through. My head was bent against the radiator, and my body curled up into as small of a ball as I could. I didn’t want to see this. I didn’t want to hear this.

Finally the noise stopped.

The noise stopped, but my eyes were still clenched shut. I heard him walk back and forth, and when I opened my eyes again the body was gone. He wiped up all of the counters and the tiles on the floor with paper towels and dishrags. The white terrycloth bloomed red as he cleaned, and the scent coming from the spray bottle he used was the smell of bleach.

I dropped my hands away from my ears. I didn’t know what to do. There was no way to escape, and now I’d just witnessed an actual murder. There was no chance in hell he’d let me go now, not after what I’d seen. I felt dead inside, numb. My stomach churned and I didn’t care.

Panic attack? I was beyond having a panic attack. I was struggling to even think a single coherent thought.

The killer came back into the room and finished cleaning up a few stray places where there was blood. Then he began to unbutton his shirt.

“What are you doing?” The words came out of my mouth before I could reach out and snatch them back out of the air. Great, Kat. Way to get the serial killer to remember you’re still there.

“Cleaning up,” the man said, as nonchalantly as if I’d asked him while he was washing dishes.

He took off his shirt and tossed it on the middle of the bloodstained tablecloth.

Then he unzipped his pants. I swallowed hard as he stepped out of the black suit pants and added them to the pile of clothes on top of the table. His hair was dark at the roots with sweat, and his muscles gleamed with moisture. If hadn’t been utterly terrified, I would have enjoyed watching him take off his clothes. He was built like a Greek statue, not a single ounce of body fat. Of course, he wouldn’t be fat. Serial killers couldn’t be fat, could they? Oh, lord, I was going insane.

He stripped off his socks, bending over. His back was taut with heavy muscle, and I felt sick thinking about how I had wanted him, how I had kissed him. He pulled off his underwear last, throwing it on top of the pile.

Oh my god. Oh shit. He was going to rape me. He was going to rape me and kill me and take me apart. I couldn’t help but stare at his naked body as he moved, folding the tablecloth on top of the clothes. He wasn’t aroused. Not yet. Maybe he would only get aroused after cutting me like he had cut that man.

Hot tears burned my eyes. Why had I insisted on breaking my boring routine? I could be studying in bed right now, instead of waiting to have my throat slit by a murderer.

He gathered up the tablecloth and left the room.

I heard him moving in the living room, and then the sound of the fire crackling. He was burning everything. His clothes, the tablecloth, the body. Everything. Even now I could smell the charred scent of what I realized was burning flesh. It would have turned my stomach, but my stomach was already turned.

The kitchen was clean, now. It looked like a normal kitchen. I stared at the place where the body had been. Fifteen minutes ago, there was a person lying there. Now... he was gone. A queasy shiver went through my body.

That would be me. He would take me and use me and cut me to pieces. My breath began to come quickly. Panic attack. No, Kat. Don’t panic. You can’t panic, or else you’ll never be able to fight back. I struggled to relax as the tension clenched my chest tight.

He walked back through the door, completely naked, and looked at me. He frowned. It wasn’t an angry frown. He looked at me like I was an object, not a person. Like I was a bag of trash he’d forgotten to take out.

“Well,” he said. “That’s done. Time to deal with you.”

He stepped forward and I screamed.

I wasn’t about to go without a fight. Sure, I didn’t have any weapons, and this guy seemed strong enough to break my neck with a single twist. But I wasn’t going to let him rape me and kill me without giving him a couple of scratches. I got to my feet, hunched over the radiator for support.

He stepped forward again and I kicked out with my foot. The blow glanced off of his leg and I kicked again, but this time pain shot up my other leg. I gasped in agony, bent halfway over. He cocked his head, looking confused.

“Don’t you touch me,” I said. “Don’t...don’t you hurt me.”

“Why would you think I would hurt you?”

I stared at him, my jaw dropped open.

“I—you—you just killed that guy!”

“Yes? He needed to be killed. And?”

“Well... and...”

I stammered for breath. What was going on here? It was like some sort of crazy nightmare where nothing made sense. The man leaned on the kitchen counter and rubbed his temple with two fingers.

“What exactly are you worried about?” he asked.

“You!”

“Me? What do you think I’m going to do?” He moved forward again quickly, and before I could raise my leg to kick him he’d stepped on my foot, pinning my one good leg down. I raised my fist but he caught it easily and wrenched my arm up over my head. I panted for breath, expecting at any moment a knife to be slashed through my throat.

“Tell me, kitten,” he said, his voice a purr. “What exactly are you worried that I’ll do?”

“Kill me,” I whispered. “Torture me. Rape me.”

“Rape you?” He chuckled. I couldn’t believe it. I’d just watched him stab someone to death, and he was laughing at me for being afraid of him. He truly was insane.

“You’re naked!” I cried out. He stepped back, letting go of me, and looked down.

“True. Well, I had to clean up,” he said. “Would you like me to put on some clothes?”

I stared at him. I had no idea what was going through his head. I was just relieved that he wasn’t planning on raping me.

“No?” He reached over and unlocked the handcuff from the radiator, holding it like a leash. “Well, let’s get you to the basement then.”

     Gav    

I took her down to the basement, holding her tightly as we walked down the steps. She limped, but I wasn’t going to trust her. She’d kicked out at me before, and playing injured was something every prey animal did.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” I said. “There’s not much here that can be used as a weapon, except maybe the wine bottles.” I nodded over to where my cellar collection stood. “And if you try that, I’ll just bring a gun with me and shoot you. They’re expensive vintages,” I added.

Her head nodded slowly. She stood in the middle of the basement, her arms crossed over her chest, tightly hugging herself. Despite her tear-stained cheeks, she was quite beautiful. It was a shame she’d followed me home. Shame I’d forgotten to change the batteries.

I flicked the light switch.

“The light’s here. I’ll bring a blanket for you. And food, later.”

I went to leave and her voice piped up. It sounded thin in the empty basement.