Wicked Ways (Dark Hearts Book 1) (12 page)

Zorie

For the rest of the day, to my relief, I was left alone, apart from the stares and laughter.

Afterward, I was told to go to one of the empty bedrooms on the second floor, alone. Disobeying was unthinkable by then. Exhausted and sunburned, I went there. I showered in the little en-suite bathroom, and I dressed in the only clothes I had – the little barely there dress. Then I lay down, and found myself shivering as if in shock.

No one had taken photos, had they? If any of this got out I’d be sacked. University lecturers were expected to behave with decorum.

A tree branch filled with yellow-white, fluffy blossoms distracted me. Tap-tapping in a subtle breeze against the window glass. It was cool in here. The sheets were fresh. The walls were decorated with discreet erotic scenes in red and black. My eyelids drifted lower.

Decorum.
Shoving a gun up my vagina and orgasming before a crowd was not that.

Rocked by the sound of the trees outside, I sank into sleep.

Reuben kept me there for days, never seeing me at all. Only Madoc came in with food. It was a blessing. Being ignored let me gather my thoughts and reason.

If he married me, I couldn’t stop him, could I? No.

Damn that.

Were Grimm or Mister Black aware of where I was being kept? If so, what were they doing?

Mister B would be doing nothing. He’d said as much.

Grimm though? He’d not break in here to free me. The man wasn’t on the wrong side of the law, or not yet. He’d seemed almost willing to do bad things to get me free of Reuben. He also wanted to keep his involvement secret.

The flashbacks of what had happened on the rooftop came at the oddest times. The usual cushioning of my emotions seemed less than before. I...felt the bad things I’d done and they shriveled my soul, more and more each day.

How could I have?

I was made to. It wasn’t me.
My heart ached, constantly.
I was made to.
Whenever the memories of what I’d done returned, I curled up in a ball, with my hands clutching my head, until it went away. I’d betrayed myself.

I was allowed my mobile phone, once a day, to answer calls, and even to speak to others. The temptation to contact Grimm was always there but, with Madoc hovering, I couldn’t begin to try. Not that I was certain I could do it anyway. Reuben had broken me, more than a little, that day on the rooftop.

I should practice resisting.

I should.

There was nothing to do except think, and stare at the wall, or out the window.

On the third day I gave in to the demon inside me that had been daily upping the ante on the screams of
do something
.

I would try, again, but no more guns. Next time he might leave the bullets in. I might’ve killed myself, and who on that rooftop would’ve blamed anyone but me?

Without writing materials, I could only practice writing with water on the window sill. After several aborted attempts, I began. I managed to write what might be a whole opus on the evilness of Reuben. It evaporated and blurred and swam into puddles as I wrote with my wet finger.

When I was done, I couldn’t even convince myself that it meant anything. Writing in water? My brain knew it was dumb as hell. Blood would show more. I wasn’t ready for that, cutting myself just to get ink.

On the fourth day, Dirke came to me with a small white dress – a flirtatious, backless one with a tiny, chiffon, satin, and lace skirt that would just brush my knees.

“Your wedding dress.” He dropped it on the bed. “Put it on and be ready in ten minutes.”

This was to be a real wedding? I stared at the cute little frothy dress.

They drove to a small nearby park with a fountain and a line of monstrous trees that dwarfed the picnic tables. Breathless and feeling as if I stood at the edge of some cliff with a nameless drop to infinity just one step from my toes, I waited.

Reuben took my hand and smiled at all the right times, said all the right words when the marriage celebrant wanted him to. I had to be prompted.

“To have and to hold...”

“For better or for worse...”

“I do,” came from a throat that wasn’t mine, and yet I said it. The words were black confetti flung on the wind.

The ring fitted my finger, perfectly.
Love
was engraved on the band in swirly writing. I signed the document shown to me, right where Reuben put his finger.

Reuben kissed me and there were photos done by a professional photographer who had us stand this way and that before shaking our hands and wandering off to his vehicle.

It was over. I looked at the children playing nearby and at the celebrant as he walked away, leaving me with
him
.

Reuben tightened his hold on my entwined fingers until it hurt.

“Come, sweet bride, we have a lifetime to live together.”

Fuck you
was all that ran around in my head, all the way back. The smallest of small rebellions but I kept it going. It was all I had.

Once back at the house, I signed more papers, sure they held some dreadful information but unable to read them.

At midnight, two days later, Reuben had me brought to him. He would set me free in the streets, naked except for my underwear and with my car keys in hand.

“It’s a half mile away through the streets.” Madoc showed me on a map.

Already, I could tell. I could see through this. Reuben would never do this. Not simply
free
. The man would want his piece of flesh, of blood.

I asked a question, not to beg, no. I wanted to delay whatever was coming.

“Why? You married me.”

“For your money, dear slut. Only that. You’re too unpredictable for me and I’m tired of you. One last thing before you go. Kneel.”

I kneeled on the hallway rug and blinked up at him and the grinning Madoc and Dirke. They stood behind Reuben and seemed sure of what would come next. Dirke made a mock gun with finger and thumb, pointed it at me and pretended to shoot.
Bang
, he mouthed.

By then I was sweating despite the air-conditioned house.

“Listen carefully, Zorie.” Reuben bent and took my chin in his hand. “You’re very, very sad. You want to die. Hear me?”

A knife sliced through my heart at his words.

My ears sang but I nodded.

“Then go do it. Think sad thoughts. You’re worth nothing. Your life is hopeless. Go away and tomorrow or the next day, kill yourself somewhere public. Okay?”

I nodded again.

“Go.”

Then I stood and I walked out the front door into the black night. My legs wobbled but...my heart still beat.

I shut my eyes, standing on the cold grass of his front yard in white bra and panties. Crickets greeted me. The keys tinkled in my hand.

Don’t do this
, said my inner demon.
Fucking don’t. He lies. He lies. You know he does.

He did. Yet I knew disobeying was impossible.

Walking all the way to my car, I’d be lucky not to get assaulted and raped.

“The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night.” - H. P Lovecraft

Zorie

The walk had torn up my bare feet a little. In this affluent neighborhood, the lawns were spongy grass, but the roads I’d crossed had been sprinkled with gravel. On one crossing, I’d stepped on fragments of glass. Picking the pieces out had woken me from the hazy state Reuben had created. Perhaps staying in shadows had helped me avoid trouble but it was more likely that the people here were all snug in bed, or watching their TVs, or out at parties drinking ice-cold Chardonnay, rather than cruising the streets looking for stray, half-naked chicks.

They’d left my Mazda under a streetlight in the car parking area of a small shopping center.

Though the shops were shut, the light shone on me as I sprinted and hopped the last fifty yards.

I unlocked the car and slid inside, relieved, sore, and with Reuben’s death wish soaking my mind.

“Ohmigod.”

Exhausted, I lay across the two seats and the middle parking brake, accepting being poked in the ribs in return for the relief of knowing I was alive and intact.

But for how long? There’d been absolute certainty in how Reuben had handled this, as if he knew I would just go kill myself....

I stared across the edge of the seat cover into the darkness of the foot-well. A pale something lay there. A dress I’d once worn at his house.

A thought blossomed. His last wife. He’d inherited a fortune from her.

“Oh fuck,” I whispered.

He’d made his last wife do this.

He’d not been caught. It would be unprovable, though people, or even the police, might think it suspicious if I too suicided. Would it matter to me? Fuck no. I’d be dead.

I turned over to look out through my dusty windscreen at the night sky and at the faint stars showing beyond the streetlight. Bugs circled in the halo of light.

And yet, I was still thinking straight. When I’d been kneeling before Reuben his words had been like the pronunciation of doom. With distance from him, the effect had lessened. I’d beat this. I would.

The dress. Thinking they’d left it there so I could cover myself, I picked it up, only to discover the gun hidden under its folds.

Of course. His words had jumbled in my head but I’d never forget the meaning.

Kill yourself. In public. One or two days’ time.

He’d be so amused if I used this gun. From the stickiness on the metal, they not cleaned it.

The car started smoothly though I winced when I pressed the brake pedal. After I’d driven for a few minutes, the sting and the slight slipperiness of the pedal made me think the cut was bleeding again. Just my luck to have an accident on the way home. So I drove carefully.

After all, he didn’t want me dead, yet.

At a traffic light stop, I gripped the wheel and shook my head madly like some puppet on crack. My hair whipped around my head. When had I last had it cut? Would I need to anyway? In a few days, I’d not be –

I took some deep breaths while swearing at the wheel.

Fuck that shit.
You bastard, Reuben.

“Bastard, bastard, bastard.” I’d beat this.

Someone beeped me, to remind me the light had changed, and I accelerated.

There was no sleep to be had that night. I walked from room to room instead, adjusting ornaments and paintings, leaving smudges of blood until I remembered where I kept plasters. I sat only to jerk awake to full awareness with something odd cradled on my lap. A vase of flowers, once. A stuffed bear my mother had given me, another time. And another time, it was the gun.

The need to do something violent ate at me, until I found myself staring at the tines of the fork while I ate lunch.

Stabbed to death by my own fork. What a novel way to commit seppuku. Wide-eyed, I blinked at the fork while chewing, before swallowing the piece of vegetable gyoza I’d bought at the little Japanese restaurant. An expensive lunch but money seemed a bit pointless at this moment in time.

When lucid, I knew this was all his doing. When not, the depression, the need to end it all, built until it was a dam cresting the top of its wall. Soon, it would burst. I saw myself tumbling under the roaring waves, falling through water, only down there it was silent, swirls and bubbles and debris floating past, while I gaped for breath. Until at last, I too was silent.

The room jarred into existence and I gasped.

What was the time? One thirty in the afternoon, according to my watch.

I couldn’t even last a day without going batshit bananas? Weak.

Wait. The date was the day after what it should’ve been.

Another night had passed?

Had I eaten? Slept? I couldn’t remember. Could I kill myself and not notice until a millisecond before?

That last was a devastating idea. I might die and not know until I was bleeding out, or falling, or if I ate pills, I’d simply fade away into nothing.

To be buried, six feet under, cold and dead and sightless. My life stolen. The man would win.

Fuck no.

“No!” I kicked at the table, banging my toes into timber, rocking the table, and screeching when pain arrived.

Clutching my throbbing foot, I made a vow.

Reuben was not winning. If I could last the day, that was all, maybe I’d be okay?

Maybe.

Violence rattled around and around in my thoughts.

The gun lay on the little table, beckoning me.

If I was out there among people, maybe I’d not go all spaced out? Checking myself into some sort of psychiatric ward might be more sensible but I’d been in one once, visiting. I’d possibly go crazier in there.

Maybe letting it all out, shooting at some targets, destroying something, would help?

I phoned the pistol range and got an open time slot that afternoon then sat down and cleaned the gun, very carefully. The bad memories, from the last time I’d handled it, I pushed aside.

Another time for that stuff. A time when I could hire a therapist and work through all this, at leisure.

Now, things were urgent.

One more day.

This was a test. I needed a test. A rigorous, fail-and-die test.

If I could survive this and not shoot myself I’d be fine...

This time I did it right and packed the gun into the portable gun safe to transport it to the range. Only a few people were about. It was a workday and most of the women, who weren’t working and who could afford to shoot, would be picking up kiddies from daycare or doing other motherly things.

Almost alone. I scanned to either side. An elderly man to my right, and two muscled gung-ho T-shirt and tattoos men to the left. No one paid me much attention except to maybe admire my ass when I stooped to pick up a dropped card. The ear protectors rendered the environment a muffled one, interspersed with the intermittent bangs of the handguns.

I shot four full magazines, blew a lot of holes in paper, and felt one hundred percent better.

Control. My smile was probably obvious to everyone for miles. I’d handled that. No hazing out. Nothing.

Now. Take it step by step. Make sure the gun was unloaded, clean it a little, as nobody was waiting on my spot, put it away. Lock the safe. Go to the car.

The drive home was the first carefree moment for days and days. Just one problem occurred to me – what would Reuben think when he found out I wasn’t dead?

One problem and there must be a way around it.

One...

Then I woke in the shade of the fig tree in my favorite park, with the gun barrel in my mouth.

My lips were aching, as if I’d been sucking on gun for quite a while.

It took a few seconds before I could figure out which fingers and muscles let me remove the gun. They were all mixed up and numb. It was entirely possible I might’ve pulled the trigger when I thought I was doing something else.

A little six- or seven-year-old boy stood on the sidewalk beside my window, thumb in mouth and ball at his feet, looking in at me.

I smiled, trying to pretend a string of drool wasn’t going from my lip to the gun I was lowering. Or that my entire body wasn’t trembling. No, shaking. My knees were swaying from the shake, then my teeth started to chatter. The gun...it...I dropped it to the passenger seat. The butt bounced off the parking brake. My judgment was out a tad.

Fuck.

The safety was off, the red dot showing.

Carefully, I reached over and uncocked the Beretta, made that red dot go away.

Help, I needed help.

I exited the car and managed to lock the vehicle, before I went to my knees and vomited on the grass. I staggered down to my usual bench seat. The boy’s mother was yelling behind me and calling him away. Least I’d left the gun in the car.

Grimm was a washout. I could see he wasn’t here, and why should he be? It’d been days.

Besides, what did he know about this quagmire through which I was wading? I might as well call in the Easter Bunny.

There was only one man I could think of with any expertise, and he was the enemy too.

I went to the drinking fountain to rinse my mouth and face, then sat down and cranked back my neck to look at the wispy clouds.

Ducks were arriving around my feet, quacking.

“Sorry guys. No food.”

Mister Black. Had to be him. Only how did I find him? And could I do it before I topped myself?

*****

The room at the Hilton was the only place I knew where he’d ever existed. I had no addresses, no phone number, and no real name. Asking at the reception desk seemed a bad idea.

Riding up in the lift, I had time to think about backing out, but a split in my lip from where the muzzle had hurt me and the memory of vomiting while a wide-eyed little boy watched me, convinced me otherwise.

What if he wasn’t even here anymore? I’d not asked for a message to be sent. For all I knew he was long gone.

But I knocked on the gray door anyway, and I stood there fidgeting, thinking good thoughts as much as I could, holding my hands in front of me so they didn’t shake, much.

Was he here?

I could feel nothing of his presence.

If he wasn’t, what would I do?

What would I do? The place seemed empty.

Nobody but a cleaning lady, down the other end of the hallway.

My mind began to wander. My feet were way down there, on the floor. I studied the gym shoes I’d shoved my feet into not long ago, a century ago, today, then I turned and walked away.

Did the windows, this high up, open?