“No, no, you don’t understand… David! David, help me!”
His pleas for help go unanswered as Sloane backs away and returns to the table to exchange her scalpel for her Damascus blade. Thorsten’s head swings from one side to the next as he loses track of her whereabouts beneath his desperate, sputtering cries. But Sloane doesn’t make a sound as she creeps closer to her prey. She moves like an owl in flight, fluid and silent and graceful. Predatory and powerful.
“The man you remind me of, he presented such a civilized mask to the world, yet underneath, he was a devil. He promised the best education. The best opportunities for students gifted in the arts. He promised a safe place to learn and the best chance for getting into the most exclusive universities for those of us whose parents were wealthy enough to pay the price. And since mine were never around, they didn’t notice the price I truly paid.”
For all the times I’ve thought my soul was little more than a fucking stone, Sloane Sutherland proves me wrong.
Her words echo in my head until my imagination takes me to every dark and terrible possibility. My heart hits every bone on its way down to the floor. All that’s left behind is a black space that burns hotter with every hollow beat.
“I could take it,” she says. “I could cope. I had an end in sight. And in a way, I was learning. I was learning how to keep my rage and darkness beneath a mask so I could carry on in the world. So I kept my mouth shut as I gave pieces of myself away. But you know the one price I could not pay?” she asks as she stops behind Thorsten. Her smile is gone. She stares straight ahead, her eyes nearly black in the dim light. Her voice is low and drips with menace when she says, “The price I could never pay was Lark.”
Ice infuses my veins. A chill spreads through my arms. It sluices down my spine.
“She was the only person I cared about. When I found out what he was doing to her, what she had been hiding, I did some hiding of my own. That same night that she confessed someone else’s sins to me, I waited in the shadows. I made a vow in the dark. That I would wipe out everyone like him that I could find. That I wouldn’t stop until I found the worst, the darkest, the most depraved, and I would erase them from the world, one at a time. And I promised myself that I would never let anyone hurt someone I cared about ever again.”
Sloane’s arms raise on either side of Thorsten’s head, the handle of the knife gripped in both hands, her skin bleached over her knuckles.
“This is me keeping my promise,” she says.
The music crescendos through the speakers. She is a fucking virtuoso, surrounded by her masterpiece. She waits for a single word from the man beneath her, holding out for the perfect note.
“Please—”
Sloane plunges the blade into Thorsten’s stomach.
“Since you asked so nicely, let’s spill the filth from your guts together,” she grits out, dragging the sharpened steel upward through his abdomen to the melody of his blistering scream.
Blood and viscera flood from the straight line carved into Thorsten’s flesh. Heavy breaths saw from Sloane’s chest as she whips the knife free, a flick crimson to stain the carpet with the twist of her hand. Thorsten’s wail slows until it falls silent beneath Sloane’s menacing, watchful glare, and with a few final, ragged breaths, he dies strapped to his ornate chair.
An electric charge surrounds us. The aroma of hot blood perfumes the air. Candlelight flickers on the web. Every detail sharpens, as though the universe has narrowed to this single room.
And Sloane the goddess of chaos at the heart of it all.
There’s a shiver in her blade. My gaze tracks a slow path up the length of her arm. Her shoulders tremble, her attention sharpened on some faraway memory brought too close to a murky surface from another place in time. I know it because I feel it sometimes too, the way I feel it in her now. It’s bleeding into her lightless eyes.
Neither of us should be trusted. She could turn on me while she’s caught in this lethal fog. But when I see the first tremor in her lips as a tear slides across her freckled cheek, I know I’d take any risk for Sloane.
I approach with careful, measured steps. She doesn’t move as I fold my hand around her wrist and pry the handle of the blade from her grip. I lay it on Thorsten’s bloodied lap and she hasn’t as much as shifted on her feet, her gaze still caught in another moment of time.
“You’re okay. Lark is okay,” I whisper as I slide one arm across her back. When Sloane doesn’t react, I fold my other arm around her too, until she’s caged in my embrace. “You did good.”