The Soul Trapper

by Ana Calin

  I realize I’m always around him, beginning to act like a stalker. Refusing to sink any lower, I stomp to the wardrobe, let the valet help me into my coat, and hurry down the manor stairs. I increase pace with every step, but as I stumble and almost slide on my butt on the last one, a chauffeur catches me and elegantly motions to a car. He tells me the Marquis insists that I’m safe and comfortable. As the car departs, I look back at the majestic manor, wondering if he’s watching me leave.

  For days I keep myself locked in the attic, painting him in a frenzy, canvas after canvas. I sink my hands in the colour, and reproduce his portrait with my fingers. My brain spins with questions. Should I tell Jeremy what I saw? Should I paint the scene, let it speak for itself? Until I decide I ignore Jeremy’s calls, fearing his questions. It’s not the same when the piranha Simon Pukov resumes attack.

  As usual, I don’t answer at first, but then it hits me—maybe he decided he wouldn’t let the Marquis intimidate him out of the chase. I need something to distract me from the dark-eyed murderer who’s been haunting my nights and daydreams, so I pick up.

  “Well, er, umm, hello beautiful,” the piranha babbles. He didn’t expect to actually hear me at the other end of the line. I’m half nice, half mocking, which he registers but doesn’t let sway him.

  “I got reservations at the Apostles,” he brags.

  The Apostles is the fanciest restaurant in town, all high ceilings and paintings to match the Royale, where I saw a dead man’s face for the first time.

  THE HOSTESS LEADS THE piranha and me to a booth at the back of the Apostles. I’m wearing a little black dress this time, Virgin Vivienne style, hoping it’ll keep the piranha’s hands off me. My hair is up in a tight, golden bun, and my make-up discrete. To my dismay, this only makes the piranha go serious-relationship on me, holding my hand over the immaculate table cloth, which smells of flowery detergent.

  “I’d like to know more about your art, Saphira,” he says.

  “It’s not—”

  “Hush, no,” he stretches over and squashes my lips with his finger. He’s so ridiculous, looking long into my eyes and acting in love, that I fidget to keep back a fit of laughter. “I understand you like your work taken seriously. Well, it’s serious business to me, just like my intentions for our relationship.”

  “Tell me more about those intentions.” That dark, liquid voice gives me the goose bumps. I look in the direction it came from and see the Marquis walking to our table from behind the drywall that separates this booth from the rest of the restaurant. My heart jumps as he stops by our side, an elegant feral in a dark suit, his eyes intense, down on Pukov.

  Stone Mask and Joyous flank him on each side, only that this time Stone Mask’s steely eyes shoot daggers, and Joyous’s smile seems deranged like a psycho’s. Just a shade different from his smile at the banquet, but it gives him a whole new aura, and I think of poor Jeanie.

  Beads of sweat appear on the piranha’s bald head again, and his frame cringes in his suit.

  “Marquis de Vandenesse.” He attempts to stand, but Stone Mask pushes him back down into his chair. Pukov’s eyes widen as he realizes the conflict is no longer veiled.

  “You haven’t seen each other in days,” Pukov anxiously explains himself. “I assumed it was just that night at the banquet.” The last words fade as his look at the Marquis gains more rounded meaning. Obviously he assumed the Marquis did me that night and then ditched me, therefore leaving the path open for Pukov to do the same.

  “And how do you know we haven’t seen each other? Did you stalk her?”

  “You must have done the same, since you’re here,” Pukov says, but the surge of anger in the Marquis’s eyes makes more sweat break out through his skin, his face now luscious with it.

  “Saphira could’ve refused to go out with me today, but she chose not to,” Pukov continues, shooting me a glare.

  The Marquis flashes a youthful smile at him that contrasts with his burning coal eyes. “Are you blaming the lady now?”

  “She did give course to my invitation.”

  “She broke under your insistences.”

  “I hardly think that’s fair. She didn’t have to answer my calls.”

  “You cornered her. You’ve been burning her phone for weeks, had her father lobby for you, even offered him money.”

  Pukov’s cheek sucks in, like he’s biting on it from the inside. “Didn’t you?”

  “Not to get her in my bed, but to secure her as my wife,” replies the Marquis.

  Both Pukov’s and my jaw drop.

  “I see,” Pukov says. “I apologize, I didn’t realize the two of you were this serious.” It’s obvious he retreats from the exchange because he’s afraid of the Marquis, not because he’s any less convinced that I’m a bitch who lifted her tail, merely playing hard to get. He makes to stand, but bumps into Stone Mask’s muscular frame, practically ricocheting off the man’s chest back into his seat. The Marquis is clearly not willing to let him off the hook.

  “What is this?” Pukov inquires, sounding desperate instead of demanding.

  “Your pattern of thinking, Mr Pukov,” the Marquis says calmly. “It’s brought ruin to innocent destinies before. It once got orphans slit open and experimented on. I’m afraid that, if I let you go, you might destroy this young woman’s life. It’s enough that her father would sell her like cattle, she doesn’t need your evil to infest her life, too.”

  Orphans? Experiments? His words hit me like electroshock. I blink compulsively. “What the –”

  Stone Mask and Joyous tighten their presence on each side of Pukov, while the Marquis bends down to loom over him, a hand on the back of his chair, the other one a fist on the table.

  “From their graves those children scream for justice, and justice they shall have,” he slurs, low and dangerous.

  Recognition lights up in the piranha’s eyes, and I know it’s not at the Marquis’s face—but at his words.

  “You’re one of those creatures the Slayer hunts,” he whispers, then grunts hysterically, “Spare me, and I’ll get him off your back forever.”

  The Marquis grins. “That’s what that other piece of shit said before I made the life fade from his eyes at the Royale. But neither he nor you know who the Slayer truly is, do you? Let alone have the power to tell him what to do or stop doing.”

  The piranha sweats and shivers, pressing himself against the back of his chair and away from the Marquis. “We created the Slayer especially to take down creatures like you. Of course I know—”

  “The Elite created the Slayer way before your time,” the Marquis interrupted evenly. “You’re just an heir, a parasite living the lush life.”

  “Maybe I myself am the Slayer. He could be any one of us,” the piranha makes a last, lame attempt. The Marquis brings his face dangerously close to the piranha’s, who now shakes so badly his chair rattles under him.

  “I’m going to take you pieces of Elite shit down one by one,” he hisses in disgust. “Sooner or later, the Slayer and I will be facing each other, there’s no avoiding that. What I know for sure right now is that you’re not him. If you were, you’d be posing some minimal challenge.”

  Maybe it’s the unbearable tension that makes the blood drain from my head, rendering me unable to speak, but it seems his beautiful marble face begins morphing into something else. My heart slows down like in a dream as I try to process what the Marquis just said, my mouth open.

  The piranha’s eyes are wide with fear, fixed on the Marquis’s menacing face. He tries to speak but fails, and the Marquis doesn’t give him a second chance. What happens next stuns me.

  Something blade-sharp begins slithering out of the Marquis’s mouth. I jump from my seat as I realize it’s a serpent tongue that undulates slowly towards the piranha, but someone is behind me and covers my scream with their hand. I have no choice but to watch how the young man with the angelic face and demon-like eyes forces the thing that moves out of his mouth down the desperat
ely struggling piranha’s throat while Joyous and Stone Mask hold him in place by his arms.

  A bubble seems to form in Pukov’s stomach, then further up in his chest. I can see it moving under his shirt, and I feel a violent need to throw up. The tongue twists and turns inside the piranha’s body, and then yanks out an organ in a splutter of blood. I realize it’s the man’s stomach. I press my eyes shut, releasing the fear and shock in muffled screams into the hand that presses hard on my mouth.

  When I open my eyes again I see the Marquis through my tears, his skin apparently changing texture into something reptilian. Before I get to see more I’m being led out through a back door to a limo. I’m shivering, certain I’ll pass out. It takes a while until the Marquis slides into the limo, facing me, looking elegant and calm as if nothing happened. But the stains of blood on his beautiful face and shirt stand witness of the deed.

  “You weren’t mocking,” I breathe with my last drop of self-awareness. “You’re indeed a demon.”

  “No, Saphira. Demons are the creation of a God. I’m the creation of a man.”

  CHAPTER VI

  DARK INTENTIONS

  Father gets so ecstatic about the Marquis’s asking for my hand in marriage that he throws a huge party to announce it. It’s around Christmas. Mum’s all smiles, her hair littered with ornaments and making it easy to mistake her for the Christmas tree. She styled me into the Ice Queen tonight, the white and the glitter mirroring my state of mind—frozen.

  It’s as if my brain refuses to acknowledge the horror of my situation. I’m forced to marry a serpent-like monster whom I witnessed killing two men. And yet one single fact worries me. On the first night we danced together, he told me he had the best of reasons; I told him there was no good reason for murder; now I know there are plenty.

  “Saphy, I can’t believe this,” a girlish squeal rings in my ear before Jeanie Simmons squeezes me in her arms. My cheek twitches as I look at her. She’s such a pure vision with those cute curls and flushed cheeks, so pure that I dread her attraction to Joyous. He’s as much a villain as the Marquis, and Jeanie doesn’t have a clue. And I can’t tell her, not without putting her in yet more danger.

  “The Marquis is every girl’s dream,” she exclaims, her small but surprisingly strong hands grabbing my arms. “He’s super hot, and super rich. Pretty Lauren is eating her heart out.”

  Both of us glance in Lauren’s direction. Indeed, she seems pissed with arms folded across her chest, looking like one of Cinderella’s evil sisters with those pouty lips, bad-girl make-up and provocative scotch-red dress to match her hair. She lost the battle for the hottest bachelor in town, but I’m sure she’ll try to get him in her bed the way she got Jeremy, just to prove to herself she’s the better.

  “You look like a fairy tale princess.” Jeanie returns her attention to me, her eyes sparkling. “Silk, ice-queen dress, neat. I love it!”

  I don’t, but that’s beside the point. Virgin Vivienne joins to save me from the fashion talk, her noble features alight with true emotion. I can tell she’s happy for me.

  “Saphira, I so, so, so congratulate you,” she says, taking my hands in hers. “I never saw this coming.”

  “Neither did I,” I manage.

  Vivienne takes it as a joke and laughs. “You didn’t even hint at it at the banquet. I mean, how long have you even known each other?”

  “About –” How long has it even been?

  “Was it a secret romance?” Vivienne leans in with the ghost of a wink.

  My cheek twitches again, and my smile must look disturbed, since Vivienne turns serious. “Saph, is everything alright?”

  Jeremy steps in, surprising me. I didn’t realize he was around, let alone so close. “Saph, if there’s anything you need to say, say it.” He’s got his no-nonsense London inspector look on, infecting me with the urge to speak. He’s been on to the Marquis all along anyway, the truth might not even be wholly new to him.

  The pressure is heavy, and I’m about to crack and cry out loud that the Marquis is a monster who forced me into this, and that no, we do not know each other well, I don’t even know his first name. But that moment murmur increases. Both Vivienne and Jeremy turn like opening doors to clear my sight, and he takes the foreground in my field of vision. The Marquis.

  He walks directly to me, elegant and dangerous like a panther, his dark eyes hypnotic in that youthful ivory face. He extends his hand, and I’m compelled to offer mine. The beautiful villain leans in and takes it to his lips, his eyes fixed on my face.

  Soon his arm is around me, keeping me close to his body that feels hard under his clothes. He’s using that inexplicable power he has over me to influence my feelings, and I don’t stand a chance of resisting him this time. He leads me around into small talk with people, who congratulate us, but look me up and down like I scare them.

  I’m sure I look like a zombie. Speaking is harder and harder, as if he put a spell on me that seals my lips to anyone but him. I feel like a living mind inside a corpse; I want to scream but I’m unable to.

  Lauren bats her lashes at the Marquis when we come to her circle, smiling seductively. He gives her a reserved smile back, no more. To be honest, I could choke her.

  “You were right,” I mutter to the Marquis as we stop at a standing table for a glass of sparkling wine.

  He takes his glass to his lips, looking purposefully away, as if to allow me to regain some self-control. “About what?”

  “You did have the best of reasons to take the lives you did.”

  “I’m glad we begin to think alike.”

  “Were you—” But courage leaves me. I eventually muster all that’s left of it, and say, “Were you one of the orphans who’ve been—” I can’t even bring slit open and experimented on about my lips.

  The Marquis laughs bitterly. “Yes.” His serpent tongue lashes at me in my memory.

  “And besides Pukov and the dead man at the Royale—” I pause and wet my lips, growing sick to my stomach. “Are there more people you want to take revenge on?”

  “Many,” he says, baring his perfect white teeth in a smile that’s anything but friendly, and that makes dread course down my spine. “The Elite.” His black eyes sweep over the room, and my throat knots. It dawns on me.

  “My God. They’re all from Northville,” I whisper.

  “And they’re all here now.”

  My eardrums throb in my head. I look around, my gaze sweeping over every face, starting with my father and ending with Jeremy, who stands a protective pillar by his sister Jeanie and Virgin Vivienne, frowning at his target, the Marquis. William “Billy” Dean—the mouse-faced notary public who’s had a crush on Lauren forever—would never fit the profile of an evil experimenter on humans. But maybe Ronald Lord Barkley, the livid head of the lunatic asylum. He looks deranged enough. Anyone here could be among those the Marquis is after. They’re sure rich and influential enough to be among “the Elite.”

  The Marquis glides behind me, one arm coiling around my stomach and the other pointing discretely but clearly in the direction of a certain someone. My blood turns to ice, scraping my veins.

  “He was one of them, too.”

  The sky falls down and squashes my heart. I stare frozen, unable to feel.

  “That’s why you insisted to marry me. It wasn’t just to keep me quiet about the murder at the Royale,” I whisper.

  “Oh, I love how smart you are, Saphira.”

  The haze begins to lift, and reality presents its grotesque face—my father slit open kids and experimented on them.

  “What do you intend to do?” I manage, bewildered to the core.

  “Initially I planned a slaughter,” he says in such a calm voice that my brain fails to grasp the meaning of the sentence at first. I slowly become aware of his men lining the walls, Joyous and Stone Mask guarding the exit, ready to seal it at their boss’s first sign. “But when you surprised me at the Royale I had a much better idea. You can avoid all the drama,
Saphira. Do what I tell you, play along, and you can see yourself as their saviour,” he sneers.

  My skin crawls. “Why would I even want to save these pieces of shit?”

  “There are many innocent people here, too. To me, they’re acceptable collaterals. I trust they mean more to you, though.”

  Jeanie, Vivienne, Jeremy, Billy, Mum. I swallow hard. “What will you have me do?” I force myself to look aside to his face over my shoulder. His eyes are black and deadly on my father.

  “You will assist me in my revenge, Saphira. And I’ll make my revenge epic.” With these words he offers me his gloved hand again, and his power compels me to take it. He says the good-byes for both of us, and invokes a romantic chariot ride as reason for our leaving the party.

  On the inside, I’m boiling. I’m paying for the sins of sadistic perverts. They gather at the windows and in the doorstep to watch the Marquis help me into the chariot under falling snow-flakes, believing me the fairy-tale princess, when in truth I’m the sacrificial lamb. The Marquis opens his coat like a demon would open his black wings to look like he’s warming me, but I can’t feel the cold anyway. My heart drums in anxiety with the tramping of horse hooves as I watch the black tower emerge from the white winter night. The Marquis’s lips touch my ear, his breath warm.

  “I told you I’d be taking you with me to the underworld, Persephone.”

  CHAPTER VII

  SEDUCTION

  My heart pounds as the Marquis leads me up the spiral stairs to the tower. It’s dark and eerie. Insects crawl in cracks and corners. Cobweb sticks to my face, and I half wish he’d use those hypnotizing powers of his on me like he did the last time. The expression on his face is wicked, and I think he doesn’t use his powers on purpose. He enjoys my distress.