by Amy Vansant
He smiled, staring at her as he slathered his abdomen with the oil. “You’ll see.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What are you doing here?”
Fiona placed her keys on the marble kitchen island, scowling at Rune. He stood, hands in his pockets, staring through the glass wall overlooking Parasol Pictures.
At least, she assumed his eyes were open. Her father wasn’t the most predictable person in the world.
Rune spoke without turning. “One down.”
What? She was in no mood for his nonsense.
“How did you get into my apartment?”
No response.
Fiona’s teeth clenched. She’d been hoping her father would find her, hoping together they could accomplish quite a bit. But now that he’d arrived, acting as if he owned her, any warm and fuzzy father-daughter love she might have harbored for the memory of the man was fading fast.
Rune turned, the power of his pale eyes dimmed by his backlit form. Fiona could barely see his shadowed facial features, which she appreciated.
She didn’t like his eyes. She didn’t remember them being so icy.
“Sean is gone,” Rune said, scratching at the neck of his ridiculous high-buttoned flannel shirt.
“Gone? Gone where?”
He shrugged. “Where is the Highlander?”
“Where—?”
Before she could finish her sentence, Rune began to unbutton his shirt. He pulled it off, exposing his bird-breasted frame. To Fiona, he looked like one of the creatures scientists were always finding on the bottom of the ocean floor. Boney, pale, nearly translucent.
She didn’t remember her mother very well, but she held the impression she’d been quite the beauty.
She ought to have been proud to produce me and Catriona with this cave frog as the sperm donor—
“I’m hot. I need a shirt. Get me one I can wear.” Rune threw his flannel to the ground and rubbed at his throat.
Fiona’s anger skipped to a new level. She opened her mouth to tell him she was done being talked to in such a demeaning manner, but all she did was gasp.
Her father’s neck was covered in smiles.
Some thin, some thick, one overlapping the next, scars of varying darkness, each one running across his neck, the ends curling up as they disappeared behind his throat.
Fiona raised her hand to point. “What is that?”
Rune looked up to find her pointing. His hands once again raised to his throat.
“It’s necessary.”
“What’s necessary? Who did that to you?”
Rune held her in his steady gaze. “I did.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
She scoffed, tired of the mysteries surrounding the man. “The hell I do, you freak—”
Rune’s expression twisted into a tight knot. He took a step forward, a threatening advance that stopped Fiona cold.
He thrust his head forward, squinting at her as if she had morphed into a creature he didn’t recognize. “Have you learned nothing while I’ve been gone?”
Fiona opened her purse, looking for nothing, her nervous fingers desperate to find something to do. “What was it I was supposed to learn?”
“To travel we have to die. Nearly die.”
“Nearly—” Fiona paused, her hand still hanging in her purse. The source of Rune’s smiles flashed in her mind’s eye, swinging against a stark white background.
Nooses.
Rune had been hanging himself in order to trigger time travel.
What kind of sicko...?
This was the man on whom she’d hung her hopes? The man she thought was destined to provide her with direction? Give her a sense of purpose?
“Why would you do that to yourself? Why are you making yourself jump—”
“Because I need to learn. I need to grow. I have to become complete—”
“Why?”
“So I can kill them all!” Rune swung his arm wide, sending her favorite lamp crashing to the ground.
Fiona gasped, her hands rising to cover her mouth.
“Oh, I loved that lamp.” She took a step forward to gather the pieces on the ground, stopping as she felt Rune’s pale eyes locked on her. Something about his look said she might be lumped in with them all. The people he wanted to kill.
Fiona straightened and rocked her weight back against the raised breakfast bar counter.
She cleared her throat. “Who do you want to kill?”
Rune’s shoulders squared. “Everyone. Everyone not strong enough to resist me. The weaklings.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Survival of the fittest.”
Fiona nodded, pretending to understand.
He’s insane. How did I forget that? How did I forget why I ran away from him in the first place?
She held out her hands, patting the air down with her palms in an attempt to calm her father.
“Just so you know, I’m not in for this.”
“In for this?”
“I’m out. I thought maybe we could work together but it sounds like you have a plan I’m not prepared—”
“What?”
“I don’t want to kill everyone. I just want my share of the fame and fortune. My career—”
Rune took half a step forward, his hands curling into fists. “Your career?”
Fiona felt a chill run down the back of her neck.
You can do this. You’ve left him before.
“My career is—”
Rune took two long strides towards her, too fast for her to stop him. He moved, wrong. Like a stop-action cartoon played at high speed. He was on her before her mind could process his movement.
Bony fingers wrapped around her neck. They felt too long. She could feel them overlapping above her nape. Fiona grabbed his wrists, peeling at his grip, her gasps for air hindered by the pressure of his thumbs on her windpipe.
Rune leant forward, bending her back against the countertop. Her spine felt as though it might snap. Lowering his face close to hers, he hissed, his face red with strain. “Let it happen. Think of a place nearby. Want that place and that’s where you’ll go. Want it.”
Fiona’s left hand shot to the side, reaching until her fingers found her purse. She pushed her hand inside the bag, feeling for something, anything she could use.
Her touch slid along something smooth and hard.
My autograph pen.
Not long after she’d booked her first television show, a little girl had asked her for her signature. She’d been giddy at the prospect of signing her name, but she didn’t carry a pen at the time, and she’d sworn to never miss that opportunity again. So she bought herself the most perfect, black, Monte Blanc pen she could find, carrying it always.
Hooking the pen into her palm, she worked the cap off to reveal the point.
Her vision grew dark. Starbursts popped against murky black.
Her arm jerked from the purse.
She stabbed.
The pen embedded into the side of Rune’s throat, plunging through layers of rough scar tissue.
Her father roared and released his grip on her throat. First the right hand, which slapped to his neck as he stumbled back. Then the left.
Fiona ducked beneath that left hand and ran for the door. Behind her, she could hear Rune wailing with anger.
He’s coming.
She fiddled with the knob for what felt like forever. Finally, her palms found purchase and she turned the oval globe, flinging the door behind her as she ran into the hall.
She glanced at the large, silver elevator doors, remembering every time she’d ever pushed the recall button. Calculating the time it took to arrive.
No time.
Running to the stairs, she pushed open the door. She could hear Rune behind her.
“Fiona!”
She slipped, nearly falling on her rear as she hit the first set of stairs. Catching herself on the railing, she kicked off her heels a
nd ran down the remaining flights. She couldn’t hear anyone behind her now. She didn’t know if he had taken the elevator.
On the ground floor she pushed open the door and burst into the lobby.
“Did my father come out of the elevator?” she asked as she ran by the deskman.
“What? Miss Fiona, no, what...?”
She didn’t stop. She ran through another door to the garage and jumped into her car, thrilled her secure, private parking had inspired a habit of leaving her keys in the coffee mug holder cup.
One of the little luxuries of being rich—you didn’t worry people might rummage through your car at night.
She started the Lexus and pulled from her spot, tires squealing on the smooth pavement.
The exit’s iron gate bars lifted as she rolled towards them and she slid beneath them, turning into the guest parking lot leading to the front of the building.
There he is.
Rune stumbled through the front door like a zombie, his hand still on his neck, his naked chest covered in blood.
Fiona screamed and jerked her wheel to the left to avoid him. It wasn’t kindness that made her swerve. She felt sure if she hit him, somehow he would only be more mad.
Passing him, she looked in her rear view mirror in time to see him fall to his knees.
She didn’t feel herself crossing the threshold from the parking lot into the street. That little bump she’d experienced a hundred times before. All she felt was a car plowing into the front passenger side of her Lexus, sending her spinning.
When her car stopped rotating she didn’t take a moment to find her bearings. Instead, she clawed at the door like an animal, until her fingers hooked the handle and she spilled into the street. Her knees ached as they hit the pavement.
A moment later she was back on her feet.
“Are you okay?”
A man in a baseball cap stood just outside the car that had hit her. She didn’t know the brand of his vehicle. Didn’t recognize the logo. Something cheap. A child stared at her through the window of the back seat.
Fiona stood a moment, unsure which way to go. Down the block she spotted the ornate entrance to Parasol Pictures.
Security. Safety.
Fiona bolted down the street, barefoot, as fast as she could run.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“I guess I don’t need to ask you if you want the gloves,” said Volkov, chuckling. He traded his bottle of oil for a small wooden box, pulled from his desk drawer. Opening it, he retrieved what looked like a ball of white powder in plastic wrap. Shaking some of the powder into his palm, he snorted it before rewrapping the ball and placed it back in the box.
Catriona felt as if she’d fallen into shock.
None of this can be real.
She couldn’t be watching a man lather himself with oil and snort drugs as he prepares to—
Those movies.
She looked away and tried to make her mind go blank. When she looked back, he was staring at her, awaiting an answer.
“No.”
Catriona watched him slide the box back into the desk drawer.
“What did you think about the end of the videos?” he asked, finishing the sentence with a sniff as he pinched at his nose.
She found she couldn’t answer. Her ability to pretend had left her. She refused to look at him.
He let his question die. “Ready?”
Volkov flipped a switch mounted to the wall and the lights in the center fighting room blasted into a new gear. Apparently, he liked his victims to be well lit for the camera.
He lifted her from the chair.
“No. No, no no—” The words spilled from Catriona’s lips. When she began to struggle, he pushed his nails into her skin and gripped, crushing her against him until she could barely breathe.
He walked her into the large room and dropped her in the center.
“Stay there.”
Bound hand and foot, she didn’t have much choice. He pulled a tiny pocket knife from the band of his shorts and cut the tie around her feet.
He took a step back, pulling her hands out with him as he went. When he was standing just out of reach, he put the knife behind the tie and pulled the blade through the plastic.
Catriona’s hands dropped to her sides and she took a step back.
They stood facing each other. Catriona rubbed her wrists. Her limbs felt numb, but she knew it was fear and not the zip-ties that had left them tingling.
She stood, heart in her throat, mentally replaying the videos of the girls who’d come before her, hoping her ability to recall things in detail would allow her to spot a misstep in his attack. Something that would give her the advantage.
Catriona now knew Volkov usually fought in a traditional boxing style. He rarely used his feet to kick, though he’d had some experience wrestling, judging by the holds in which he’d wrapped the second woman during their fierce battle.
Catriona hoped her own kickboxing style might prove an advantage. If the color coding of the thumb drives meant anything—if red was reserved for women who fought back—then he wasn’t used to a challenge. Volkov could brag that he loved a good fight, but he preyed on hookers; women who were often tired, malnourished and suffering the effects of drugs and alcohol use.
Coward.
Volkov stood before her, bouncing one pec and then the other before repeating. His eyes danced in his skull. His countenance was joyful.
Catriona took a deep breath.
Concentrate. You can do this.
This man brutalized women. He ordered Broch’s death—
Catriona realized an awful truth. If she died in this sick fight-club pit, Sean would never know what happened to either of them.
He’d be devastated.
She could only hope if something did happen, Sean would find his way to Volkov and destroy him.
It wouldn’t do her much good, but it was a nice thought.
No. Wrong thinking.
Don’t imagine Sean coming after Volkov.
I am going to destroy him.
Volkov took a step back and grabbed a small hammer hanging from the bell mounted on the wall. He hit it, once. She recognized the sound from the beginning of the videos she’d watched.
It had started.
Volkov raised his fists and circled them in front of his nose like an old-timey Marquess of Queensbury rules boxer. He looked cartoonish.
He’s toying with me.
Already he wasn’t following his pattern. He’d been very serious with the other women.
Would all his tricks be new today?
Volkov motioned for her to come forward.
“Do it. Come at me.”
Catriona held up her hands and circled with him. She preferred to let him make the first move.
Really, she preferred to circle endlessly and never have to fight the psychopath at all.
Volkov rushed her and she kicked, instinctively, catching him on his hip. He laughed and returned to his stance.
He stepped in again and tried to slap her face, again, toying with her. She blocked him easily and moved away.
Moving forward, he tried boxing her into the corner of the room. She sensed the trap, ducked and moved away.
Volkov bounced on his toes.
“You can’t avoid me forever.”
He rushed forward before the end of his sentence, swinging wildly, left and right. She blocked one, partially blocked the second and took a glancing blow to her cheekbone as she kicked him in the stomach, just missing his groin.
He rolled back and made a tsking noise, shaking his finger at her. “Naughty girl. Not below the belt.”
Good luck with that.
She reasoned it would be hard for him to rape her battered body if she kicked his dick off first.
Lunging forward, Volkov tried to wrap his arms around her. She made him pay for his playfulness and connected with an uppercut and, turning, threw an elbow into his solar plexus. He coughed, doubling over and clutch
ing his stomach, trying to pull back. She grabbed a handful of his hair and tried to ram his face into her knee. He twisted so the blow glanced off the side of his head and backhanded her as he spun away. Catriona’s head snapped with the blow and she tasted bitter iron in her mouth.
She turned to refocus and found him behind her, hand raised to strike. With nowhere to circle, she scurried through the only doorway left unexplored. As she stumbled into the room the lights turned on, triggered by a motion sensor. Her foot knocked into something unstable and she twisted, searching for solid ground.
Catriona fell to her knees, finding herself hovering precariously over a pit in the floor of the chamber, now half-covered with a piece of plywood. A horrific stench rose from the uncovered portion. Catriona gagged and covered her mouth and nose with her hand.
Lights above her head beamed down into the pit as she peeked over the edge.
Six feet below, the blotchy face of a girl stared up at her, the eyes white and glazed, yellow eyeshadow still smeared beneath her eyebrows. A still, pale hand jut from the murky depths beside her, standing like a white rose in a murky field of black.
An oubliette. That’s where he threw the girls’ bodies. There they lay, heaped together, cursed to spend eternity in his dungeon after the horror and humiliation of their deaths.
“Get out of there. It isn’t your time…yet,” teased Volkov from the fighting room.
She looked around the space. There was nowhere to run. The hole in the floor was the only additional area, and down wasn’t an option.
She moved to the edge of the doorway.
“Step back so I can come out.”
“I have. I’m in the center of the room. See?”
She poked out her head and saw him standing there, bouncing on his toes, waiting.
“Were they dead when they went in there?” she asked. The words sounded pathetic leaving her lips. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from asking.
He shrugged. “Mostly.”
“Most? Or Mostly?”
“Both.”
She stepped out and he motioned to her.
“Take your spot. We begin again.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dez put her hand on Broch’s arm.
“There’s something else I should probably tell you about Volkov.”
