Sins of the Master

by Catherine Taylor

Some anger remained that unwanted memories had been dragged up. Once again, Dylan found himself questioning the decisions he had made. He could see Mary’s angry face and hear her challenge him. “She has a right to know.”

  He shook his head and kissed Tammy again before tickling her sides and sending her into a giggling struggle to escape. Mistakes had been made, but Tammy would never be one of them.

  * * * * *

  Brendan opened an email and leant forward as two pictures appeared side by side. One was of the woman Adele had taken at the wedding. The other was of a younger girl with a narrower face, beaming a smile that showed dimples in her full, rounded cheeks.

  He stared at the pictures, wanting to believe they were the same woman, but he wasn’t convinced. The younger girl was pretty and slimmer. Scrolling down, he read the email.

  Mr. North,

  My apologies for the extended time in replying, but a problem has emerged that I have been unable to resolve. An initial positive match was made between your image and this wedding photo appearing in an Australian newspaper in 1996. The bride was a girl named Ashley Tait, but she drowned on her honeymoon in New Zealand soon after and her body was never recovered. You state your photo was taken this year, and therefore couldn’t be the same girl. I can only surmise the possibility of these girls being close relatives.

  Brendan sat back confused, but as an idea came to him, he was forward again, typing ‘Ashley Tait’ into the search engine. Several stories came up for him to read, but it was one from 2005 that caught his interest.

  Mystery continues to surround the death of Brian Tait with the release of the official statement from the Coroner’s inquest. Arson has been confirmed as the cause of the West Coast house fire, in which Tait’s charred remains were discovered, along with that of an unknown woman. An accelerant had been used and the fire had become an inferno that left little behind. With its isolation, it had taken fire services two hours to arrive on the scene to find the house gutted and very little had been left to examine. Skeletal remains were found which allowed forensic pathologists to clearly identify two separate bodies of a man and a woman.

  Further investigation revealed injuries that suggested that both people had been subjected to a brutal assault, prior to death. Due to the extent of incineration, positive identification could not be established through forensic analysis.

  Tait was victim of another tragedy in 1996 when his pregnant and newlywed wife, Ashley, fell overboard from a cruiser they were honeymooning on and her body was never recovered.

  “Jesus.” Brendan sat back again, stunned at what he was learning.

  If the woman in Adele’s photo was Ashley Tait, she had suddenly gone from drowning victim to Tyler’s whore. Maybe Tyler had a very good reason to keep her around, but the questions remained over what had happened to the baby and who had been responsible for her husband’s death, if it was his charred remains.

  Brendan laughed, jumping to his feet and pacing the room. Going to the fridge, he grabbed out a beer, flipped the top and guzzled the first third of the bottle. His excitement was palpable. Exposing Dylan Tyler and his sordid world was going to be the greatest achievement of his life. This time there would be no mistakes, as long as he kept to the rules. Staying sober was one of them, as was keeping his temper under control.

  He now had a fresh lead. Ashley Tait had a bizarre history and there were possibly family or friends that might know something. Returning to the laptop, he sat down, confident and eager to find out whatever he could.

  He frowned to see an email from Adele. It was through an online mail server, but still, there was supposed to be rules of contact between them. He opened it.

  Brendan, it has come to my attention that our man could be meeting with Mairead in her home, tomorrow morning. I believe this is something you should follow up with urgency, Adele.

  “What the fuck?” Brendan shook his head.

  That Adele would have this information was enough to enrage him. As he had suspected, she was not keeping in the background. She was out there doing her own investigation, but where the hell was she getting her information? Picking up his phone, he went to ring her but stopped himself.

  Adele was running the risk of exposing herself to Tyler. It was possible he already had her phone tapped. As far as Brendan was concerned, that was her problem, but he wasn’t about to be taken down with her. He would have liked more information, but he’d follow up the lead anyway. Of course, anything he learned would be kept to himself. Adele wasn’t about to cheat him out of the one thing he’d chased for nearly twenty years.

  * * * * *

  It had been a fascinating hour, kneeling naked in the theatre, watching Dylan indulge in one of his stranger habits of knife throwing. It was something he did when he had things on his mind, but the silence was making Esther nervous. It meant that he knew she also had something on her mind. She tried not to think about it and waited until he had finished throwing the last of six knives and had gone to collect them.

  With his back to her, she risked raising her head to admire him as he walked across the stage. His jeans were tight and low on his hips and his upper body was bare. He had come to the theatre without his t-shirt and she guessed that Tammy had secured his attention. Esther sighed, wishing that she had been in her place.

  “Master.” She spoke on his return, sure that her word was barely audible.

  “What?” He glanced at her as he lay out six short knives on the table. Each had a curved blade that narrowed to a sharp point.

  Esther trembled and found herself unable to continue, shrinking down as he turned to study her.

  “Sooner or later,” he said quietly. “You’re going to tell me what’s bothering you, so why don’t you get it over with?”

  Esther smiled and dared to look up at him. “I was just going to ask where you learnt to do that. I’ve never seen anyone do that, except in old movies about the circus.”

  His grin told her that he didn’t believe her. “Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it. I’ve been throwing knives since I was a kid. I just got good at it.”

  She looked up to the large wooden board he had fastened against the wall, some twenty feet from where he stood. It was well over six feet, covered in thousands of marks where the knives had embedded around the outline of a full sized person drawn in the centre.

  Esther grinned. “Have you ever used a real person?”

  Dylan stared at her. “Yes.”

  Her mirth faded away. “Really?”

  He nodded. “I had a board I used to call ‘the confessional’ because the people attached to it wanted to tell me all their sins.”

  “Who would be brave enough to do that?”

  “Not many,” he replied. “But they weren’t usually volunteers.”

  “Did you…” Esther swallowed again nervously. “Did you ever miss?”

  “No. I put the knives precisely where I want them to land.”

  “So no-one ever got hurt.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Esther looked up at him, but quickly bowed her head again.

  “How much do you trust me?” he asked, picking up a knife and running his thumb along the blade.

  She laughed softly. “Probably not enough to stand up at that board.”

  “And not enough to tell me what happened today.”

  Esther winced and jumped when he suddenly sent the knife hurtling through the air. It landed with a dull thwack into the board, directly above the head of the outline.

  “Please, Master,” she whispered. “I didn’t think it was important at first and then when I thought about it, I knew I was wrong and I didn’t want you angry with me…”

  “So you made it worse by keeping your silence.” He threw another knife which came close to the shoulder. “I suggest it wasn’t punishment you feared, more than breaking your loyalty to Mairead.”

  “No, Master. Mairead said that I should tell you. She didn’t want me to lie to you.”
r />   Dylan turned to look at her. “Is that so? And yet you chose not to tell me. Why was that?”

  “Because I didn’t want to get her into trouble.”

  He laughed and turned back to throw another knife. “Mairead doesn’t need your help, but at least she didn’t try to take you with her.”

  “We were followed,” Esther blurted out. “A black car followed us from Mum’s house but Mairead managed to get away.”

  She watched him pause before taking a knife and throwing it with ferocity, embedding it into the face of the outlined man. When he turned to her again, she could see the cold fury in his face as his eyes bored into her.

  “Foolish, girl,” he said with quiet, simmering anger. “Why didn’t you ring me immediately?”

  “I wanted to, but Mairead wouldn’t let me. She said it was just reporters. In all the excitement, I didn’t think about the man who had visited Mum’s house or your gallery.”

  “Did you ask your mother about that?”

  “No, Master, I didn’t, because we got caught up in other things and…”

  “A licence plate for this car?”

  Esther sunk a little lower. “I didn’t think…”

  “No, that part is obvious.”

  The contempt in his words crushed her. “Master, please…”

  “You can go to your own bed now,” he said. “And stay out of my sight until I tell you otherwise.”

  Esther bowed and nodded, “Yes, Master.”

  Getting up, she felt bitterly overwhelmed by his disappointment, and furious with herself. Sending her away was a harsher punishment than pain. She yearned to feel the cane bite into her flesh, or the whip striping her breasts.

  Before she reached the door, she glanced back and watched him throw another knife.

  “I’d do it,” she yelled back to him. “I would stand at that board. I would do that rather than be sent away from you.”

  He had turned back to fix his gaze upon her, one eyebrow arched. He shook his head. “How can I trust you when your concern for others overrules your obedience to me?”

  “I made a mistake,” she pleaded. “I’ve made a lot of them, but I know I would put you before anyone. I would put you before my own life.”

  His thin smile showed his amusement. “You would rather stand up there, than spend a night alone?”

  Esther nodded. “Yes, Master, if it would convince you that you can trust me and that I’m truly sorry for what I’ve done.”

  “That would convince me,” he grinned. “But I think you’re putting a bit too much faith in yourself to follow it through. I would have to tie you to make sure you didn’t move and I think by then you would be having second thoughts.”

  “If I do it, would I be able to share your bed tonight, Master?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll do it.”

  He stared at her and then, without a word, strode back to the board and collected his knives. Bringing them back to the table, he laid them out. Another glance at her and he walked to where coils of rope hung along a wall. He studied them and took down a coil of thick, red synthetic cord.

  “Come.” He walked towards the board.

  Esther’s heart was thumping violently as she silently crossed the stage after him. At the board, the second thoughts were coming thick and fast, but she remained silent.

  “You sure you want to do this?” he asked.

  “Yes, Master.”

  She glanced up enough to see the smallest inflection of his smile, before he began to make the loops that would bind her wrists and ankles. His proximity calmed her as he went about his work. Many times her body had been the subject of his artwork, her limbs bound and stretched into positions enhancing her vulnerability and exposure, or captured within an intricate array of knots and design.

  As always during these times, she loved the closeness between them, with its intimacy and gentle caresses, in an atmosphere of sobering silence as he bound her. He watched her face as he backed her against the board, and then went behind her. The cord was pulled tightly, stretching her limbs to their length.

  The board was rough against her buttocks, which had already suffered his wrath once that morning. In the distance she could see the knives spread out on the table. Her stomach lurched as her body began to tremble.

  Dylan stepped back in front of her, blocking her view. His eyes wandered over her naked body in starfish pose and settled on her face, where he could see her quivering lip. She stared back at him, expecting to see a hint of doubt in his face, or amusement that he had taken this far enough, but she saw nothing more than his hard, unemotional gaze.

  Instead he gently kissed her mouth and slid his palm up the side of her body, coming to rest on her breast. His thumb caressed her hardened nipple as his lips moved, nuzzling down her neck to her shoulder and then back to her ear.

  “Don’t be afraid, little one,” he whispered. “Who am I?”

  “You are… Master,” she stuttered.

  He nodded. Stepping back, he gazed at her again and looked pleased with what he saw.

  Before she could speak he had turned and strode back to the table. Esther gasped and pulled at the bonds, finding that she couldn’t move in the slightest. She was bound against a board, offering her naked body as target practice to six deadly knives. Although she had watched him do this a hundred times, fear began to seep through her veins, clutching at her and making her want to scream out to him to stop before it went further.

  Too late, she saw the sudden rapid movement of his body, a flash and a sound, something like an axe falling into a chopping block. A vibration went through the board and the air was sucked from her lungs, turning her scream to a gargle. With her peripheral vision, she could see the knife in line with her eyes, no more than six inches from her temple.

  Her mouth hung open, but before she could draw breath he had thrown again. She sucked in air and her scream finally got traction, bursting from her mouth, as she spied the knife on the other side of her head. The scream died down to an anguished moan as tears spilled over with a word from her mouth.

  “Red.”

  The moment it was uttered, Esther broke down, bawling unable to look at him as he approached. Dylan leaned down and rested his head against hers, shushing her gently.

  “Stop crying.”

  “I’m sorry, Master. I’m so sorry.”

  “For what? Protecting yourself? Stopping something that didn’t feel right for you? Challenging me?” He grinned. “Now, I know I can trust you.”

  “But… I failed,” she sobbed. “I’ll be alone tonight.”

  “Forget it. You’re not the only one who makes mistakes. I wasn’t angry at you. I was angry at myself and I took it out on you. I’m sorry, Esther, and I’ll make it up to you tonight.”

  She frowned. “You mean, you could have… I might have got hurt?”

  Dylan laughed. “No. As terrified as you felt, you were always safe. I meant it when I said I never miss.”

  “You don’t think you might one day?”

  “No.” He shrugged. “It’s just something I’m naturally good at, like fucking, and have I ever got that wrong?”

  Esther grinned. “No, Master, never.”

  His eyes wandered down her body and his hand casually went to her vagina. He grinned as he rocked his fingers into her and felt her come coat his fingers.

  “Did that excite you, Esther?”

  She nodded, gasping at his touch. “It did a bit.”

  “I should be turning you over my knee for putting yourself in danger.”

  “But I wasn’t,” she smiled. “You just told me I wasn’t.”

  “You didn’t know that.”

  “Yes, I did. I just got scared and I had to stop, but I know you would never do anything to harm me. You tell me that you trust me now. I want to show you how much I trust you, even though I let you down sometimes. There are still four knives to throw.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t n
eed to prove anything to me. Tomorrow, I want to show you something else, something I want you to be part of with Yvette. You’re ready and I don’t say this lightly. I’m proud of you, Esther.”

  More tears ran down her face. “Then let me prove something to myself, Master. Whatever becomes of my life now, I want to remember this moment, something that only you and I have shared, so when life does terrify me, I always know that I can rise above fear.”

  He stared at her long and hard. “What’s your safe word, Esther?”

  “Red.”

  “When do you use it?”

  “When I don’t feel good about something and I want it to stop immediately.”

  “Doesn’t that make you a failure?”

  She smiled. “No, Master. That makes me awesome, because I care about myself, and my submission to you deserves to be honoured and treated with respect.”

  “It certainly does,” he smiled. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Esther beamed, as he walked back to the table. She felt so much joy, but it wasn’t long before the icy tendrils of uncertainty began to clutch at her again.

  Dylan stood calmly watching her, a knife dangling down from his hand. He was waiting patiently, casually as if this was not a terrifying, life threatening situation. It was almost arrogant, but his composure was hypnotic, blunting the raw edge of her fear, as if her anxiety had no grounds to be there.

  Once again, he had her under his spell and he did it so effortlessly. Esther knew that it was an acknowledgement of his own capabilities, an unwavering certainty of what he was capable of. Somehow she managed to close her mouth and with it, her eyes, signalling her readiness. A few seconds later, a loud, dull thud was heard above her, the sound filling her hearing and the vibration passing through the back of her head.

  The possible scenarios of what a direct hit would do still filled her thoughts, but she fought them, seeing only her Master in her mind. Another thud, this time only a few inches to the right of her waist. The next came even faster on her left.