“I'm sorry.” She was sure that he thought her a fool now. That saddened her, and she was surprised by that. Surprised that such small hurts could still sting. “I've got to take this. It's kind of an emergency.” “Is everything all right?”
He straightened, like he was planning on standing and coming with her, like a knight errant who thought he could save the damsel in distress.
No, nothing's all right, and you can't save me. Not from this.
Val said hastily, “Probably—I hope so. Just a family thing I'm dealing with. I—we'll do this again, okay? Some other time?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Some other time.” She turned her back on him then, not wanting to see his face. As the sliding glass doors parted and the evening breeze tickled her damp, perspiring skin, she said, “All right, what is it Lisa? What now?”
“Oh, I'm not Lisa—and as for what I want, well, why don't you hazard a guess?”
Val dropped the phone.
It fell slowly, as though in a dream. A nightmare. She heard his laughter spiral up from the speakers like curls of smoke.
Shit. She dropped to her knees, flinching as the damp soaked through her jeans as she groped for the phone. When it rained, it poured in Washington. The same was true for this sad mess she called a life.
The line was silent when she held the phone up once more to her ear. She couldn't even hear him breathing. Had the sim card been damaged by the wet grass? Part of her still clung to the hope that she had hallucinated the entire exchange: even madness would be preferable to…this.
“Lisa?” The counter on her phone's screen silently ticked away the duration of the call. “Lisa? Are you there?”
“It's just me, Val.” His voice. Oh, God, it was his voice. “Save your breath. You have so few remaining.”
His words, and the implications riding behind them, shook her straight to her core. “W-what did you do to Lisa?”
“Hardly anything. Not compared with what I plan to do to you.” He paused a moment, an eloquent pause to let that sink in. “She was very cooperative, your Lisa, and with so little prompting, too.”
“You killed her.” Her knees were wet again; she had fallen back into the knot of grass and clover. She didn't care. “You killed her, didn't you?”
He said nothing. “Oh, God,” she said hollowly, “and Blake—and those girls—you killed them happening. “You bastard. You calling the police right now.” all.” This can't be
monster. You—I'm “I wouldn't do that, Valerian. Tell me, how is Washington this time of year? Cold?”
He's guessing. He can't know.
“I wouldn't know.” “Pity. I'd like to know how heavy a coat I should bring when I come to see you. Something light, I should think. Easy to move around in. Something that won't show blood.”
Val tried to speak and let out a weak, coughing gasp instead. This was worse, far worse, than anything she had imagined. Because it took someone psychotic, someone totally and unequivocally heartless, to imagine something this terrible. “S-stay away from me.”
He made a sound she couldn't interpret, or indeed, had no name for, but it chilled her straight to the bone. “Try and stop me,” he said, in a low voice that made all the hairs on her body stand on end. “You are about to discover just how formidable a hunter I am, my dear.”
Part of Val's mind splintered away and at the breaking off of that crucial piece, all the pent-up horrors and fears she had tried to fruitlessly to keep locked away after all these years rushed out to flood her consciousness like a broken dam.
“No. I beat you. You can't do this. I beat you.” “Not quite.” In a quiet voice she could scarcely hear over the sound of her own frenetic heartbeat, he said, “I hope you still remember how to run.”
He cut the connection before she could respond. Chapter Eight
Checkered Fritillary
She felt as if she were in a cage and the mesh walls were closing in, squeezing, suffocatingly tight. His presence was like that, smothering and electric. Irresistible. Surely this was how the fly felt just before it was incinerated by the zapper.
Val hugged herself. His voice, so seductive, even as he threatened her life. Intentionally fucking with her mind. How could he still have such an effect on her even now?
Mary noticed her shiver and in her casual way asked if something was wrong. “I'm just worried about…exams.”
“You shouldn't worry. You're smart.”
“Not that smart.” If she were smart, she wouldn't have gotten herself into this mess.
“I'm sure you'll do fine.” And with that, Mary launched into a tirade about her own assignments and exams while Val made a halfhearted attempt to look like she was listening as she got dressed.
(Save your breath. You have so few remaining.) Washington was a big state, she told herself. There are hundreds of towns.
But how many area codes? He has Lisa's phone. He has my number.
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
She was on her way to class when she saw him. It was so sudden, so unanticipated, that Val came stumbling to a complete stop. She couldn't have moved if she wanted to. Her limbs were completely petrified. All she could think was, How did he find me so quickly?
He was standing in front of the Coffee Shack in the Student Union, where she had met Jade last week. He was looking around, one hand thumbed through the belt-loops of his jeans as the other toyed with the metal chain around his neck. Under a black leather jacket that glistened like motor oil in the silvery light was a charcoal gray shirt.
Something that won't show blood , Val thought. He looked so…different.
Oh, but the real difference was in his face, in his eyes. With his gaunt cheekbones, the five o'clock shadows casting the angular planes of his face into stark relief, he looked—she gulped—hungry.
A few girls were eying him curiously, with obvious interest, and she realized with a sick sense of horror exactly how he'd gotten his victims to come to him, because he had tried the same tactic on her all those years ago to great effect. When she'd been innocent. When she hadn't known any better.
He acted like a libertine of Europe with a genteel Southern propriety—and had all the morals of an emotionless psychopath. The two former masked the latter, like leaves covering a snare. You didn't notice the steel jaws until they were impaled in your flesh, and by then it was already far too late to run.
Val wanted to scream at them to run, run while they could. Run while they still had a life left to run for. He's not playing at being dangerous. He is dangerous.
But then, that unrestrained aspect of him had been part of his appeal—at least, it had been in the beginning. Until she realized how deeply it ran, past recklessness, straight into a moral void.
Until she learned that he could kill.
Until she learned that he could like it.
She kept her eyes straight ahead— don't look, don't look, don't look—trying to ignore the ache in her chest. She didn't dare breathe. Any movement or sound might draw his attention. He had already glanced her way once, in passing, lumping her in with the scenery, and even that cursory glance had stilled her heart's beating because she remembered being its focus.
She had never been more aware of another being in her life. Breathing in her terror of him as if it were more sustaining than air itself, Val felt as if her mind were not her own.
Almost there .
And then—
She tripped.
Her books fell with a heavy slam that echoed like a gunshot in the emptying quad. She could have not called his attention towards her more effectively if she tried. Those gray eyes snapped back to her and his lip curled slightly in amusement. Not because of who she was, but simply because she had fallen; because she was weak.
Val averted her eyes and scrambled to catch her papers before they could be blown away by the wind. Nobody moved to help her, though a few—the few who had even taken notice—laughed in aside to their friends.
Through the da
rk screen of her hair, she hazarded another look at him. He was still watching her. His gaze had turned speculative and slightly menacing. Her pulse throbbed like an open wound. She clutched her books to her breast and got unsteadily to her feet, trying not to sway too drunkenly. She wanted to run, but that would trigger a chase response. He was the predator, after all, and she the prey.
Val swallowed hard and kept her eyes ahead. I am invisible, she thought. Don't look at me.
She peeked at him again, obliquely; it wasn't working. Oh please, no.
His arm moved as she went by him. No! She could not suppress her involuntary flinch as she caught a whiff of his familiar aftershave. Sandalwood and rose. What was he pulling out of his jacket? A gun? Surely not. Not on a college campus full of witnesses. No—a cell phone. She breathed out, not daring to hope. Just a cell phone. But then why—?
Vivaldi again. Val fumbled in her coat pocket, almost numb with relief by the distraction, and then froze when she saw the caller ID.
Slowly, she lifted her head—and she nearly screamed when she saw his expression as he waved Lisa's phone at her in quiet triumph.
That look sent her body running before she had even fully registered its subtle threats and nuances. Only when she had gone into full motion did she realize that it was the look of someone who was about to kill without mercy or remorse, and the look of someone who would enjoy it. He hadn't been bluffing; he really was going to kill her.
(I hope you still remember how to run.) She didn't have to look back to know that he was chasing her. She could hear his swift and heavy footfalls, picking up at an alarming rate.
People were staring. For once, she didn't care.
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪ Harper Hall was a two-story building that housed two of the chiefly-used lecture halls for the soft science lectures, in addition to the experimental psychology and neuroscience laboratories and the offices of the professors and graduate students of that department.
Surrounded by a meticulously-tended garden of juniper hedges, cypress, and mulberry, the grounds were a labyrinth of shade and greenery. Better yet, the inside was just as disorienting.
Val cut around the boxy hedge, heading for the side entrance. She wasn't too familiar with the buildings yet she knew first hand that the middle hallway connected perpendicularly to two adjoining halls in an H-shape that tended to leave one with a niggling sense of vertigo. Hopefully, he would think so too. Val gritted her teeth and picked up speed and cut sharply around the corner, taking the next sharp turn to head down the hall that contained the professors' many offices.
So someone can hear you scream? His voice mocking her—real or imagined? She didn't look behind her, didn't check to see if he was following. If she didn't look, the monsters wouldn't get her and she would be safe. But only if she didn't let herself be turned into a pillar of salt first.
At the end of the hallway was an elevator. She slipped inside so abruptly that her sneakers squeaked against the marble tiles. She flinched at the sound and slammed the button for the second floor, watching the end of the corridor with her heart in her throat. She felt winded. It had been years since she'd actively gone running. She had lost a lot of the muscle tone and endurance that made her so good at track in high school.
As the doors were closing Gavin rounded the corner. He locked eyes with her from across the hall. “I only want a moment, Val.” Her fingers tightened around the books as he loped easily towards the elevators. Close faster, she urged the doors.
“Val—” They weren't fast enough. He was going to reach her, and then the sensors wouldn't close. Shit. Desperate, she threw the heaviest of her textbooks at his face.
The thud of her other books hitting the ground after she dropped them made her start, so when she hurled her Sociology textbook at him the throw was crooked from the get-go. Had it connected the book could have easily broken his jaw.
Gavin parried the book with his forearm instead of halting the doors as he had intended, striking it on the flat side. They slammed into the wall with a violent slam that echoed up and down the narrow corridor.
The doors closed.
She could breathe again—but only for a moment.
Val poured out into the second-floor hallway. Running footsteps sounded his presence from the stairwell down the hall. Val turned and headed for the fire escape; the doors weren't alarmed and they led directly outside, to the opposite side of the building through which she'd entered. Out into West Thoreau and the beginning of North Point's downtown.
Her phone rang. She looked up, her concentration narrowing to focus on the doors above her head as she fumbled to turn off the power.
The doors on the third floor burst open—clearly, he'd assumed that she would go up instead of down —and he hit the balcony hard enough to make the metal rails rattle in their frames.
“You're only prolonging the inevitable.” He spoke just loud enough for the words to carry. “Come with me now. Let's talk. It's been so long since I heard the sound of your voice.” He moved closer to the stone steps. “Almost a year, in fact.”
She swayed, once, twice, hypnotized, caught in the thrall of that voice. Then jerked. No. She fumbled with the door. It opened, bathing her in blinding light. Gasping, Val looked back over her shoulder. He was still there, watching as she fled. He ran his finger across his neck, and blew her a kiss, all in a single eloquent gesture.
It was not a threat, she realized, but a promise. (Are you frightened?)
She wondered who would die now in her stead. She wondered how long until she joined them.
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪ Attempting to camouflage herself had signified that even she knew that she was prey—his prey—by resorting to such mechanisms.
He had ensured that she would be desperate, because people were careless when they were desperate. In this instance, he did not mind being wrong because he had always appreciated a challenge and because her underhandedness amused him.
Playing dead had failed, so a new line of defense had become necessary. She had changed her colors to blend in with the scenery. It had almost worked.
When he had seen that dark-haired woman standing off to the side she had not immediately conjured up an image of Val. No, not even when she had fallen, or when he had watched her scramble after her blowing papers. He had only thought what a pity it was that she didn't have red hair, as she fit into his desired profile so well.
And then she had looked at him, and he felt that glance tighten his groin with its familiarity because there was a kind of knowing in that gaze: recognition —and a bold display of fear. But what, if anything, could such a girl know about him or his ways? Even if such fears were warranted, he was intrigued.
Rules were, after all, made to be broken. A drab little raven, to stand out amidst his fiery collection of cardinals.
When she walked past him, he had seen her flinch: a tiny shiver she tried quite hard to suppress. More fear, yes, but there was something of the sexual in it too, and he felt his own body begin to respond in kind because at that moment, he had caught her scent on the breeze. He would have known her anywhere then, even in darkness.
It was her.
After all this time, she was in his grasp.
Chasing her had been purely instinctual. He'd had to think about it no more than a hawk did when swooping down to catch the unwary field mouse.
For weeks a heady blood-lust had infused his dreams, stirring up the potent need for violence and vengeance in his veins as though stoking kindling for a fire. But now a different sort of conflagration was growing, white-hot and blinding. He could see nothing else but the tails of her coat as she ran, flapping in the rain-soaked wind like the wings of a bird in flight.
Thought, when it did come, had sullied that purity. When he had her cornered in that elevator he saw the pale curve of her neck, as supple as the skin of a ripe fruit; the push of her breasts against her shirt; her long legs, full hips, and tight buttocks forming a sensual triumvirate; his desire to kill waned in
lieu of an earthier desire, primal and all the more powerful because of it.
But that can come later, he thought. Even the mightiest predator deigns to toy with his prey on occasion. Memories of that blushing skin laid bare elicited phantom sensations that made him look at her in new light. No longer dewy and coltish with youth, her body had new curves and contours belied by her sinewy frame.
She could be his to conquer and explore, but it would not be by her choice. She had made that quite clear when she raked him with that shard of glass, cornered, with just a few stitches of clothing separating them from consummation.
No, she would have to be tied down, and forced into submission. He would bring her to heel, and if she resisted there would be pain.
Theirs would be a violent union, christened in blood and sweat and hatred so fierce that it bordered on passion. She would fight him, he would fight back, harder, as they lost themselves in the oldest of battles waged between male and female.
She caught his glance and stiffened, and he knew that she knew, and that flickering remnant of strength inside her rebelled at the thought, and he went fully hard as he weighed the pros and cons of taking her right there against the wall of that elevator as he slit her slender throat.
And then she had thrown that book at him, and he felt another tide of sensation flood through his blood because he had come to this place looking for a quick kill and realized that he was going to receive a battle instead.
Those other women had fought him, too, when he had at last made his intentions clear. Such futile struggle, he had suffered only a few scratches. Nothing more. But Val had managed to escape him— not once, but twice. And now a third time. He touched the scar on his throat. She, alone, had left her mark. She was elusive and wary game; the perfect quarry for the most sophisticated of hunters.
He looked forward to chasing her down. This time, she would not escape. Revenge and sensuality in a single swoop.
No, he could not recall ever feeling quite so alive. Chapter Nine
Gladiolus Days passed, then weeks, and Val did not catch a single glimpse of the grandmaster. Rather than finding this a comfort, Val realized that this didn't really matter. Just because she couldn't see the monsters didn't mean they didn't exist, that they weren't out there looking. Looking for her.
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