Arthur gave a harsh laugh. “I’m a monster, Jade. There’s nothing you can do to fix me.”
“You’re not a monster. You did what you had to do. Steve would have killed you and me.”
Arthur pinned me with a look that made me shudder. “I should be dead. I don’t deserve to live.”
He stood and shuffled away, moving up the stairs like he was an eighty-year-old. I jumped up and followed him.
“You’re not dead and you have a reason to live. Helen loves you, I’m sure of that. You should ask her to come back, let her into your life.”
“Helen? She did come back,” Arthur said over his shoulder.
I frowned. “She did?”
Arthur continued walking, heading straight for his study. “She’s upstairs resting.”
“Oh.” I smiled. “Well, that’s good news then.”
We walked into his study. I glanced down at the floor by his desk, still seeing the faint stain left from Eddie’s wounds. Some blood had seeped through the blanket he’d been on. I gulped, a flash of memory giving me a nasty taste of that night.
Arthur was haunted, I could see that and I could connect to that. I had nightmares too. Horrible, blood-filled ones where I woke up screaming. It was hard for me to fully accept that Steve had been a murderer. That he had not only violated those poor women but that he’d mutilated and brutally killed them. I knew he was manipulative, dangerous but I’d naively thought it was all just a game to Steve and that it was all directed at me. So self-centred of me to think that way. So narrow minded. I tripped over it each and every time my thoughts turned to Steve. How had I been so wrong about him? So blind to the danger?
“Helen got me food earlier.” Arthur moved to the other side of his desk and glanced at me. “I’m happy she decided to come back.” His voice was flat, his expression showing nothing but remorse. His eyes were dark. He wasn’t sleeping well either.
Whatever I’d thought of Steve wasn’t important in the face of what I needed to do to help Arthur. Steve was dead. Gone. Couldn’t hurt anyone else. It was the memory of him that was haunting us and I needed to get Arthur coping and living rather than dwelling. Rather than barely existing. “See? You have things to look forward to. You have a woman who loves you. Helen will help you feel better.”
“Jade,” Arthur narrowed his eyes. “You don’t do optimism well. Just stop.”
I flinched. Okay. “Sorry.”
He shook his head then moved to the corner and bent down. He’d stashed our guns there. The shotgun he’d used to stop Steve the first time, my .38 and stun gun. Under the floorboards—old Victorians had all kinds of great hiding places. With a grunt he stood, weapons in hand. He angled the shotgun against his desk, barrel up and put my two on his desk.
“I’m going to need you to do something for me tonight,” he said as he sat and opened one of the drawers.
“Okay, no problem. What do you need?” I sat down too.
He pulled out a book. Hardcover, old. It wasn’t very big or thick and looked like it had been read a million times.
He opened the book, leaning back in his chair. “‘My Last Duchess,’” he began.
I listened to him read, his poetry like magic, soothing me, the words flowing out like he’d written the poem himself.
“I remember that poem, I studied it a long time ago, first year English.” I frowned. “You named the portrait of Lizzy after that poem?”
Arthur nodded, his face drawn with fatigue and sadness. “She was the first.”
He leaned forward and set the book on the desk, open to a pre-marked page where a folded piece of paper lay inside.
“I couldn’t find one for you, so I had to come up with something.” He pushed the book toward me and then stood.
I leaned forward, hand out to grab the book as he came around the desk.
“I’m going to ask you to be vengeance for me, Jade.”
I frowned as I angled the book so I could pull the sheet out. I flipped it open and read the poem, gaze scanning the title. Be Vengeance by Arthur Stone. I glanced over my shoulder at him. “You wrote this?”
“I’m a monster, Jade, and I need to be stopped.”
He was standing next to me. I frowned, confused by the look on his face. “Arthur? I don’t under—”
He lifted my Taser, then brought it to the side of my neck and turned it on.
I must have fallen on the floor when I passed out. I lay crumpled between the chair and the desk. My neck was sore, my body tight. I’d never been tased before. I moved slowly, groaning quietly as I pushed the chair back a little then used it to pull myself up.
My brain was fuzzy, thoughts coming slow. Arthur had knocked me out. I got into the chair, my body weak still from my injuries—being zapped hadn’t helped either. My brain hiccupped over what had happened. Arthur had used my Taser on me? He’d knocked me out. I couldn’t make sense of that, like my head refused to accept the reality. I reached up and touched my neck, felt the tender skin and winced.
My thoughts turned to Eddie. To his accusations. To his suspicions about Arthur early on.
My gaze fell on the book, the paper I’d been holding no longer there. I scanned the floor, spotted it a few feet away.
I turned around, looking over the room, searching for Arthur. The shelf door was open, the one leading to the passageway. I shivered as a cool draft came into the room.
Arthur wanted me to help him with something. He wanted me to be vengeance. His poem had talked about wrath and revenge. It had talked about owning men, meting out punishment to those who deserved it. It had talked about power and justice. And it had talked about me. About my hunts. He called me a vengeance dealer.
Open your eyes, Jade. Kassey’s final words to me echoed in my brain. A memory, her voice, the embodiment of her, gone forever. Open your eyes.
I flipped the pages of the book. My Last Duchess. Earmarked. Porphyria’s Lover. Earmarked. I gulped. Flipping to the final earmarked page. Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night.
Fuck. I hadn’t seen it. It hit me. Took me down into the darkness again.
Arthur.
A murderer.
A rapist.
Arthur wanted me to get revenge. He wanted me to stop him.
My shoulders slumped, my body deflating as I sank further into the chair. Why did this keep happening to me? I was surrounded by these men, these horrible violent men. Tears welled. Pain seared through me. I loved these men like family, confided in them, given parts of myself to them. And yet here I was, the unluckiest woman alive, forced to obliterate my heart once again. First Steve, now Arthur.
I heard a noise, muffled, close. Not coming from the stairs or the passageway. I pushed myself up, noticed Arthur’s computer flashing images. Pulled it toward me. It took me a few seconds to realize what was there.
I covered my mouth. It was a video, dark, grainy, but unmistakable. With shaking fingers I pushed the volume up, the sound of pleas tinged with terror burned my ears, my eyes filled with tears once again.
We’d been wrong about Steve. Wrong about Kiefer. So, so wrong. The danger was closer. Too close for me to see.
Arthur was on the screen, violating, torturing, murdering. The poor girl. I didn’t know who it was, which one, and it didn’t matter. Arthur had been the one all along.
I gave my head a shake, the pieces coming together in a strange kind of clarity. Arthur had given me the trophies from the victims to plant in Steve’s place. He’d had access to the underground tunnels from his house. He’d known all of the victims.
A shriek of terror echoed from the passageway. It stabbed me with fear, a shiver jolting my spine. He had Helen down there. He was doing it again.
I stood. My gun was still on his desk. His shotgun was gone. Fuck.
I checked that my .38 was loaded the slipped it into my pants then walked to the doorway. The tunnel was dark and I had a choice to make.
If I went down there, someone was going to die, maybe even me. Arthur
wanted me to stop him but I had a feeling that he wasn’t going to make it easy. Where was Kassey? My voice of reason.
Another shriek came, this one long, low, and speaking of horror and pain. Anger jolted through me. He was raping her to be sure. He’d do just as he had the others. And he’d mutilate her and then kill her.
What was I? A hero? A warrior? No, I was just a woman with a gun and a giant chip on my shoulder. But I wouldn’t let Arthur get away with this. I could go down there and put a stop to it. I could save Helen and incapacitate Arthur. He’d go to jail.
Do it for Kassey. Do it because no woman should die that way.
I moved back to his desk and opened all the drawers, looking for a flashlight. I found a lighter, moved to the mantle and snatched one of the candles. It would have to do.
I walked back to the door, sucked in a breath of damp, rank air and then went inside, down the stairs and into the tunnel. I was meant to do this. It’s what I’d been heading toward the whole time.
The tunnel was darker than I’d remembered. Colder too. I slid along the wall slowly, heading to the room that I’d been captive in, moving slowly, soundlessly. When the light from the office started to fade, I lit the candle and continued.
I heard another sound, a moan this time, like a wounded animal. It was coming from the opposite direction. I frowned. Was there another room? One that only Arthur knew about? I paused, listened carefully, even holding my breath. There it was again. A moan, a sound of begging, pleading.
Helen wasn’t dead yet.
I moved back toward the light of Arthur’s study, shifted along the side of the stone staircase to see a passage going in the other direction, jutting off to the side, parallel to his house. I put my hand on the wall, felt the bumpy, damp and unyielding stone. Even with my candle, it was impossibly dark. Like the lack of light was amplifying with every step I took, the darkness eating the glow of my flame. I was headed into hell; I could feel it in my soul.
It didn’t take me long to find him. The passageway opened to a large alcove. I hugged the wall and blew my candle out before peering around the corner. Arthur was waiting for me. Standing in the middle of the room, shotgun pointed at the doorway.
“You really need to work on stealth, Jade. I could hear you stomping all the way down here.” Arthur chuckled with a bitter edge. “Don’t give me a clear shot because I will take it.”
“Arthur.” My voice shook. I cleared my throat. “This isn’t how things are going to end for us.” Reconciling that my mentor, a man I loved and respected, was a murderer was more than I could do at the moment, so instead I tried for rationalizing. He was grieving, he was acting out—he couldn’t have been the horrible villain. Not this time. “You need some help.”
“I think it’s a little too late for rehabilitation, Jade.” He scoffed. “Even you know how hopeless that is.”
I shifted my gaze behind him where the light of some lanterns illuminated Helen, naked, blood covered and bent over a table. Her arms were spread eagle, tied to the legs of the table. Her legs similarly so. She had blood dripping down her thighs. He’d raped her already.
I closed my eyes, felt a wave of dizziness, opened them again. “What have you done?”
“I told you that I’m a monster, didn’t I?” Arthur moved closer.
I raised my gun, aiming for his chest. “Stop.” My voice quivered.
“I have these urges, Jade. I can’t seem to keep them at bay.”
“You murdered those girls?” I asked it like a question but it wasn’t one in my head. I knew, in my gut, that Eddie had been right about Arthur. “You raped them all. You brutalized them.”
“I did.” His voice cracked. “I thought that I could stop. Steve offered the perfect out for me. Clean slate. Everything pinned on him and I walked free.”
“Not free though, right? You couldn’t keep yourself from doing it again.” I understood the mind of a repeat offender. I understood what those kinds of compulsions could do to a person. Arthur was right—rehabilitation didn’t work. Those urges that made people do terrible things, they were just too strong.
“Helen was with another man. Flirting at work just days after I’d ended it. Days! She’s just like every other whore. They take a man’s heart and pulverize it. Crush it, eat it, spit it out.” Arthur moved closer. “I couldn’t let her get away with it. I couldn’t be responsible for her doing that to another man.”
“You’re punishing her by raping her?” I felt sick, bile was in my throat and I wanted to puke.
“I had to take one of those pills to make me hard. I’m not a rapist. I don’t find pleasure in the act of violating her.”
“Bullshit, Arthur. You might need to take a pill to stay hard but I don’t believe you aren’t taking pleasure from this.” My words felt harsh, reality settling like a cold blanket over my shoulders.
“She needs to learn. She needs to know where the power lies. And then she’ll die like the others. Slowly, painfully but learning from her mistakes.”
“You’re not going to kill her.” I adjusted my stance, trying to get a clear shot to wound rather than kill. There was no way I could end Arthur’s life. I needed to be fast, direct shot, no hesitation. I cleared the corner of the wall.
Arthur fired. The stone at my head shattered, sending shards and pebbles into my face, into my eyes. I cried out and stumbled back, disoriented and in pain. My back hit the wall and I slid down, having sense enough to keep hold of my gun as I tried to clear my vision.
“I didn’t want to kill you too, Jade. I thought you’d be a worthy opponent. But I fear you’re too sentimental to end my urges and, frankly, now that we’re in the moment, I don’t really want to stop.”
He was standing over me. I couldn’t see anything but a blurry outline of him. My eyes burned, throbbing with the grit inside.
“I’m sorry, Jade. I truly am.” He pumped his gun. “You’re like a daughter to me so I’ll make this fast.”
I had seconds. The tension around me shifted, amplified. Fight or flight.
I raised my gun and fired.
38
Something happens to you when you kill a person. Something inside of you snaps. Breaks. Never to be the same again. Prison does that to you, too. It teaches you things. It hones skills you never knew you had.
I’m a ghost. Not really living. Not dead either. Two years incarcerated and I’ve learned a few tricks. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect as well. There was a lot of time for rage to simmer in there. A lot of time to plot.
Made quite a few connections too.
I ran my hand along my belt, a gun in my holster, knives lined on the other side. It was surprisingly easy to arm yourself when you knew who to ask.
I hadn’t killed Arthur but I might as well have. My shot would have been fatal if Bill Bean hadn’t come when he had. Without the use of my eyes, I’d managed to nail Arthur in the neck—he would have bled out in minutes. Bill had just made it happen a lot quicker.
Eddie had figured it out just after I left the hospital. Bill had told him about a book of poetry he’d riffled through on Arthur’s desk when they had been there retrieving Devin Bells’s painting. He’d read My Last Duchess. The poem about a man who poisons his wife and then shows her portrait off to all who visited. Gloating that he’d gotten away with murder every time he talked about how beautiful his beloved had been. How enticing she’d been while alive. And he’d been the one to kill her.
Bill didn’t understand. He hadn’t read the plaque marker on the portrait they had retrieved for evidence. The one Arthur had done of his dead wife. My Last Duchess.
But Eddie had seen it. Connected it. Convinced Bill to humour him and drive over to Arthur’s place, make sure I was okay. He’d found the passageway door open. Had heard the gun shot. Made it just in time.
He’d saved my life too.
I’d still gotten jail time. Self defence notwithstanding, with Arthur’s death, the truth came out. I’d helped cover up the murders of
those girls. I’d lied to the police. With my injuries and traumatic experiences, my attorney had managed to get it down to a pitiful amount of jail time. Time served during the trial added with exemplary behaviour and I was walking free.
I had to see a therapist twice a month. Irony at its finest. Rehabilitation didn’t work but I knew how to play the game. I wasn’t even on parole. I’d faded into society seamlessly and no one was bothering to watch me.
Kassey hadn’t been back. Her silence made me sad. On those lonely nights, laying on my bed in prison, I’d wished and wished that she would come to me. But my mind wouldn’t conjure her again. No voice in my head. No hallucinations. No dreams. It hurt. It hurt so bad I could understand why I’d denied it. Why I’d fantasized her into existence again.
I knew she was supposed to be the embodiment of a moral compass for me, and that her absence meant something more than just my finally accepting her death. I knew it meant I was embracing my darkness. Because without Kassey, there was no light.
I moved stealthily though the dark, knowing exactly where my target was, who he’d be with. I’d been following him for a few months. I’d learned that in prison too. Patience was key when it came to vengeance. There was always a time for revenge, sometimes you just had to wait for it.
He wasn’t clubbing that night, had opted to stay in alone. His penthouse suite surprisingly lax with the security. I’d made it to the back service hall with little trouble. Breaking into his actual condo was also a joke.
And there I stood, over his sleeping form, watching as his chest moved, his breathing calm, peaceful.
“Salvatore,” I whispered while leaning over him, my breath washing over his face as I purred. “Wake up, sweetie.”
I’d picked a night when his security was down to one thug. The other presumably off raping some innocent woman or whatever. I’d take care of those two another time. Tonight was all about Salvatore and I’d waited a very long time for it. Revenge simmering while I rotted in jail. Lots of time to fantasize about this moment.
Burning Kiss Page 27
