Vigil

by V. J. Chambers

  Still. I didn’t like talking about my dead grandparents. It hurt too much.

  Airenne wandered into the bathroom and began rummaging through my makeup bag. “I didn’t even know you owned this much makeup.”

  “I used to have to wear it for work,” I said.

  “Where did you work?”

  I shrugged again. “Nowhere special.”

  “I’ve never heard of a job requiring makeup.”

  “They didn’t require it exactly. It was definitely expected, though.” I snatched the bag back. “I gotta get going.” Why had I brought that up? I didn’t want to talk about my past. Especially not with Airenne. She’d never understand.

  * * *

  I stuck to the back of the smoky room, hugging the corners. Technically, no one was supposed to smoke cigarettes inside any bar or restaurant anymore, but some of the dives out by the docks didn’t pay much attention to any of the laws. It burned my eyes and invaded my lungs, and I knew the smell would cling to me until I took a shower and washed it out.

  In front of me, there were two pool tables and a smattering of small tables. The lights were suspended from the ceiling, low and yellow.

  I knew that I was supposed to be standing outside on a corner, bait for Vigil. But I’d seen Hayden Barclay come into this bar, and I hadn’t been able to stop myself from following him.

  After all, Barclay was the real story. Vigil was something that had happened to me by chance. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Confused, I guess. I didn’t know how to write a story about a man that I found so attractive.

  Okay, attractive wasn’t exactly the right word.

  I thought Vigil was liquid sex.

  But he was crazy. He was obviously mentally disturbed, running around in that costume, saving girls. He wasn’t the kind of man I should get involved with.

  And it would be easier not to be involved with him if I wasn’t writing stories about him all the time.

  If I could bust Barclay as the killer who was dismembering women, it would overshadow the story of Vigil. No one would care about that. They’d care about the fact I’d brought a killer to justice.

  Barclay was more important to me than Vigil. That was that.

  But I was staying back, out of sight, because I didn’t want him to see me. He probably wouldn’t recognize me. It had been a long time since I’d seen him, and he’d never paid a particular amount of attention to me. Still, I didn’t want to risk the idea that he might remember who I was. Even worse, he might connect me to Darlene.

  And since he’d killed Darlene…

  Well, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be a great idea.

  Barclay was sitting at a table with several other men. They all wore dark suits. They sipped whiskey and smoke cigars. Every once and a while, there was a burst of laughter from the table, but I wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying.

  Barclay was the heir apparent to the Barclay crime family. They’d been working the streets of Aurora since the 1920s, when they used to run their own homemade moonshine. Now days, they’d upgraded to more sinister products. The Barclay family supplied half the eastern seaboard with cocaine and heroin. The face they presented to the world was that they owned a chain of pizza joints, but it was a front, and everyone knew it.

  I watched Barclay. When I’d met him, three years ago, his father had still been alive, and he’d only been a rich and young. He hadn’t had any responsibilities to the family yet.

  Even now, he was attractive. He had fine features—delicate, elfin. And he had bright blue eyes that stood out in sharp contrast to his dark coloring.

  There was an air about him. He was cocksure. Arrogant. He had one of those self-satisfied smiles.

  He was wearing it right now, leaning back in his chair, sipping at his whiskey.

  But I knew he was guilty. I knew because of the things that Darlene had told me.

  She’d come to me to hide from him.

  I’d let her go. She’d come to me for help, and when she hadn’t lived up to my expectations, I’d kicked her to the curb.

  I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have been so afraid that Darlene would drag my old life into my new one. I shouldn’t have been afraid that all my new friends would find out about her—my old friend.

  If I’d had any idea that she would be dead within two weeks of leaving me, I never would have made her go.

  I swear I wouldn’t.

  Barclay got up from the table. His gaze swept the room, moving right over me.

  My heart leapt into my throat. Had he seen me? Had he recognized me?

  But he just smoothed his suit and made his way to the back.

  I waited for a moment.

  Then I followed him.

  Barclay had gone down a hallway underneath a sign that said, “Restrooms.” He was probably using the bathroom, either for normal reasons or to snort drugs or something. I was probably wasting my time.

  I ducked into the hallway anyhow.

  There was a door at the end. It was closing. I felt a hint of the night breeze fluttering back to me through the door. That door led outside.

  I hurried down the hallway, past the bathrooms.

  Carefully, slowly, I eased open the back door.

  There was no one outside the building.

  Had I missed Barclay?

  Or hadn’t he gone out this door? Maybe he was in the restroom, and someone else had gone through this door.

  I looked back over my shoulder at the hallway. The door to the women’s restroom opened, and a woman with a big, gold purse came out. She looked me up and down.

  I pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped outside.

  I was in an alley. A dumpster stood next to me, and I could smell the co-mingling of putrid scents on the breeze. There was nothing much else there. The steps to a fire escape to my left.

  I looked up at them, noting that they didn’t extend up the entire side of the building.

  And someone grabbed me.

  A hand went over my mouth.

  An arm wrapped around my torso, pulling me tight against a bony body. I could smell whiskey and cigar smoke.

  A voice rasped in my ear. “Aren’t you a pretty thing?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Oh god, oh god. Someone had grabbed me in an alley. I struggled. I drove my elbow back into the rib cage of my captor.

  He grunted, and his grip on me loosened.

  My heart thudded in my chest. I pried his hand off of my midsection.

  He scrabbled to get hold of me again.

  I bit down on the hand that covered my mouth.

  “Bitch,” he cried.

  And I was free. My breath came in shallow gasps. I screamed, taking off down the alley.

  I tripped.

  I don’t know what snagged my foot, but one second I was sprinting, and the next I was on the pavement.

  I pushed myself to my feet, still breathing like a locomotive.

  He was there.

  He grasped me by the wrist, turning me so that I faced him. He wore a black silk suit, complete with a long, flowing cape. On his face, he wore a white theater mask.

  The Phantom. He was real. He wasn’t the figment of some woman’s imagination.

  He brandished a small knife. The blade winked cruelly. “Don’t run, pretty thing. Don’t scream. Or I’ll cut you.”

  I looked from the knife to me, gauging the distance between us. I could feel my pulse pounding against my temple. He could do it. If I tried to run, he could dart forward and stab me. Depending on how well he managed it, he could hurt me pretty badly, even kill me.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “You to cooperate,” he said.

  I raised my hands, palms up. “I’m cooperating. How about you put that knife down?”

  He shook his head. “You don’t tell me what to do.”

  I realized that I was shaking from fear. He was really getting to me.

  “On the ground.” He g
estured with the knife. “Face down.”

  I debated. If I didn’t do what he asked, he might stab me. On the other hand, once I was on the ground, he’d be able to tie me up or hit me over the head or otherwise subdue me. I’d be playing into his hands. And I didn’t know what this guy wanted to do with me, but I had a feeling it wasn’t good. Maybe he was the killer. Maybe Hayden Barclay was innocent somehow, or…

  I cocked my head to one side. “It’s you. You’re Barclay.”

  The Phantom let out a low growl and lunged for me, slashing with his knife.

  I jumped backwards, but not fast enough.

  The knife bit into my bare midriff. The pain shocked me. I screamed.

  “Don’t scream,” said the Phantom, slashing with the knife again.

  Now that I’d seen it, it was obvious. Of course he was Barclay. I recognized his chilly blue eyes, his finely detailed lips and chin.

  I tried to evade the knife, but it cut me again.

  I clutched my bleeding belly, stepping backwards.

  He came after me, raising the knife. It glinted in the streetlights.

  I screamed again.

  And a black blur swung down from one of the buildings, colliding with The Phantom.

  Vigil.

  He’d shown up to save me after all.

  The two masked men tumbled together in a heap.

  Vigil snatched the knife from The Phantom and threw it. It clattered against the sidewalk.

  “You again!” said The Phantom. He scrambled to his feet, curling his lip.

  Vigil got up as well. “I told you to leave the girls alone, didn’t I?”

  “You can’t stop me,” said The Phantom. “No one can stop me.”

  “I am stopping you,” said Vigil, folding his arms over his chest.

  The Phantom giggled—a high-pitched, insane sound. “No one can stop me.” He scrambled down the alley, his cape furling out behind him.

  I expected Vigil to pursue him, but he turned to me instead.

  “Cecily,” he said. “I thought I told you to stay out of this neighborhood.”

  I shrugged. “Well, my editor wanted another story about you, and I don’t have your phone number.”

  He set his jaw. “You shouldn’t put yourself in danger for something like that.”

  I squared my shoulders. “It takes a real reporter to stay on the front page, week after week, or so I hear.”

  “You’re bleeding,” he said.

  I looked down at my stomach. “Well, yeah. Maybe a little bit.” My legs felt shaky. I wasn’t sure if they were going to hold me up.

  He crossed to me.

  And I collapsed into his arms.

  * * *

  I was sitting on a padded black bench, and Vigil was applying antibiotic ointment to my wounds.

  “I was worried you were going to take me to your secret lair,” I said, looking around.

  “It’s not a lair,” he said.

  We were underground somewhere. We’d come in off an abandoned subway tunnel. We were in a vast room that was full of state-of-the-art gadgets. Screens lined the walls. Row of weapons—knives, clubs, and ropes. There were several different vehicles parked in here. Two motorcycles. One car. Something else that might have been a glider.

  “You don’t have a collection of women’s legs, do you?” I said.

  He set down the ointment. “You don’t really still think I’m the killer.”

  “Well, it would be a clever ruse,” I said, “pretending to save people from yourself. It would be quite a plot twist if it turned out you’d been the bad guy all along.”

  He unrolled some gauze and cut it with a tiny pair of scissors. “Who says I’m a good guy?”

  I gulped. “You’re not?”

  He pressed the gauze against one of my wounds. “I seem like a good guy to you? Running around at night wearing this?”

  “Well, you’re trying to save people. You said you wanted to clean up the police department.”

  “You took that out of context.” He began taping the gauze down. “I said that the police department was too corrupt to do anything about Barclay.”

  I didn’t understand. “You implied that you were going to do what the police couldn’t.”

  “Well…” He spread his fingers gently over the tape on my stomach. His fingers grazed my bare skin. “I don’t want Barclay to kill anyone else.” He looked up at me. “I wondered why you left him out of the article you wrote. We discussed him, but you didn’t put that in print.”

  I noticed that he hadn’t moved his fingers away from my skin. “It was only a theory. I didn’t want my theory going out until I had proof.” And I might have that now. I’d seen Barclay running around in The Phantom costume. He’d stabbed me. I could write the article I’d been planning on writing.

  He traced a finger over the curve of my waist.

  Goosebumps jumped up on my skin. “What are you doing?” I breathed.

  He shook his head. “You make it hard to think.”

  I agreed. He made it hard for me to think. There was something about his presence. He loomed, larger than life. His virility overwhelmed me. I touched his chin, turning his face up to mine.

  His blue eyes sliced into me. “I don’t want you to go public with Barclay.”

  I ran my fingers over his jaw. I could feel the faint prickle of stubble beneath his skin. “Why not? He’s obviously the killer. He needs to go to jail.”

  He caught my hand, held it there. “That’s the thing, he won’t go to jail. At worst, they’ll lock him up in Chilton.” Chilton Center was a treatment facility for people with mental illness. “But he’s been in and out of there more than once. It will only be a short stay in the facility, trust me.”

  “He’s dangerous. Something has to be done.”

  He moved closer, his lips inches from mine. “I’m doing something.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I watch him. I keep girls away from him. They haven’t found any more bodies in weeks have they?” And then he was kissing me. His tongue darted into my mouth.

  His lips were warm. I felt like I was sinking into him. And he was delicious.

  His mouth moved away from my lips. He kissed my chin. My neck.

  I gasped. “It’s not enough. You can’t watch him all the time. He has to be off the streets.”

  “There’s no way to do that,” said Vigil in between kisses. His mouth found my earlobe.

  Shudders went through me. “There has to be.”

  “No.” His tongue ran around the rim of my ear. His voice was husky and soft. “Not unless I kill him.”

  The words hung heavily between us.

  I closed my eyes.

  “And I won’t do that,” he said.

  I turned my face to his. I captured his lips again. “Because you’re too noble to kill?” I murmured.

  His mouth claimed mine. For several seconds, there was nothing in the world but the sweet darkness of his kiss. Then, he pulled away. “Because… he and I are connected.”

  He sat down next to me.

  We weren’t touching anymore.

  I was tingling all over, still worked up from his kisses. I took an unsteady breath. “Connected?”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “You can’t see it?”

  “What, just because you’re both wearing masks and running around in the city at night?” Okay, so maybe they were connected. Maybe they had a lot in common.

  “Not just because of that.” He sighed. “I guess that’s a symptom, not the cause.”

  I struggled to collect my thoughts. “So, you want me to sit on the biggest story of my career because you have a… a connection with a serial killer?” That was a ludicrous idea. What was even more ludicrous was that I was actually considering it. If he started kissing me again, I’d probably agree to everything he said.

  He turned to me. “I know that breaking the story about Barclay would be big for you.”

  “It’s a career-making sto
ry.”

  “What about me?” He folded his arms over his chest. “I got you on the front page, didn’t I? Am I a career-making story?”

  Henry seemed to think he was pretty damned important. “I…” My gaze ran over him. Damn it, why did he have to be so distractingly gorgeous?

  “I’ll cooperate with you however you want. I’ll give you as many interviews as you want. I’ll even give you a phone number where you can reach me. I’ll be at your beck and call.”

  My breath caught in my throat. Did he mean that to sound as sexy as it did? And would there be more kissing if I agreed to interview him?

  “But you keep Barclay out of it, and you let me handle it the way I’ve been doing it.”

  I tore my gaze away from him. “I can’t.”

  He sighed. “Because it’s personal.” I heard him get up. When he spoke again, his voice was further away. Across the room. “You want him dead, don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer. Maybe I did want Barclay dead. But I mostly wanted him locked up.

  I looked up at Vigil, who was standing with his back to me. He was just as exquisite from behind. I had the sudden urge to go across the room to him and press myself into him, flattening my breasts against the hard muscles of his back.

  But I didn’t move.

  “I can’t let you write about him.” He turned to look at me. “I promise he’ll never kill another girl again. Can’t that be enough?”

  I didn’t know. I tangled my hands in my lap. “Things are more complicated than that, though, aren’t they? What about…? You and me, we keep… doing things.”

  He glanced at the floor, looking almost abashed.

  “Not that… I mean you’re a very good kisser.”

  He chuckled. “Do you want to write about that too?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “It’s only that it… introduces bias, and good reporter should never allow her personal feelings to—”

  “You have personal feelings about me?”

  “Well, not like that,” I said. “I barely know you. And you obviously have… issues.”

  He chuckled again. “Issues?”

  “You know, because of the mask and the costume and the connection with…” I sighed.

  “I frighten you.”