The Reckoning

by Alma Katsu

  “What about Jonathan?” Jude asked. “We can’t take him with us.”

  “I’ll stay in the car with him,” Pendleton spoke, surprising everyone. He turned to Jonathan. “I’d like to ask him about his experiences. In the next world.”

  “All right, we’ll bring him with us, but cover him up as much as possible. And have him keep his sunglasses on. I don’t want him frightening my driver,” Tilde instructed.

  “Good,” Adair said. “Maybe he’ll be more forthcoming with you. And, Pendleton, if he does tell you anything, I want you to make a full report to me.”

  Tilde squeezed Adair’s forearm. “The house is yours. Take all the time you want.” Her eyes shone at the prospect of what was about to happen, as excited as a foxhound anticipating the kill. It was a good thing she couldn’t see into his heart the way he could see into hers, Adair realized, for she’d be disappointed by what she’d find. But he said nothing, watching her usher the others up the stairs to dress or retrieve coats, the sooner to get them out of the house and leave him to his prize.

  “Don’t forget your promise,” Jonathan said in a low voice as he was led away. “You swore under heaven. Heaven will be watching.”

  “I remember,” Adair replied, wondering if he’d be able to keep it, now that he was about to come face-to-face with Lanore.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I jolted awake. The keening in my head was now at a terrible pitch, and I knew at once that Adair had arrived. I looked down at my hands to see that Tilde had come in as I had lain unconscious and tied them together in front of me but had left my legs unbound; I shuddered at the realization that she’d no doubt left my legs unfettered for Adair’s convenience. She was one of those women who had only contempt for their own gender, and took a perverse pleasure in a man’s abuse of another woman.

  His presence was strong enough to make it nearly impossible to think or listen. Even in the darkness of the tiny room, my vision went white from panic. I could make out other signs of his arrival: the slamming of the front door, followed by the murmur of several voices and then his voice, a distinct rumble to which my ear was still tuned. The thunder of his pitch reverberated down the hall and up the walls; it traveled through the pipes of the bed’s metal frame. His voice passed through me in low waves, like sonar, each wave heralding his arrival. Each wave announcing he was coming for me.

  The other voices fell away, or my frightened mind couldn’t process them. His footsteps grew closer and louder, the sound carrying through the floorboards, my heart beating twice as fast as the footfalls. I looked about desperately for a way out, but there was only a narrow casement window placed high in the wall, and I knew I’d never be able to free myself and get to the window in time. A far door opened onto a bathroom but it was small and plain as a shoe box, and offered nowhere to hide.

  I had risen from the mattress on one elbow to scan for hiding places, when the door flew open. Adair filled the doorframe, so much bigger than I remembered, or perhaps fear made him seem larger than he really was. The other sounds of the house had dissolved, and all I could hear was blood sluicing in my ears and the beating of my heart, rapid as that of a hare that had been running for its life. My throat was dry as a long-rusted pipe, and I felt as though I was going to be sick.

  He stepped into the room and closed the door. I could see his face better now, and it was both frightening and hard to read. He did not look at all as I had imagined he would when we came face-to-face again. He wasn’t red with rage. He wasn’t shouting or threatening me. He stood motionless in the doorway, seemingly unable to take his eyes off me, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I held the thinnest sliver of hope that he might let me beg for leniency or that I might find a way to deflect or lessen his anger the tiniest bit.

  “Adair,” I said once I’d found my voice. “Let me explain—”

  In two quick strides he was across the room, his hand lifted and poised to strike me across the mouth—but he froze in place. I cringed, closing my eyes, but there was no strike. I opened my eyes to find he was staring at me. A sad, strangled gurgle sounded in the back of his throat.

  “Please, Adair—”

  “Don’t. You are not to talk to me. Not yet,” he said, choked with emotion. He reached for my face and I drew away reflexively, falling backward onto the bed. My pulling away angered him, and his expression changed swiftly and completely, like the striking of a match.

  I tried to get up and he pushed me down, climbing on top of me with grim determination. He brushed his face up my neck and across both cheeks, drawing in my scent before taking my mouth with his. He wasn’t kissing me so much as devouring me, and I could do nothing to escape him. His body over me, the smell of his skin and his hair, the taste of his breath—it was all so familiar, and so frightening. He leaned against me and held me in place like an animal as his hands searched lower, and then I felt my skirt being hiked over my hips, the blush of cold air on exposed skin, my panties being jerked down.

  “Please don’t do this,” I started to say, but he was like a deadweight on top of me, and I could see that I wouldn’t be able to dissuade him by begging for mercy. I was only to experience what was coming next. His hands steadied my hips and then he was in me, dry pain tearing as he pressed into me hard, over and over and over. He said nothing, didn’t insult me, didn’t curse, didn’t even sigh, just ground his teeth with each thrust. I clenched my eyes shut and tried not to scream, and suppressed the urge to struggle, for struggling would only make it worse.

  And then I heard the sound in the back of his throat. Not the grunt and groan of pleasure that I was used to hearing when we coupled. It sounded as though he might be smothering some kind of pain. He came quickly, slamming into me at the same time a strange cry escaped from his throat. It was a sound I’d never heard him make before, and it was unmistakably sad. I lay underneath him while he stroked my face and my hair, his breathing hot and tense in my ear.

  At great length he climbed off me. I was wet with his ejaculate, my head pounding as though it might explode. With my eyes still closed, I listened to the metallic rasp of a zipper being worked. He didn’t say one word to me, and I remained conscious long enough only to hear the door open and close behind me before falling into a dark, agonizing oblivion.

  THIRTY

  Adair stood in the hall just outside the room where Lanore lay aching in a tumble of damp sheets. He held a hand over his eyes, his fingers trembling. He was spent, his every muscle twitched. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the room; all he remembered was the moment he spilled into her.

  He hadn’t wanted this, not for their reunion. He’d had every intention of talking to her, telling her of the change that had come over him since he’d been freed. He longed to tell her that he’d forgiven her and ask her to give him a chance . . . but when the moment finally came, he found it impossible to speak in her presence. He became tongue-tied as soon as he saw her, thick-tongued with lust. More than lust, he craved the closeness that came with being inside her. He wanted to melt into her, and wanted her to melt into him. But she hadn’t shown the slightest sign that she would have him, and so he took her forcefully, unable to stop himself.

  He’d taken her despite what he knew, for her life had rushed at him the moment he touched her, the same as Tilde’s had come to him. He knew instantly of her years of loneliness waiting for Jonathan—and felt a pang of envy that she hadn’t longed for him in that same way. Her feelings for him were a tangle of fear and revulsion for the things he had done to her and the others. He thought he felt a tiny glimmer of something like attraction, but it was small and weak, and he guessed it was nothing but a residual speck of the love she had felt for him in Boston, like visible light from a distant star that was already long dead.

  Standing on the other side of the door, he wanted to beat his head against the wall with regret. For centuries he had thought about the moment when he would see Lanore again, at first choreographing elaborate scenes of revenge and,
after his epiphany, wondering how he would make her understand that he had changed. Now the moment had come and gone, and it had been unlike any of the scenes he’d played over and over in his mind. It was too late, over before he realized what he’d done. He felt a jumble of contradictory emotions: nausea, triumph, remorse. He wanted to rush back into her room and apologize, and at the same time was disgusted that Lanore had reduced him to his present state of weakness.

  All that should matter was that she was his again; it shouldn’t matter how she felt about it. He was the one who’d been wronged, after all. There was no reason for him to feel as wretched as he did.

  But he couldn’t deny that it did matter to him. As soon as he laid eyes on her—at the exact same time revenge sang in his ears—he also wanted to hold her tight as his heart exploded with joy. This simpering, lovesick part of him wanted only to feast on the sight of her, to revel like a schoolboy in all the things he loved about her and had missed. He was delighted to find that the mere sight of her still moved him; her beautiful face still could make him weep. He put his hand to the door, hoping for a wild moment that it was not too late; he would tell her not to be afraid of him, he would beg her to give him another chance. She once felt something like love for him—he knew this was true, she couldn’t deny it—and all he wanted was to make her love him again.

  But his pride stopped him, and he took his hand from the door.

  Adair went to the bathroom to wash his face. The water helped to calm him, and he stared into the mirror, remembering how she’d turned her face away from him and tried to resist his kisses. How she’d tensed against him and flinched when he withdrew his spent member from her. Jonathan had been right to doubt him: he couldn’t make Lanore love him. He couldn’t even stop himself from raping her, couldn’t stop from being swamped by the swirl of his conflicting emotions. How would he ever be worthy of her love if those dark urges still lived inside of him? He had to fight to keep from smashing the mirror over and over until it was nothing but needles of glass.

  He’d tried to get his emotions under control on the trip to Aspen from Boston. He’d hoped that, when he saw Lanore again, he’d find that his feelings had changed, that he wouldn’t feel this giddiness and optimism or the desire to see his love reciprocated in her eyes. Things would be easier for him then: if it was not love, he could punish her to his satisfaction and then dispose of her.

  But, maddeningly, the signs were that he still loved her. He wished there was some way to extract this love from wherever it resided inside him like a creeping vine, curled and wrapped around his organs and his bones, squeezing his heart and cutting off oxygen to his brain, insinuating itself into his very marrow. He’d rip out the strangling, cancerous growth if only he knew how. It was killing his vitality; the unstoppable force of his being was grinding against the immovable object of love, and he knew from costly experience that he would not win such a battle. He could not force someone to love him.

  Adair showered to wash away all reminders of what he’d done to Lanore; he washed her juices off his groin and the smell of her fear from his memory as he drank a bottle of something strong. Still, nothing would alleviate the regret he felt for giving in to this flash of vengefulness and lust. Now, whiplashed by emotion, Adair wanted to inflict pain upon himself like a penitent. He thought about slitting his wrists to see if it would bring any relief, if bleeding off his self-hatred would harden him to her. He remembered how Dona used to cut his arms when he was drunk, thinking it ridiculous, a futile act. Now Adair understood why he did it, saw the allure of the act and the poignancy of its utter uselessness.

  What a punishment God had sent to him. God—he hadn’t thought of God in a long time, except in a disparaging way, and yet, as if he were a superstitious old woman on her deathbed, the name of God flew to his lips! The invocation of God at this bitterest, darkest time shocked him. It was maddening; what was this woman doing to him? She had turned him inside out, made him into something he was not, or was turning him back to something he had once been and tried to deny. He had been a young man when he decided to forsake love for science. Stupidly, he’d believed one had a choice in these matters. As it turned out, he was only human after all.

  He wandered to the kitchen for something else to drink, opening cabinets until he found a bottle of wine, and stood in the middle of the room, uncertain what to do next. No matter where he was or what he did, Lanore’s presence pulled him like a magnet; he was unable to be happy anywhere but at her side. With a groan, Adair resisted the urge to take two glasses up to her room, and instead drew out a chair and poured a solitary glass.

  The others’ return saved Adair from standing watch in the kitchen all night long. Tilde’s stepsons and their friends were still skiing, but the others came back in high spirits, their voices echoing through the cavernous rooms. Adair figured they had fled, these otherwise bloodthirsty and heartless fiends, because they could easily see themselves in Lanny’s position, suffering whatever horrors he was inflicting on her. But this, Adair knew, wasn’t true: not one of them could invoke the emotions that she drew out of him. He’d never loved anyone the way he loved her.

  Adair, sober despite having downed a second bottle of wine, joined his attendants. “I had been frantic,” Alejandro was saying when Adair slipped into the room. “I had started feeling the presence again in my head, just like you, yes?” he asked as he looked expectantly from face to face. “I was wondering what it meant . . . when Lanore shows up at my studio. So I think to myself, Could this be just a strange coincidence? But no, I know it cannot be a coincidence at all. When she admitted that she was responsible for Adair’s disappearance, I almost lost my composure right then and there—”

  “I’d always suspected she had something to do with it,” Tilde interrupted, nodding at the others. “Right from the start, there was something about her I didn’t trust.”

  “—so I know I must do something,” Alejandro continued, raising his voice to be heard over the others. “She cannot be allowed to get away with what she has done to Adair, but what am I to do?”

  “Why didn’t you just hold on to her yourself? Keep her until you found Adair,” Pendleton asked to the Spaniard’s surprise. He wasn’t fooled by Alejandro’s feyness, his pretense of delicacy; Adair appreciated that.

  Alejandro feigned shock. “I couldn’t think straight, for one thing, being taken unawares like that. But, my dear, me? Lay hands on someone? No, but I tell you what came to me: call Tilde. I was sure she would know what to do.

  “So I fabricated a story to send Miss Lanore on her way, and then I called Tilde, and she told me to send a message to every one of the others we knew, to see if anyone had been contacted by Adair.” He smiled, satisfied with himself. “And then I heard from Jude, and a day later I was in Boston, reunited with Adair, as though my desire to see him had made him materialize, like a dream. I was speechless with joy.” He turned then and caught sight of Adair and his face lit up in rapture. “And I am still amazed to see him again with us like this. As though all this time was nothing but a nightmare, but it is over now. It is a miracle.”

  Adair grunted noncommittally, lacking the desire to engage with Alejandro’s sycophancy. The truth was Adair had been as shocked to see Alejandro without having beckoned him. The Spaniard turned up on Jude’s doorstep, assuming he’d resume his place in Adair’s entourage. He brought a box of photographs with him and insisted on showing Adair picture after picture from his life: people he had known, places he had lived. The most embarrassing were of the house where he currently lived, which Alejandro had practically made into a shrine to his former master. He’d re-created Adair’s bedroom down to its hookahs and bower of cushions. One of Adair’s very own silk banyans hung by the bed forlornly. Worse yet, the Spaniard had brought with him the torture device, the web of restraints, and handed it over to Adair reverently, as though Adair could bear to use it now.

  As the others gossiped and carried on around him, Adair regarded them cr
itically. Had they always been so disagreeable and he’d not noticed before? Was Jude always so greedy, Alejandro so obsequious? Or, without a strong hand to guide them, had they let their worst attributes grow out of control? Adair hated self-indulgence, thinking it a curse of the lazy. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to take up with any of them a second time; it would take too much work to reform them. Pendleton seemed the only one with promise, Adair thought; he might banish the rest of them, give his household a good purging, but spare Pendleton. A man needed at least one reliable servant.

  And then there was Jonathan, sitting by himself, listening to the cackling magpies but making no comment. Adair thought Jonathan seemed subdued. Perhaps he was wondering what had transpired with Lanore, whether Adair had kept his promise. Or perhaps he could see that Adair had struggled with his emotions and lost.

  At the mention of Lanore’s name in the conversation around him, Adair felt a twinge near his heart as he recalled again what he’d done in the room down the hall. He’d had the chance to show her mercy and squandered it; she’d never trust him now. His former entourage chattered on around him, not suspecting that he was racked with shame, that he wanted to douse himself with gasoline and light a match, or hack himself into a thousand pieces. He would do anything to be free of his own miserable self, but there was no escaping his nature . . . or regret, either, as he knew too well.

  The door opened and the skiers returned on a cloud of aimless talk and sarcastic laughter, their young faces red from exertion. Upon seeing the adults gathered around the fireplace, they quickly smothered all cheer and became sullen-faced teenagers again.

  “Mika,” Adair called over his shoulder to the youngest, his words slurred as his tongue thickened from the wine. “Come here, boy. I have an errand for you.”

  A dead silence fell over the room except for a sharp intake of breath from Tilde. The younger boy stepped forward reluctantly.