Awaken the Devil

by A. J. Chase

They stood, wordless, in the space that was much too small for her to feel comfortable with him there. She wanted to ask him what he was doing and what he had beckoned her for, but she felt keenly that she could not be the first to speak. The heat of their wet bodies created a strange kind of steam and the pouring rain made a curtain between their alcove and the street. She felt more alone with him than she had ever felt, even though it wasn't true.

  He touched her mouth, and his fingers were hot against her wet skin. He curved his thumb over her bottom lip and then shook his head. Her breath caught in her throat, and yet again she was left in the position of not understanding their relationship. Her eyes closed, and she scraped the pad of his thumb with her teeth. His harsh intake of breath was his only reaction for a moment. Her eyes were still closed when he pressed her mouth down with his thumb and his tongue slipped into her mouth, tracing the inside of her lips.

  She heard a strange, guttural sound and then realized it had come from her own throat. Heat pooled, she stretched on her toes and warred back, their tongues sliding against each other in an incredible erotic friction. Maybe this wasn't really happening, maybe somehow she had invented this silent manifestation in the middle of the night, and in reality it was nothing more than fantasy.

  He tasted like fantasy. He paused, letting out a big shuddering breath. "If you want to leave, you'd better go now."

  His low voice caressed her, wrapped around her spine. It was a warning, she knew, but it sounded like the hottest promise she'd ever had.

  She stretched until their bodies were flush and lifted her mouth for another breath of him, another taste. Her tacit permission was all he had apparently been waiting for and it was suddenly as though they had never left his office. She was back against the wall, this one rough brick, her skirt pushed up her thighs and his hands on every inch of her. They slid against her stomach, pushing into her sweater as he cupped both of her breasts and brushed his thumbs over her nipples.

  She knew that she was ignoring the facts, but she felt disconnected, wildly turned on and allowed, suddenly, to give in to every one of the baser urges that she'd been fighting for too long. Perhaps it was just the feeling of unreality that came with his sudden appearance, his continued silence, and the curtain of rain that blocked out the harsh realities of life outside this alcove.

  Whatever it was, she felt keenly that she could do what she wanted, and so she did. Her kisses were ruthless against his mouth, and his were just as harsh. She knew she would be bruised in the morning as no doubt would Chandler's. He drew his keys from the pocket of his coat and opened the door pulling her in behind him before shutting it.

  He didn't even bother with the lights.

  He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it aside. Between heated kisses hers went the same direction landing in the dark. She wished she could see him, but the darkness added to the feeling of unreality and allowed her to act in a way she might never have in the harsh light of day. All of her senses, besides sight, were on overload. She felt every brush of his skin against hers like an explosion in every nerve ending. Her fingers laced into his hair, and it felt like cool silk under her fingers. She even loved his hair. She was so unbelievably lost.

  Chandler's head was spinning. His sense of unreality wasn't to be trusted, but he liked what it was saying. That whatever happened here in the dark, in this place where they were totally alone, couldn't matter outside those doors. No one could possibly know. No one could guess how he burned for her. No one would be able to connect them at all.

  No one was going to kill her. Not Fielding. And that meant that she was safe to touch, to taste, and to consume with a passion that bordered on rage. He should have acted before this, before he'd reached this level of senselessness, when he could have been more reasonable, could have tried harder for seduction rather than this sensuous attack on both their parts that bordered on depravity.

  Her small hands searched, found the hem of his shirt and tore it over his head. Her nails scratched long trails in his skin in her haste. He helped her get it off, welcoming its loss. He couldn't see her, but he could feel every inch of her hot skin fused to his. The smell of her was like a drug.

  Reality tried to creep back in, to tell him that his logic was faulty. He had hidden his relationship with Elizabeth, too, and she had ended up dead. But Fielding wasn't like any of the others, and how could anyone possibly know? This was between the two of them, and he would not let harsh truths penetrate now. Not when he was so close to ending the pain.

  Their joining was hard, fast and frenzied. Neither one of them retained enough control anymore to even pretend at civility. The second it was over, and he returned to himself, reality slammed into him with brutality. He had just meant to come to the theater to tie up some loose ends. He had even unconsciously chosen the time they always met. He had never expected to find her there. Good Lord.

  What had he done?

  He knew. He had condemned her to death in just a few minutes with just that one action. She was about to lose her life because he had lost his control.

  Panic swamped him, and he pushed away from her. She buckled at first without him to support her, but she recovered quickly. She didn't even seem surprised by his hysterical behavior.

  Fielding felt her shoulders slump. She should have expected this kind of thing from him—indeed she had in a way. But she had not anticipated he'd freak out quite so much or quite so quickly. He'd still been inside her when she'd felt him regain his infamous rigidity. And his reaction seemed disproportionately severe considering it was just sex between two consenting adults and not some sleazy affair.

  "We're both adults," she whispered, pointlessly covering her breasts. Suddenly she felt again how cold it was in this building. She was going to have to turn on the light to find her panties. "This is no big deal," she lied.

  "You have no idea what you're talking about, Miss French." He was back to haughty indifference.

  She felt the urge to laugh but tamped it down. "Don't you think formality is slightly senseless considering you just had bodily parts inside me not thirty seconds ago?"

  Even though she couldn't see more than his shadow, she could feel the heat of his displeasure. "Formality may be the only thing that will save you now. I suppose you should know that every woman with whom I have ever slept has been subsequently murdered, and I have very little doubt that you will be next. I can't stop it. I don't know how. Don't you see, I killed them all, and now I've killed you, too."

  His words sent a harsh shiver through her body, but she brutally ignored it. "I'm not going to try to talk you out of your hysteria, as it's obviously going to be pointless, but I am going to say this: Yeah, okay we got a little out of control, and maybe it was stupid, but I don't believe you would kill anyone."

  "You don't know anything about me."

  Again she had the insane urge to laugh. "I think it's safe to say I know a few things."

  Casual was the only way she knew how to handle this situation without falling apart.

  When he spoke, his voice was cold. "Don't fail to take me seriously, Fielding. It will cost you your life."

  He was so flatly sober that it finally sank in he really meant his words. She couldn't kid her way around them to hold onto her pride because she had made a mistake and attacked him like that when he'd offered the slightest kiss.

  "You wouldn't hurt me," she whispered softly. She knew he wouldn't. It didn't matter that he believed he was somehow indirectly responsible. He was no killer

  "Good Lord, Fielding, I wish that were true. I truly do. But it's not. I will hurt you. I hurt them all." His hoarse voice was tinged with hysteria, crazed, and for the first time in the months she had known him, she took Josh's advice, and she feared him. She didn't believe he was a killer, but she feared his mania, his intensity.

  Chandler turned on the light, which was thankfully the one that lit up the smallest immediate area of the backstage entrance, and did not create so much light that she felt even mo
re exposed. He pulled on his jeans and looked at her. "I'm sorry Fielding, I truly am." His face was shadowed, lined with displeasure and genuine fear.

  But the light made the fear she had felt disappear as though it had never existed. Just like everything else that had happened tonight. "Don't apologize to me, Chandler." It made her feel stupid and used. "Do you want to tell me about this unreasonable guilt that you possess?"

  "It's not unreasonable. It's true. Promise me you will watch yourself. God, I wish I could take this all back. Everything I've done since I saw you in the street. I saw you and I thought…I'm not even going to bother telling you what I thought. Just remember Charlotte, and don't trust anyone, not even me. Least of all me."

  He slid on his shirt and then his jacket with the quick precision of someone who had spent years mastering the quick change. Most theater people could do it. She could too. So she did. Her outer clothes all went on easily—she was even still wearing her skirt. Her panties proved a little harder to find, and she had resolved to go home without them when she spotted them in the corner all the way across the room. Chandler had really gotten some range with that throw.

  "I'll get you a cab," he said.

  His words suddenly sunk in, and she asked, "Are you trying to tell me that you slept with Charlotte?"

  He stared at her incredulously. "Are you mad?"

  She shrugged. "You said…never mind. I was just asking." She had another alarming thought. "We didn't use anything. No protection, I mean."

  What had she been thinking? Really, she had never been so stupid.

  He looked even more annoyed, if such a thing were possible. "I don't have diseases."

  She really did laugh then, he looked so adorably affronted. Her sudden rush of affection for him made her slightly ill. There would be repercussions tomorrow and the next day, and especially when he discovered who she really was. She didn't want him to hate her. "I'm sorry but that's not what I meant. I mean, I don't take anything. I'm not in a relationship. I wasn't expecting…"

  He leaned out the door, checking that the rain had stopped. He went to the curb and hailed the nearest cab, which of course stopped for him even though there were dozens of other people looking for a ride along the street. Even taxi drivers bent to his will. She followed after him, annoyed that he was acting as though she hadn't spoken. She didn't want him to think she was like Helena, everything else she had done would be enough to turn him against her forever, but even she wouldn't stoop that low.

  He opened the back door to the cab. "I had a surgery. Years ago. After Anne. You needn't worry."

  Oh. Of course he had. He wouldn't have wanted to be caught in that trap ever again. He rapped on the driver's window and handed him a large roll of bills. "Take her home by the shortest route and watch her walk in. Do you understand me? Do not move from that curb until you see her go in the door."

  The driver flipped through the bills, which Fielding could see amounted to over two hundred dollars. He smiled. "Sure thing, Governor." He didn't seem to perceive that making fun of Chandler's accent might be rude, and Chandler didn't seem to care.

  Chandler looked at her still standing on the curb and scowled, and she felt distinctly, with a razor sharp clarity, how much she loved him. Mighty fine time for it, too. Fielding wanted to reach out to him, but how could she? She was a user and a liar herself. She was in no position to try to make up for someone else's using and lying. And even if she had been it wouldn't have mattered. He still wasn't ready to accept comfort for hurts that were decades old. And that was the saddest thing of all.

  Sunday morning dawned too early, and Fielding wondered when she had last had decent sleep. Probably about two months earlier. She wandered to her window and looked out over the misty low-lying clouds that often touched her here on the fifty-second floor. She could see the Christmas tree still lit up in the flat across the street from hers, its lights twinkling in the early morning grayness. She looked at her watch. It was December sixth. She ought to do something. Put on a Christmas disk, buy a tree, drink a cup of hot cocoa, for Heaven's sake, but she couldn't find it in her. She just wasn't in the holiday mood.

  Making love to Chandler had probably been the most thoughtless and utterly ridiculous thing she had ever done, and she felt keenly that she ought to regret it, but she couldn't bring herself to. Not really. She regretted everything else. She regretted that she had so little control over herself that she had let herself fall in love with him. It was a bad idea. A mistake that would end up breaking her heart. She regretted her lies, she regretted his feelings of guilt, but she could not feel bad about the tactile memory of his skin against hers. Never.

  What about his guilt, anyway? Their conversation had made it fairly clear that she had been right all along. He had not killed anyone. However, he felt as though he had by taking them to bed. What was that about? Why would someone follow Chandler around killing girls he had sex with? Was it possible that it was merely a coincidence? No, that was ridiculous. There was no chance of that. But there was every chance that if she didn't step up her investigation, he really would go to jail this time for a murder he didn't commit.

  She didn't have time to worry about what she would do about telling Chandler the truth—this simply wasn't the juncture for that. That would have to come after she had proved his innocence. If ever. Maybe she would just disappear out of his life forever. No doubt he would hardly notice she was gone. She shook her head. She didn't have time for depression either.

  She fired up her search engine. This time, she wanted to learn more about Chandler's musicals. She didn't know what it meant but, with the exception of Helena, all the women had died during the course of a show. She began printing off pages, one for each musical, advertising its auditions, then its opening date and closing date. Some of them, like the ones he had merely been in or, later, the ones he had choreographed were harder to find. When she pinned them to her living room wall there were gaps of lost time where she had no idea what he'd been doing, but she had a slightly clearer picture of where he had been over the years.

  She marked each of the musicals where a murder had occurred with a red marker across the top of the pages, even the disappearances that she knew in her heart were murders. Her giant time line took up one whole wall and there were still several spans of unaccounted time that she had to fill. All at once, she realized she was hearing really bad singing in the hall, and she paused. She knew that terrible voice.

  She flung open the door and confronted Josh, hands firmly clasped onto the handles of Mac's wheelchair, standing in her hallway singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" at the top of his lungs. Besides Mac, looking frail but alert, Josh had a teenaged boy with him dragging a pine tree leaving a trail of needles in his wake.

  "You guys, look at you," she said, hearing the wonder in her own voice that they were really there. "Moreover listen to you. What are you doing here?"

  "Spreading Christmas cheer," Josh answered easily. He pulled out two bills and paid the boy. "Just call me Santa."

  She simply shook her head, unable to add anything to his words. Wasn't she overemotional the last day or so? She felt a thickness in her throat as she looked over her beloved uncle's wizened, pale visage and Josh's cheeks, red from the cold, combined with the boyish sparkle in his eyes.

  How could she turn her back on these men? They had been there for her for so long and, whether she loved him or not, she could never depend on Chandler for even so much as forgiving her, let alone to make this kind of familial commitment.

  "You didn't have to do this. I would have gotten to it eventually."

  "Well, now you don't have to." Josh grinned cheekily and propped the tree in the corner. He was in such a good mood he seemed almost demented. "I saw the other day this place was distinctly lacking in festivities so here we are." He crossed over to the CD player and popped in a disk from his pocket, carelessly tossing the plastic holder onto the top of her television. When he pressed play, June Christy blasted out "The M
erriest." "Let's get some cocoa-and-brandy action going on in here."

  She dropped to her knees and hugged Mac while Josh unpacked the ornaments. The next hour was spent in playful decking of the halls while Mac sat pretty much unresponsive in his chair. When the tree was up and everything else was in place, they settled at the table for a drink. "Where did you go last night?" she demanded.

  "I was going to ask you the same thing. I went back stage for a minute with this absolutely adorable little pixie-haired girl from the band to…uh, look at her guitar. Really carefully. And when I got back you were gone."

  "I took Leslie home. Well, not all the way, but most of it. She was completely plastered. I thought she was going to throw up."

  He nodded. "I noticed she didn't look too good. Why didn't you come back?"

  She opened her mouth to try to think of anything she could say that would not infuriate him, but she couldn't think of anything. She was saved from having to lie by Mac suddenly speaking.

  "I had a guitar once."

  She knelt beside his wheelchair again. "What kind of guitar, Uncle Mac?"

  He didn't respond, just stared at an invisible spot in the distance. She tried a time or two more to engage him, but it never worked. She and Josh frowned at each other. Wanting desperately to bring normalcy back to the conversation, she asked, "So how was the Pixie's…guitar, by the way."

  "Amazing. I mean really. She didn't actually let me play it, you know what I mean. But she let me touch it a little. You gotta meet her, Fielding. She's so amazing."

  "Who? The Pixie?" She couldn't believe these words were coming out of his mouth. Was he feverish?

  "Janine. That's her name. You wouldn't believe how hot she is. I mean, like, the complete picture. She plays in this band Verboten on the weekends to get through her masters in comparative literature at NYU. She's smart, and she's funny, and when I tried to put my hands down her pants, she slapped me." He grinned like an idiot.

  Fielding and Mac both stared at him. Mac was suddenly more alert than he had been all afternoon.