by Heidi Brod
“Me too.”
“I should have believed you, but you’ve been acting so crazy.”
“Carter said you were at the bar that night in Boston. It’s all over the Internet. He made it seem like you were the one that attacked me,” I say.
“I wasn’t anywhere near the bar that night. Carter is a liar. You can’t believe a word he says. I wish I had been there so that I could have saved you from all of that pain,” he says. “I would have killed him, ripped him to pieces, and I would have enjoyed it. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
“I still love you, Harper. Nothing will ever change that. I don’t know who to trust anymore,” I say.
I can see now that I have been too stubborn, my words senseless, full of anger and hate. If I had not pushed my husband away, Jessa would not have squeezed into that small place inside his heart, a place meant only for me. This new threat to Harper’s life scares me. I’m faced with losing him, and all of the pettiness, the failed expectations, the lies, his infidelity, all of the ills that can plague a marriage, have vanished. I still love him.
For Harper and me, our love is madness. His magic casts a spell, and nothing else seems to matter as long as we’re together.
“I can’t go home yet. I have to find out who is behind all of this. Go back to the house. Stay with Sky. You’ll be safe there, and I don’t want to have to worry about you,” he says.
His hand lightly caresses the side of my cheek. I try to turn away. I run my hands through his hair. Harper looks at me, letting his desire take control of me. In my eyes, he can see that hunger, the passion and the desire, the divine inspiration that comes from being an artist.
“I need you,” I say. “Come to bed.”
He kisses me. His lips are soft and warm. His hands, unrestrained by fear, dominate me. I submit to the pleasure, and he worships me, as if I’m a goddess.
“My Maja,” he whispers playfully in my ear, referring to his favorite painting from our trip to Madrid, The Naked Maja by Francisco Goya.
The model, naked and vulnerable, exposes herself without modesty or shame. Her arms placed behind her head in submission, her sex the center of the picture, on display. Her female gaze is fixed and fully aware of her erotic feminine power and the splendid enigma of it.
My body responds as he eases onto me and grabs my hips. I feel a quiver run through my body. The space between us is swallowed up in the sweetness of our release.
My heart is pounding, and the warmth surrounds us, affecting me like a potent drug.
“Sleep now,” he says, kissing me, silencing my objections, until I drift away.
The sky has darkened, and the wind has picked up over the Hudson. The branches bend and sway, lashing out at each other.
Black clouds fill up the sky, an ominous warning, nothing like the rage of a powerful storm to come.
“A pack of Lucky Strikes,” Harper says to the man behind the counter at the Rainbow Deli, as he fishes around in his gym bag for his wallet. He has been carrying around his laptop and everything else stuffed in there like a mobile office.
A bolt of lightning splits the sky, crackling and electric. As he walks, the streets are quiet, too quiet.
He lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag, and watches the tip flare up and the smoke swirl into the air.
Harper can feel someone behind him, as close as a shadow, and he reaches for his gun—which has been returned to him, along with his ID. As he crosses over the ramp of the parking garage, a car guns the accelerator.
A black van drives up on the sidewalk, side door wide open. Three bodies pile out, all wearing black military skull masks, glistening and metallic.
His mind is struggling to make sense of things, and all he can think is Seraphina.
In that moment, the adrenaline rips through his body, laced with regret and the knowledge that tonight is the night he is going to die.
Before Harper has the time to react, he feels the crack of metal against his skull, and the bitter taste of blood fills his mouth.
The color starts to fade from the world around him as he passes out.
Twenty Three
SERAPHINA AND CARTER
I don’t know how much time has passed when the buzz from my cell phone jolts me out of a deep sleep. I open my eyes to find Harper gone. He didn’t leave a note. He just vanished, as if the whole thing was just a dream. Heavy gray clouds crowd the light from the setting sun, and the sky is a deep, fiery red.
The text is from Carter:
* I need to see you. *
And then just two words:
* I remember.*
My stomach churns, my mind flashes, grasping at the bits and pieces from that night in Boston. It feels like Harper’s time is running out, as if he is now being hunted, and the forces of evil are closing in around us. I dress quickly. I need to leave before Harper gets back, or else he will panic and convince me not to go see Carter, saying that Carter will have nothing to offer me but more lies. Harper will tell me it’s too dangerous and that I belong at home with Sky.
I can’t let him stop me. I have to speak to Carter; my intuition is telling me that he is the key to my disconnected past, and any details will help me put the pieces together and put an end to all of this madness and bloodshed.
The eyes that watch me, circling like a vulture up above, are making me feel like I’m insane.
All of Carter’s lies about Harper—I need to set the record straight. The wind whips, and the rain thrashes outside against my window. The storm threatens to come inside. My mind spins, and anxiety floods my brain.
As I wait on the platform, the light at the end of the tunnel is only the Cannonball, a Hamptons express train out of Penn Station. I know that I’m being reckless by traveling alone, and I make sure no one is following me.
I feel the outline of the gun, and it brings me peace.
I panic and call Harper to tell him where I’ve gone and why I feel the need to be so impulsive, but he isn’t picking up. I leave another message, feeling like I’m now stalking my husband.
The man across from me is reading the paper and keeps making furtive glances at me. I don’t like him. I move to the back of the train, wishing I had my own laptop or something else to focus on, something other than my own fears and paranoia.
Next I try Belle, desperate for any new information, and letting him know I’m on my way to see Carter in Montauk and that he should call me immediately. I’m babbling. I leave a muddled message about Harper and how he has disappeared. I know that something awful has happened.
Who is driving this kill list and why?
I keep replaying all of the events, Brooke’s murder and then Jessa’s, going over the facts, trying to connect them back to that night in Boston, the Renaissance Killer, and the Boston murders. My stomach twists in knots with a feeling that something is deeply wrong. It’s gnawing at my insides.
It isn’t like Harper to disappear, and I can’t stop thinking of the worst-case scenario, that he has been kidnapped, beaten unconscious, needing my help, and I’m not there.
Or even worse, that he has been murdered, bloody and battered, and left like Jessa and Brooke.
I’m praying that everything is okay, but the rush of fear and anxiety is taking over, and I keep leaving messages on his phone.
“Harp, it’s me. Call me back. I’m scared.”
I keep leaving messages like this, over and over.
I’m feeling paralyzed and wishing I had gone home and waited, just like Harper told me to do. I never listen, a fact that pushes me further into a state of self-loathing.
I need to get off this train; the crush of people and the noise are making me feel claustrophobic. Aside from the single-lane traffic from hell, I prefer to drive to Montauk, through the potato fields, wide-open sky, and farmland, enjoying the serenity and tranquility of
the water that surrounds me.
Finally, as the train pulls into the station in Montauk, I have to admit, I’m a mess.
I see Carter’s black SUV, and his driver rushes over with an open umbrella as I step out of the train and onto the platform. I breathe a sigh of relief.
The panic in me starts to rise like mercury. The crescent moon hangs low in the night sky as we head toward Old Montauk Highway and the scenic bluffs of Carter’s opulent mansion.
Twenty Four
HARPER
Harper opens his eyes, his breathing slow and weak, his body shaking, and his mind flooded with thoughts of Seraphina. He is alive but now held captive. The sound of men’s voices and footsteps float up into the air, surrounding him.
“Move! Move!” a voice yells from behind him. He can feel the cold, hard metal point of an AK-47 at his back, and he can see the black military skull masks of his assailants out of the corner of his eye.
Harper has never known terror like this. His pulse thrashes in his ears, and his legs are weak. He reaches for his gun, but all that remains is an empty holster.
The emptiness of the space, an old warehouse, transformed into a masquerade, a kingdom of living darkness, swells with vice and chaos. Ghoulish faces on parade are anonymous, protected by their masks, all shadows of evil.
The room glows with wicked desire, like a ball on fire. He is pushed through a crowd of dancing, gyrating bodies, the walls around him pulsating to the beat of the electronic dance music. The room is tinted red.
A screen blasts images on the walls, and it’s as if they pulsate with light and sound. In front of him, yellow lights glow, forming the shape of a pyramid, and then it shatters, fading into thirteen small temples of gold.
Harper realizes he must be hallucinating, as he passes a beautiful naked woman with a halo and wings on her back. The music, a requiem, pounds to the tribal beat, and to Harper, it feels like a dance of death, as if he has fallen into purgatory and is now surrounded by demons. The searing pain of his fear and anger takes over, and he is a prisoner in the panic of his own mind.
His vision starts to blur. His heartbeat feels like it’s dangerously slow.
He is pushed forward into another room. The tiles on the floor are painted black and white, and in the center, spray-painted in colorful graffiti, is a pentagram.
A man is waiting for him, a black cloak covering his body and his face hidden by a mask. Harper shivers. It is cold and eerie, and the face of a goat with curved horns speaks to him. “Do you know why we’ve brought you here?”
“No,” Harper says, his breathing weak.
“We believe you are guilty, possessed by an evil spirit, and we sentence you to a trial by ordeal.”
Harper’s mind is racing. He thinks of Brooke Beck, the brutality of her murder, and the remains of her body.
He closes his eyes and concentrates on Lara’s words: “The seed of the Calabar bean is extremely poisonous; West African tribes used it as a system of law. They believed God would perform a miracle and let the accused live if they were innocent. If not, they died, an excruciating death from the poison, and justice was served.”
Harper feels the blood rushing back into his body. His senses are raw and fragile, as if they are cross-wired, and he is seeing sounds as color, a deafening yellow, and tasting the bitterness of their words.
“We’ve given you an alkaloid poison, eserine. The effect is similar to nerve gas. Your heartbeat has already started to slow down, and some of what you see is just a hallucination. These are all side effects of the drug.”
Harper can feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“We are here to hold you accountable. Your survival will prove your innocence, or this will serve as your death sentence. The poison will draw out the truth, and it’s your own guilt and sin that will destroy you,” His tone is razor sharp.
“You people are fucking insane. This isn’t justice. It’s cold-blooded murder,” says Harper, his rage flowing through him. “What did Helen Achlys do to deserve being drugged and hunted like an animal? Brooke Beck or Jessa Dante? How many others have you hunted and killed?”
“Matthew 15:19: For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander,” he says. “We aren’t afraid. We have faith in our God.”
“You’re never going to get away with this.”
As Harper fades in and out, trapped in between two states of consciousness, he loses the words.
“We already have.”
Harper is sick, thinking of the women, all victims, thrown away like trash. He can feel his blood boil; it flows through him, a river of searing anger and pain. He shuts down, saving his physical strength to fight the poison.
This is an evil beyond tolerance and reason, and one that only responds to the brutality of violence. He will find a way to live through this night, not only for Seraphina but also to seek retribution. He will not stop until people are free from these demons that haunt the earth.
Harper drops to his knees from the crippling nausea and is left alone to fight for his life.
Again, he thinks of Seraphina, their lost love and the sweetness of finding it all over again. He won’t let anything come between them ever again, not in this life or in death. A child between them, Sky, will give their love wings and carry it forward with speed and grace.
To Harper, Seraphina will always be his eternal sunrise, an artist making poetry out of the mess and chaos, and his destiny.
The poison takes over, churning his insides and playing tricks on his mind. The pain starts to fade, a deep sleep takes over and seizes him, mind and body.
Harper’s flashback shimmers, like an oasis of desert madness, and his childhood memories overwhelm him: the smell of whiskey, his father’s fury, fueled by alcohol and addiction. All of it, making it harder for Harper to breathe.
His soul hangs heavy, weighted down, as if he is watching his own energy and life force drain from his body.
He feels disconnected.
His mind shifts into another vision, and he’s a soldier at war, with a gun in his hand, firing a round of shots into the air, the sound of jazz against the backdrop of the brutality of war.
The broken rhythm of his dream continues, the drugs forcing the images to layer, one on top of the other, slowing his pulse even further.
Again, he’s a young boy, chasing an eagle, through the courtyard of the projects toward home. He throws open the door and climbs the stairs, hearing the hauntingly familiar sounds of fighting and his mother sobbing. The pain of it all, still real, is etched deeply in his mind, flowing through him, hot like lava, burning everything it touches.
He hears the sound of a gunshot and watches his father fall to the ground, arms flailing. He keeps falling, through the earth and into a shallow grave.
Harper looks up to find his mother holding the smoking gun, trembling and crying, gripped by fear and desperation after killing his father.
Harper takes the gun from her and the guilt of her crime, all in his own hands and heart.
These visions are hard, wrapped up in the guilt, pain, and loneliness of his lost childhood.
Now he can hear the music pulsing through him, the weight of the trauma crushing down, and he knows he is dying.
He watches as the face of his mother starts to fade, and in her place stands Seraphina, bruised and beaten.
His mind twisting even further, he hears the sound of another shot, although this time, in the darkness of his mind, he can see it’s Seraphina pulling the trigger.
Harper doesn’t have the strength to go to her, and all he can do is cry out in pain.
Seraphina is fire, and each time she touches the earth, it’s as if she sets it on fire with her pain. Only she could have found a way to melt the frozen walls around his heart with her heat and desire.
&
nbsp; The door opens, and Harper can’t tell if he is hallucinating. He is starting to lose consciousness. The dark figure locks the door and moves closer to him and removes the hood. It’s Jessa.
His vision is blurred and the sound of her voice forces him to focus.
Jessa takes his hand and puts it up to her face and says, “I am alive. It’s me, Jessa. Stay with me, Harper. The only antidote to the poison they have given you is atropine. I’m going to give it to you now, and it will save your life. We are still in danger. You have to follow me. I can get you out safely.”
Harper nods.
She injects him with a syringe.
In the distance, he thinks he can hear the sound of sirens, and they’re getting closer, howling like a pack of wolves.
Twenty Five
SERAPHINA AND CARTER
Carter is waiting for me outside the house. The glow from the candlelight and fiery metal torches illuminates the grounds of the estate. The flames dance against the hypnotic lull of the surf and the smell of saltwater.
In the distance, the melody of a child’s laughter, bright and sweet, carries like a wind chime.
The storm has passed, and the Montauk sky is clear, a patchwork of stars and light. The moon hangs over the pool, its reflection a shimmering silver streak cutting through the crystal blue water. For Carter and me, magic still exists between us, as if in some past life, we connected deeply, and then the chain was violently broken. Now our fates are once again colliding.
We walk through the house. The doors and windows rattle, as the wind drives out the last few raindrops from the storm.
“Can I get you a drink?” Carter says, pouring himself a glass of red wine.
“Sure. I would love some wine,” I say, feeling awkward and uneasy, my mind still obsessing over Harper.
I’m not sure what is wrong with me. Now that I’m here, I’m desperate to be there. I can’t stand not knowing if Harper is all right. What will happen if I can’t find out anything useful from Carter? Will we be forced to live in a state of constant terror? I can tell Carter is in a dark and intense mood. I regret my decision to come here even more now, a feeling that is totally useless.