She was. He sprinted the distance between them and embraced her, grounding her inside the dream. There was nothing for her to do but melt against him and allow him to him pepper her face and hair with kisses. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted, after all? To lose herself in him, to wallow in his arms until he made her forget that she was doomed?
His words from earlier that night came back to her. She’d almost allowed the catastrophe that had followed to erase them, but now she heard them as plainly as if he were saying them again. He considered her beautiful, which was flattering, and interesting, which was a word she would never have thought to apply to herself. He loved her company, although she was unsure about what love meant in the context of him, and he would enjoy keeping that company. Keeping her.
She started to cry again.
“Why did you have to meet me?” she sobbed, and buried her face in his neck, unable to keep herself from shaking. “Why didn’t you lie when I asked what made you spare me? I could have lived out all the time I had left without a single worry in my head, without having to agonize over it, without . . .”
He brought his hands up and placed one on either side of her chin, forming the bottom of a heart. She looked up, aware that with her eyes rimmed red and her face sticky and hot with tears, she didn’t present a pretty sight. However, he appeared to disagree with that assessment, and pulled her into a kiss so energetic it nearly drained her, before gently licking away any tears that had dared to fall in the vicinity of her mouth.
In hindsight, Rose felt like she should have expected such a reaction. He’d eaten her up with his eyes — figuratively speaking — while she cried out and begged and her bottom burned under his palm. This was nothing compared to that.
“Fate,” he told her, answering her earlier question. Or one of them, at the least. “I believe it was fated that we’d meet. And I’ve delayed you enough, I think. Do as I told you, and meet me again at the inn in three days. If you disobey me and allow yourself to freeze to death, I will desecrate your grave and do to your corpse things hideous beyond imagination. Now wake.”
Rose hadn’t meant to obey him. His threat hadn’t moved her, because she hadn’t believed it. If he did anything to her after she was dead it wouldn’t be punishment, but an act of spite, and as many faults as he was confirmed to have, the killer did not strike her as spiteful.
Nevertheless, she hoisted herself up, tested her stiff joints and started walking. His orders gave her a sense of direction, if nothing else. She wasn’t determined to survive, as it was hard to muster determination for something that was set to be fleeting, but she wasn’t that eager to die either.
Besides, she was curious about what he would be like in the flesh.
The key was where he said it would be. The inn was more difficult to find, as it was located on the fringes of the town, which Rose had never made a habit of visiting. Still, eventually she stumbled on it and was let in by a shabby-looking innkeeper, who informed her that it was far too late for decent people to be walking outside, and that she was lucky he didn’t have the heart to turn her away with a murderer walking loose.
Rose showed him the key, and he showed her the room. It had nothing in common with the places the killer had taken her to in her — their — dreams. Its fillings were ordinary in everything but the fact that all the pieces light enough to be picked up had been nailed to the floor, and she could smell the mold that had settled in the bed from the doorway. The innkeeper noticed her frowning and explained, unapologetically, that the room hadn’t been aired because Mr. Eade had, after paying for it in full for the next four months, forbidden anyone from entering it.
Once she was alone, Rose walked to the window. The loose planks were easy to locate and lift, and the promised money lay underneath, as well as a few other items — bottles, knives, a ball of cheese wire, more bottles. Since she had no need of them at the present, she repositioned the planks, sat down on the bed and wrapped the blanket around herself.
The room was colder than the attic had ever been, which was saying something, but at least it wasn’t the sort of cold she believed she could die from.
There was little else to do, so she laid her head down on the pillow and slept. It wasn’t the most restful of sleeps. She kept slipping in and out of it, waking to find out that she’d spent a while staring at the ceiling, glass-eyed and oblivious, then plummeting back into dreamless darkness.
The killer didn’t visit her that night.
Rose woke around midday, but was unable to marvel about the novelty of sleeping in that late for longer than it took her to take notice of the soreness of her throat. She coughed into her hand to dislodge some of the phlegm, which made her feel a bit better. However, after a disastrous attempt to leave the bed that ended with her arms hugging the footboard and the insides of her head spinning, she was forced to give in, concede that she was too sick to begin the day, and crawl back in.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d fallen ill. At the orphanage, perhaps, and that had been so many years ago that if she’d felt as awful then as she felt now, her memory must have blocked it. It was almost a blessing that there was nothing edible around, or she would have been tempted to stuff her mouth with it, which in her current state couldn’t end well.
The hours passed sluggishly. She made a few other attempts to get up, if not leave the room, but never made it as far as the door before collapsing in a heap and pitifully dragging herself back to the bed. The innkeeper came by later in the afternoon and knocked on the door. She croaked at him to let him know she was alive, but was unsure of how long that would hold true.
Fever and delirium set in before nightfall. She slept fitfully and bit by bit. Sometimes she dreamed, or hallucinated, and sometimes the killer was a part of it, but it was the version of him that her nightmares had featured: all monster, all intent to kill.
Unpleasant as it was to have her head spit out that image and force her to acknowledge it, it didn’t frighten her this time. Now she knew him. Not all of him, of course. She suspected she wouldn’t know all of him even if they did spend an indefinite amount of time together, even if he put a damper on his evasiveness about his past and self. But she’d seen enough of him to believe he would not hurt her, at least in a way she wouldn’t enjoy in the end, and that sentiment fortified her enough to get her through the night.
Dawn broke. Another day passed uneventfully, apart from the occasional coughing fit that made her double over, and the steady throbbing in her temples. She felt filthy and hungry and the whole room smelled like her sickness, and she was beginning to believe that she’d never recover enough strength to get herself up again.
What would the killer think when he found her the way she was? He was meant to arrive the next day. She could just picture his handsome face twisting with disgust, his back turning away, his footsteps leaving the room, leaving her behind, never to return . . .
The next day Rose forced herself upright, forced herself to eat, and asked for a bucket with clean water and a rag. The water was as icy as could be expected, but her too-warm forehead welcomed the brief touch of cold.
When she was satisfied that she didn’t smell like her own bile anymore, she started washing the room and tidying it up, refusing to allow her growing dizziness to stop her. She didn’t know at what time he would arrive, but by God, he’d arrive to find everything decent. The fact that he likely wouldn’t give a second thought to the decency of her lodgings — or her decency, for that matter — wasn’t lost on Rose, but she didn’t care.
The day went by with no word or sight of him. By midnight, worry was eating her up from the inside. She opened one of the bottles she had found under the floor and placed it on the bedside table, together with a cup, in the faint hope that he’d only been delayed for a few hours and would want a drink when he came in. Then she slunk under the blanket, fully dressed, and tried to sleep off her worry.
Sleep didn’t come, which was reasonable, as she’d had her fill of
it over the last two days. The minutes rolled by. She reached for the bottle in a fit of boredom, apprehension and rebellion, and took a sip. It didn’t taste too bad. The room was dark and the bottle was dark and the liquid inside was dark, so she couldn’t tell what it was, but she drank a bit more. It made her throat tingle every time she swallowed, and the feeling was agreeable enough to convince her to keep drinking.
There was a rasp on the door. Rose stumbled out of bed and pulled it open. She gave the newcomer a wide, happy smile before falling onto him.
“You are late!”
“I had to run an errand before coming here.”
“I thought you had left me!”
“How could you possibly think that?” Now that he was there, in front of her, against her, all solid and real to the touch, Rose didn’t know either. “You seem cheerful tonight. Have you been . . . ah!”
He’d spotted the bottle. She giggled guiltily and pressed herself harder against his side. Her head felt lighter than usual, even considering that it had weighed on her like a stone during much of her sickness. It was a good, fluffy kind of lightness, one that made even the black room look bright. That such a state didn’t lend itself to big thoughts about life and death and right or wrong was, in her somewhat tipsy opinion, a bonus.
He led her towards the bed and laid her down. To her chagrin, he avoided her awkward attempt to pull him with her. Rose propped herself up on one arm, following his movements. He took off his coat, hung it over a chair, and took two items from it. They were rounded, had the shine of glass and went ‘plink’ when he placed them on the windowsill, so she deduced they were flasks. Guessing their contents wasn’t altogether hard, either.
Suddenly she felt both soberer and considerably less cheerful.
“Why?” she asked, slurring the end of the word, looking from one flask to what she’d thought to be another flask, but was actually a strikingly familiar bottle. “Hadn’t you told me you had collected enough lives to go without killing for centuries?”
“I took this one out of storage,” he replied, raising the glass container into the moonlight. “Forty years. I tend to think it a waste to target anyone of advanced age, but the owner was a deeply unpleasant creature, and they do say the wicked die slow.”
Rose squinted at them, thinking that in her limited experience they looked as fresh as if they’d been reaped minutes ago. His explanation was the most soothing one, though, so she went with it, although she wondered why he’d taken them out of storage. She’d seen his room, with its shelves full of eyes trapped in glass and liquid. It hadn’t looked like a place that anything ever left for no good reason.
“What do you mean to do with them?”
In response, he took off the lid of the flask and slid a few fingers inside. They searched around for a while, but eventually managed to grab both slippery orbs. Or his exclamation of triumph made her assume that was the case, since she’d taken the liberty of planting her gaze on the ceiling until he was done.
He approached the bed, sat down next to her and opened his hand.
“My gift to you.”
Rose continued to stare at the ceiling. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that as gifts went, this left plenty to be desired. Right now he wasn’t a frightening wolf, but a cat. A cat who’d hunted down something beyond disgusting, mauled it and left it on her doorstep in the deluded hope that she’d appreciate it.
“What am I meant to do with them?”
“I have no need of them at this time, and they cannot be put back. You can either make use of them or let them go to waste. I leave it in your hands.” Fortunately, he didn’t mean the last bit literally. Rose couldn’t help shuddering as he bent over to drop his catch on the bedside table. He laid a hand on her head and pulled it onto his shoulder. “You should accept, though. Forty years is not something to sneer at.”
Rose felt troubled. This development . . . well, it changed things, didn’t it? The person he had stolen that life from was already dead, and more importantly, already dead without her having lifted a finger to make it so. Her refusal to kill was the reason for her resistance to becoming like him. If she didn’t have to do anything of the sort, if all she had to do was accept his macabre offerings . . . well, forty years was a long time.
Forty times the rest of her life as things stood now, for a start.
“Supposing that I agree,” she began. He nodded encouragingly, coaxingly, his already intense expression intensifying at the mention of agreement. Rose found it comforting that so far, he was proving himself not at all unlike he’d been in her dreams. Even the lack of eyes was starting to seem like something she might get used to. “What would happen to me in forty one years?”
“Death would happen.” That too was peculiarly comforting. She didn’t require forever, and sixty seemed, to her, like an acceptable age to be when leaving this mortal coil. An age too distant to seem real, a number round enough and big enough to give an illusion of unattainability. “Unless you add more life, again and again. In doing that, you could have forever.”
“Forty years will do, thank you.” She dared to glance at the eyes. There was something familiar about them too, as there had been about the bottle he’d brought, but she convinced herself that she was either dreaming awake or allowing the drink to think for her. Many people had light blue eyes, didn’t they? “Did they . . . did they truly belong to someone awful?”
“Awful enough that if you had been given the chance and the will, you would have done the deed yourself.”
The statement made her shiver. It was difficult to imagine a person that would give him cause to say such a thing, considering he knew how reticent she was to commit a cardinal sin — there was not fearing Hell, and then there was having no standards to speak of.
It did ease her conscience somewhat. She supposed that was the intention.
“Is it painful? The process, I mean,” she added, remembering the corpse in the alley. The corners of the killer’s . . . eye sockets crinkled, and he set his jaw, all of him irradiating discomfort. Rose realized that deep down, she’d known the answer already. She would be like him. In every respect. “Good god. You mean to cut me up, isn’t that right?”
“Yes. That is the process.” He wiped off the sweat that had broken out on her forehead and tucked some loose strands of hair behind her ears. Rose batted his hand away and pressed her own against the side of her head, willing it to stop buzzing. He had bled her in dreams, and her nightmarish imitations of him had bled her a dozen times more. Still, the pain she believed she would feel would be neither a kind she was used to nor one she thought she could enjoy. He put his arms around her and waved at the small bottle on the windowsill. “You will feel none of it, though. I brought you something to put you to sleep.”
“Oh. Will I dream?”
A ghost of a smile appeared on his mouth.
“Only about pleasant things. And I will take care of you. During. After.” He squeezed her hand, exerting only a minimal amount of the force she knew he was capable of. Rose wondered, idly, how long it had been since he’d last offered true comfort to another human being. “You have my word on that.”
Then again, he wasn’t human. He might have been, once, but there was no doubt that as he was now, he belonged into another secret, unstudied category. As would she, soon. When the day came for them to face their judgment, would God judge them differently on that account?
“I’d rather,” she said, catching hold of his fingertips and placing his hand on her lap, “that you took care of me before.”
He looked at her. Yes, she decided. After a while, you did grow used to the absence of anything concrete to look into.
“We shouldn’t delay ourselves too much. The eyes have to be used as soon as possible.” She was about to nod with resigned understanding, but then he broke into a grin. “That said, I do believe I have a duty to ensure that you exit this life with the best possible memories.”
She forbade him from rippi
ng off her dress. It was the only one she had, and what was feasible in dreams was less so in the real world. He circled her while she shed it on her own, tapping his feet with impatience, and all but pounced on her when she was finally free of it. Rose wasn’t any more eager to delay matters than he was, so their joining was as fast as it was brutal.
She shivered and gasped against him, relishing in the sweet pain, in the feel of his skin, in every long, full stroke. She guessed, by the fact that he had yet to bite her to the bone, that he was aware enough of the unpleasant limitations of corporeality, and would moderate his roughness accordingly. She found herself wishing he wouldn’t. She’d spent nights doing nothing but want him, carelessly, despite herself. Now the part of her that was desperate for survival clashed with the part of her that wanted him to ride her until she broke.
“There goes your virtue, I’m afraid,” he rasped into her ear. Rose responded with a snort turned into giggle turned into moan. Virtue? If she believed she’d still possessed any by that point, the situation would be vastly different. He tapped her nose with a finger, then covered her mouth with his. She parted her lips and allowed his tongue to explore at will, savoring the taste of him.
He’d told her, in their first dream, that he’d lied when saying he could have grown to love her. Yet, what was love but something born out of care — which he had to, otherwise why go to any length to keep her? — and companionship and willingness to be with each other? If she took those things and added up the physical connection they shared, was this thing they had all that different from true love? Their relationship all that different from marriage, albeit one made in Hell?
Besides, they dreamt the same dreams. No doubt about that.
The Darker Side of Love (A Dark Erotica Boxed Set) Page 51