Evil Unbound- Death's Mistress Returns

by Daniel Grayson

It was perfectly obvious to me what she was offering, but Brandon, somehow, seemed unaware. While she had been bent over, he had been looking at his plate, and now that she was addressing him, he was actually looking over at me.

  “Thanks,” he said, “I think we’ve got everything we need. Emily, do you need more wine?”

  “No,” I answered. I was completely baffled by his behavior. Had he really not noticed the way she had practically thrown herself at him? That didn’t make sense. It was his job to be observant, and he had already proven to me that he was, indeed, very perceptive. It must be part of his plan to get at me. He was obviously very smart and had guessed that I wouldn’t put up with a wandering eye.

  I decided to test him. While he began eating, I quickly finished my glass of wine.

  “You know,” I said lightly, “I actually would like another glass, but I have to run to the restroom. Would you mind ordering me one?”

  “Of course,” Brandon said, “I’m glad you like it.”

  I walked away, but I didn’t go to the restroom. I stepped just inside the restaurant and pretended to be on my phone near a window that gave me a view of our table. As I stood there, waiting for Brandon to flag down the waitress, I could see him drain his glass in one big gulp. I wondered why he would do that, after sipping at it for the last half hour. It crossed my mind that perhaps he was finishing it quickly simply so that he could order another glass as well and make me feel more comfortable.

  A moment later, the blonde waitress walked by, and Brandon lifted his arm to catch her attention. I could see both their faces in profile, even in the growing darkness of the evening. Seeing my empty chair, she put on a big smile and walked over to him, standing closer than was required. He said something, and she touched her ear as if indicating she couldn’t hear, so she bent over once more. I watched him carefully. The waitress was attractive. She was so close she was almost touching him, her skirt riding up the back of her legs, her chest swelling out of her low cut shirt. Brandon looked slightly uncomfortable and scooted his chair back a few inches. Not in a rude way; he moved just enough to let her know that he wanted to keep his distance. I almost dropped my phone. He kept a polite smile on his face as he gestured toward our glasses and said a few words to her that I couldn’t hear. She stood up abruptly and nodded her head, her smile forced now. As she walked away, Brandon grabbed his phone; he didn’t even watch her go.

  I had to stay there for a moment collecting my thoughts. I was certain Brandon could not see me from where he sat; he had no idea that I was watching him, testing him. He had guzzled his wine for no reason I could fathom other than just to be able to order a second glass with me, and then he had passed up the opportunity to even look at the waitress. Without knowing I was watching, he hadn’t done either of those things to win points with me. I found myself really smiling again, and this time, I could not come up with a reason to stop.

  I let my improved mood carry me back to the table, where Brandon was waiting with two clean glasses and a bottle of wine.

  “Since I needed another glass too, I figured we might as well get the bottle,” he said, pouring us each a generous glass. “How about a toast?”

  “What are we toasting?” I asked.

  “How about new friendships?” he said.

  We clinked our glasses and resumed our meal.

  The conversation flowed easily, but the whole time we talked I was trying to think of how to get the subject back to a place where I might be able to get him to slip the name of someone who could become my next target. Fate must have been on my side, because we were discussing a popular crime show when, without any prompting from me, he started talking about arrest rates in the city.

  Suddenly he looked up at me and grinned sheepishly. “Wow, I’m sorry,” he said, “that must literally be the most boring thing in the world to you.”

  “Not at all!” I said, eager to keep the conversation on this track, “I think it’s fascinating. They always say ‘crime doesn’t pay,’ but I’ve always had the feeling that people get away with more than anyone realizes. You must see that all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Brandon agreed glumly. “The worst is when you know, know beyond any shadow of a doubt that someone did something, but you can’t prove it, and you just have to let them walk.”

  I was about to press for details when he continued.

  “Or sometimes, you know there’s been a crime, but the victim won’t press charges.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Like domestic abuse,” he said.

  I shook my head angrily.

  “Like, a few weeks ago,” he went on, “I got called to this house, really nice part of town, this poor woman had the shit beaten out of her, and she would not admit that her husband had done it, but I knew he had.”

  “What did she say?” I asked. “If she was beaten that badly, how did she explain it?”

  “People come up with all sorts of crazy excuses, but this case was one of the strangest I’ve ever had. The lady was absolutely insisting that she and her husband had both been attacked in a grocery store parking lot.”

  My breath caught in my chest. “A grocery store?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that was her story. The two of them were beaten up at a grocery store – in broad daylight – by a woman.”

  I gasped, which Brandon seemed to take as disbelief.

  “Crazy, right?” he said, “But there was nothing I could do. I checked the grocery store, of course… no parking lot surveillance, no witnesses…”

  Brandon startled me by pounding his fist on the table, and I jumped.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “It just kills me! It was obviously the husband… and you should’ve seen that woman, she was lucky to be alive. But there was nothing I could do, not a single thing.”

  I looked at Brandon, and I felt like I knew him, truly and deeply. This was not an act. He cared about that woman; he wanted to help her and was tormented by his inability to do so. I understood his pain, but I did not share it because I was not bound by the rules that limited him.

  “You don’t have to apologize,” I said, laying my hand on his arm, “I can’t imagine doing what you do, and finding myself in situations like that where I couldn’t help someone who needs it. Maybe someday she’ll reach out to you, when she’s ready.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “if he doesn’t kill her first.”

  Then he looked at me sharply, “I’m so sorry, this is terrible first date conversation.”

  Despite the heaviness of his story, I felt my stomach give a little flip. We hadn’t actually called our dinner a ‘date’ when we had talked on the phone, and I was surprised that I was glad to hear him say it. I let my hand linger against his. It was the first time I had touched a man without intending to inflict pain since I’d been a girl, and it was nice. We seemed to have a connection that I could feel tingling through our skin.

  “You’re right,” I said, “this is terrible. I can’t believe you would bring it up… can we please get back to my amnesia now?”

  He looked at me and I winked.

  We returned to lighter topics of conversation, and before long, dinner had wound down and the wine was gone. We walked slowly back to the car; arm in arm again, but closer this time, our bodies occasionally brushing against one another. Brandon drove me home and insisted on walking me to the door. It was a silly gesture, but once again, I found myself glad that he was doing it.

  We stood on the porch like two teenagers in a movie.

  “Well, to be totally cliché,” he said, “I had a really nice time tonight.”

  “I did too,” I said, hardly believing that the words were true.

  I looked up into his pale blue eyes as he gazed down into mine. My heart fluttered in my chest like the whispery wings of butterflies, and I wondered if he would kiss me.

  “Emily Something, can I kiss you?” he asked.

  I nodded, and tilted my head up toward him as I closed my eyes. I felt his
hand against the back of my head, holding me gently as he pressed his lips against mine. Our lips moved together softly, just for a moment, before he released me slowly.

  “Goodnight, Brandon,” I said.

  “Goodnight.”

  We were both smiling.

  He watched me as I opened the front door and slipped inside. I leaned against it as I shut it behind me and listened to the sound of his car driving away.

  It was dark in the house. I kicked off my heels and slid to the ground against the door. If Kate came to check on me she would think I’d lost it, but my mind was being pulled in a thousand directions and I needed to think. Brandon had surprised me tonight, but I could not lose focus on what really mattered.

  I thought back to that grocery store parking lot. I saw the woman, meek, cowering at the man’s every movement; taking his abuse day after day until she couldn’t see any life beyond it. That disgusting, selfish pig of a man! I remembered him howling on the ground, trembling beneath me, begging for mercy. I wasn’t so delusional that I thought I’d changed him, but I had thought I’d bought that woman some time. Turns out I was wrong. From what Brandon had said, he must have gone home and taken everything out on her almost immediately. Weak coward. He’d been threatened, so he had to beat his poor wife into the ground to feel better? I was seething with rage at the thought of what he’d done, but there was also something else. Anticipation. It was there beneath the surface of the rage. I’d gone out wondering if I might come home with another target, but I had never imagined one that I wanted as badly as Kyle. He thought he’d known pain in the parking lot?! Thought he’d known fear? That was nothing. I would show him pain. I would show him fear. I would tear him apart for what he had done! I smiled into the darkness. A cruel, twisted smile.

  I’m coming for you, Kyle Gordon.

  Chapter 7

  I’d expected to find Kate waiting up for me after my date, but she never came to check on me. She appeared to have already gone to bed and when I eventually got up from the floor in front of the door, I looked around the house just to be sure. She’d been so excited that the thought of her going to bed that early didn’t seem right. It was strange enough that I considered checking on her, but the likeliest explanation was that she was tired, or not feeling well, and had gone to bed. Not wanting to disturb her rest in either of those scenarios, I poured myself a glass of wine and relaxed in the living room. The night had offered far more than I had ever hoped.

  I’d gone to dinner with him for two reasons: to see if Brandon could be of any use to me, and to appease Kate. I’d expected to spend an uncomfortable evening warding off his advances, and was fully prepared to want to kill him before the night was done. I’d known going into it that he couldn’t be my next victim, it was far too risky, but in the back of my mind, I’d thought that at the very least he’d end up marked for death. I could come back to him later once the investigation into Joe’s death had cooled.

  My guard was up from the moment he’d arrived on Kate’s doorstep, but somehow Brandon kept getting it past it. He wasn’t the first man to try to traverse my defenses; I was used to dogged persistence, false charm, and even force, but somehow, Brandon was none of those things. I was prepared for a battering ram, but Brandon was like a breeze, slipping through the cracks in my fortress, cracks I hadn’t even known were there. As the night had progressed, I found myself relaxing more and more. I began to stop trying to catch him in any momentary lapse of perfect gentlemanly behavior, and when I stopped watching him, I found myself seeing him.

  The hard line of Brandon’s chiseled jaw paired with his height and the width of his shoulders conveyed strength and steadiness, but it was his eyes that had captivated me. Long ago, centuries ago, I had wished for a husband with kind eyes; Brandon’s eyes were more than that. At first, I had thought there was softness in them, but I had been wrong. It was depth I was seeing reflected in those pale blue eyes. He had seen death, evil, and the profundity of human suffering, but none of it had broken him. It had sharpened him. He was devoted to helping the weak and the powerless, just like me.

  It was just that I could do more to help.

  When Brandon had spoken of Kyle Gordon, it was like the heavens above had opened and set me on my path. It was too perfect. What were the chances that the one tiny scrap of information he had shared would point me to someone I already knew? Someone I could easily find? Kyle Gordon had been warned. I should’ve gone back for him already after that encounter in the parking lot. My internal alarms had been screaming that he was a monster deserving of death that day, but I hadn’t followed my instincts. I never killed the innocent, and I required proof before I took a life. Now, thanks to Brandon, I had it. The best part about it all was that not only would I be saving Gordon’s wife, but I would be freeing Brandon too. He would certainly hear that the pig who the law couldn’t touch had been dealt with. He wouldn’t have to worry anymore, and even if he was assigned to the case there was no way he could link it to me. He hadn’t shared any details of the case with me, not a name, nothing. It was Fate.

  It was late when I finally headed upstairs, but I wasn’t tired. I was exhilarated. Killing Joe had been fun, but it had only whetted my appetite. I hadn’t had the time to really savor it. I would make certain Kyle did not get off that easily. A shiver of excitement ran through me as I climbed into bed and began to plan.

  I’d gone by Kyle’s house once after that first encounter, just to check it out, so I had an idea of what it looked like on the outside. I would have to make sure the wife wasn’t home, and then find a way to surprise him. I couldn’t just knock on the door. Kyle knew me already and he would be on guard the moment he spotted me. My mind spun, envisioning different ways I might get inside, or lure him to another location. Eventually, I drifted seamlessly from the world of my imagination to the world of my dreams.

  Sleep was often elusive since I had stepped into this time. Even after all these months, the fear that if I closed my eyes I might not reawaken for a few hundred years still plagued the corners of my mind. When I did sleep, it was usually restless and filled with broken fragments of dreams that made no sense and left me anxious, but tonight was different. I was aware that I was dreaming, but I was in control. I walked through dream after dream, each one starting the same as the last – arriving on the familiar porch of Kyle Gordon’s house.

  From there, the dreams departed from one another. I had no concept of the inside of his house, so my mind filled it in for me, differently each time, as I tortured and killed the large man over and over. Whether I was dragging his battered body into a backyard with a pool to bring him to the brink of drowning, or practicing my knife throwing skills with him tied to a table in the kitchen, each dream culminated with the satisfaction of seeing him cowering on the ground, begging for mercy. In each dream I laughed at his miserable form. In one dream, I stood above him; I grabbed his chin and forced him to open his eyes. “Look at me!” I screamed, “Don’t you see? I am mercy. I am mercy for your wife!”

  When I finally woke in the morning, I felt rested and happy. I was eager to get started and found no difficulty in gathering my strength and rising to meet the day. I went downstairs and was surprised to see Norah at the table eating a bowl of cereal. She was supposed to have stayed the night with David. Kate was bustling around, tidying the kitchen. I couldn’t see her face, but there was a sharpness to her movements that made me think she was upset.

  “Good morning,” I called, somewhat uncertainly, as I entered the room.

  Kate looked up and responded, “Good morning! How was your date?”

  I could hear the genuine excitement in her voice, but there was something else there too. When she turned, I saw that she appeared exhausted. She was smiling, but there was a hint of sadness in the upturned corners of her mouth and the slight crease in her brow.

  “It was wonderful, but what’s going on?” I answered.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said brightly.

  “That’s
what she told me too,” Norah said with a cute, sour face.

  She had a way of scrunching up her little freckled nose in the cutest way. I ran my hand up and down her back as she returned to her food.

  Kate glared at her daughter and offered me another half-smile. “It was a long night, but I’m fine – I swear. I want to hear about your date! What was Brandon like?”

  Given how she must have gone to bed rather early, I wasn’t sure what she meant about having a long night, but I respected the fact that she obviously did not want to talk about it now. I wasn’t going to press her in case it wasn’t something she wasn’t comfortable discussing in front of Norah. I just nodded my understanding and took the opportunity to share how well the night had gone.

  “You know I had my doubts,” I sighed, leaving a long pause at the end to add a little dramatic effect.

  “Oh, tell us already!” Kate shouted.

  “It was wonderful. Brandon was a far better date than I was expecting. He was a perfect gentleman, the meal was wonderful, and I hadn’t realized just how attractive he was.”

  “Uh… yeah!” Kate exclaimed. “He is H-O-T HOT!”

  “EWWWW,” Norah moaned as she got up from the table.

  “You don’t want to hear about them kissing?” Kate teased her daughter.

  “I’m not a little kid, mom!” Norah shot back. “Kissing isn’t gross, but you talking about it is!”

  “Well, you might want to leave then, before I gross you out anymore.”

  Norah just rolled her eyes dramatically, then gave a silly smile to let her mom know it was in jest. She put her bowl in the sink and marched out of the room to go entertain herself.

  Now that we were alone, Kate pulled a chair up to the table. “Ok, go on,” she said, “and I’m going to need details!”

  I recounted the evening for her, sharing what we did and how I had felt. I’d never had a close relationship like this where I felt comfortable opening up to someone, and it was nice. “It was a really good night. I’d love to go out with him again,” I ended.