by N Gray
Staying in the doorjamb, I listened at first, slowly edging further into the next room, to see where they were. Ophelia, her skin gray and losing life, lay naked on a table as McNielty gave her a sponge bath. Deep purple marks littered her body. Nearby were the shelves that held the jars full of body parts and the shrine. I shuddered.
There wasn’t a lot of options; I could sneak up on them and hope for the best, or I could find my gun and just shoot him.
Was he able to sense me, considering that was how he had previously known we had been in his house? He had said he had been waiting for me, which suggested that he had already known of my existence before we even entered his house. When he had first seen my light, my aura, two months ago, that was when his plan must have started to come together.
I couldn’t wait for him to return, kill me, and have Ophelia take over my body. I had to finish this now.
My sneakers were soft on the floor. I gripped the machete tightly in my right hand. In a crouching stance, I approached McNielty and Ophelia, the shelves lined with glass jars between us. McNielty whispered under his breath as he wiped Ophelia down, cleaning her body. Her eyes were closed, but tears streaked the side of her face. McNielty went to the top of the table near her head and started to wipe her face, wiping the tear stains away.
My heart was beating loudly in my ears. McNielty looked up. I held my breath. He wasn’t looking at me, but he was looking at something. He was listening to something just above him. He whispered to himself, then carried on cleaning Ophelia.
Ophelia moaned and tried to speak, but her words were incoherent. Her hands went between her legs and came back with blood.
“It will be over soon, my love. You will have a new, young, and healthy body. Then we can leave this place. Bryan is expecting us, so we need to be quick.” McNielty kissed her forehead, put the sponge in the bucket, and headed for the main bedroom.
Ophelia lay still, blood pooling on the table from between her legs. She seemed so sad lying there, like a wilting flower, her pale, bruised skin smeared with her blood. I didn’t want to hurt her, but the choices were either her or me. I could turn tail and leave through the kitchen, but McNielty would just come after me again. I wanted to survive this. I had to survive them.
The thought of seeing my daughter one day was something that kept me going. The possibility of Sebastian was another.
Ophelia glanced up at me as I approached her. She tried to call out, her dark eyes searching me, but only the faint sound of her voice could be heard.
I had to be quick.
Lifting the machete above my head, I swung downward, hard and fast. The blade of the machete sliced through her neck quietly, quickly and cleanly. I caught her head before it fell to the floor.
This had to be the weapon he used on his male victims when he removed their hands.
I held Ophelia’s head in my hands, her eyes wide and her mouth set in a surprised ‘O’. She had had no time to mutter. I placed her head back on the table and pushed it against her body so that it was positioned in line with her neck.
There; she was almost whole again.
Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about the blood on the table, and I was running out of time.
Footsteps grew louder as McNielty headed back toward the room I was in. Not sure where to go, I ducked under the table, crouching with one knee raised and the other foot firmly on the floor.
McNielty stopped near Ophelia’s head, his feet in front of me. He squeezed water out of the sponge and started cleaning her again. Her head moved above me and rolled on the table.
“NOOOO!” McNielty cried loudly, as realization of Ophelia’s decapitation set in. “No, no, no, no, no! What have you done? Where are you, bitch? I’m going to fucking pull you apart before I kill you. And I’m going to make it hurt.”
McNielty ran to his pleasure room in search of me. Now was my only chance. I had to kill him before he killed me. I came out from my hiding spot and stood there, waiting. He came back into the living room and froze when he saw me.
“I’m going to fucking kill you! You have cost me my Ophelia!” he cried.
I switched the machete to my other hand and removed the single tail bullwhip from my pocket. The thong of the whip was made from leather, with several braids and two bellies; this was the center of the braids, which meant it was a high-quality whip.
Good for me, not so great for the target. It was going to hurt.
I cracked the whip once, then twice, creating a sonic boom sound each time.
McNielty lunged at me, screaming, his hands reaching for my neck. With a quick motion of my wrist, I flicked the whip so that it wrapped around his neck and pulled hard. The momentum of him lunging at me and me pulling his body ensured he was headed directly toward me. From reflex, I hefted the machete out in front of me and pierced his sternum, pushing it in as deep as it could go. I felt the crunching of his chest bone against the machete as it vibrated through the handle. The machete pierced his heart and exited his back.
McNielty collapsed to his knees, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell backward onto the floor.
A sharp pain in my ribs caught my attention. I glanced down. There was a knife handle sticking out of my left side. The handle was beautifully made; if it hadn’t been embedded in my body, I would’ve admired it. Funny how you only feel the pain when you notice the wound.
My chest tightened, and my heart started racing. My breathing became shallow. Shit. Had the knife punctured my lung?
The knife was made from gold and was adorned with intricate patterns and swirls. The detailing reminded me of the armbands. This voodoo priest must have used the power of his gold armbands to travel from one body to the next.
McNielty lay motionless on the floor. I kicked his hand for proof of life, but there was no movement; the handcuffs were no longer necessary.
He was well and truly dead.
Kneeling down, I pulled both armbands off him, but the movement pushed the golden blade deeper inside me. Bright, sparkly stars clouded my vision. I rose, holding onto the table until I could focus properly. With short shallow breaths, I could stand unaided. I had to stay conscious long enough to remove Ophelia’s armbands and destroy them. If McNielty could swap souls, it was too powerful to leave them lying around. I had to destroy them.
Unfortunately, after a brief search, there was nothing inside the house that could truly melt gold. I settled on the microwave, set it on high, and set the timer for twenty minutes.
I grabbed the cleanest dishcloth I could find and placed it around the hilt of the knife to stop the bleeding. Mel would have to remove the blade; I wouldn’t attempt to take it out myself. Until then, I had to stay alive. I opened the gas on the stove and exited by the kitchen door. I walked away from the house, one queasy step at a time, applying pressure to the dishcloth as I ambled to the sidewalk.
After a few minutes, a loud noise erupted from the house. The microwave exploded and ignited the gas from the stove. Debris from the roof fell onto the lawn and sparks flew into the black sky. It reminded me of the Fourth of July.
Chapter 20
FOR A CHANGE, I WAS CONSCIOUS in the hospital bed—or rather the bed in Mel’s infirmary at the Labyrinth. She had stopped the bleeding and removed the knife from between my ribs without my lung collapsing or me dying. Even though I had already started to heal, I was still hooked up to an I.V. It had only been two hours after we’d arrived, but already the wound had begun to form soft pink scar tissue. Yay for vampire marks and having three strains of lycanthropy.
I’d managed to call Sebastian to inform him of my whereabouts, so when he, Ralph, and Sawyer had arrived at McNielty’s house, they had found me lying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood. It was déjà vu all over again.
By the time the ambulance and police cars had started to arrive, we were already leaving the crime scene. But not before Ralph had inspected the house, making sure the flames were hot enough that no one could escape. I�
��d chopped Ophelia’s head off and pierced McNielty’s heart with a machete. I was certain they weren’t going anywhere—but he checked anyway.
Luckily, the infirmary was big enough to accommodate everybody standing around as I recalled what had happened. Even Léon was there, although he and Sebastian stood on opposite sides of the room and glared at one another. I could feel their power in the air and on my skin, and it was thick enough to cut. The three of us needed to sit down and talk about what was happening, but the intense pull I felt for both of them wasn’t something we could discuss lightly. I didn’t know what was going on or why I felt this way. The whole thing left me feeling slightly sluttish, even though I hadn’t bedded either of them. Yet.
Right this moment, we needed to make sure we were safe and got our money for the contract we’d fulfilled.
“Do you know who kidnapped Ophelia in the first place and why?” Sebastian asked as he reached for my hand.
“No,” I said.
Devan came through the door, looking paler than usual. I could see his translucent eyes from where I lay on the bed; one green, one blue. He didn’t meet my eyes, instead casting them downward.
“We went back to the house after the emergency services had doused the fire and left,” Ralph said. “We found flecks of gold among the rubble, but we picked up most of it.” Ralph shrugged. “Just in case someone went back to the house looking for it.”
“Great.”
“And Martin says ‘thanks’,” Ralph said.
“I bet he does,” I replied with a hint of sarcasm. “Now tell him to pay up.”
“I’ll make sure of it.” He smiled. “Thank Christ it’s all over. I was worried there for a moment. It was like McNielty knew everything about us. I doubt he got all that just from sensing us in his house that one time.”
Ralph took the words right out of my mouth. “I agree, Ralph. Someone who knows us was helping him.”
Now all we needed to do was work out who.
I must have been silent for too long, because Mel said, “Okay everyone, get out. Blaire needs to rest.” She held my forearm and pushed power into me. It made me lie back on the pillows, my eyelids suddenly heavy.
“You’re like a human drug. One touch, and I’m floating,” I said through clouds and buttercups.
She giggled under her breath, “I also opened the drip with my other hand.”
“Ah, that explains the buttercups.”
“What?” She laughed.
Everyone left the room except for Mel. I did one of those slow blinks as I watched everyone leave. I think Sebastian and Léon waved at me as they left. Another slow blink, and Mel blurred around the edges. One last blink—and I slept.
There were no dreams as I slept. But I was moving. No, someone was carrying or pushing me. Actually, I couldn’t be sure. The only thing I could be sure of is that I was moving and there was the aroma of disinfectant. Wherever I was, it was clean; recently scrubbed down.
I opened my eyes, but all I saw was black. The drugs were strong; I wasn’t usually this groggy. I moved my arms, as heavy as they were, to touch my face. My clumsy fingers weren’t my own, but I could touch my face.
Numb. Either my fingers were numb, or my face was numb. It was the same kind of weird feeling in your jaw and cheek after a Novocain injection.
I cleared my throat. The footsteps stopped. I stopped.
“Are you awake?” he whispered close to my ear. His breath smelled distinctly of mouthwash, with a hint of cigarette.
My tongue and lips wouldn’t move. Couldn’t move.
His cold hands touched my cheek. “We are almost there.”
We moved again. Sleep took hold of me once again and I drifted away.
I woke but kept my eyes closed. The feel of the soft and fluffy duvet over me was comforting. I snuggled further down the bed, with the disinfectant smell lingering just above the surface. I flinched and opened my eyes, pulled the duvet off, and sat up, the wound in my ribs stinging from the sudden movement. I ran my fingers over the fresh wound and felt the soft scar tissue.
I glanced around the room. It was painted teal, with a white dresser, a white chair, and a white door. I tried to climb out of bed, but I couldn’t. I threw the duvet off and found restraints around my ankles.
“Morning, Blaire,” someone said over a speaker, but I couldn’t see where the speakers were.
“You must wonder who I am and what you are doing here?”
“Yeah, the thought had crossed my mind.”
The door opened, and McNielty walked in. I felt my jaw slacken and my mouth open.
“I watched you die. You can’t be alive.”
“If I can fool you, I can fool anyone.” He smirked.
“But you died at my feet!” I sounded angry, and I was. I remembered the feel of the machete as it had pierced his heart and exited his back. I had thought removing his armbands would help, but I was wrong. So wrong.
He was more powerful than I thought.
McNielty sat on the only chair in the room. He wore faded blue jeans, sneakers, a white shirt, and a white hoodie. His white clothing, hair, and eyebrows made him look ghostlike.
“What should I do to you for killing me, Blaire? What should I do to you for killing Ophelia?”
“I don’t know, McNielty. If you plan on killing me, just get it over and done with already. Enough shit has happened these last couple of months and teasing me is only pissing me off.”
“So feisty; I love it.” His mouth curved upward, making the lines at the corner of his eyes more prominent.
I crossed my arms over my chest. I exhaled slowly, opened my eyes, and glared into his green eyes. I frowned.
“I thought your eyes were a different color.”
“Yeah? What color would that be?”
“Violet. It’s hard to forget a unique eye color like that.” I studied his face. “You’re twins?”
He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest, with one leg over the other. He pursed his lips and held his gaze on me, like he was thinking about what to say next.
“You were the one doing the killings?” I said.
He flinched, then went back to glaring at me.
“That’s why the police couldn’t get anything to stick on Ross—because they were focusing on the wrong person. You killed those men while your brother stayed at home and looked after Ophelia.”
He tipped his head slightly. “Very perceptive, Blaire.” He touched his chest. “My name is Bryan.”
Ross had mentioned him. He and Ophelia had been planning to meet him after they stole my body.
“Bryan, you were free. No one knew about you. Why come back for me at all? Why didn’t you just leave?”
“You took everyone I love away from me, Blaire. The moment you killed them, a part of me died, too. Their light extinguished. How could I leave with only my dim light shining? I’m in darkness now. I have nothing left, and you took it all away from me.” Bryan raised his voice with the last sentence and pointed a finger at me.
“We can go around in circles, but you and your brother killed eight men. You tried several times to kill me. I killed them in self-defense—and I won’t hesitate to do so again.”
He nodded a few times, and I heard him swallow.
“Ophelia was ours. We tried to save her, but it was too late. They did too much damage to her. The same men who took us found her. They did to her what they did to us. They experimented on us, drugged us—all because we were different.” He laughed. “And the best part? These weren’t the bodies we were born with, Blaire. We found the twins in Haiti, when they were teaching their art to students. It was easy, but it cost us.”
“What Ophelia was subjected to was terrible, and I’m sorry it happened. But what you—both of you—did to those eight men was just as bad, if not worse. You removed their organs, replaced them with a voodoo doll, and dumped them like garbage. Those men had families. They provided for their families. Now, their families are
in mourning, too. You took their loved ones away from them.”
Bryan closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “It was wrong, but Ophelia was more important to us. I’m sorry for what we did, but she was ours. The three of us had been together for centuries. We moved from one country to another, one continent to the next. From one body to another. It was always the three of us. Always.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“What are you going to do to me?”
He rose. “I haven’t decided yet.” He touched my arm. “But it will hurt.” Bryan closed his eyes and squeezed his fingers around my arm. His scalding hot fingertips burned deeply into my flesh. I tried to pull my arm out of his grip, but he held my arm down and pressed harder. I struggled for air. The agony was thick and suffocating. His fingertips pushed so deeply into my skin that blood pooled around his nails.
“That hurts, Bryan. Let me go. Please. Please let me go.”
“You killed them, Blaire. I’m sorry, I really am, but I can’t forgive you for taking them away. I am nothing without them. I would rather die than live another day without them. But only if you come with me.” He blinked and tears fell.
The heat coming from him burned along my arm and through my veins like scalding hot water. The veins in my hands started turning black as my blood boiled. When I screamed, so did Bryan. I struggled to breathe, and so did Bryan. We were both hyperventilating as he was burning me from the inside, and removing the oxygen from the air that kept us alive.
My chest rose and fell.
I closed my eyes and thought about my session with Seraphine. I needed to concentrate on the power he was using against me. I had a metaphysical picture of what he was doing to me; how he was burning me alive from the inside.
I could counteract the heat. I could use the white light that was all me, and I could turn Bryan’s sizzling power into my weapon and thrust it back into him.
I screamed again, and I touched Bryan’s arm with my free hand.
I held him tightly and pushed the searing fire back into him. I forced it into him as I screamed. As he screamed. The veins in his hand started to turn black under his pale skin, then the fire travelled up his arm, leaving a map of dark veins all the way up to his neck.