Arsenic for the Soul (25 page)

The same pale figure that lurked
outside her bedroom window stood in the wall crevice, silently
plodding behind them.

Camilla screamed.

Vivian stood rooted to the spot,
staring at the ghastly face of Milo. He looked inhuman as he
shuffled toward her like a lobotomized patient. Hefting her gun,
Vivian tried to pull the trigger but the blood coagulated in her
veins.

A dim glow erupted in the far corners
of the room, throwing light on a pair of emaciated feet. The rest
of the body stepped out of the shadows, revealing a lanky figure
with an eviscerated face. Its ghoulishly black eyes and slashed
mouth greeted Vivian with glee. The sanitarium stalker uncurled her
fingers, ready to lay waste to the rest of Vivian.

She refused to label that thing as a
woman. Her face and body were too abnormal to associate with a
female, even though traces of her humanity lingered.

Vivian turned her gun on
the new target while all thoughts of Milo fled her mind. The
stalker advanced at an alarming rate. Vivian squeezed off two
bullets before a claw seized a handful of her stomach and lifted
her into the air. She was brought down against the rotting
floorboards in a wave of pain. She fired frantically at the woman
until she emptied every cartridge onto the floor. Her spine felt
like it would splinter from the blows when she heard and more
importantly
felt
a
popping sensation. The boards collapsed underneath her.

Camilla’s shrieks echoed above as
Vivian tumbled through the floors. Something struck her head and
the lights around her were snuffed out in an instant.

When Vivian awoke, she was floating.
She found herself in a flooded, bathing chamber with brown tiles
and drains. Chains stretched across the walls and dangled just
below the showerheads.

“
Ca… Camilla?” The water
growled like a heart palpating under her feet.

As soon as she stood up, the room
seemed to sway in the opposite direction. Her skin itched like it
wanted to crawl off her bones. Her motions felt choppy as she
sloshed through the water. This primal fear felt like an acid trip
she might have experienced before—except this time, the acid trip
wouldn’t end. This would stretch on for eternity. She needed to
escape. Her body didn’t feel right—it felt alien to her.

Vivian was mentally coming
undone.

Her knees almost gave out. She thought
of Milo’s treachery. Her vision reeled around the bathing room and
its plethora of bloodstained manacles.

I’m in hell.

Something latched onto her thigh and
dragged her under. She screamed as rank water swarmed into her
throat. When the filth lifted from her eyes, the stalker’s head
submerged in front of hers. The cleft in her face opened to a nest
of teeth that seemed preternaturally large for a human.

Vivian’s lungs locked up no matter how
she tried to scream. She landed a solid blow on her stalker’s eye
as they scuffled. Breaking the surface to gulp down air, she
submerged again.

The air blasted from her lungs when
she felt something scrape against her belly like teeth. The thought
of that thing’s jaws outstretched below amplified her
paranoia.

She almost slammed head-first into a
grate barring her way. Vivian emerged from the water into the
linoleum prison. Noises akin to muffled voices bounced off the
tiles.

The sound unnerved her so much that
she barreled ahead through the dangling chains—directly into the
woman’s embrace.

A fist slammed into Vivian’s chest,
knocking the breath out of her. She doubled over as another punch
caught her in the gut. Vivian lifted her arms in defense and they
were batted aside.

Knuckles ground against Vivian’s
sternum, razing the skin to flesh. The pain was dulled but within
seconds it blistered into nerve ends on fire.

Nothing less than survival screamed
through Vivian’s brain.

With the stalker all but fixed to her
body, she tried to reach for the knife in her pocket. She always
expected to wield it against a violent thug or maybe a groping
drunk in the street—but not this. Her breath bled out as another
punch slammed into her breastbone. At this rate, she was trying to
punch her way into Vivian’s rib cage like a rotten piece of
fruit.

Vivian closed her eyes and
swooned. She was dying. That must have been the last dregs of life
ebbing from her. She hoped God would be merciful to her in the next
life.
Take me somewhere without
pain.

She grunted as knuckles imprinted her
chest, sending flecks of her blood into the water. Her fingers
jerked as they wrestled with the polished handle of the
pocketknife.

No. Milo can’t have me
like this. You can break every bone in my body but I’ll keep
hunting you down.

With a howl of rage, Vivian yanked the
knife from her pocket. Her fingers slipped on the blade as she
rammed it into her assailant’s neck. That was it—all of her
strength poured into one explosive strike.

Vivian choked for breath as the
stalker leaned over her. If she was going to die in this ugly
shower room, the moment was upon her. There was nothing Vivian
could do to defend herself now.

With weary eyes, she studied the
monstrosity with four inches of steel protruding from her neck. The
deformed woman reached for her.

Vivian closed her eyes.

“
Fuck you,” she hissed with
a smile on her face. Water violently covered her head. When she
could see again, she was alone. The stalker was floating lifelessly
with the blade in her neck. Vivian sighed and wiped the blood from
her lips. There was a gaping hole in her shirt centered by a
bruise. The burning sensation required medical attention, but she
couldn’t leave without Camilla.

“
That was satisfying,”
someone crooned. She froze and scanned the far corners of the
bathroom.

“
Milo?”

The voice seemed to carry through the
pipes, transforming his eloquent sonnet into something hollow and
foreboding.

“
I always pined for another
who understood the torment pulsing through my soul. You seemed like
the ideal girl who could share that burden with me. Your sins weigh
heavy on you, I know. It just took a matter of nudging to bring it
back out.”

Vivian rose from her knees.

“
What the hell are you
talking about?”

“
I thought of you as a
social experiment,” Milo’s voice rang out from above. “I was
intrigued when you trusted me with your none-too-wholesome past. I
sincerely wondered if I could push you back to the brink of ruin.
In a way, I wondered if I could make you similar to
me
.”

Vivian laughed, but it did little to
blunt the rage swelling inside her.

“
How did you do it? How did
you spread tuberculosis through the hospital?”

“
As you must have learned
by now, I was sent to a tuberculosis sanitarium at a young age. It
shouldn’t be a mystery why I despise society for allowing those
slave institutions to flourish. I wanted to return the favor one
day. It wasn’t very difficult, given my position at the hospital. I
transmitted tuberculosis through blood transfusions, but you
figured that out, didn’t you? You were catching on to me the more
time you spent obsessing over the outbreak. It wasn’t enough to
just fake your blood results.”

“
Fake my
results?
”

“
You don’t really have HIV,
Vivian. It’s easy for me to switch results when I have access to
the blood lab. I spread rumors about your diagnosis until word
reached Crenshaw and he was forced to take action. You were on my
trail. I had to do something to force you out of the
hospital.”

Vivian couldn’t form words. She felt
elated at this revelation, but it hardly mattered tonight. HIV
wouldn’t claim her life but Milo surely would.

“
Your lies destroyed
everything I worked so hard to achieve!” she yelled. “I can’t go
back to the nursing program because of you!”

“
I could have killed you
the night you spent with me,” Milo taunted. “How many times have I
asked myself why you left my home with your head still attached?
You truly have spun your way into my heart. I feel for you, Vivian,
as much as I try to deny it. However, those sentiments are
outweighed by the trouble you’ve caused me in recent days. You’ve
come in between me and Camilla too many times.”

“
I’ll never let you hurt
her again. This is as far as your twisted game goes.”

“
I can hear in your voice
that I’ve taught you how to hate.”

Vivian scooped up the gun she dropped
earlier. All she needed was one last bullet to end this.

“
You’ve taught me much more
than that. If you thought I was a thorn in your side before, you
haven’t the slightest idea what waits for you.”

Vivian gripped a chain dangling from
the ceiling. Despite the throbbing in her chest, she began to climb
out of the abyss.

* * *

Camilla remembered darkness overtaking
her. Nightmarish images of her brother floated through her brain.
Winter gasped through the curtains of a nearby window, jolting her
from sleep. She opened her eyes to a bedchamber that appeared
pallid like a shed skin. It harkened to the existence of a tenant
who would never return.

“
This was our mother’s
room.”

Milo “Ezran” Vesely stood behind the
curtains. He was little more than an ethereal figure before the
window.

Camilla’s eyes fell to his hand. He
grasped a flail ending in three wickedly curved tails.

Standing in his gaze was like standing
before a roaring furnace. Camilla could almost feel his hypnotic
pull over her, entrancing and potent. Though she was free to run,
she didn’t dare.

“
What are you?”

Milo was calm but she sensed the
volatility simmering inside him. He was so close to achieving his
end goal and that prospect excited him.

“
You tried to atone for our
family sins by shutting down the asylums. I try to atone by ending
our existence. I suppose we have our own methods for dealing with
the treacherous past.”

Milo rolled the flail’s barbs between
his fingers.

“
I owe everything to
Alyssa, the homeless woman who was brought to the University
Hospital during Vivian’s first day at clinicals. I collected a
sample of her blood when I learned she was infected with skin
tuberculosis, which was the cause of death. I kept a reservoir of
her blood to use for contamination.” He eyed Camilla oddly. “How
strange that your charitable efforts brought her to me.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Alyssa was housed in the
Magdalene Midnight Mission for her severe condition. She lived
under the care of nuns with plenty of food and rest. When the
asylum was condemned, the streets became her home. At least she was
fed at the laundry. She still had a bed to sleep on when it rained
or snowed.”

Camilla shivered as the chill of
winter hissed through the rafts.

The flail slithered like a serpent
over the tiles as Milo approached.

“
You see, had you not
condemned the Magdalene asylums, I never would have found Alyssa. I
never would have harvested samples of her blood and used them in
transfusions. I never would have found
you
.”

Camilla’s stomach sank in despair. How
could her act of kindness result in something so heinous? As he
drew closer, she struggled against the invisible bonds he put in
place. His presence alone forbid her from running. Her only thought
now was finding and saving Vivian from this monster.

“
I was working at the
hospital as a matter of convenience to punish society one day,” he
continued. “I never would have suspected you would deliver Alyssa
to me. I never anticipated this
weapon
falling into my hands. Knowing
your weak heart, I knew I could use it to reach you.”

“
How?”

“
To lure out you out of
hiding. Your guilt is a powerful tool, Camilla. I saw how it
compelled you to shut down asylums that you had no part of. You had
no hand in their creation or the abuses perpetrated by nuns, but
you campaigned for their abolition. How many articles must you have
written about the misconduct there?

“
One might suspect you were
trying to atone for some grievous sin. Of course, it was much
simpler than that. I learned I could use that guilt to my
advantage. I knew you wouldn’t hide from me while innocents are
dying in the hospital. Not when you feel like their deaths rest
squarely on your shoulders. Not when you can stop me from
inflicting more suffering.”

“
How many chances have you
had to kill me?”

“
Too many. I could have
killed you at the Black Atrium, but I wanted you to know the truth
first. You needed to know about the brother you never remembered.
The one who was cast aside. After my first attempt to kill you in
Kunatrice Forest, I knew I had to bide my time for the perfect
moment. Over time, it became apparent that I needed to get rid of
Vivian. My efforts to dismiss her from the hospital didn’t throw
her off my trail, but now everything is as it should
be.”