The Living Night (Book 2) (21 page)

Danielle stared at the door. She made no move to
open it.

What would Ruegger say about this whole thing?
At Kharker’s Lodge, he’d said that she must follow her heart, but the heart is
not a simple thing; it’s multi-faceted and one must consciously chose which
facet to pursue.

Taking a deep breath, Danielle unlocked the
door, swung it wide and stepped into the chamber beyond.

Kicking the door shut behind her, she gave her
eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. The room was made of thick stone and the
ceiling stretched away into high shadows, narrowing into a sort of dome. On a
ledge sticking out from the circumference of this dome
crouched
a dozen large stone gargoyles, glaring down into the room with malevolent eyes.

Along the wall lay rumpled sheets where Malcolm
must be spending his nights—if, that is, he could tell them from the days—but
he was not among them. Instead, he stood tall and proud and completely naked in
the center of the chamber, holding his ground against her. She wondered what
she must look like to him, she the creature that had haunted him for so many
years, a creature he had lived with in his youth and ultimately betrayed.

"You stand tall for a coward," she
said.

He stared at her hard and seemed to shudder.

At a flick of her wrist, the large curved knife
she used for these killings shot from the sleeve of her jacket into her waiting
hand—a cross between a dagger and a scythe and a machete, yet none of these. The
blade glittered even in the faint light, as if over the years it had captured
some wispy fragments of the souls it had liberated and now they were making
themselves known.

"All the others died by this blade,"
she told him, watching his reaction.

He visibly fought to maintain composure.

"Where's the music?" he asked.

“‘Night on Bald
Mountain’?
I decided I didn't want to listen to it, not now. The only music I want to hear
is your screams."

He swallowed, took an involuntary step backward.

"Don't," he said. "My wife, my
kids ..."

"Yeah, I talked to Harry. He almost had me
convinced, too, but then I thought to myself, If Malcolm gets away,
then
he
will’ve
had his cake and
eaten it, too. You were evil, and now Harry says you're not—if that's even
possible—but still you live the good life. You were never punished, never
brought to justice."

"I've changed. Please, Danielle..."

"I'm not sure I believe it's possible to
change, Malcolm. Ruegger says it is, but he still struggles with it to this
day, so maybe he's wrong, although in his case I'm willing to cut him a little
slack."

"It
is
possible to change. I'm not
evil! Danielle,
I'm not evil!
"

She stepped forward swiftly and raised the
scythe high over her head. Immediately, Malcolm/Martin dropped to his knees,
his hands knotted together over his face, maybe in prayer, maybe for
protection.

She grabbed him by the hair, wrenched his head
away from his hands and placed the blade at this throat, cutting him just a
little. Blood ran down his neck and stuck in the thin hair on his chest.

"Convince me," she said.

Panting heavily, blinking to keep the sweat out
of his eyes, he nodded as much as the knife at his throat would allow.

"I've ... I've had a lot of time to think
about evil over the years," he began.

"I'm sure you have, you fucking
bastard."

"I've come to the conclusion that there
isn't such a thing, not really."

"Convenient."

"No, no. That's not what I mean. I mean
that really evil's just a way to say cruelty or sadism or self-absorption to
the exclusion of all else ... Okay?"

"Talk!"

"So—well, once I was cruel and I enjoyed
it. Then came a time, when I was on top, a successful player in the drug world,
poised to become a major player ... I lost all taste for it. The cruelty, I
mean.
The barbarism.
Somehow, it struck me, what I'd
been doing, what I'd become, doing junk all the time, whoring and boozing and
killing—I wanted out. Don't know why it happened, it doesn't to most, but it
did to me. You understand?"

"Epiphanies are easy reprieves, Malcolm."

"Well, I ... I saw all the, ah ...
destruction
I was causing and I grew a distaste for it, for myself. I wanted to be different
than who I was. Constructive, I guess. So I got out, successfully, which is
rare. Most usually get busted or killed, or kill themselves one way or another.
I got lucky."

"That's right."

"So you see?"

"I see."

"You won't kill me?"

Hope welled up from the depths of his eyes, and
she enjoyed it for a moment before saying, "I understand you were lucky, that
you made a clean break. That's why I must make up for all the good fortune that
went your way. You never had to account for your sins, not until tonight. I
hope
you
understand."

She placed the knife at his hairline and slipped
the knife under his skin, stripping the flesh from his skull like peeling an
orange. She grabbed the scalp and tore it free. As she tossed the strip of skin
and hair to the floor behind her, Malcolm screamed and leapt backward on his
hands and knees.

Calmly, she pursued him to the wall, where he turned
as if about to fight. He was pinned. She kicked him, hard, in his chest, in the
stomach.
In the face.
She could hear bones crunch
under her heels. She moved in with the knife, cutting him across the breast,
opening his skin in long arcs. He crawled off, screaming, trying to escape her.

She stopped and smiled, listening.

"That's what I like to hear," she
said, and went after him.

He had crawled over to the door and was clawing
at its metal surface with his fingernails.

"Sorry, Malcolm," she said.

He turned as she approached, his face a mask of
horror, and let loose his loudest howl yet. His next words were the only things
that had any chance at saving him, and he knew it.

"I'm sorry!" he shouted, tears
coursing down his eyes. "I'm so fucking
SORRY
! Danielle,
PLEASE!
Don't kill me! I’m SOOOORRRRY!!!
"

His voice cracked. His words became inaudible as
he placed his hands over his face and supported his arms with his knees. He was
just sitting there by the door, curled up and miserable, waiting for her
vengeance, bleeding all over, his skull
gleaming
a
ribbon of blood where she had peeled him. Of course, it was far from over. She
might take hours or days with him, soaking up his pain. She could feel the
knife in her hand and the grin on her face.

This was going to be
beautiful
.

She moved closer.

He didn’t pull away.

This was going to be …

He just sat there, shaking, weeping.

"Forgive me!" he shouted from behind
his hands. Then, less distinctly, "Don't make my wife and kids suffer for
what I did. Please, please don't do that to them ... Forgive me, forgive me ...
forgive me …"

"You bastard," she spat, and took
another step.

"...
forgive
me ...”

She brought her knife across his exposed legs,
slicing open his shins. He howled with pain and fell over on the stone floor,
crying and wailing, but not trying to escape.

She towered over him, the knife dripping his
blood onto the floor. His muffled sobs, her jagged steaming breaths and the
faint splashing of blood were the only sounds in the room.

"Do you like being the victim?" she
asked.

" ...
please ... please ... no
..."

She studied him, then the knife. She frowned.

She let the knife slip from her fingers and
clatter to the floor. He looked out from behind his hands, saw the knife on the
floor and stared up at her hopefully.

"It took all the others," she said of
the knife. "I didn't drain them. For you, I'll make an exception. I want
to feel you die on my teeth. I want to taste you as you go."

He only sobbed, wrapped his arms tighter about
himself.

She knelt beside him, grabbed him by a tuft of
graying hair and brought his sweaty face up to hers. He’d aged, she thought,
almost to the point were she couldn't recognize him. His eyes stared into her
eyes, remembering her ... really remembering her for the first time.

"Danielle ..." he said.

"Malcolm."

She tilted his head, exposing his neck, and sank
her fangs into his warm salty skin. Blood spurted into her mouth, as hot and
spicy as it always was, and she drank it in, lovingly. He convulsed and beat at
her, but she wouldn't be denied. She held him to her breast tightly, trying to still
him, and finally his limbs seemed to loose their strength. She could feel him
going, almost on the brink of death.

"Danielle ..."

She tore herself away and brought her face to
look at him again. As she did so, she could feel his blood trickling down her
mouth and knew that he was watching it.
How does it feel
, she thought,
to
see your own life plastered across the face of someone else, to know that the
sum of your fears has materialized?

"Danielle," he said. "Please ... don't
... do ... this ..."

"It's almost finished," she told him
softly. "I could've taken much longer. Hours ... days ... but I've made it
short for you."

"...
no
..."

"Yes."

"... no ... please ... forgive me ..."

She felt the wall of ice within her give just a
little. His face wasn't as she remembered. It wasn't cruel. It was mature,
almost kind. And it
was
the face of a man who had suffered, Harry had
been right.

"Jesus," she said, and turned her gaze
away.

"Danielle," he said, his voice weak
now, his whole torso being suspended by only his hair, what little blood he had
left slowly leaking out of his cooling body.

She felt a tear fall from the corner of an eye
and turned back to stare at this naked, dying man before her, butchered by her
own hand.

"You deserved it," she whispered.

His watery eyes closed.

"Yes," he answered. "Now, please ...
forgive me..."

She released her grip on his hair. He crumpled
to the floor with a muffled sound of agony.

"You fucking bastard," she said.

He just lay there at her knees, barely stirring.

She saw that his blood had stained her clothes
all over. She could feel the wetness against her skin. Slowly, very slowly, she
began to cry. Doubling over, she placed her hands over her eyes and wept.

"... I'm sorry," he was saying.
"I'm so ... so ...
sorry
.... Please, Danielle ...
forgive
me..."

She swallowed her tears, but still her throat
was raw. For a long time, she remained silent. She let herself cry, let all the
hurt and anger of the years come out and roll down her cheeks. It was like
nothing she'd ever known, a deep
unburdening
,
a
cleansing unlike any she'd ever experienced after a killing. Deep within her,
something changed, became calm, and she did forgive this man for what he'd
done, or what a different version of him had done to her many years ago.

Fucking bastard
, she thought.
Fucking
fucking
bastard.
I got to him too
late ...

After some time, she clasped her hands and
stared up at the strange domed ceiling and the gargoyles there, or past the
ceiling to what (if anything) waited above.

"God," she whispered. "If you're
there, you're a bastard, too—but please give me strength anyway."

As she said it, one of the gargoyles stirred.

Danielle nearly shot out of her skin. The
gargoyle leapt from its perch and landed on the stone floor a few feet away.

Like Malcolm, it stood tall and naked, but
unlike Malcolm, it was an extremely large being with black skin, a tangled
beard and carefully-patterned dreadlocks.

"Good evening, Danielle,"
said Jagoda. "I'm not a sign from your god, but I'm a lot more fun."

*
    
*
    
*

Danielle
froze.

This was too much. Just seconds ago, she’d
laid
to rest the biggest demon of her life. Emotions pounded
through her too fast to name.

Jagoda had no right to be here! This was perhaps
the most private moment of her life. Now, after dealing with Malcolm, she was
free from the death-squad, free to await Ruegger’s return. Free either to continue
their quest or let it go.
But now …