Behind The Hands That Kill

THIRTEEN

It can’t be true…

It can’t.

I feel like I’ve woken from some strange dream, like one of those dreams that seem normal in the beginning, but halfway through, things begin to defy all sense of sanity and logic. Now I’m sitting here on this chair, awake, feeling out of touch and out of time, wondering what the hell just happened, as an uncomfortable feeling sweeps over me, and I never want to dream that dream again.

Was I right all along? Was I right to be afraid of Victor, to wonder if he could ever kill me if the situation were dire enough? Had Niklas been right in saying, ‘How long will he allow you to compromise him? Victor is experiencing his one moment of entitled weakness right now, just like I did with Claire. Just like Gustavsson did with Seraphina. And look at what love did to Flynn, right in front of your eyes. It’s my brother’s turn now, like a rite of passage, but how long will it last?’ Had Nora been right? ‘Anyone can be in love, Izabel, and I can tell by the look in that man’s eyes that he is in love with you. But a man like Victor Faust can’t stay in love forever. Like Fredrik’s type can’t live without love, Victor’s type can’t live with it. And the more that it gets in the way of his duties, and the more human you make him become, the closer you push him to his breaking point. He’s just like me. And one way or another, he’ll instinctively do whatever it takes to restore the balance to the only life he’s ever known.’

I feel like now I have my answers.

And I know…(a sob rattles inside my chest)…I know that not only will I die today, but also by whose hands.

Raising my head again, I look only at Victor; the tears streaming down my face are itching, and I wish I could move my hand to wipe them away.

“I still love you, Victor,” I tell him, not caring that Apollo has a knife against my throat; he doesn’t cover my mouth with his hand this time. “No matter what you’ve done, or what you will do, I’ll always love you.” The words are as true as they ever were, but this time they taste strange and final in my mouth.

But I need Victor to understand that I understand him. I need Victor to know that I’m more like him than he realizes, and that I’ve almost always been…

“Sarai, baby,” my mother whispered to me; her body odor, mixed with strong perfume and cigarettes, choked me as she laid next to me on the soiled bed. “You forgive me, don’t you? I never meant for any of this to happen. I just…wasn’t thinking straight.” I saw the whites of her eyes briefly in the darkness as the heroin began to swim through her bloodstream. She smiled euphorically as if she’d touched the Face of God. I set the needle down on the tray at the foot of the bed.

“It’s OK, Mom,” I whispered back, and loosened the tourniquet from her wiry arm. “I forgive you…”

Victor looks at me, but he doesn’t respond. Not verbally, anyway. His eyes tell a different story. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it is.

Artemis’s laughter rings in my ears.

“After all this,” she says to me from inside the cell, “you still have love for this…barbarian?”

“Yes,” I answer without hesitation.

She shakes her head. “Such a dumb, love-struck girl.”

“You loved him,” I counter. “You knew he killed Marina, and you knew, in a roundabout way, why, yet you still loved him.” I round my chin, defying the cold blade pressed to my throat. “And you still love him now. He slit your throat and left you for dead, and he admitted that he still would’ve killed you if you were carrying his baby, yet you’re still in love with him—dumb and love-struck doesn’t even begin to explain you.”

Artemis scowls, and Apollo wrenches my head backward vigorously in reaction to it.

She steps away from Victor and approaches the cage exit; the guards shuffle backward carefully to make way for her. I watch Victor in my peripheral vision, and see him start to follow, but he stops when Apollo’s hand makes a threatening movement against me.

Artemis exits the cage without incident, and stands in the opened doorway. She motions a hand toward us. “Bring her now,” she orders, and I’m violently extracted from the chair and brought to my feet; all the way to the cell, Apollo’s knife blade is kissing my jugular. Artemis moves out of the way of the door, and then I’m kissing the stone floor when Apollo shoves me through the opening.

Victor’s hands are behind me before I can even raise my head, and he’s lifting me into his arms. “I am so sorry, love,” he says, and presses his lips to the top of my head; his arms encircle me.

“I remember when he used to call me that,” Artemis says, whimsically. She closes the cage, twists the key in the lock afterward, and then pockets it.

She walks around in front of us, then she reaches out her hand to her brother. Already knowing what she wants, Apollo places the knife he had been holding to my throat, into her palm, her long, slender fingers collapsing around it. Stepping up closer, she leans over and slips the knife through the bars, setting it on the floor inside the cell.

“If it looks familiar,” she says to Victor, “that’s because it is.”

Straightening her back, she turns and walks away, taking her twin brother with her.

“I’ll give you something that we never had,” Artemis says, stops, and turns to see us once more. “A moment alone together before you kill her.”

My heart stops.

“I will not kill her,” Victor says calmly…uncertainly?

The blood in my veins turns to ice; his arms tighten around me.

Looking back, Artemis smiles and says with eerie confidence, “Yes you will. I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life.”

She and Apollo exit the room, leaving us with the armed guards.

Trying to ignore the feeling in my gut, I turn to Victor quickly, my wrists still bound behind my back. “We have to get out of here,” I say, frantic. “Cut me loose.” I turn around, putting my back to him, and my wrists into his view. “Hurry, Victor!” I don’t care that the guards are watching. I don’t give two fucks that they’ll surely stop us when we manage to use the knife to pick the lock of the cell door. I don’t care! We have to do something—

“No.” Victor’s voice stuns me, the stillness of it, the irrevocable finality of the word.

I turn again to face him, my eyes wide, my mouth parted.

“W-What do you mean?” I ask. But I already know; still I don’t want to believe it.

“I mean no, Izabel.” He looks right at me, and the tranquil, yet intense look in his gaze frightens me. “This time it is over. There is no getting out of this one—it is over.”

I start to throw my hands up in the air until I realize that I can’t, and that pisses me off even more.

“So you’re just giving up?” I can’t even believe I’m saying this. “You’re just going to accept this and give up? What the hell is wrong with you?” I push myself into his space, glaring at him.

He remains as calm as ever. And I want to slap him for it.

“Victor—”

“I did not finish telling you the truth about Kessler,” Victor interrupts. “You need to know the truth.”

I suck in sharply, unable to speak, terrified about what he’s going to admit to. I hadn’t forgotten any of this: about Italy, or Nora, or whatever else Victor had wanted to say—I just wanted to forget. Already I feel sick to my stomach, and my heart is withering like a dying flower.

Anything but that, Victor…tell me anything but what I think you’re going to.

“I knew you would want Kessler alive,” I say. “I wanted her alive even more than you did, but I could not let you know that.”

Izabel’s chin rears back; a look of confusion crawls over her features—perhaps she thought I was going to say something else; I cannot tell if she is relieved by my confession, or not. But then another look begins to take over, and this one I am quite familiar with: the sting of realization.

Her eyes narrow; she glares at me in a sidelong manner.

“You manipulated me,” she accuses.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t give a shit about what Nora did: kidnapping Dina; turning Niklas against you; making me relive the nightmare of my confession when I was alone—or so I thought—in that room with her. You didn’t care about any of that!”

“That is not true,” I speak out. “At first I wanted her dead as much as everyone else—I was going to kill her myself. And later, I did care about what she did to you.”

“But not enough to kill her for it!” She struggles with her hands behind her, her shoulders end up making awkward motions for her as her voice blazes at me from just a foot away. “You knew I’d want her to stay so she could train me! But you wanted me to be the one to make the decision because if you did it, after everything she’d done, then I’d know the truth—I’d know you wanted her!”

“No, Izabel!” I shout back. I move toward her, and she stands her ground. “It is not what you think,” I continue, lowering my tone. “There is not, and has never been, any kind of sexual attraction to that woman. I simply wanted to study her, to know her ways, to learn how she…”

“How she what, Victor?” She grits her teeth. “How she what?”

I start to speak, to answer her question, but she stops me, and surprises me with the answer all on her own.

“You wanted to know how she does it,” she says with accusation and ire. “How she can do what she does without batting an eye, how she can be so heartless and emotionless, how she can be so immune to love—you wanted to be just like her! You wanted me to go off with some kid I never knew and play fucking house, so you could be just like Nora!” She stops long enough to take a breath. “You let me think I was making an important decision in your Order; you let me believe that you believed in me enough to trust my judgment”—she clamps her jaw shut, presumably to stifle an indignant scream—“but the truth was you had already made the decision for me; you had no intention of killing her, whether I wanted her dead or not!” She turns her back to me; her shoulders rise and fall heavily with heavy, deep breaths. “You manipulated me,” she repeats, at last.

“I am sorry,” I speak softly from behind.

Silence fills the room again.

“So am I,” she finally responds, and it catches me off-guard.

Izabel turns around to face me, and while I am wondering what she could possibly be sorry for, she begins to tell me.

“In my heart,” she says, “I sided with Niklas when you confessed to Nora what you did to Claire.”

“But—”

She shakes her head sharply, in substitution of putting up her hand. “I’m not done,” she says, and goes on. “And while we were in Italy, I was given the opportunity to know the real Niklas, to understand him, and to see through the rough exterior. And do you want to know what I saw?”

I nod subtly, and with reluctance.

She swallows, and glances briefly at the floor; when she raises her eyes again she is not looking at me anymore.

“I saw someone who, although he has done so much harm, still deserved forgiveness; someone who, in a way, is still innocent in all of this; someone who has so much love and compassion in his heart.” Her eyes find mine again and then she says, “I saw a man who…can still be saved.”

“And you are sorry for this?” I ask, confused.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I feel guilty,” she answers. “I feel guilty because…when I look at you…I don’t see the same.”

I turn my back to her so she does not see the pain in my face.