Chapter 17
“It’s just people who don’t matter,” Lucian said soothingly.
They were both wearing white lab coats, Hemsworth with a scalpel and Lucian with a clipboard.
And in front of them on the gleaming table. . .I couldn’t even look at the poor creature.
“It’s just a few useless whores now and again. A beautiful man who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. No one important. He’s under control. I make sure I keep him under control. It won’t hurt your career, son. I promise.”
“You are so weak and spineless!” I shrieked with rage. “Your brother is a fucking serial killer and you don’t give a shit! You’re enabling him!”
“He’s a psychopath, too,” Hemsworth said, his eyes gleaming as he watched Gabriel. “It runs in the family. He doesn’t give a shit. In this family, we take what we want.”
“Were you the one Lark saw on Halloween?” Gabriel asked.
Hemsworth directed a little bitter glance at me. “Yes.”
Of course he was. I recognized the eyes now.
Lucian stepped in between us as he always did. “He was a little angry about that, but he’s over it now. Lark was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He set a clipboard down on the gleaming silver table and I couldn’t help looking at it.
There was something about Lucian’s careful bookkeeping, the way he was merely keeping a record of all Hemsworth’s kills, that nauseated me the most.
My stomach heaved as I threw up again, my nose full of the scent of blood and torn flesh and utter horror.
This was my life’s work, and suddenly it seemed so useless now.
All my studies and I had never been able to stop one psychopath.
“So you see,” Lucian went on, “There is no need to worry about this, Gabriel. Your father has it taken care of, as usual.”
“Or, you could join us,” Hemsworth said, his eyes looking bright and frenetic. “My boy, think of the power. It’s an incredible rush, to feel their lifeforce between your fingertips.”
Gabriel’s face was blank, but I felt panic pulse through my temples and my empty stomach twisted painfully again.
What if it sounded good to him?
“You could join me, Gabriel,” his uncle continued, his voice low and seductive, laced with wickedness.
“Together we’d be unstoppable. You with your untouchable celebrity status.
You could get an endless supply of useless whores for us to kill.
They are drawn to you like moths to a flame.
Together the country could run scarlet with blood and we’d be like gods. ”
I held my breath.
There was no expression on my husband’s face.
Unearthly, otherworldly beauty, with that jet-black hair that licked the strong tendons of his throat, the cheekbones and jawline that could cut glass.
“I’m not doing any of that shit,” Gabriel said. “I’m about to be a father. I’m a goddamn family man and you think I’m going to fucking frolic all over the countryside trolling for nasty pussy when I have my wife right here?”
He leaned back against the counter, the outline of that stupid big dick visible against his gray sweatpants.
They both looked startled, and Hemsworth licked his lips.
The room was completely silent except for the distant drip of blood somewhere.
This was the rot I had smelled. This was the rot that had spread, until Ashgrove Manor was poisoned with it.
The scalpel twisted in Hemsworth’s hands.
If only he’d drop it.
There was another lying on the table, within close range of his fingers.
“All right,” Lucian said. “Then there’s nothing for you here. There’s no need to worry about him. Just let him do it. He’s not doing it to anyone important.”
“You’re disgusting!” I cried. “These are real people we’re talking about here. They don’t deserve this treatment.”
Lucian’s mouth twitched like the fucking coward he was, but he still kept his eyes focused on Gabriel.
Gabriel who wasn’t moving, Gabriel who was still leaning against the counter next to the desiccated brains and the stomach-churning totems of his uncle’s deadly work.
“I know you don’t care,” Hemsworth said. “I can sense it in you. I know another psychopath when I see one. Everyone else is just a pawn to us. You don’t really care about these corpses.”
Gabriel shrugged. “You’re right. I don’t.”
He leaned back against the counter, the tip of his cigarette a burning dot in the darkness.
Lucian’s shoulders sagged in relief, and I felt my heart sink.
Even though I knew he was a psychopath, even though I knew he didn’t care about anyone.
“But,” Gabriel said, and I saw the brothers pause, darting little looks at each other.
“But what? I thought we all agreed you didn’t care about their lives.”
“I don’t.”
Gabriel unpeeled himself from the counter, taking a deep drag from his cigarette and then kicking at the door so he could blow the smoke ring out into the hallway.
“But my wife will give me something I want if I stop the Ashgrove Village serial killer. I don’t give a fuck about anyone but her. So I’m going to have to kill you to stop it.”
“The—fuck? What’s she going to give you?”
“She’s going to love me.”
“Love you? What the fuck do you need that for?”
Hemsworth looked incredulous, the scalpel twitching in his hands.
“I want it,” Gabriel said.
“You’re really going to blow up our lives because you want some—teacher’s love?”
“Yeah, because I’m a psychopath, right? I don’t give a fuck about either of you.”
He pushed off the table and began to walk toward Hemsworth.
“Son—” Lucian began, but Gabriel ignored him.
Hemsworth thrust out, fast and deadly, aiming a blow at Gabriel’s midsection, to slice through his guts just like he’d sliced through all his other victims, watching with bright eyes as their life spilled out.
But Gabriel kicked out at the table, knocking Hemsworth off balance, then gripping his wrist.
I thought it would take longer.
I thought Gabriel would say something to him, maybe give him one chance to stop.
But he didn’t.
My husband dodged the blow and wrenched the scalpel from his uncle’s hand.
Then stabbed him in the gut, slicing through his organs in one violent movement.
The silence was so complete my ears were ringing, then the only sound was the ragged gasping of Hemsworth’s death rattle as he fell to the ground.
Gabriel watched him go as I clutched the shiny table in shock.
“You were wrong, dumbass,” he said critically. “I watched your life flow away and that wasn’t a rush at all. In fact, it was boring as fuck.”
He stepped over his uncle’s body and walked over to his father.
“You gave the order to kill Lark, didn’t you?” Gabriel asked almost conversationally.
Lucian blinked, backing away from his son. “No. No. Of course not.”
“You’re a shitty liar. I don’t think Branby would take orders from anyone else.”
He gripped Lucian around the throat and slammed him against the stone walls.
“She’ll make you weak,” Lucian gasped out desperately. “I did it to help you.”
Gabriel didn’t make a sound, just squeezed until there was a loud crack.
And then there was just the two of us.
My veins froze like ice as he turned to me, his face expressionless, blood flecked all over the hauntingly, demonically beautiful planes of his dark angel’s face.
I should have run. But I couldn’t.
Lucian and Hemsworth were dead.
The killings were going to stop.
“There. I did what you wanted, brat. Now you have to love me. And you have to mean it.”
A hysterical giggle burst out of me.
“What are you going to do with them?”
“You figure it out. This was your hobby. I’m bored of it now.”
“You weren’t tempted by what they said?” I asked as he drew me out the door.
He made a face. “To go hunt down a bunch of randoms at night? Not interesting. I’d rather hunt you down.
Because I know there’s always going to be this little flicker of defiance in you, Lark.
There’s always going to be a little wonder in your mind.
I wonder if I could escape him this time.
And it will give me great pleasure to prove you wrong every single time. ”
“Maybe sometime I will escape.”
He snorted, gripping my chin hard with one hard.
“Try me then.”
A smile spread across that blood-flecked face.
“Give me what I won.”
“I love you,” I said promptly.
“I love you,” he replied, kissing me with that bloody hand spanned across my throat, smearing evidence of his psychopathy all over my chest, and I felt my heart begin to pound.
Maybe it wasn’t the empathy I had dreamed I could teach psychopaths. But it was something.
“How are we going to explain this?” I demanded.
“Let’s burn this whole damn thing down,” he shrugged. “It fucking reeks in here.”
“You—don’t care?” I asked. “This manor has been in your family for generations.”
Gabriel made a rude noise.
“You and the baby are my family. I don’t give a fuck. Let’s get the gasoline, baby girl. Then we’ll pick out the crib.”