34. Eden
THIRTY-FOUR
EDEN
The massive mansion before me is surrounded by a stone wall and wrought iron gate, not unlike the derelict one of St. Ignatius. It’s dusk, and heavy storm clouds rumble in the distance, like fluffy, gray cotton balls filled with static and rain. The car rolls to a stop, and though the silence within the cab is unnerving, I’d rather stare at my impending doom than glance at Daniel.
He drove me, wanting to ensure no funny business would occur between now and the time I’m raped for twenty thousand dollars. When we’d left the circus, Teddy’s perceptive eyes had followed me, Vic yammering at him to pay attention as he taught him how to swallow fire. Ever since our little spat in literature yesterday, I haven’t talked to him, too keyed up and nervous for whatever he’s planning.
I know he’s a killer, that much is obvious. It should frighten me, but it doesn’t, because he’s had every opportunity to end me and he’s never come close. I speak with the dead, and he creates them. We’re twistedly perfect for one another, but if he wants a future with me, he needs to keep himself in check and leave this entire situation alone. There’s too much at stake for the two of us, and I won’t have him risking his life for me.
“Ride the bus home when you’re done. I have work to do,” Daniel snaps. Jumping at the sound of his voice, I turn and glance at him, fingers gracing the handle of his car door. A nice car, to be sure. A brand new BMW that I have a feeling this transaction helped pay for.
Sick fuck.
Popping the door handle, I don’t give him a backwards glance as I exit and slam the door a lot harder than necessary, treading up the driveway to the little box with the keypad near the gate. Shakily, my finger presses the call button as Daniel speeds away. Releasing a deep breath, I glare through the bars of the gate and to the dozens of windows beyond that spill golden light onto the immaculate front lawn. There’s even a damn fountain right in the center of the driveway, and I have to wonder…
If this scumbag can afford a home like the one I’m standing in front of, he couldn’t fork over more money to sleep with me?
The speaker box crackles, and I jump at the intrusive noise, heart pounding as the gates slowly begin to open with a heavy groan.
“You may enter,” says an androgynous voice, and I stare at the box for a moment, summoning my courage and giving my eyes one final lap around the foreboding mansion.
Teddy ? My heart whispers longingly, that wistful part of me praying he does come to the rescue, my knight in shining armor. I’ve thrown up everything in my stomach today, both dreading this moment and fearing that he will come and do something stupid and get himself killed for it.
There’s no way he can leave the circus though, right? There’s too many people keeping an eye on him, and they’d know of his absence?
My feet propel me forward, my body numb and my mind buzzing as it has been all day. Even Cash’s jokes during gym couldn’t make me smile, and Teddy knew better than to try.
Swallowing down my fear, I raise my chin and calm my soul. If this is what I have to do to keep Teddy and my father safe, then so be it. I’d do much worse if the need ever arose. It’s just…scary, that’s all. Just something new, and a little intimidating, but I can do it.
I can do anything for those I love.
“Soon as I laid eyes on you,” the man says sloppily around a mouthful of steak and potatoes. My plate sits untouched, a luxury I hadn’t been expecting. He reaches for his glass of wine, some of it sloshing over the sides of the crystalline glass, dribbling down in crimson rivulets and staining the starched white tablecloth below. “I knew. I knew I had to have you.”
His home is just as spectacular on the inside as it is on the outside, and I can’t keep my eyes from wandering over all the gaudy decor. His dining room is huge, hues of blood red and crimson layered against heavy curtains and an ostentatious fireplace. My eyes sweep back to his, a steady tremble thrumming through my chest. He’s horrible, at least in his mid-sixties, with long, yellowed teeth and a turkey neck. His tuft of white hair sticks up against a balding head filled with dander, and his watery brown eyes keep dipping to my chest. I don’t have big boobs, so I’m not sure what the fuck he finds so interesting about them.
A sinking feeling hits my gut. I’m barely legal, and childish still in my appearance. This must be his way of circumnavigating a child molestation charge. Find someone who looks the part, and take from them like the greedy, sick bastard he is.
The butler in the corner remains stoic and still, but there’s a firm set to his jaw and a rather annoyed glint in his eye. He’s easy to ignore, as insignificant as the wallpaper. What I can’t ignore, however, is the old woman dressed in black that stands behind the man who paid for me, her eye sockets empty, her hair nothing more than wispy tendrils, her skin wrinkled and worn and decomposing.
She doesn’t frighten me, because her wrath isn’t meant for me. She’s rather intent on the man, and I think she’s been haunting him for a while. Perhaps a deceased wife, or even his mother, judging by the dress. Even with the blazing fire in the hearth, there’s a constant undercurrent chill in the room. She wavers in and out of my view, leering over his shoulder like a vulture waiting its turn for a bite of rotten flesh.
I have to fight my smile, because as disgusted and terrified as I am to be in the presence of him, I’m just as comforted, knowing the dead feel the same.
Something thumps against the floor above us, rattling the chandelier and splintering the thick silence like an ax sinking into wood. Everyone’s eyes jump to the ceiling, and the man grunts, stabbing at more red potatoes and shoveling them down his gullet.
Behind him, the woman’s head cocks to the side at an unnatural angle, and a sick smile splits her face, nothing but a gaping hole where her mouth should be.
“Go take that mongrel outside to the kennels, Anders, and leave us be for the rest of the evening.”
“Of course, sir,” the butler says softly, exiting in long strides. Alone, the man points his knife to my plate.
“You’ll need your energy. Richard promised me a virgin, and I don’t go easy on virgins.”
That queasiness enters my stomach again, and I swallow down my bile, refusing to answer. They only told me I had to let him sleep with me, not that I had to attend a dinner date and be even more humiliated in the process first. So when I say nothing, his eyes narrow, and his moist lips quiver.
He slams his fist on the table, knife sticking up threateningly and clenched in his meaty fist, spittle flying from his mouth. “Speak. Or are you a dumb bitch like the last one, too?”
Last one…?
The woman behind him grows darker, her fury mingling with my own. She loathes him. And suddenly, an idea occurs to me that never has before. I have nothing to lose by sharing this secret with him, because who the fuck cares if he believes me or not? As long as he gets what he paid for, I’m in the clear, and my father will be safe.
A nervous smile has my lips trembling and my heart racing as I sit up straighter. “Were you ever married?”
His chewing slows, his eyes narrowing. He doesn’t speak, and I don’t give him a chance to.
“She died, didn’t she?”
“How dare you speak?—”
My lip curls back in a sneer, and I lean across the table, emboldened because…because I know that Teddy keeps his promises, and I know he will never let anyone touch me.
“She hates you,” I seethe with venom. His mouth pops open, revealing wet crumbs of food still clinging to his tongue. “You feel her all the time, don’t you? That chill that hasn’t gone away since she died. She hated you in life, and she hates you in death, and she knows. She knows you’re a pervert.”
“You little cunt?—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” comes a deep, dark voice, filled to overflowing with malice, the tone one I recognize, because the voices in his head have taken over.
And I’m about to witness him really hunt.
I have to bury my smile, difficult as it is, as the man whirls in his seat and gasps. It’s not his dead wife he sees, but Teddy emerging from the darkness of the doorway. The lights overhead flicker noisily before we are doused in orange-hued darkness, the only remaining light that of the fireplace.
His grin is dangerous, and the reason I am shaking now is far different than the reason just moments ago.
“I’m the only one allowed to degrade my little ghost,” he says smoothly, flipping a knife seemingly out of thin air, the silver glinting ominously.
“Who the hell are you? How’d you get in here? Anders! Anders, call the police?—”
But Teddy is on him faster than I can blink, the knife pressed to his quivering throat, choking off his pleas. The madness in Teddy’s eyes has my body going rigid and utterly cold, the sneer on his lips and the way he’s devoutly focused on his task something otherworldly. If demons exist, they do in him, and their master has let them out to play.
“I make it a sport to slice up sick fucks who hurt little girls,” Teddy hisses, spilling a secret to me that I catch and bury close to my heart. “You’ll never touch her, or anyone else, ever again.”
The man protests, but Teddy grips what little hair remains on the back of his skull and forces the man to face me. Knife still pressed to his throat, his watering eyes go wide with shock as they find mine, but I’m not looking at the man who paid for me.
No. I’m looking at the man who is about to kill for me.
And I’m entranced.
He smiles like the devil.
“You wanna watch, baby?”
Sick fascination swirls into me and floods my veins. I’ve seen the dead in all forms—decrepit, rotting, and as close to normal as can be. But to watch the soul leave a body? It’s always been a curiosity of mine, and so I nod shakily.
“You can’t do this, you can’t?—”
“I already sent your porn stash to every professor, student, even fucking janitor at your school. The news has the tapes, too. No one will miss you, Dr. Williams.”
He goes pale as the ghosts I’m fond of, and my smile grows, something about this level of justice giving me hope that someday, Teddy and I will take it for ourselves.
“Your wife is waiting for you,” I whisper, my voice hoarse with nerves. Teddy’s eyes widen in what I can only describe as lust, his entire body tightening and poised to spring across the table and fuck me over the corpse he creates. The idea alone has my underwear soaked. “She can’t wait to drag you to hell where you belong.”
Teddy chuckles, the sound dark and foreboding as it bounces off the walls. He pats the man’s shoulder. “See why I refuse to share her? She’s… exquisite .”
He breathes the last part, his words spoken from the darkest parts of his cracked and ruined soul, one that is so beautiful it makes my bones ache to behold.
“You freaks?—”
Teddy smirks. Time stands still. The ghost of his wife buzzes with sick excitement.
“Yes,” he says, sinking his knife into skin and muscle and viscera, thick red blood cascading out as the man’s eyes widen in a way I’ve never seen before. It’s the look of someone who knows with utter certainty they are about to die at a monster’s hands.
My monster’s hands.
“We are freaks,” I seethe as tears pool in my eyes, threatening to spill over like his coppery blood. He gags and clutches at his throat as Teddy takes the dripping knife away, his cut so seamless and precise, deep enough to be searingly painful, but not deep enough to kill him immediately. The cut of an expert.
“I’ll give you a head start again, little ghost. If you make it back here without getting caught, I’ll let you finish him off. But if I catch you…” he trails off darkly as the man slowly bleeds out.
A girlish smile lights my face, and I spring from the chair so fast it skids across the floor, my heart racing, my stomach twisting in fear and disgust but also something deeper and far more heinous than love. Teddy’s eyes spark as he flips his knife and grabs the man’s wrist at the same time. He forces his hand splayed over the table and drives the blade through all the tendons and bones, pinning him there amidst garbled screams and moans.
“ Run .” He commands.
And I do.