Chapter 60
Chapter Sixty
Haven came awake with a blast of frigid air against her face.
Blinking to rid her eyes of the fog of unconsciousness and confusion, she tried to lift her head.
Pain shot through her skull. She tried to lift her hand to investigate and was immediately confounded by her restrained arm.
She blinked, drew her brows together in a frown.
She swallowed against the pain and lifted her head slowly to get a better look.
Shivering, she realized the cold air rushing through the room was brushing against her bare legs.
She was naked.
Fighting back the bile shooting up her throat, she whimpered softly.
Nakedness was stock and trade of her career choice, but when she danced before the leering men at the club, she was nude of her own choice.
Angelous had robbed her of that and left her exposed in a semi-dark room on a cold, flat surface.
She looked up again, ignoring the pain spreading through her skull.
Lying on some kind of table, her arms were tied to metal rings, one on each side. The restraints were the kind used on convicts for lethal injections, or to subdue mental patients when they tried to harm themselves.
She closed her eyes, and the memories of what happened in her room burst behind her lids, playing like a rerun she wanted to turn off.
Someone had snuck up and hit her from behind.
Flashes of mousy hair and a wild-eyed expression flit through her mind.
Roselyn.
Her memories flashed further to the day when the housemaid came into her room and was surprised to find her there. At the time she’d given a lame excuse; she’d lost something, some trinket or something, and was looking for it.
Had she been searching for something to steal—the watch? No, she wouldn’t have known about it; more than likely she was just looking for something to take. She doubted Roselyn knew its true value.
If Roselyn took the watch, where had she taken it? Where had Perez gone?
Shit.
Perez had been hovering in the room with her right before she’d been taken, so he could’ve followed Angelous and Roselyn after she knocked her unconscious. Was he in the room with her now? Could she initiate communication with him in her mind?
She’d have to try.
Reaching out with as much focus and determination as she could muster, she silently called to him. “Perez, if you can hear me, please help me.”
She held her breath, willing him to tell her everything would be all right, that he’d use his power, vaporize Angelous, and send her back home—lickety-split.
No bodiless voice answered.
She tried again, desperate for any sign of the otherworldly eavesdropper.
“Perez! I need you to come back and help me. Please!”
After long moments of silence, she choked on a sob. Hot tears spilled from her eyes, running in streams into her ears.
If Roselyn stole the watch, perhaps Perez went along for the ride.
She didn’t really understand how Perez’s soul was chained, but his presence could go wherever it wanted.
He’d eavesdropped on a few of her private conversations with Logan, among other things.
So, if Roselyn had the vessel, could Perez still go about as he wished, or was he trapped wherever Roselyn had stowed her stolen goods?
Releasing a pent-up breath, she hoped Perez was as free as a bird and trying to get to her or someone who could save her.
Logan.
Yes, she’d accept help from him, even if it meant seeing him, and reading the disappointment and bitterness etched into his face. If it meant she could get out of this alive, she’d beg him.
She pulled at her restraints, straining to loosen their hold. Hope stuttered in her chest, fading into a dull ache.
Angelous emerged from her blind spot and stood over her, and she gasped.
His eyes were filled with something she refused to name.
She shivered, part chill, part fear.
His ear-to-ear smile splintered her resolve. Her breaths came in a rush, her heartbeat pounding erratically against her chest, and she pulled frantically at the restraints.
He chuckled. “It’s best not to fight. It will only mar your perfect skin.” His voice held a note of censure, as if she were a recalcitrant child in need of chastisement. He slid his eerily warm hand over her wrists, and a cry wrenched from her.
Wherever his skin touched her, a crawling sensation pushed against her flesh.
“Let me go! What the hell is wrong with you?” Her hoarse voice strained beneath the assault of air from her lungs.
She lifted her head and spotted her ravaged fingernails. When had that happened? The answer came quick—when she was looking for the watch. The magical pocket watch she stole in 2025. Magic happened, so miracles could happen, too. Hope flickered brighter in her soul.
She sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes. If she wanted to live, she needed to get her shit together.
Don’t fall apart now.
Easier said than done. She breathed in again, and Angelous turned from her, walked to a table a few feet away, and began lifting knives, one at a time, to inspect each one. Fear flew through her blood like a murder of crows, intent on swarming her heart.
“Are you going to kill me?”
Busily organizing his knives, he didn’t bother looking up. “Not right away, no.” His tone was matter-of-fact, his manner calm and easy. Her breath burned her throat as each exhale brought with it the fire of bile-laden saliva.
Terrified of the answer to her next question, she swallowed the ball of horror and groaned. “Are you going to rape me?”
He whipped around, nearly overturning the knife covered table, and he peered down at her with a look of disgust so vehement she would have drawn back in shock if she weren’t tied down.
“No!” Leaning over her, close enough for her to smell the scent of something sour on his breath, he spat, “You are a filthy human being. Imperfect. Unholy. Not worthy of being a true child of the Heavenly Sire. Your body only yields diseased fruit, contaminated by sin, and left to rot beneath the impurities of your depraved desires.” Pulling himself to his full height, he peered down at her with an air of divine superiority.
“As a Chosen Child of my Heavenly Sire, I am forbidden from finding debased pleasures among the human swine. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at your nakedness without vomiting. ”
That explained the scent she’d smelled on his breath.
He smiled, the promise of pain twinkling in his eyes. “That will all change once I’ve begun my masterwork, once I’ve begun slicing away at your imperfect flesh, once the blood begins to run, and the color of your skin begins to pale. Then your naked body will be worthy to look upon.”
She closed her eyes as the tears of fear rolled free. Dear God, this man wasn’t just crazy; he truly believed he was on a mission from Heaven to kill her, to make her into some twisted sort of human canvas for his bloody, gory art.
Trembling, she turned her head, fighting back the nausea threatening to weaken her further.
From beside her, she heard him pick up and put down a knife, then another.
He was deliberating on which one to use to make the first cut, murmuring to himself in contemplative tones as though he were trying to pick a pair of shoes to wear.
After several minutes, he turned back to her. While he’d been busy choosing, she’d been trying to wrap her mind in a threadbare cloak of courage and hope. But when the wicked edge on the knife he psychotically caressed came into view, the dam holding her fears and panic in check exploded.
He’s going to hurt me. He’s going to slice and dice me until I bleed to death. This can’t be happening.
“What are you going to do?” Her bulging eyes speared the knife in his hand. “You can’t kill me—I don’t want to die,” she pleaded, uncaring of how desperate she sounded, her mindless shrieks absorbed by the gray stone walls.
Closing her eyes, she forced her brain to shut the hell up, stop whimpering like a helpless victim, and focus on getting free. But her mind wandered to a bedroom in a manor in another lifetime.
Logan....
Did he know she was gone?
Did he care?
Focus!
She had to find a way to escape.
Daring to lift her head and look about the dank room again, she spied the end of a table peeking out from the doorway to another room.
There was a body on it—at least she assumed it was a full body.
It could very well have been just the foot, but she didn’t want to know why Angelous would have a severed foot lying around. Did he have a foot fetish?
She shuddered.
She looked over at him watching her intently.
A slow smile crept across his face, and a deep rumble of laughter burst from his chest.
“Ah, dear, sweet Roselyn. She was a quiet beauty. Easily enticed and easily controlled.”
This guy was killer-cult crazy.
“What do you mean? Was she working for you the whole time?”
He nodded. “A few months before you arrived, I took interest in Roselyn. She was unassuming, pretty, and seemed like the kind of sheep I could lead to the edge of the cliff, dangle over the edge, and she’d still bleat for more.
By the time I’d finished carving the flesh around her meager breasts, she was mine. She did all I asked of her.”
Like stealing my glove and slashing a painting. Oh, God.
The quiet lady’s maid earned her trust, but all the while was setting her up for rejection and separation from the one man who could save her.
Angelous stood over her again, holding his knife up for her inspection.
“Enough talk of the lesser canvas. Let’s speak of more interesting things.
” He turned the knife over in his hand, gazing longingly at its shiny length.
“This is a seax, a blade of extraordinary craftsmanship. Made by my ancestors and passed down through blood and conquest to me. It is the most prized of my collection.” His eyes brightened and his voice grew heavy with an unidentifiable emotion, and she knew she had a chance.
Keep him talking. Get him distracted. Maybe help will get here in time.
She cleared her throat. “Collection? Of knives?”
He smiled. “Yes, I have a rather large and varied assortment of knives.” He was proud and excited about what he’d get to do with them.
“Oh, that’s impressive, and quite unique.”
Come on Haven, stoke his ego and keep him talking about himself—isn’t that what sociopaths like to do?
“I’ve never met a knife collector before. It must be amazing.” The lie burned her throat, but she’d damn well live a mute than die screaming.
He looked at her with a hint of suspicion in his expression, but he had a captive audience, he might as well expound on the greatness of his shiny knives.
“Yes, it is very impressive, but few have seen the extent. Those who have viewed items from my collection are usually bound, helpless, to the searing caress of the blade’s edge. Just as you are now.”
Ice spiders skittered under her skin.
Keep it together.
“You are the canvas on which I will carve my masterpiece. I know you fear it and fight it now, but once I begin my work, you will know nothing but utter elation. You will be the very thing on which God’s perfection is wrought.
” He glanced down at her body and smiled.
“Do not fear, Miss Edwards, the pain is worth it.”
A scream burst through her chapped lips as he pierced her, sliding the blade along the flesh under her belly button, slicing the skin, and letting loose a flow of precious blood.