Chapter 39
Karia
Isit in front of Sanford Rule in the library.
A pile of bodies litters the house outside, and underneath this floor, two begin to rot.
Constance, Arthur, Rex; they’re all dead.
Two drivers as well. Isa and Von took care of three of them, and Cosmo did the rest, defending both of my friends when anything got too close.
Stein and Klein were able to snag Sullen thanks to Cosmo’s… diversion of putting me underground.
So I’ve been told.
But now, as Sullen washes his hands guarded carefully by Cosmo and Fleet, who is more animated than I have ever seen him—he and Elliot both called out locations and positions when the lights went out and thus aided in the murders—I am alone with Sanford Rule.
Alivia and Maude’s tasks were less bloody, but just as important, even if I don’t like to think of Maude that way. They both asked questions as the battle raged. Everything is documented in written and auditory records. I can only hope it will be useful later.
But now I need to hear it directly from the source before the source becomes a corpse.
Sullen would not want me in here. That is why he is “guarded,” although distracted is probably the better term.
He tore a man’s jaw apart with more or less his bare hands.
He can handle Cosmo and Fleet if he decides he wishes to.
For now, Sanford Rule—the hope Sullen once thought he had in the dark—sits before me, and he is all mine to dissect.
“Karia Ven.” The man nods toward me. He looks pinched, dehydrated, his wrinkles deep, his suit having seen better days. His hair is oily, tucked close to his scalp, as if he needs to bathe.
He likely will not, ever again.
I cross one leg over the other. I have blood on me, from Stein’s brain matter, Klein’s thigh wound. I have dirt in my hair. Glass too, from when they blew in the windowpane to distract us from their real entrance. None of it matters to me now.
As I face Sanford Rule, I lounge in the plush velvet chair as if I own this place, and practically, I do, don’t I? It’s mine and Sullen’s now.
I drum my arms along the padded armrests. “Cosmo has been threatening you, and now it’s my turn.” I say it slowly, with a smile. My knees are two inches from Sanford’s, in his own chair, books spanning the wall behind him.
Some of them—on science and anatomy and religion—I will burn.
Maybe this man will be on the pyre too.
He studies me, and I, him. In the pale morning light streaming in from down the hall, curving under the gauzy partition, he looks older than he ever has to me. Or maybe I am seeing him for what he really is: Weak. Not in stature, but mind.
He bowed to his megalomaniacal son.
He started this all.
I will not forgive him.
“You can try, Princess. But I confessed upfront I was fascinated with Gates. The ways he created the possibility in my mind that I could do all this,” he gestures vaguely, “forever.”
“That’s not enough for me. You had a hard-on for a serial killer, fine.
You are the reason Stein Rule is—was,” I amend with relish, “a psychopath. Cool.” I lift my fingers, brushing it all off.
“But I want more details. You said you read The Scientist. We all have weird kinks, so that’s understandable.
You say your grandfather bought the original hotel from Gates’s descendants, but what else? I want everything.”
He is quiet for a moment as he stares at me.
I wonder if the news I just indirectly delivered of his son’s death affects him at all.
Does he care? Or is it unsurprising? Did he ever have any fondness for Stein?
For Sullen, when he snaked his way into helping us down in those tunnels? Or was it all always a game?
That is what I want to find out. My monster deserves the truth, if he ever wants to hear it.
Now I watch as Sanford calculates his next trick.
“I found The Scientist in a stack of my father’s books.
He left them in piles, haphazard.” He shrugs.
“I was fifteen. My father loved to beat my mother, and almost as much, he enjoyed ignoring me. Most days, he acted as if I did not exist. Sometimes, if I was lucky,” he says the last word bitterly, “he would throw out an impossible question. Some bit of worldly trivia my schooling never gave me an answer to, and he knew it.” His eyes meet mine.
Deep brown. Scattered amber. The same as Sullen, yet nothing like him, either.
He folds his hands in his lap, squeezing his opposite wrists with each.
“Gates wrote in a lofty language. He wrote like my father spoke, really. That alone endeared him to me. As much as I grew to loathe my father, I wanted his attention.” His eyes seem to shine. “I wanted to make him proud of me.”
Pathetic. But I don’t speak.
“I thought if I memorized his vocabulary, I could speak in a love language my father understood. But turns out, he did not care for Gates as his father had. It was no matter, because I began to. I don’t expect you to share my kink, as you said, but he believed the body could be changed at will.
For someone who was small at the time, helpless against my mother’s beatings, this appealed to me. ”
“Did Gates say if he ever achieved immortality?” I let the condescension drip from my tone, because the man is dead.
Sanford smiles at me as if he hates me. “You are not here to be a disciple of Gates. You are here because you want to know what made my son follow this path. The origin story, as it were, of all the family trauma.”
“No.” I grin at him, and I do hate him. “I am here for Sullen.” My voice almost breaks on his name.
Almost.
A flicker of emotion twitches in Sanford’s face. It feels as if I have been training my whole life to read feelings, because Sullen cannot speak of his grief, and Writhe hides murder behind a smile. I am an excellent interpreter.
It is not guilt Sanford feels. He is not sorry.
Agitated, I think, that all of Sullen’s trauma comes back to this moment, and I love Sullen so fiercely, I will murder Sanford for it. He recognizes his own death’s arrival now, doesn’t he?
“Did you or did you not know what Stein was doing to Sullen?” The calmness in my words is alien to me.
“You say you could not escape from beneath the hotel. That you were trapped after you tried to warn Mercy. But you know too many things you shouldn’t.
You know,” I shrug in a gesture of mock innocence, “for a prisoner.”
He stares at me but doesn’t speak.
“Because you never were trapped, were you?” Anger burns bright in my chest and the calm recedes.
“There was a part of you, was there not, which thought you could still be the one to achieve immortality? To own Writhe, claw your way back to being the leader? That maybe through Stein’s work,” my lip curls, “on Sullen, you could benefit, too. So you waited.”
“Stein is the one who put his hands on the boy—”
“Only because you were the worst kind of coward.” I cut him off. “You let him do the dirty work.” I do not know how I keep my voice level, but I manage it, just barely.
I am not sure either of us are breathing as our gazes stay locked.
“You are much more clever than I ever gave you credit for.” He smiles, but it is mocking.
“Blonde and so beautiful.” His eyes drop over my frame.
“How he ever got you, I do not know. I certainly never factored you in, before. Although it’s good you came along, because without you, the experiments could never be complete. ”
I want to tear him apart.
He meets my gaze again. “What did my son do to you in the basement of this house?” He is trying to goad me. “I hoped to participate. It’s true, that I wanted to lure everyone here, but maybe I could still try it out?”
Once, this tactic would have worked, but I am forever changed. He helped make me that way. “Did you give Alivia and Maude what they need? What we need?” I know the answer.
“Of course.” He says it as if he has done me a kindness.
“How did you feel, when they recorded your sins?”
He doesn’t blink as he stares at me. “Do you enjoy this power? Having everything you need to turn Writhe against me, and my son?”
“More than I ever believed possible.” That’s the most honest I’ve been with this man.
He snorts. “You both are too stupid and too weak to survive this world without me. Without Gates and his teachings.”
My heart slams inside my ribcage. I want to hurt him.
“Do not speak to her like that.” The voice that interrupts my violence is not his.
I look up.
Sullen is in the doorway.
Cosmo is at his back. I do not know where Fleet is, but I am grateful he is not here for this and my heart squeezes.
Sullen has no gloves. No bandana. He’s wearing a hoodie and he has damp hair, curling at the ends.
There’s a heaviness in his expression as he looks at Sanford. His grandfather. The great pretender. It wasn’t only the double hotels full of duplicity.
“You made me believe someone cared about what I went through.” Sullen breathes in through his nose, nostrils flaring. “In the tunnels, I felt less alone.”
“He only wanted his own immortality.” I am the one to say it, even though it hurts, so that Sanford cannot backtrack.
The man glances at me, as if he is annoyed. I do not give a fuck.
Sullen’s chest heaves. “You are just like him.”
“But better,” Sanford says, evil in the word. “I knew how to play you like I led your father to Gates. I orchestrated it all, and you, pathetic and stupid, never suspected me. You, so broken, so obnoxious and angry and hurt, you could see none of it and it took this bitch to—”
The gunshot cracks in the room.
Sanford’s head jerks back, chin snapped up.
He is staring at the ceiling.
He is staring at nothing.
I place the gun that was behind my back on my lap, and when I turn my head, I meet Sullen’s gaze.
“I love you,” I say. “And I am sick of them.”