Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Valdemar is a monster; this isn’t news to me. So why am I so shocked by the revelation that he cut two fingers from some guy who tried to steal his phone from him?
“You were seventeen?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“And you just met this strange guy on a street, and he told you to cut off a thief’s fingers, so you did?” I clarify.
“He told me to teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget. I had to interpret the punishment myself.” Valdemar’s voice is husky now, as if the story he’s just told has scratched at his throat.
“And this led to you being a Raven Hand?” I’m mentally writing a piece on this, constructing the sentences, delivering the lines.
“I’d heard of the Raven Hands, but I had no idea who Victor Rue was. After I’d cut the thief’s fingers off, he looked at me and laughed, then told me I was fucking nuts and that he could use a guy like me.”
“A boy. You were a boy.” I lean forwards, emphasising my point.
“Have you lived in Amontillado all your life?” Valdemar arches an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
“Then you know as well as I do that you become an adult a lot younger living here than anywhere else.”
I sit back as Ed comes to life in my head, the nights he would come home in the early hours smelling of strange scents, a haunted look in his eye like he’d seen things he shouldn’t have. And he was just a boy. Just like Valdemar had been.
Ed wasn’t the only one who’d been corrupted by this city.
“So, Victor Rue takes you under his wing”—I smirk at my unintended pun—“and you became a Raven Hand.”
Valdemar doesn’t answer me, and the journalist in me senses there’s more to this.
He swallows hard before glancing down at his hands. “It was a couple of months after I met Victor that I became a full-fledged Raven Hand.”
He’s gearing himself up for something, and I’m poised, waiting until he opens his mouth.
“My mother was attacked one night on her way home from work. It was late, she was alone, and someone jumped her, stole her purse, her phone, the cheap gold ring that belonged to my grandma.” He pauses, readying himself, his eyes lost. “They hit her on the side of the head and again on her cheek—not enough to kill her, but enough to knock her out.” He looks up at me before continuing. “She was left unconscious. When she didn’t come home on time, I took to the streets looking for her. Anyone else would have survived—they would have been traumatised, needed a few stitches and some rest, but they would have lived. Unfortunately, my mother was a haemophiliac. When she was left unconscious, her blood didn’t clot, and she bled to death. By the time I found her, it was too late.”
Something unravels inside me, and I don’t want it to be sympathy. I don’t want to feel sorry for this man—he doesn’t deserve it. But I am only human, and somewhere, under those tattoos, so is he. I’m also aware that this all could be a ruse, a lie, laying the foundation of the sob story so that I feel sorry for him and his poor start in life that led to him being a killer.
But he isn’t the only one who started life as a killer.
“I’m sorry for your loss” is the best I can come up with, but Valdemar bats this away as if it’s inconsequential.
I want to know what happened to the man who killed his mother. But if the thief who tried to take his phone is anything to go by, then I presume he came to a rather unfortunate end at the hands of Valdemar and Victor. Aware that time is pressing on, I change direction.
“What I don’t understand is your gift. You said you can’t be a Raven Hand without a gift. Did Victor Rue get lucky and just happen to stumble upon you by accident?”
Valdemar sits up, seemingly happy with the change of topic. “When you become the head of the Raven Hands, you’re delivered an extra gift—a foresight, if you will. He’d been looking for me.”
“He knew your gift?” If Valdemar picks up on the scoff in my voice, he doesn’t show it. I don’t mean to sound so dismissive, not after what he’s just told me, but I can’t help thinking this all sounds like something from a comic book.
“He didn’t know exactly what it was, just sensed that I had one.”
“I take it you now have this same foresight?” I guess.
“Yes.” He’s reluctant to discuss the gifts, this much is clear, but I push on.
“And you recruit—or recruit ed when you weren’t in here.”
“Yes.”
There’s a bitter taste on my tongue, metallic and tangy, and it isn’t until Valdemar glances at my mouth that I realise I’ve bitten my lip.
“Is that why you took it upon yourself to recruit Ed?” Any earlier sympathy I had for him is gone.
“Your brother had a gift.”
The room tilts, memories washing over my skin: Ed and me in the park, him pulling on my hand as I set off running for the swings.
“No!” Ed shouted, grabbing my wrist so tight, it left a red mark on my skin.
“Hey, let go.” I tugged my arm back, but he held firm.
“You’re going to get hurt,” he insisted.
“I’m not a baby. I’ll be fine.” Then I pulled my arm harder and ran straight to the swings.
I mastered them easily as Ed watched from the side, a paleness to his already colourless skin. I laughed, flailing my legs wildly as the rush of air enveloped me, the feeling of freedom swallowing me before my left sandal flew from my foot. The momentary distraction caused me to lose my grip on the chains, and I was flung forwards , flying weightlessly through the stagnant sky before hitting the ground with an undignified thud.
Ed rushed to my side, his utter panic delivering his breath in raspy gusts.
“I told you not to go on them.”
My tears fell, and I wiped them away with the back of my sweaty hand as I surveyed the two grazed knees I’d suffered despite the rubber tarmac that was supposed to soften my landing.
“Hey, are you okay?” Another parent had arrived, a mother in a thin jacket and worn sliders armed with tissues and a bottle of water.
Ed pulled me to standing, the pain in my ankle making me dizzy.
“I’m fine. We’re fine.” I gestured to Ed for him to steer us away from the woman. The only thing worse than not having a mother of your own was having to endure the pity of someone else’s.
I hobbled over to a large sycamore on the edge of the park that doused the grass in shadow and would shelter us from prying eyes.
“Are you okay?” Ed said at last, but all I could think of was what he’d said to me before I’d run for the swing.
“You’re going to get hurt.”
“How did you know?” I asked him.
He did what he always did and ignored my question, fussing over the graze.
“Ed, how did you know?”
Startled at my insistence, Ed stared at the ground, scuffing the dry dirt with his muddy Nikes. “I just knew.”
“Was it like a feeling, or did you know exactly what was going to happen?”
He took his time, probably considering whether it was worth lying to me.
“I saw it,” he said at last. “I saw your shoe fall off, and then you fell with it.”
It should have come as a surprise, but this wasn’t the first time Ed had said he’d seen things before they happened, I’d just never paid enough attention to warrant it with any credibility. He’d always had a wandering imagination, coupled with a sense of dread that comes with growing up knowing you killed your mother. But this was different.
“You knew about his gift,” he says.
Valdemar’s smoky voice pulls me back into the room, and I feel as if he’d seen the memory for himself. There’s no point in lying to him, so I say nothing.
“There are things I wish I could change, things I wish I’d done differently, but there are some things I didn’t have a choice in. Your brother was born with his gift. That was out of my control.”
“What a bullshit excuse.” Squeezing my hands into fists, I try to keep my voice down, as the guard at the back is eyeing me across the room.
“Did he talk to you about his gift?” Valdemar asks.
“His gift is irrelevant. You groomed him, lured him in with promises of a gang-style life, the glamour, the money, the violence, and then you shot him in cold fucking blood, so don’t give me your pathetic excuse about a gift and him being chosen,” I spit.
The hand creeps over Valdemar’s shoulder, its fingers the colour of old chewing gum. I track the bitten-down nails, the blood-spattered sleeve, the elongated neck, and the protruding Adam’s apple, and finally my gaze lands on the face—his haunting porcelain face.
Ed stares through bloodshot eyes as my breath catches in my throat, and I want to clasp my hand over my mouth to stop the shrill cry that’s about to erupt, but I can’t let Valdemar know something is wrong, that my brother is here.
“I wish that were the case. Truly, I do. And I’m not arguing with you about me being the bad guy because I am. I know I am. I have so much blood on my hands, I’m not sure what colour my skin is anymore. But when I tell you that your brother was a Raven Hand, born a Raven Hand, bled like a Raven Hand, and that his gift had everything to do with his death, then you have to trust what I say.”
I don’t have to trust anything this man says, and I have to stop myself from saying so out loud.
My eyes glaze over, the room blurring beneath the stagnant tears I refuse to cry. I feel trapped. I want to look at Ed, but I don’t want to arouse Valdemar’s attention. It’ll look strange if I’m staring over his shoulder. And my brother’s face is not the smooth portrait I remember.
“ You pulled the trigger. You shot him. You spilled his blood. No one else,” I remind him.
Valdemar’s shoulders rise and fall, the sheer force of his stare keeping my tears at bay.
“And I’m truly sorry, but….”
I’m about to interrupt, but he continues, bulldozing my argument right out of the room.
“He asked me to shoot him.”
It’s like an avalanche, the cold rushing into my bloodstream, the world as I know it buried under his words.
“ He asked me to shoot him.”
My brother doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch. I want him to nod, to confirm what Valdemar has just said, but just like my mother, he remains silent, his face conveying nothing but pain.
The guards move away from the walls in unison, and I almost scream at them to stay put, just for one more minute.
“Time, everyone,” one of the guards shouts, and my eyes remain rooted on Valdemar. I can’t look at my brother—the torment is too much.
“ He asked me to shoot him.”
Leaning over the table, my voice breaks as I hiss, “What do you mean?”
When a guard appears behind Valdemar, my brother vanishes as if someone has turned the TV off.
Valdemar rises, and I’m swallowed by his shadow.
“Sleep well, and I’ll see you next week, angel,” he says, that hypnotic quality to his voice back.
One whole week. He can’t tell me something like that and expect me to wait an entire week before finding out what the hell he’s talking about. But the moment to argue is gone, as Valdemar is led away, the coldness of his shadow remaining.