32. Lazarus #3
“Since I was a child. Around everyone. I see what they are, what they intend. I see the truth of them.” Her voice breaks.
“And I see you, Lazarus. I see what you are. The colour around you is unlike anything I have ever witnessed. It is not one colour, but many. All of them dark, all of them bleeding into each other like a bruise that never heals. My daughter will see it too. She will know what you are the moment she looks at you.”
I consider this. The information settles into my mind, rearranging itself into new configurations, new possibilities.
“Ines,” I say. “Your niece had this gift as well?”
“Yes.”
Something monumental seems to snap into place at that. Ines always seemed one step ahead, always knew what I was thinking, what everyone was thinking, and this explains how.
“Your other children have this? Your other daughter too?”
Magdalena’s face contorts with fresh anguish. “I, I don’t know.” She says, but I can tell she’s lying.
“Where is she?”
“We were separated years ago. She was married off. I haven’t seen her since we fled. Please, she has nothing to do with this…”
“Everyone has something to do with this,” I say. “Everyone is a piece on the board. The only question is how I choose to move them.”
I file it away for later. Another thread to pull, another avenue to explore. If this synaesthesia is a family trait, then there may be others. There may be uses I haven’t yet considered but for now, Leandra is what matters. Leandra and her colours, her truth-sight, her inability to be deceived.
I cannot lie to her, but I can be the one person who never needs to. I can be the one person whose truth is exactly what she wants to see, I can shape myself into the man she needs me to be, and I can do it without ever speaking a false word.
“Thank you,” I say. “That’s very helpful.”
I set the knife down and walk back to my chair. Magdalena is sobbing now, her body shaking with exhaustion and pain. The strips of skin I’ve removed from her arm glisten on the table, and her broken fingers have swollen to twice their normal size.
“Please,” she whispers. “Please, I’ve told you everything. Just let us go. We won’t say anything. We’ll disappear. You’ll never see us again.”
It would be easy to let her go. She’s no threat to me. She’s no threat to anyone, but she’s Leandra’s mother.
And I cannot allow Leandra to have anyone else.
That’s the truth of it, the cold, hard calculus at the centre of everything I’m doing. Leandra needs to be mine, completely, utterly, without reservation. She cannot have a mother to run to, she cannot have any family to protect her. She cannot have anyone in her life but me.
I am her god now. Her saviour. Her everything.
And gods do not share.
“I know,” I say, standing up. “I know you’ve told me everything, and I want you to know that I appreciate it. You’ve been very helpful.”
I walk to the table and select a new tool, a long, thin blade with a handle wrapped in leather. It’s sharp enough to split a hair.
“But I can’t let you go,” I continue. “You understand why, don’t you? You’re a mother. You would do anything for your child. You would lie, cheat, steal, even kill for them. You would tear down heaven and earth to protect her. And as long as you’re alive, you’re a threat to what I’m building.”
“No,” she breathes. “No, please…”
“I’m going to make this quick,” I tell her.
“You’ve earned that much but I need you to know, before you die, that your daughter is going to be mine.
She’s going to love me, she’s going to worship me.
She’s going to give me everything she is and everything she has and she’s going to do it willingly, because I will be the only person in the world who has never lied to her, never hurt her, never betrayed her. ”
I step behind her and take hold of her hair, pulling her head back.
“You’re lying to yourself,” she gasps. “You’re not doing this for her, you’re doing this for you. You’re a monster, just like Ezekiel is. Just like all the others. And she will see it. She will see the colour around you, and she will know. She will know what you are.”
“Perhaps,” I say. “But I’m the monster who’s going to win.”
I draw the blade across her throat in one smooth motion.
The blood comes fast, hot and arterial, spraying across the stone floor in a crimson arc. She makes a sound, not a scream but something wetter, something more final. Her body convulses once, twice, and then goes still.
I step back and watch the light fade from her eyes.
The silence that follows is absolute. It fills the chamber like water, like the absence of everything. I stand in it for a long moment, the blade still dripping in my hand, and I feel nothing at all.
No. That’s not true.
I feel something. Something quiet, deep, and utterly consuming.
Leandra.
Her name rises in my mind again, unbidden, and I let it come. I let it fill me the way the silence fills the room.
Leandra. Leandra. Leandra.
I whisper it into the darkness, and the darkness whispers it back.
She is mine now. She just doesn’t know it yet.