Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cain
The Lockwood ballroom hasn't seen light in twenty years.
I stand in its corpse now, setting candles on every surface that will hold them—the warped mantlepiece, the windowsills with their broken panes, the floor where moisture has buckled the once-pristine hardwood into waves.
Each flame I light reveals more decay, more beautiful ruin.
The chandelier above dangles at a thirty-degree angle, half its crystals shattered on the floor below, the rest catching candlelight like tears frozen mid-fall.
This is where Richard and Patricia held their parties.
Where they'd display Juliette and me like trophies before sending us to bed so the real festivities could begin.
Where men in thousand-dollar suits would drink champagne while bidding on children.
Now it's where I'll marry the daughter of their business partner.
Where Sheriff Sterling will give away his only child in a room his crimes helped destroy.
The poetry is too perfect to resist.
Snow drifts through the holes in the ceiling, each flake a small blessing on what's about to happen.
The December wind howls through broken windows, making the candles flicker but not die.
Even nature wants to witness this.
I don't clean, don't repair, don't pretend this is anything other than what it is—a mausoleum where we're about to conduct a ceremony of resurrection.
I simply clear a path through the debris, pushing aside chunks of fallen plaster, the bones of dead furniture, memories crystallized in dust and rot.
In one corner, I find a child's shoe.
Juliette's, probably, though it could belong to any of the dozens of children who passed through here.
I leave it where it lies.
Let it bear witness too.
The bloodstains are still visible on the floor near the fireplace.
My blood, from when Richard decided I needed to learn about consequences.
He'd made me kneel on broken glass while reciting his rules, adding more shards each time I stuttered.
Patricia had played Beethoven during the lesson, her fingers never faltering even when I screamed.
Those stains will be my altar.
Footsteps on the stairs—heavy, uneven.
Sterling is early and drunk.
He appears in the doorway, surveying the ruin I've chosen for his daughter's wedding.
His sheriff's uniform is wrinkled, badge crooked, gun prominent on his hip.
He's been drinking whiskey—I can smell it from ten feet away.
"This is where you want to marry her?" His voice slurs slightly. "In this tomb?"
"This is where it all started. Seems fitting it should be where things end."
He laughs, bitter and sharp. "You really think you've won, don't you? Think you've figured it all out?"
"I think your daughter will be here soon, and you'll play your part."
"My part." He stumbles further into the room, nearly tripping over a broken chair. "Father of the bride. Such a fucking joke."
"You are her father."
"I'm a monster who happened to raise an angel.
And now that angel is choosing a devil." He focuses on me with difficulty.
"You know what the funny thing is? I always knew she'd end up with someone like you.
Someone dangerous. It's in her writing, all those dark heroes, those violent men.
She was calling for you before she knew you existed. "
"Or you shaped her to want darkness by being the thing she should fear most."
Sterling's hand goes to his gun, a reflexive motion. "I could kill you now. Tell her you attacked me. Justified shooting."
"You could try."
"I've been killing since before you were born, boy."
"No, you've been selling children and calling it business. There's a difference between commerce and killing. You're about to learn it."
He draws the gun, points it at my chest.
His hand shakes, but at this distance, that doesn't matter.
"I should," he whispers. "I should end this now."
"But you won't. Because Celeste would never forgive you. And despite everything, you need her to love you. Or at least to pretend."
"She does love me. I'm her father."
"She loves who she thought you were. That man died the moment Morrison told us the truth."
The gun wavers. "Morrison was a liar."
"Morrison was many things, but his dying blinks didn't lie."
Sterling stumbles to what was once a velvet settee, now a skeleton of springs and rot.
He sits heavily, gun still in hand but pointed at the floor.
"I need to tell you something," he says. "About tonight. About the shipment."
I wait.
Men like Sterling always talk when they're drunk and desperate.
"I've been in this business for thirty years.
You think I don't have contingencies?" He laughs, wet and broken.
"If I don't make a specific call by two, the entire route changes.
The girls go to a different location. The buyers are warned to scatter.
Your little rescue mission becomes a wild goose chase. "
I keep my face neutral, but inside I'm recalculating.
We'll have to keep him alive longer than planned, force him to make that call.
"Why tell me?" I ask.
"Because I want you to know that even when I'm dead, I'll still win. Those girls will still be sold. The business will continue. You can kill me, but you can't kill what I built."
"We'll see about that."
Car doors outside.
Celeste and Juliette are arriving.
Sterling struggles to his feet, holsters his gun. "How do I look?"
"Like a man at his own funeral."
"Good. That's what I am."
Celeste enters first, and the breath leaves my body.
Patricia's dress has been transformed on her.
What was once pristine white is now somehow both pure and dangerous.
She's added black ribbons that could be decoration or restraints.
The train trails behind her like spilled ink.
Her dark hair is up, held with pins that could double as weapons.
Patricia's ring catches the candlelight, fracturing it into rainbows that dance across the decay.
She's the most beautiful thing that's ever stood in this room of horrors.
"Daddy," she says, voice neutral. "Thank you for coming."
Sterling moves toward her, stops when she steps back. "You look... you look like your mother."
"I look like myself."
Juliette enters carrying a bag that clinks—bottles of champagne for the toast.
She's wearing black, of course, but formal black.
Funeral black. Perfect.
"The officiant has arrived," she announces. "Shall we begin?"
"Walk me down the aisle, Dad," Celeste says. It's not a request.
Sterling offers his arm.
She takes it like she's handling something diseased.
They begin the walk through the ruins, careful steps over debris, her dress collecting dust and ash with each movement.
I wait by the bloodstained floor, my chosen altar, watching my bride approach through a gauntlet of decay.
The chandelier above creaks ominously.
More snow drifts down, landing on Celeste's bare shoulders, melting instantly against her heated skin.
When they reach me, Sterling has to hand her over.
Has to physically place his daughter's hand in mine.
The man who trafficked children giving his child to a serial killer.
His hand shakes as our skin touches.
"Take care of her," he whispers.
"I'll take care of everything," I reply.
Juliette positions herself before us, pulls out a small black book.
Not a Bible—something else.
Something older.
"Dearly beloved," she begins, voice carrying through the dead space, "we are gathered here in the presence of witnesses living and dead, to join these two souls in unholy matrimony."
Sterling flinches at 'unholy' but says nothing.
"Marriage is a covenant written in blood, sealed with promises, consummated in darkness. It is not to be entered into lightly, but with the full knowledge that to love is to possess, to cherish is to consume, to honor is to kill for."
These are not traditional vows.
Juliette wrote them specifically for us.
"Cain Lockwood," she continues, "do you take this woman to be your wife? To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, in murder and in mercy, until death do you part?"
"I do."
"Do you promise to protect her with violence, to love her with obsession, to worship her with the dedication you bring to your darkest works?"
"I do."
"Celeste Sterling, do you take this man to be your husband? To have and to hold, in darkness and in deeper darkness, in blood and in blessing, until death do you part?"
"I do."
"Do you promise to stand beside him in his works, to sharpen his edges as he sharpens yours, to be his partner in all things both terrible and beautiful?"
"I do."
"The rings, please."
I pull out a simple black band, a mate to Patricia's diamond monstrosity.
Celeste produces one for me—also black, also simple.
We wanted nothing that could catch the light, nothing that would identify us at crime scenes.
"These rings are circles, representing eternity. But they are also shackles, binding you together in your choices. What you do to one, you do to both. What hunts one, hunts both. What kills one..."
"Kills both," we say in unison.
Sterling makes a sound like choking.
"Cain, place the ring on Celeste's finger and speak your vows."
I slide the black band next to Patricia's ring, the contrast striking—old beauty and new darkness.
"Celeste," I begin, my voice steady despite the hurricane in my chest, "I vow to be your knife in the dark, your shelter in the storm of what we're becoming.
I promise to teach you everything I know about ending life, and learn from you about creating it on the page.
I will be faithful to you and our work, dedicated to our justice, devoted to our darkness.
From this night forward, your enemies are my prey, your demons my congregation.
I will love you in ways that would terrify others but will only inspire you.
This I vow, until my last kill, until my last breath, until the world burns or we burn it ourselves. "
Celeste is crying, but smiling.
The tears look like diamonds in the candlelight.
"Celeste, place the ring on Cain's finger and speak your vows."
Her hands are steady as she slides the ring on.
It fits perfectly, cold and final.
"Cain," she says, her voice carrying strength that could crack stone, "I vow to be your partner in darkness, your accomplice in justice, your co-author in rewriting the world's wrongs.
I promise to hold the knife when your hands shake, to hide the bodies when you're tired, to alibi your existence with my own.
I will write our story in fiction and live it in fact.
Your hunts are my hunts, your kills my celebration.
I will love you not despite the blood on your hands but because of it, not apart from your violence but through it.
This I vow, until the last predator falls, until the last page is written, until we've painted the world in the red it deserves. "
Sterling is crying now too, but his tears are different.
His are the tears of a man watching his world end.
"By the power vested in me by absolutely no one but ourselves," Juliette says, "I now pronounce you husband and wife, bound in darkness, sealed in blood. You may kiss."
I pull Celeste against me and kiss her like the world is ending, because for some people tonight, it will.
She tastes like champagne and promises, like violence and vengeance.
When we part, there's blood on her lip where I bit too hard.
She licks it away, smiling.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Juliette announces to the empty room, to the ghosts, to Sterling who looks like he's become one, "I present Mr. and Mrs. Lockwood."
The chandelier above creaks again, louder this time. Plaster dust drifts down like snow.
"Now," Celeste says, turning to her father, "I believe you wanted to give a toast?"
Sterling looks at her, then at me, then at the gun on his hip.
For a moment, I think he might actually draw it, might try to end this in a shootout in a ruined ballroom.
But then his shoulders slump.
"I need that drink first," he says.
Juliette pours champagne into cracked crystal glasses she found somewhere in the house.
We raise them, standing in our strange triangle—killer, writer, victim.
"To my daughter," Sterling begins, his voice cracking, "who I failed in every way that matters. May you get exactly what you deserve."
"And to my father," Celeste responds, "who made me exactly who I am. May you also get what you deserve."
We drink.
The champagne is bitter, too warm, perfection for this moment.
"It's nearly one," I say, checking my watch. "We have somewhere to be."
Sterling's eyes widen. "The shipment—"
"Will be handled," Celeste says. "Every girl saved, every buyer dealt with."
"You don't understand. If I don't call—"
"Then you'll call," I say simply. "You'll make whatever call needs to be made to ensure those girls arrive where expected. Because if you don't, if even one girl disappears into the trafficking network because of your contingency plan, I'll make your death last for days instead of hours."
Sterling looks at his daughter for mercy, finds none.
"You should go, Daddy," she says. "We have a wedding night to attend to."
"Celeste, please—"
"Go. Now. Before I decide to make you the first wedding gift we unwrap."
He stumbles toward the door, pauses. "Your mother would be horrified by what you've become."
"My mother ran from you. I'm doing something better. I'm ending you."
Sterling leaves, his footsteps echoing through the dead house. We listen until his car starts, until he drives away.
"Two hours until the shipment," Juliette says. "You should change."
Celeste looks down at Patricia's dress, now decorated with dust and candle wax and tiny spots of blood from our kiss.
"No," she says. "I want to be wearing white when I kill them. I want them to see a bride coming for them and know that death wore a wedding dress."
"Poetic," I say.
"Everything is, if you frame it right." She turns to me, my wife now, my partner in all things dark. "Ready for our wedding reception?"
"The one where we slaughter human traffickers?"
"Is there any other kind worth having?"
We gather our weapons—guns, knives, the tools of our new trade as a married couple.
Juliette will drive separately, coordinate with Thalia's network for the rescue.
We'll handle the killing.
As we leave the Lockwood estate, I look back at the ruined ballroom, the candles still flickering in the windows like eyes.
The house seems to breathe, seems to know that tonight, its legacy of horror dies with Sterling and his associates.
"No looking back," Celeste says, taking my hand. Her black ring is cold against my skin. "Only forward, into whatever darkness we create."
"Together," I agree.
"Forever," she confirms.
And we drive into the night, newly wed, armed for slaughter, ready to paint our wedding night in the blood of men who sell children.