Chapter 16 ZAGHAN
ZAGHAN
Who was she? That nameless, faceless thing?
“Three.”
Click.
“Two.”
Clunk.
“One.” I announced, tossing the golden zippo in my hand into my pocket.
I uncrossed my legs and gently rose from the wooden chair I was sitting on.
Two long strides and I was towering over the familiar soldier bundled up on the floor, closing in on him like a predator sizing up a prey.
The man’s breath quivered as he cowered in fear…just the way I liked them.
But he could run if he chose to, dig a hole in the middle of the earth and hide there. That still wouldn’t save him from death today.
Investigation on who stole the ledger pointed at too many angles. I needed to eliminate every suspect until I caught the real mastermind. And this soldier here was one of them…at least, that was what the theory insinuated.
“Again, I believe you have something to tell me.” My arched brow raised expectantly.
“I don’t know anything,” he uttered the same phrase he seemed to have rehearsed. I guessed we didn’t make any progress after all. And that alone caused anger to spark like wildfire in my chest.
What was really happening? I had retraced Callan’s steps over and over again, visited the drawing board, carved out clues, pointed out possibilities, black spots, and yet, no lead?
Who took the fucking ledger?
“Very well then.” My hand drifted toward the table on my left, my fingers grazing the cool surface before settling on a round tray of gleaming instruments.
I selected a pair of scissors etched with the emblem of the Bratva–a python’s head, its fangs bared in a silent warning.
The soldier choked out a gasp, terror settling in the depth of his eyes. And seeing that deep swirl of horror stirred euphoria within me, my fingers trembling.
If the soldier was truly innocent, I didn’t care anymore…not that I cared before. His fate was decided the moment he ended up on the list of suspects. I wanted blood and I would make him bleed for me.
Callan, that bastard. He gave me control days late. I felt him fighting me off, trying to silence me. And he had never done that before. He had never hesitated. I didn’t know what came over him. What made him bold enough to think of being this reckless, habour the idea of cheating me.
Was he changing his mind? Had he become selfish with sharing his body with me? Or was he hiding something, something he didn’t want me to see?
These questions had bothered me for days. But I didn’t even have time to source for the answers because I was too busy looking for a damn ledger. I woke up, barely had time to release a breath, and I was hit with a fucking missing ledger.
I couldn’t hunt, couldn’t do the one thing that always excited me.
I had been starved.
I positioned myself behind my new prey, my fingers gently curling under his chin, titling his head to bare the flesh on his neck to me.
“I guess this is goodbye then.”
“Please–” Before the word could have a chance to be heard by another ear, a continuous squelching sound of metal piercing through flesh echoed in the room. I repeatedly drove the scissors into his jugular, watching the soldier gurgle as blood oozed in waves from the miscellaneous holes on his neck.
He grappled for air, his frail hands thawing relentlessly at his own neck, desperate for a chance to save himself from the death glaring at him.
It took five minutes, just five minutes, and the soldier hit the floor.
I hovered over the paling body and not a sliver of regret dared to tug at my conscience. Rather, a twisted smile lifted the corners of my lips, power surging through my veins, watching the faint tremor in the man’s fingers as life left him finally.
“You’re wrong again, preacher,” I murmured, the scissors hitting the floor with a loud clatter. “Still, destiny has no role to play in their deaths. They died only because I wanted them to. I am higher than any so-called destiny.”
A treacherous wind dragged me back in time, years ago, at St. Joseph’s cathedral, the Raskov family’s sacred ground.
I found myself standing beneath the vaulted ceilings, the air thick with incense and whispered prayers.
It was Eugene Raskov’s burial.
Father Thomas stood at the pulpit, solemn and unwavering, his voice echoing through the cavernous church.
“Eugene Raskov died because it was written in his destiny,” Thomas proclaimed, seeming so wise and so sure of the nonsense he just uttered through his chapped lips. “All who perish do so at destiny’s decree.”
Destiny’s decree, he said. But I remembered vividly, the gurgle of a severed throat, the warmth of blood spilling over my hands, the final rattling breath as Eugene’s life seeped away on the cold office floor.
Destiny? Really?
Who was she? This nameless, faceless thing they so willingly bowed to? Did she hold the blade with me that night? Did she whisper in Eugene Raskov’s ears as I carved the old man’s fate into his flesh?
No.
Only I played god that night. And yet Father Thomas had the gut to credit my work to some unseen force, absolving the guilty with the poetry of fate.
It was hard work carving into flesh. You had to be precise, position the knife well, make a clean and perfect cut.
Sometimes it would take me hours as mathematics and physics came to play.
It wasn’t easy, and yet, every damn time, every fucking time, they would credit my work to some entity I didn’t even know.
It was me. It had always been me, Zaghan. A deity. The god living through a mortal’s body.
An ominous breeze circled around the dead soldier’s body–death, who had come to collect another soul, the first one I would be collecting today.
Because my hunger had been awoken. I wouldn’t stop until bodies that had been hollowed out laid around, eyes empty, fingers splintered, the city painted with their blood.
And tomorrow morning, I would purchase the Glenfallow Chronicles, the popular newspaper, just to be sure tonight’s escapade had been documented.
I would make sure I left the body where eyes could see.
I would love to inflict the city with pure terror.
I needed them restless, afraid, running from a ghost they couldn’t see.
So long as I was in control, Scotland must not sleep tonight.
I could almost picture tomorrow’s article.
‘The Crimson Artisan Strikes Again’.
They better get the details of the murders right this time. They better praise me well. ‘The Crimson Artisan, a killer with a surgical hand, and an artist’s eye. Each body is his canvas, each mutilation a masterpiece.’
You could say with his silly, little sketches, my brother was the artist. But make no mistake. I was the sculptor.
A staccato of footsteps reverberated in the room as two soldiers filed in on cue to do what they knew without being told.
They would take the body, strip it for anything of value–the organs, if they were in good condition–sell them for millions, then toss whatever was left into the incinerator, reducing it to nothing but ashes.
While the soldiers circled the body, I felt a vibration against my thigh. A bloodied hand slipped into my pocket only to return with the unfamiliar cell phone I found earlier.
I was turning the room upside down this morning, hoping to find a clue when instead, I saw one of Callan’s cell phones under the bed. I didn’t know how it ended up there. I figured it fell and he never bothered to pick it up. He had at least five of those.
I had pulled it out and tried to turn it on.
Luckily it was charged. Since I was searching for clues literally anywhere–I had actually gone down to the kitchen for the first time in forever this morning, opening cabinets and lifting pots, searching for something, anything I could work with.
Anything that would lead me to the ledger so I could find it on time and focus on my fun.
Anyway, I had kept the phone in my pocket to go through it later when I was done with this soldier.
And now it was actually…ringing?
I turned it over in my hand. Elizabeth, the caller’s ID read.
“Elizabeth,” I hummed, my brows furrowed, tongue curled inward and pressing against the wall of my left cheek.
I didn’t know any Elizabeth, never met one. I had gone through the journal Callan and I shared messages through and I didn’t remember coming across this name there.
This only meant one thing. While I was chained away as always, my twin brother had been very busy with other things.
My thoughts began to spiral. This was it, wasn’t it? The reason Callan refused to release his body to me on time?
Had he gotten carried away because of this…Elizabeth?
A sick kind of amusement slithered through me as I moved my finger to swipe at the screen.
But before I could even touch the green icon, a violent, thrashing sensation ripped through my skull.
Immediately, my vision distorted, twisting at the end like heat waves.
A weight pressed against my mind, a force clawing and shoving at the walls of my consciousness.
That son of a bitch.
Callan was trying to take back control. Was this idiot actually being serious right now?
Not only did he give me control days late, he was trying to snatch it back now? The audacity almost made me laugh.
Why was he doing this?
Because of her? Now that I knew about his filthy, little secret, he was afraid, trying to protect her from…me?
For fuck sake, had this idiot never seen a woman before? What was so special about this creature that he didn’t just become reckless enough to lose the ledger that held this fucking empire within its pages, but also greedy to the point where he didn’t want to share his body with me anymore?
I inhaled sharply, each question answering itself. I gritted my teeth, my fingers twitching on my side.
My muscles were rigid with barely contained fury.
For weeks I had been locked away, curled up in the darkness, scratching at walls as chains dug into my skin.
When I finally stepped out, I barely had time to go hunting, and instead, I was stuck searching desperately for a ledger whose disappearance had nothing to do with me but my stupid brother.
And now that stupid brother was trying to take back control from me?
What a pathetic love-struck fool.
My gaze flickered to where the corpse had sprawled before the soldiers hauled it out. Blood still pooled on the spot, soaking into the cracks of the concrete, the scent dancing in the air like a metallic perfume.
The sight soothed me, though. Just a little…not enough.
“Hi,” a feminine voice whispered from the phone clenched in my bloody and sticky hand. “Are you still there?”
I didn’t even realise I had finally picked the call.
My lips curled in a slow, dangerous grin. Did she even know that she was talking to someone else? That the man she had been giggling with over the phone was gone for days now?
My fingers tightened around the phone, wishing it was that delicate vein in her neck fluttering beneath the weight of my hold.
“Callan,” she whispered his name like a prayer, soft like a gentle kiss, and something rotten and bitter stirred in my gut. How dare she call me by another man’s name?
“Are you still there?” she asked again, her voice a plea, as though she was walking on a sliver of hope, and my reply would change something vital. “Please, answer me. Are you still–”
Her words began to blur, stretch, and warp. A high-pitched ring screeched in my head as I staggered and lost control of my limbs.
“Marshal?” A hand caught my shoulder, firm and grounding. The phone was ripped from my hand, and the sudden absence of weight in my palm infuriated me.
Peppermint and smoke filled my nostrils as Sebastian Razzo–Eugene Raskov’s grandson, born of his only daughter–held me still.
“You need to sit–”
“I am fine–” I tried to speak, but my tongue felt swollen, my mouth heavy, wrong.
Then suddenly, the momentary paralysis. For a split second, I felt nothing. I wasn’t dying, for sure. But I knew this feeling. Callan was really forcing himself out.
Fucking again.
My body tensed, every muscle locking as rage flooded my veins. My twin brother, that self-righteous bastard, was trying to smother me like I was some plague, trying to erase me because of her. That fucking girl out of nowhere.
A woman.
A fragile, little thing.
Had Callan really lost himself to some fairytale? And why was he so desperate to keep me away from this girl? Did he think that I was unworthy of her?
That alone snapped something inside me; a wire pulled too fucking tight. My fingers twitched with the phantom sensation of wrapping around someone’s throat.
I would not be discarded.
I would not be locked away like some unwanted memory, all because of a girl from nowhere. I would not be denied my right.
Since Callan was so desperate to keep this girl hidden, I would have no choice but to meet her somehow. If she was the reason my brother was trying to finally bury me, then she must be deliciously dangerous.
My vision flickered, the word tilting. My mind thrashed against the pull, against the hands dragging me into the abyss.
Not yet.
Not yet.
Not yet—
Darkness. Then silence.
No problem. I would surrender. But not for long.
I grinned into the void.
This was not over.
Oh, not by a long shot.
The next time I took control, the story would be far different from this.
Callan needed to watch his fucking back.