A Dark Beginning: A China Dark Novel (26 page)

She felt a soft paper tissue being pushed into her hands. “Stop crying now lady.”

His voice was kind but firm, and she was able to gain some measure of control, snuffling loudly into the tissue. Devak was crouching in front of her looking into her face with interest.

“I’m sorry, Devak. I thought I would cope just fine with that…” she waved her hand in the general direction of her confrontation with Philip. Devak would know what she meant.

“You seemed to be doing just fine. Up to a point. I was worried you were going to hit him at the end though.”

She snorted, an unladylike sound of startled laughter. “I wanted to.”

“But he is your husband, lady. Does he not have a point?”

“I’m not sure that’s any of your business,” she said, immediately regretting the harshness of her response. He was taking Philip’s side, but if he was, maybe Philip did have a point. She didn’t want to allow that thought any space. She must remain strong. “He may not have made me have an affair, but he was instrumental in the whole set up.”

“But, lady, you made the choice. Mark was the gun, but you pulled the trigger. And then he left you, like a coward, to deal with the consequences alone.”

“I don’t regret my choices, but I wish I had known what was going on.”

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” said Devak with a heavy sigh. “It’s such a shame. I thought you could be saved.”

“What do you mean, saved? I don’t need to be saved from anything.” He was irritating her now, and she could feel the heat of her annoyance beginning to boil over.

“I rather think you do. Your betrayal of your husband with that man. That sinful photographer.” His words were spoken like a preacher, hints of fire and brimstone dripping from each syllable. The change in his demeanour was frighteningly sudden.

China knew that Devak must have been listening in on the whole of her earlier conversation with Philip, but something else was wrong. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something was very wrong. The language he was using. Who used ‘sinful’ nowadays other than religious extremists? Her tears were drying and she looked up at Devak with sore, red-rimmed eyes. His eyes had changed unrecognisably. They were no longer a soft chocolate brown, no longer alive with intelligence and kindness. They looked almost muddy, dead of emotion. He didn’t even look angry, although his words had been edged with fury.

“If you had been listening to it all, you’d have known that Philip set me up with him.” She knew she sounded defensive and she didn’t like it. She shouldn’t have to defend herself to this man.

“The choices were yours,” he spat, the ire in his tone almost breaking his voice. “You are a married woman, and you acted like a painted harlot.”

“What,” she screamed. “How dare you. This is none of your business.”

“When a woman betrays her husband it is everyone’s business. A civilised, god-fearing society cannot survive if such transgressions are allowed to pass without punishment. Marriage is sacrosanct. God has declared it so. And you have spat in God’s eye, acting the whore.”

Her own defiant anger did not blind her to the fact that Devak had grown very still as he raged at her. His voice was full of pious anger, barely above a whisper now, and his expression was stone with murky, dead eyes just staring through her. She started to feel afraid and looked around for a way out of the room. Devak had shut the door, but she went to it anyway and tried to open it. She hadn’t heard him lock it when they had come in, but then she had been crying hard and loud and hadn’t been aware of much else at all, just in need of a sympathetic haven. She rattled the door handle. “Let me out, Devak.”

“Women like you don’t deserve happiness. Your tears are the first judgment from God. They are there to show you the error of your ways. Your sadness is necessary.”

“I said let me out. I will scream if you don’t”

The blow came out of nowhere and startled her. She reeled, the pain flaring from her cheek, and dark spots swam in her vision. He had just hit her across the face. Before she could recover she felt a second blow to the side of her head. It felt like he had hit her with a hammer, but through her blurred vision she could see that his only weapon was a clenched fist. She was gasping for breath, unable to scream, only choke out a barely audible and futile “Help me.” She knew that no one would hear that.

“There is no help for you now, whore. Your first judgment was tears and sadness, your second will be hell, and God has demanded that I deliver you.”

Devak reached into a drawer and pulled out a large kitchen knife. China stumbled backwards into a corner of the small room. She looked around desperately for anything to use to defend herself. She knew she must somehow delay his attack, give herself more time.

“You don’t need to do this,” she said. That was a pathetic attempt she told herself. She needed to do better. A slideshow of films played through her head, all the clichéd girl victims at the climax of the movie. How had they slowed the murderer down? Mostly they got him to talk, but right at this panicky moment she couldn’t think of what to say.

“Surely if I’m such a sinner, it would be better to save me,” she tried forlornly.

He waved the knife at her as he slowly advanced. “Don’t try those tricks with me, demon woman. You are a liar and a cheat, a snake with charms. They were all like that. But they all betrayed their husbands with that photographer, and so I delivered them to their hell.”

China suddenly realized that Devak was on some kind of damned crusade to rid the world of unfaithful wives. It was obvious to her now that he had been cleansing the world of Mark’s married lovers. How dare he take this role upon himself, become the judge, applying his bigoted views to other peoples’ lives, destroying them to satisfy his own interpretation of morality. Her anger got the better of her and so she attacked.

“Fuck you. You’re a pathetic worm. It’s a good job you have that knife or I would kick your ass. You talk about things you know nothing about.”

“I know that you are an abomination in God’s eyes, and must die.”

China felt behind her and scalded her fingers on the hot kettle. Putting up with the burning metal, her fingers fumbled to flip off the top of the kettle.

“Well come on then you piece of shit. Let’s see if you’ve actually got any balls at all. Unless you want to fuck me first.”

Devak hesitated, his dead eyes momentarily showing a flicker of dark emotion. Was it anger? Was it desire? It was definitely surprise. And then his mouth stretched and he started to scream as he rushed forward. Just as he got within arms reach, China swung the hot kettle around. She could feel splashes of boiling water stinging her arm, but managed to deliver a full blow into the side of Devak’s head and watched in satisfaction as scalding water splashed out of the kettle on to his face.

Temporarily blinded, Devak’s knife only nicked through China’s clothing and buried itself in the work surface beside her. His scream had turned into an inhuman gargle of pain. She brought her knee up as hard as possible, almost lifting her own body off the ground as she drove her kneecap into his groin. There was an audible, almost comical crunching sound and Devak folded up in front of her, dropping to the floor.

She looked down at his curled up body. He was shaking and sobbing quietly, hands pressed to his swollen red face, but she didn’t want to get too close. She turned and started hammering on the door, hoping someone outside would be able to let her out.

“Help,” she shouted. “Let me out, someone, please.”

She heard a female voice on the other side of the door, and the door handle rattled again. “I can’t. It’s locked.”

“Please,” she said desperately. “Call the police, but please get this door open.”

“I’ll get help.”

“Don’t go,” she said, dreading being left alone even for a second.

She screamed as she felt a strong claw grab her ankle, pulling her off balance. She fell backwards over Devak’s half slumped body, bashing her head hard against a cupboard. Her vision swam dizzily for a moment, as her attacker knelt up to reach for the knife embedded in the wooden counter. She could see that his face was swollen puffy and wet on one side, and one eye was barely open. The other remained devoid of emotion, staring at her as his right hand wiggled the knife out of the counter. His left hand reached for her neck.

She threw a punch at his head, already knowing that it was too weak before it even connected. As he turned his head away she connected with a glancing blow from the back of her left hand. Devak screamed again as a red stripe appeared across the swollen side of his face, blood instantly swelling through the rapidly developing blisters. She looked down at her hand and was almost sick when she saw some of his weakened skin caught in the stone and clasp of her engagement ring. His hand withdrew from her neck and went to his face, barely able to touch it, shaking just above the broken and blistered skin.

China reached forward with both hands and grasped Devak’s crutch, squeezing as hard as she could, screaming with the effort. Both of his hands went to her wrists, his right hand dropping the knife on the floor, and he cried out as he tried to twist her hands away. Despite the wrist-breaking pain in her arms she kept squeezing. She knew her life depended on it. She could see the knife beside her, but she daren’t let go long enough to grab it. Devak was curled over her, shaking in pain, his dead eyes tightly shut. He was just whimpering now but she could feel his strength waning in his grasp on her arms.

She could hear a commotion on the other side of the door, people calling out, asking if she was ok. Stupid question, she thought, of course I’m not fucking ok. The door was rattling and then there was a huge bang and the door shuddered. It looked as if someone was trying to break in. She needed to hold out a little longer. She had no doubt that Devak would kill her as soon as he got the chance.

With all the strength she could muster, her arm muscles burning with the effort, she grunted as she closed her fists even tighter around his balls. She almost let go when she felt a sickening pop in her right hand, as if a small balloon had burst. A sudden exhalation of breath came from Devak, but no further sound, and his hands released her wrists. He fainted forward, his full weight on her body. She was trapped under him, his chest hardly moving, his strong, rotting-meat breath hot in her face. Up close she could see the horrifying detail of the massive burn blisters developing on one side of his head.

Scrambling and twisting she managed to get her face away from his, but could not remove his dead weight from on top of her in the claustrophobic confines of the small room. She was hard up against one of the cupboards and only just managed to free one arm from between them. While he was still alive he was a danger. She had no doubt that as soon as he awoke from his faint he would exact his revenge. Tears rolled down her face with the effort of trying to roll him off of her.

She panicked as she saw Devak’s eyes flicker open, rolling around, struggling to focus. As his sight settled upon her, vulnerable beneath him, she felt a renewed strength surge through his body and he started to push himself up onto his hands and knees. She thrashed about as his weight lifted off her body, desperate to get away from him, pushing and slapping at his chest and face. And then there was an enormous crash as the door whacked open against her shin. Her relief suppressed the sudden pain of impact when she saw Tony appear in the doorway. He halted for a moment as he took in the scene and then he quickly reached down and dragged Devak’s body off of her, throwing the still weak assailant against the farthest wall as more people crowded into the room.

China sat nursing her orange juice in the restaurant. Somehow she just never seemed to fancy a coffee nowadays. The empty breakfast plates had been cleared away from in front of them and she felt satisfyingly full. She looked away from her fellow diner, back to the large window at the traffic outside. She didn’t feel the need to say anything, enjoying the comfortable silence.

His voice broke into her quiet contemplation. “You seem in a good place, China. Happier than I’ve seen you in ages.”

She just nodded slightly, although the faint smile on her face was answer enough.

“What are you going to do next?”

China looked back at Philip’s face. He took a sip of his tea and waited patiently for her answer, not pushing her, knowing he no longer had that right. She took in his handsome features, seeing again the man she had fallen in love with all those years ago. He had been fully supportive and respectfully distant since the attempt on her life. She knew that he felt the full burden of guilt over his part in the events of last month, but she had also come to terms now with the fact that the only person truly responsible for the danger that had woven itself into her life had been Devak, and he was now safely behind bars awaiting trial. She was almost ready to forgive Philip’s foolishness and selfish manipulation. She realised that no one had forced her to do anything, and she was ready to accept that the road she had taken had been her choice. She wasn’t happy with the behaviour of some of her travelling companions, but had she really been any less selfish herself?

She knew that Philip was waiting anxiously for an answer.

“I think I need to, as the Californians would say, find myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t expect you do. You never really were much of a hippy were you? And I am sorry, Philip. I do still love you, despite everything.” The relief she saw in his face was almost pathetic, but she found that kind of helpless devotion and dependence on her actions quite pleasing nowadays. More power play to relish. “As you said before, I am loving who I am now. But that new me is just starting to explore possibilities. Just starting to realise the potential world of pleasure that is available. I need to find out how far I am willing to go down that road. The road that you set me on, don’t forget, Philip.”

She experienced even more pleasure as she noticed the fear in his face, and she wanted to play with him a little more, loving him, loving his reaction to her every whim. She looked away, back to the window, watching the airplanes taking off and landing, regular as clockwork. She reached into her bag and pulled out her ticket.

In the same envelope as her ticket was another one. “You did bring your passport didn’t you, like I told you to?” she asked.

He grinned broadly, a grateful puppy, and nodded. She threw his ticket across the table and watched as he studied it closely. “We’re going to Venice?” He seemed pleased at the romantic destination. But then he looked a little more puzzled. “But we don’t leave until tomorrow evening.”

She laughed, bright and loud, pleased that this was playing out exactly as she had planned. He was no match for her in this new game. “Oh no,” she said happily. “
We
are not going to Venice tomorrow.
You
are going to Venice tomorrow. I am going to Naples today. In about an hour’s time in fact.” She waved her own ticket at him, taunting him, enjoying his expressions of puzzlement and betrayal.

“I don’t understand.”

“Then let me explain Philip. You do remember that you chose this life for us don’t you?” He just nodded. “Well, now I’m in charge and I have decided that I need a few days in Naples to sort a few things out. I’m sure you can imagine, maybe even remember, what some of those things might be.” Her grin was wickedly broad now, as she noticed the flicker of trepidation and desire in Philip’s face.

He barely emitted a simple, breathy “Yes.”

“You will be in Venice tomorrow evening. Don’t worry I’m sure you’ll find a comfortable seat for the night here. And then I’ve booked you onto a train that runs from Venice to Naples the day afterwards. I think you might enjoy whiling away the long hours, thinking about how I might be occupying myself while I’m waiting for my errant husband to join me in Naples. You’ll be able to find me somewhere on the Amalfi coast I suspect. But don’t take too long to find me Philip, I might find that I can happily amuse myself without you at all.”

She laughed again, and left her husband to pay the restaurant bill as she headed off for her plane.

THE END