A Siren's Song (Ride of the Darkyrie 2) (12 page)

             
It was made of bone and dust.
Kelly
.

             
“An unusual piece,” I commented in a casual tone.

             
“I keep different things on my desk to engage my patients. Sometimes it helps them feel more at ease about the process.”

             
I smiled at him. “Ensures compliance?”

             
He returned the smile. “Exactly.”

             
“I see.” I placed the hourglass back on his desk.

             
“Do you?”

             
“I do, Dr. Larkin. I really do.”

             
“Call me James.”

             
My muscles coiled tight and I was a King Cobra ready to strike, until the scent of jasmine drifted over me. The small, white trumpet shaped flowers mocked me from their position on table by the door. There was a card on a stick that had been jammed into the dirt as if they’d just been delivered.

             
“Jasmine?” I asked.

             
“Do you like it?”

             
“Some days more than others.” Was Larkin the Capri killer?

             
“Someone sent them to my wife. A secret admirer.”

             
“A secret admirer or are you trying to be romantic?”

             
“I wish I’d thought of it, actually. She’s been through so much.”

             
“If they’re your wife’s flowers, why did she put them in here?”

             
“She felt guilty accepting a gift from another man.”

             
“May I see the card?”

             
He shrugged. “Be my guest.”

             
I took the card and flipped it over.
Kasalan
was scrawled in a neat, precise script.

             
“Does that word mean anything to you?”

             
“Why so curious? Has someone been bothering Angela?”

             
Besides you, asshole?
“Ah, no. I’m just always a cop. Can’t seem to turn it off. If someone I loved got flowers from an unknown source, I’d want every detail.”

             
He looked sheepish. “I did look it up. It’s the Filipino word for marriage.”

             
Jasmine was part of the marriage tradition. It was also the Capri Killer’s calling card. Angela’s mother was in danger, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Angela had told her mother what Larkin had been doing and she’d done nothing.

             
If anyone had done these things to Thora, had she lived, there would be no hellhole deep enough, nowhere far enough to escape my wrath.

             
Angela’s mother was just as culpable as Larkin. The Capri Killer could have her.

             
Thank you.

             
His voice was as loud and clear as if he’d been standing right next to me. My head snapped up and I scanned the room for another presence, but there was no one there but the remnants of Kelly, Larkin and myself.

             
In the blood, in the blood, in the blood.

             
“Out of curiosity, what’s your wife’s blood type?”

             
“What a strange question.” Larkin leaned back on his desk, his palms splayed on the edge.

             
“Indulge me.”

             
“Only if you return the favor.”

             
“If I can.” I nodded.

             
“O positive.”

             
“Huh. Me too.” I had to remember to ask Jenna what the other victims’ blood types were, but I almost didn’t need her answer. I knew this was it; a piece of the puzzle. Though I knew now he was in my head as much as I was in his. He knew I’d come here, find the plant. I was suddenly hit with the impression that this was all a game. He needed the girls’ blood, but the elaborate dressing of the corpses, the scene, all of this was him playing with me.

             
The killer wasn’t human.

             
He believed himself to be my equal.

             
“My turn. Can you get me a day pass to see Angela? I just need to talk to her. There’s no reason to put her mother through this.”

             
“You’re right,” I agreed.

             
“I knew if we could just talk you’d see it my way.”

             
“First, tell me what you did with the rest of Kelly’s body.”

             
His eyes narrowed to little slits and then widened again, the expression would have been imperceptible to a mortal. But not to me. It was as clear and bright as a new light bulb.

             
“You can’t really believe that story, can you?” James Larkin said in a tone designed to calm, soothe, and manipulate. “She went to school and told all of her friends that about the hourglass. It’s made of ivory. Gwen and I got that on safari in Africa for our anniversary.”

             
I could have killed him right there. Snapped his neck. Shoved that pen from the pocket of his shirt into his jugular. Used that hourglass and crack it across the bridge of his nose so the bones shattered and exploded up into his brain. But I did none of those because I wanted him to be afraid first. Like Kelly. Like Angela.

             
“What do you think my job is?” I asked him in that same calm, soothing tone.

             
“You protect people. Now I’m asking you to protect me from a girl who has a lot going wrong in her head. She needs love, family, and medication.”

             
“I do protect people. Do you know what else I do?”

             
He laughed. “What is this? Career day at the grade school?”

             
“I hunt monsters, Larkin.”

             
“And you put them in cages and keep us all safe,” he said dismissively.

             
It was my turn to laugh. “No, sweetheart. I don’t put them in cages. I kill them.” His fingers flexed and his eyes darted to his desk drawer. “You have a gun? Good. Get it. I’ll even give you a free shot.”

             
I knew the thought of the gun comforted him. Or it would until he actually shot me and the wounds healed before his eyes. The terror he’d know then, well, that might be a fraction of what his victims felt.

             
This was joy. Pure and untainted. Some people were meant to write, and when the words flowed from their fingers, the ink on the page like blood, it was bliss. Some were meant to sing, and when their voice was lifted to the heavens, every cell in their body vibrated with their purpose. Punishing and killing were those things for me—what I’d been made for.

             
He shot me.

             
The bullet grazed the side of my head, but I didn’t even bleed.

             
“Try again,” I invited. “Keep shooting until the bullets are gone.” I unbuttoned the first two buttons on my blouse. “Look Ma, no Kevlar. Try my heart.”

             
The stench of his fear filled the room and I could see his pulse thundering in his throat, the terror on his face as he fired the gun. Watching the bullets as they tore through my flesh, my body healing as it was damaged.

             
“What are you?” he gasped, the gun falling from his shaking fingers to clatter on the desk.

             
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,” I said, cheerfully quoting Hamlet.

             
“Someone will call the police. Shots fired in this neighborhood…” he muttered ineffectually.

             
“Your neighbors aren’t home. They’re businesses as well. No one will know where the shots came from. And did you forget? I
am
the police. Where’s Kelly?”

             
“Down…downstairs.”

             
“Show me.”

             
“Don’t kill me. I’ll leave her alone.”

             
“Show me where downstairs.”

             
“If I show you…”

             
“I’m not the kind of devil who makes deals, Larkin.” I slammed him against the wall, my forearm pressing into his throat. “But you belong to me. For eternity. Think about how you want to spend it. It can either be as a nameless, faceless, one of the damned or I could take a particular interest in your afterlife.”

             
“This isn’t real,” he muttered, spittle clinging to the corners of his mouth. Then he changed tacks. “It wasn’t my fault. I’m sick. I need help.”

             
“And help has arrived.” I leaned in, my weight pressing harder against his larynx. I could crush it, but I wasn’t ready for him to die yet. I wanted him to feel every single thing he’d done those girls. Images of walling him up alive in the basement washed over me. I knew then I didn’t need him to tell me what he’d done with Kelly’s body.

             
Something new surged hot and sweet, fire and sugar, and it exploded from my fingertips to wrap around my prey like a hundred boa constrictors. They wriggled up into his nose, his eyes, and when he opened his mouth to scream, down his throat.

             
Scream he certainly did. Until his voice cracked, and all that was left were harsh little barks of terror.

             
Dr. James Larkin was a victim of his own crimes.

             
This was exactly what I’d intended for him.  Contentment filled me as he writhed and begged, clawed at imaginary walls and wailed at his fate.

             
“You recover quickly,” the Cross said as he stepped from the shadows. “Pain seems to inspire greatness in you.”

             
“As it does in all of us.” I wasn’t even surprised by his presence this time. “Look what it made of you. I wonder, if I hadn’t fought with your mother if you’d be the hard, blade of death—an unstoppable assassin. Or would you be using your voice to bring glory to the gods, singing and weaving tales of great deeds?” I looked up at him again, my gaze dragging over the wide rivers and tributaries of raised and puckered flesh. “You were a beautiful child who would have grown into a devastatingly beautiful man. Would you have so vigorously sharpened your weapons, or dulled them on women and accolades?”

             
His eyes flashed with a hate so pure it was almost lovely. “And now, no woman would have me unless I use my voice to blind her to my face.”

             
“Then they are stupid women, Assassin. Scars are proof of strength. They are the grooves that the razors of pain and suffering leave in their wake after defeat. A man with no scars is a man who has not yet been tested.”

             
“Sex is not my weakness, Darkyrie.”

             
“No, not sex. But your want of me.”

             
“Even after what I’ve done?”

             
“
Especially
after. Your punishment pushed me here. I’m closer to ascending. I have a piece of me I always felt was missing. Thank you.”

             
My words were chosen just to elicit that reaction—that rage mangling his already twisted features. I couldn’t help the smirk that curved my lips and I didn’t want to. No, I’d never allow him to bring me so low again.

             
“You’re quick to betray your lover.”

             
I’d already established that Grimes wasn’t my lover. So he couldn’t know about what had happened between us unless he’d been there. “Did you stay and watch us? Creep back inside…”

             
“I wanted to watch you suffer. Just as you’re doing to this scum on the floor.” He indicated where the good doctor still whined and flailed.

             
“If that’s what you tell yourself. Do you like watching other people’s intimate moments because you have none of your own? No touch, no connection…
You’re completely alone
.”

             
“No, I’m not. I have you,” he growled.

             
I could practically taste the bile that coated those words like venom and it warmed me, made my heart race faster like a dose of Belladonna. It was just as poisonous, but I still wanted a sip.