The Swan and the Jackal (2 page)

Seraphina wants to talk. After all this time she has eluded me, kept me in the dark about what she’s been doing behind my back, she finally wants to tell me. More lies? Is this her way of getting me off her back so that I’ll let her go and let her live? So she can be free of me? But it’s not her style. Seraphina, for all that I love about her, is as sadistic as I am. Begging for her life even in the most sardonic of ways, is very out of character for her.

There’s something more to it.

I’m back at our house in Boston in under thirty minutes and her car is parked in the driveway. How bold this woman is, how defiant and fearless. She knows what I’ll do to her. She knows how much I’ll enjoy it and that not even
she
is immune now that she has betrayed me so unforgivably.

I park next to her car, my eyes skirting the trunk before I pull in all the way, remembering the sounds I heard from it before. But I don’t care about that right now.

Slamming the car door behind me, I rush up the stairs and burst into the house, the front door slamming into the wall.

“Seraphina!” I call out as I close the front door and begin my search.

But in the back of my mind I know exactly where to find her, in the basement where I keep my interrogation chair and tools.

The basement door is unlocked. And cracked.

I place my full palm against it and push. It opens without making a sound and I waste no time and descend the concrete steps. A single light glows in the distance, casting faint swaths of light against the steps as I take them one at a time. The familiar sound of a woman whimpering slowly fills my ears. But this is another kind of whimper. Not one of pleasure inflicted by sexual pain, but of fear and pain of another kind.

I step off the last step to find Seraphina standing there in all of her dark and sinister glory. A woman in a long T-shirt and a pair of panties is strapped to my interrogation chair—an old dentist chair—with a gag in her mouth. Blood is still wet in her long, disheveled hair, staining the blonde color just above her hairline, indicative of being hit over the head with something. Tears stream from her wide and frightened eyes, running streaks of mascara down her reddened cheeks. I know now that it was her who had been banging inside the trunk.

Seraphina smiles at me across the space between us, so lovingly, yet so darkly. Her knife hangs from her hand down against her thigh covered by the fabric of a skin-tight black bodysuit. The black lace-up boots with six-inch heels appear to make her tower over the frightened woman. But I don’t remember this woman. She’s not one that Seraphina and I ever ravaged together.

“Why are you doing this, Seraphina?” I walk closer, slowly. “Why did you bring her here? Who is she?” We’re not cold-blooded murderers—of innocent girls, anyway. We’ve never done something like this to any woman who wasn’t willing—unless she was a target. Seraphina has taken this to a whole new level and I don’t like it.

She clicks her tongue and puts the blade to the woman’s throat. “Not too close, love,” she warns me, shaking the index finger of her free hand side to side. “She’s the one with the information. She’s the one you want to talk to.”

This isn’t about sex, I realize now. This is about something so much more.

Confused, but thoroughly invested, I crouch down and set my gun carefully on the floor beside my scuffed dress shoes. Then I raise back up slowly into a stand, both hands level with my shoulders to let her know that I’m not going to make a move. The blonde-haired woman’s eyes grow wider, darting between me and Seraphina though with her head fixed against the chair by a leather strap, she can’t see much of my wife behind her.

Seraphina’s eyes stray briefly to the wooden chair sitting against the wall to my left. Knowing it was an indication for me to sit down, I wrap a hand around the back of the chair and drag it on its back legs into the light before doing so. I cross one leg over the other and fold my hands on top of them after I sit.

“Why do I need to talk to her?” I ask calmly.

“Because she’s the reason we’re here,” Seraphina answers and then slowly moves the blade away from the woman’s throat. “She’s the reason I am what I am. And just like I helped you kill that bastard pig who raped you when you were a boy, you’re going to help me kill
her
.” She points the knife at the woman. “Because you owe me, Fredrik, just like
she
owes me.”

I remain quiet for a long moment, trying to take in her words, seeking some kind of understanding in them and how this woman has anything to do with why Seraphina betrayed me. Why she has betrayed the Order. I want to feel out the details she’s already given me and have some kind of idea of where this is going before I speak. Because I like to have the upper-hand right at the get-go. Always. Only this time, I’m beginning to think that’s not going to be the case.

Not being the one in control makes me very anxious.

“Why does this woman owe you?” I ask. “What has she done to you?”

Seraphina’s darkly painted eyes grin before her lips do. She reaches around and touches the woman’s hair, spearing the ends of it in-between her fingers with gentle, motherly strokes. “So blonde. So pretty.” Then her hand comes up in a swift motion and falls back down across the woman’s cheek; a sharp slapping noise zips through the air. “I hate blondes. I’ve always hated them. But this one in particular, I’ve been looking for her for
years
, Fredrik. Because of what she did to me.”

“What did she do?”

She slaps the woman again and this time blood springs from her nose. The woman’s hands are shaking against the leather restraints securing them to the arms of the chair. The muscles in her legs harden and relax repeatedly as she struggles. Her eyes are pleading for me to help her. I can’t tell her that I’m not here to rescue her, that I’m a heartless bastard who only needs answers. But it’s the truth. I don’t
want
the woman to die, and if I can stop Seraphina from killing her, then I will. But sadly she’s not my priority. And if she dies, I’ll still be able to sleep tonight.

Yes, I am a monster.

“Why don’t you ask her?” Seraphina says as she steps around in front of the woman and snatches back the gag that was tied around her head, removing it from her mouth.

“PLEASE! PLEASE LET ME
GO
!” The woman’s cries pierce my ears, filling my senses with pain and heartbreak.

I only feel this pain when the victim is innocent,
I say to myself as I’ve done many times before. It’s how I know when I’m being lied to. It’s how I know that when I’m torturing a victim in my chair whether they deserve to be set free or not. It’s an instinct, one that only my heart knows, but sometimes my mind refuses to listen.

I only feel this pain when the victim is innocent…

She thrashes violently within the chair, trying to break free, but to no avail.

“P-Please…I’m
begging
you…
please
just let me go!” Sobs roll through her chest, causing her whole body to shake.

I push myself out of the chair and grab Seraphina from behind just as she’s slamming the hilt of her knife into the woman’s face. She fights against me, swinging her fists in the air blindly at me behind her until I grab them, too, and pin them against her chest. I hear the knife clink against the concrete floor. And then black spots spring before my eyes accompanied by a white-hot pain as the back of Seraphina’s skull smashes against my face. Instinctively, I release her, trying to shake my eyesight back into focus. Finally, when I do seconds later, Seraphina already has the knife in her hand again and she’s heaving herself away from me and toward the woman.

“SERAPHINA! STOP!”

I don’t get to her in time.

Time stops.
Everything
stops. My answers, if they were truly to come from this unknown woman, seep out of her throat with the gush of blood pouring down her chest.

I stumble back and fall against the chair again, sitting in a slouched and defeated position with my legs splayed out across the floor. I watch the woman from my seat, the way her eyes begin to glaze over, how her eyelids flutter in some soft yet sickening way. I watch helplessly as she chokes, and how her body fights to hold on to that last breath, her bloodied chest heaving desperately.

And then her fingers uncurl and lay heavily over the chair arms. Her dead eyes look upward at the ceiling, filled with nothing. Blood drips from the chair into a dark puddle beneath it. It won’t stop. I wonder how much blood this woman’s body held.

I sigh with pain and remorse and softly shut my eyes.

I only feel this pain when the victim is innocent.

Seraphina, standing with her back facing me, finally turns around. Her soft, plump mouth is partially agape. There’s something called confusion and maybe even regret swirling in her brown eyes. She looks down at her hands, the right one with the knife covered in blood, and then she drops the knife as if it’s a dirty, evil thing. She brings her hands up and looks at them, it seems as though asking herself how she could’ve done this. How could she have
done
this? I don’t understand it. Seraphina is a killer. An executioner. Many lives have been taken by her hands. But they were, for the most part, deserving deaths. These three women she killed since yesterday were the first—that I know of—that were done in cold blood.

Was it because of me? Am I to blame for her madness somehow?

No. She was
already
mad. She was a sadistic bitch when we met and when I fell in love with her. But
this
. What I’m witnessing now…

I am so goddamn confused…

“It wasn’t her,” Seraphina says, her voice cracking.

She looks at her hands again, one covered in blood, and then she looks back at me.

“I’m so sorry, Fredrik”—tears begin to stream down her cheeks—“I’m so sorry.”

She falls to her knees on the concrete floor and buries her face in the palms of her hands, sobbing into her fingers.

I rush the short distance to her and pull her against my chest, enveloping her in my arms. I rock her against me, pressing my lips to the top of her black hair as she weeps. I let her cry, but I don’t let it go on for long. Because I need answers now more than ever. I need to know everything.

“Tell me, love,” I whisper, holding her tightly within my arms. “Tell me who you thought she was. I can help you if you’ll just tell me. Make me understand.”

She shakes her head against my chest.

“I-I can’t. I can’t tell you because you’ll hate me.”

“I could never hate you,” I say with truth. I
love
her. Parts of her I don’t love, like who she was moments ago when she killed that woman. But right now, the person she is wrapped in my arms, I love with everything in me. “You said she owed you, Seraphina. What did she owe you?”

At first, she doesn’t want to answer. I wait patiently, hoping that if I don’t push her she’ll feel more confident about telling me. I squeeze her gently for good measure.

“I was ten when I met her,” she says, but then becomes quiet again.

Anxious. Desperate. Perplexed. They are among a thousand different emotions I’m feeling right now. But still, I try to remain calm.

“I never meant to betray you,” she says.

I feel like she’s jumping subjects, evading the one about the woman.

“But I knew you had to get away from me,” she goes on. “I couldn’t leave you on my own. I tried. But I couldn’t bear it. So I lied to you about everything. I started sleeping at Safe House Sixteen.”

This is the part I don’t want to hear, but know that I need to.

I brace myself, gripping her tighter, both out of preparation for the pain I’m going to feel, and the pain I’m going to inflict on her before this night is over, because of it.

“I-I did sleep with him, with Marcus who ran the safe-house.”

I grit my teeth and take a deep breath.

I stay calm.

I stay quiet.

I want to skin her alive.

“I did it because I wanted you to find out.”

“Why did you want me to find out?” My voice is composed, careful.

“Because I wanted—.”

She stops.

I’m growing more impatient. Subconsciously, I feel the leather straps on the chair slipping through my fingers as I bind her against it in my mind.

“You wanted what?” I ask with my chin resting atop her head.

“I wanted to hurt you.”

“Why did you want to hurt me?”

I love you.

I despise you.

“Because love is pain,” she says and I swallow down the truth of her admission. “Because love is the greatest scam of all time. And because as much as I fucking love you, I
hate
you for inflicting it upon me!”

Suddenly, I feel a pinprick.

Warmth moves from my thigh upward, spreading out through my veins.

The room begins to blur, faintly at first, but enough that I instantly know I’m in trouble. I try to shake my mind free of the drug, but it’s too strong, wrapping around my consciousness like a spider’s silk around its prey.

I didn’t even realize when Seraphina left my arms, or when I fell against the concrete floor.

Gasoline. The cool air is rife with it, so much so that it’s beginning to burn my nostrils.

“Love…where are you?” I call out, but can’t tell if the words ever actually left my lips. “Sera….”

My lids are getting heavier. Flames. The air isn’t cool anymore. It’s hot…so fucking hot. I want to loosen my tie to let my neck breathe, to strip off my suit jacket, but I can’t move my arms.

“I love you, Fredrik,” I hear her voice whisper near my ear, soft like powder, fatal like poison. I want to kiss her, to feel her lush lips on mine. I want to grind my hips against hers until she cries. “I love you…and because I love you,”—I feel my body moving across the floor—,”you have to let me go.”

Smoke. It’s scratching my throat and my lungs, seeping into my pores and suffocating my blood vessels. I feel like I’m being cooked from the inside out. The heat is becoming unbearable, the flames engulfing the wooden beams holding the basement ceiling up. I can’t see them through my heavy lids, but I can hear them, licking the walls like a thousand demons that sprang from Hell to torment me.