Page 46 of King of the Dawn

I knew the answer, of course. If Alastair Green had told him to slit his own throat, he would have. If he had been ordered to jump off a cliff, he would, and hoped for the best, because the alternative was always death. A death that was visiting him now…

“You bet on the wrong horse,” I said, looking at the finely cleaned blade, shining in the sparse light overhead.

The shadows on Brock’s face were harsh and sinister. He was such a sad little prisoner.

“Now you must contend with me. Aren’t you lucky?”

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!” He rattled against the chains, his feet kicking at air as I approached with the tip pointed up towards his nose.

“Shhhh,” I said, soothingly, like I was calming a lamb before I slaughtered it for dinner. “You know what will happen.”

The stitches between his ribs from where my wife had planted a blade began to ooze and puss with the stress of his movements. I peeled off the bandage with careful movements, seeing the straight mark of the gardening knife she had used to defend herself.

I pulled a breath in though my teeth as I remembered our ill-fated meeting in this house. How she had planted a knife in my skin. She had stabbed weakly, her emotions barely letting her control the blade. The knife had been vertical, and didn’t even touch bone.

Her fingers in my hand as I showed her the intercostal spaces to stab… oh, she had remembered her lesson well.

I was proud of her.

She wasn’t the defenseless thing I had placed a ring on. She was something so much more. She was ready to live by herself - to take the world by storm. How tragic that as she became the best version of herself, she would slip from my grasp.

“That fucking song,” Brock said through a small whimpered cry. “I can hear it, even now. Her stupid fucking song. She would hum it to herself all the time. Then she started putting words to it…”

Was he speaking for the sake of speaking? It was something I had witnessed people close to death doing. They would just… confess. Not even relevant to the situation they were in. I had men confess to accidentally killing a cat in their childhood, or stealing a pack of cigarettes from a local gas station when they were teens… the things that haunted people were often ridiculous, and surprising.

I had been around enough death to know that person’s last words were rarely ever profound. More often, it was the last misfires of an overstimulated mind, fighting for it’s grasp on the sad state of living.

I casually placed the blade in my hand against Brock’s skin, letting him feel the cold metal. I wasn’t even sure he could feel anything, but I was curious.

“She’s going to kill us all.” A fat, pathetic tear went down his cheek, dripping off his chin before it fell to the floor, down to the drain where his blood would follow. “She’ll destroy you too…”

I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise in awareness. Those words were a curse.

I looked up at him, keeping a snarl from escaping my lips. But he kept talking.

“She’ll destroy every man she encounters. That’s what witches do.”

As with his tears, his wound also wept.

There was something… religious looking about him. About how he was strung up, tortured, crying and bleeding. Like a sad martyr, with a blade to his skin.

I would be moved, if I did not know what he had done to my wife.

“Alastair Sr.” he sniffed. “He said it was alright. He said they wanted it!”

‘They?” I asked, tilting my head.

Were there more than just my wife? Were there other women who needed him to pay for his crimes?”

“A woman of a certain age who is unfasted is… is…”

I narrowed my eyes, feeling bile rise up my throat.

“They’re fair game! That was Alastair’s choice, and I just followed orders! I never… they never…”

Another sad, martyred tear fell down his cheek, and I felt the bile turn into something else. It turned into laughter.

“My God,” I laughed, feeling the cruelty of my soul come fully to the surface. “You truly think you are the sacrificial lamb? You think that none of your misfortunes are your fault?”

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