Page 101 of The Ripper

For the briefest moment, I saw myself in her place. My face, a carbon copy of hers, covered in blood.

I closed my eyes, shook my head, and tried to stifle my cries, but I couldn’t. The tears continued to flow as her blood continued to pour, and she took my hand in hers, seemingly with the last of her power.

“Mírame, mi niña[13]…”

I opened my eyes as if I were a robot listening to a command.

I could hear it in her voice, the life draining out of her, and she smiled a broken smile as she opened her mouth to speak, but no more words came out. The spark in her blue eyes, identical to mine, slowly dissipated, as though death had kissed her with bitter lips before she could say her goodbye, and she faded into the afterlife, leaving nothing but a pain-glazed look behind.

I didn’t recognize the agonized howl that left my lungs.

“No!”

I looked around, feeling my body covered in sweat, a heavy weight pressing down on me from above, keeping me from thrashing around and falling off the bed.

Grimm was on top of me, holding me tightly, his eyes full of panic as he breathed heavily over my face. He looked so worried, almost as if it shocked and frightened him to see me like this.

When I finally stopped shaking, he dropped onto the bed next to me and pulled me into his arms, enveloping me in his warmth, promising that I was safe through his touch. His heart hammered in his chest, vibrating against my ear, strong and alive. I was trying to calm my breathing and banish the bitter thoughts that had crawled their way into my brain, like a dodder crept to the nearest plant, ready to infect it and drain all the life out of it.

“You’ve never had nightmares before,” he whispered while he traced soothing circles across my bare back.

“Do I want to know how you know that?” I asked.

I always found that the best way to avoid talking about what was on your mind was to change the subject completely, treat it like a bacterium that you don’t want in your body.

“Don’t do that,” he reprimanded, as his fingers dug into my skin.

“Don’t do what?” I sat up, rubbing my eyes and fighting the urge to cry.

It was true.

I haven’t had any nightmares about my mother’s death — or any kind of nightmares — since I changed my name and moved to the States. I haven’t talked about her to anyone and I pretended that nothing happened, meticulously avoiding the topic of my family in every conversation I ever had. I became a master of deflection, so why was Grimm able to read me as easily as one reads the title of a book?

How was it that the memory was now revealing itself?

That was the thing about ghosts of the past, wasn’t it? They came back to haunt you when you were already down and only pushed you deeper into the mud. As if my brain didn’t already have enough demons to deal with, the image of my mother just had to pour gasoline on the fire.

“Don’t avoid the subject,” he sat up and leaned against the headboard, running his fingers through his hair a few times.

The lights from outside cast ominous shadows on his face, making him look like the poltergeist hiding in your closet, ready to come out and attack you at any moment. I had to remind myself that I was in bed with a patient predator who was just waiting for me to make a mistake and fall into his trap.

“Recent events in my life brought back memories of things I thought I had forgotten,” I sighed, pushing back the hair that was sticking to my sweaty face.

“We never really forget the past,Snezhinka,” he sighed as he linked our fingers. “We fool ourselves into thinking it’s forgotten, we repress it and avoid talking about it until it becomes nothing but a shadow in the back of our minds, but just because you can’t see the monster, it doesn’t mean it’s not there…”

Before I could realize what was happening, he rolled on top of me, his eyes spearing into mine.

He was big, naked, menacing, otherworldly.

Everything I wanted and more.

Everything I needed.

“It’s waiting for you to turn your back on it,” he whispered over my neck as his palms found my legs and wrapped them around his hips, his tone sending a shiver down my spine. “Then it attacks.”

I cried out when he entered me without holding back, arching my back off the bed and pressing my chest to his.

It burned, but never in my life had I craved the flames so much. I wanted to burn, hoping that his fire would burn away the shadows, too.

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