Page 54 of King Among the Dead

A woman screamed.

Rose caught a glimpse of flashing white satin, and she didn’t think – she struck. Her knife bit into flesh, and there was another scream, this one ear-piercing. A punched-out sound of pain. She withdrew the knife, and struck again, higher, and the scream became a liquid gurgle.

She stepped back, and heard the body drop; heard it thrash against the fibers of the shag rug.

The lights came on, and she squinted against the brightness.

Two bodies lay on the ground, the man dead, the woman still dying. The man had been killed swiftly and neatly, a puncture in the side of his throat that had sent a waterfall of blood down his bare torso. He’d fallen back against his nightstand, sitting upright, eyes glassy and unseeing, hands open in his lap, wet and crimson where he’d flailed at his wound before weakness overtook him. The blood dripped down onto the cream rug; it had smeared on the cream bed linens.

The woman – Rose’s kill – died as she watched, her face going slack, her hands uncurling. She was not the woman in the photo downstairs, but a much-younger blonde. Rose had gotten her between the ribs, first, and then found her throat on the second try, a messy, inelegant cut that had nonetheless done the trick.

Beck came to stand beside her, surveying their work. She could feel the energy pouring off of him, tightly-leashed; knew that if he met her gaze now his eyes would be sparking.

But he nodded, and wiped off his knife with a cloth that he then passed to her. As she cleaned the blood from her blade, he produced another knife: a cheaply-made thing she hadn’t ever seen before. He pulled it from its plastic bag, with gloved fingers, and carefully went to both bodies, wetting the blade with blood.

“Let’s go.”

He left the lights on, and went back out into the hall, and halfway down the stairs, where he set the knife, carefully. The plastic bag got crumpled up and put in his pocket, and he motioned her along in his wake.

Back through the kitchen, back out the window – he replaced the bars, adding an extra screw from his pocket so they were fixed securely: no signs of forced entry. He led her along the backs of several townhouses, and pulled her down behind an artificial hedge, where they crouched on the wet tile of a darkened patio, and waited. For what, she didn’t know – and then she saw headlights.

A sleek, expensive car rolled past, turning in at the house they’d just left. It disappeared inside the garage, and a moment later, a light came on in the kitchen window they’d used as an entry point.

“His wife,” Beck explained.

And then she understood: the wife would go inside, and when she started up the stairs, she’d find the knife. She would pick it up, and it would hold her fingerprints, and the blood of her husband and his mistress. When she found the bodies, she’d call 911, but the only evidence to find would point to her.

Silently, Beck stood, and she followed.

The rain picked up on their walk back to the house; it beaded on the edge of her hood and dripped down inside, cold against the back of her neck. It felt good, though, her skin overheated and too tight, her pulse throbbing in her temples, making her head ache. She breathed the humid air in through her mouth, drinking it down, with all its foul city smells, feeling so keenly, wildly alive.

They went across the courtyard, and in through the back door, which he locked behind them. Raindrops dripped from their jackets, quiet patters against the tile, as they stood in the dim kitchen, just breathing.

Beck pushed back his hood, and his face was all of tension: jaw clenched, brows lowered, nostrils flared. His damp hair clung to his neck, where it had come loose of its knot, and save for its softness, he looked carved from marble. He stripped off his wet coat, and hung it by the door; knelt down to unlace his boots and tugged them off.

Rose watched him a moment, drifting, dreamy and relaxed like she’d just gotten out of a bath. Then, belatedly, took off her own coat and boots.

He sent her a look – low-lidded, full of things unsaid – that clearly told her to follow, and headed down the hall.

He built up a fire in the library fireplace, and stayed crouched in front of it a moment once it was snapping merrily, warming his hands. Orange light bathed the slender elegance of his fingers, clean tonight because he’d worn gloves, but she could imagine the smears and stains, the evidence of the violence he’d wrought. He could wear gloves, and soak in the tub, and scrub his hands until the skin was raw, but the things he’d done would forever be etched beneath his surface, sense memories like echoes, bells tolling through him and then through her when he touched her, even innocently, as he always did.

She tried to gauge his mood, but his profile revealed only gilded sharpness – and the sense that he was holding himself on a very tight leash. She wondered what it would take to make it snap.

When he stood, he went to the sideboard and poured two whiskeys. Rose settled into her chair, feet hooked over the arm and pointed toward the fire, and accepted her glass with a quiet thanks.

He got situated in his own chair, and lit a cigarette from the pack on the table. Stared into the fire when he said, “You didn’t ask me who they were.”

“I figured you would have told me if you’d wanted me to know.”

His brows lifted, and she thought he started to face her – but didn’t. “You didn’t know if they deserved it. What if they were innocent? What if they took in orphans and walked old ladies across the street?”

“What if they did?” she countered.

His head did turn, then, fractionally. He looked up at her through his lashes, chin tucked at an angle that lent his face a hollow, hungry look. “Would you have regretted it?” He took another long drag, smoke curling through the wisps of his drying hair.

She hadn’t taken one sip of whiskey, but felt like she’d had a whole glass, loose, and warm, and relaxed. Unafraid of her own honesty. “I don’t regret anything when it comes to you.”

Beck, by contrast, vibrated with barely-suppressed tension. His fingers tapped on his glass; shook where they held the cigarette. He didn’t blink for a moment, holding her gaze. Debating, she thought. Arguing with himself.

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