Page 16 of The Deer and the Dragon
Placate. The surviving victims had mollified their attackers.
“You look good.” I smiled, keeping the tremor from my voice. I put on Maribelle’s confidence like a mask, shifting into her skin. “How have things been in the surgical wards?” I asked, slowly shifting my weight to the balls of my feet. It wasn’t yet wise to bolt, but I needed to be ready to run.
“Oh, you know,” he said, rising from my corner chair with glacial slowness, “cutting and dicing, slashing and hacking, this and that.”
An unfaltering smile remained on my face as I took a stepbackward into the kitchen. I knew I was corning myself, but if I put the island between us, I might be able to create the space I needed to get to the door. I’d still have to make it to the stairwell and sprint from the building. And then down the empty streets of the warehouse district. And if there was no receptionist or security guard…
Richard was fit. I wasn’t ready to stake my life on outrunning him.
Another backward step. Perhaps I could distract him. I fought to keep my voice level as I did my best to offer a charming, apologetic half-smile. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to reschedule our date. Would you like to catch up now?”
His eyes shone black as if his pupils had swallowed his irises. His smile widened further, almost as if small strings were responsible for tugging it into the most sinister grin as he said, “You know how I found you?”
I swallowed as high, loud fear rang in my ears. My clammy palms nearly forced me to drop my beer bottle. I didn’t know what kept me from trembling, aside from shock. He took another step forward. I mirrored it with a backstep.
“Do you know that little bookstore on Main Street? The one that always hangs those pride flags in the window? Guess whose smile I saw. Merit Finnegan, bestselling author of thePantheonseries, followed by the grinning face of the prostitute who stood me up. I just had to see it for myself.”
It should have been the least of my worries, but a small part of me died at the word. No one shouted your alias for the world to hear with camaraderie on the brain. No one broke into your apartment in the middle of the night with good intentions. No one referred to sex workers as prostitutes unless they swung to hurt. I’d been doomed from the start, but now I knew: there was no way this night ended well.
I trained my face to remain calm.Keep him talking,the voice in my head screamed, clawing at the scraps of information that had been drilled into my brain.Survivors humor their captors.“I’m so sorry, Richard. I haven’t been takingdates since I began writing. I’ve been busier than I could have imagined. I’m so blessed that my dating life was able to set me up—”
“I would have stopped then, you know.”
I calculated the distance between myself and the knife block, only half listening as I tried to form a plan. My eyes drifted casually over it to see…
“Are you looking for these?” He made a sweeping gesture to the knives he’d set on the small table beside the corner chair. Renewed fear pulsed through me, filling me with deeper dread as each second passed. He’d preemptively collected anything I might use against him. He wasn’t open to bonding. There would be no placating.
I marked each utensil as he continued. “Maribelle, Merit Finnegan, they were both lies. You’re not real. Nothing about you is real. That’s when it occurred to me that it didn’t matter whether you’re a whore. You were still a liar, Marlow Thorson.”
My full name. The final, chilling nail in the coffin.
Our game had come to an end. My eyes darted. His teeth glistened.
He lunged in the same fraction of a beat it took for me to make a move. Rather than turn my back on him, I jumped forward and to the side toward the table of knives. Richard snarled and spun on me as I wielded my only weapon. I swung the beer bottle as hard as I could. It made contact, but he barely registered the blow. I lost my grip on the glass, and it shattered to the floor.
Each tooth in his grin remained manically feline as he glistened with feral delight. He dipped and picked up the shattered bottle. I dove for the knives. My knees smacked the marble with bruising impact, stealing my breath. I didn’t have time to be consumed by the pain-fueled stars that filled my vision. I knocked the table to the side, its glassy surface shattering into ten thousand pieces as I wrapped my hand around the steak knife that clattered to the ground, grippingit by the blade. I scarcely felt the spike of pain as it bit into my skin, struggling through the free-flowing blood to adjust my hold and find the hilt. I tightened my grip, distantly aware of a sharp, high crunch that sounded like blade on bone.
A guttural, animal scream tore through me.
The sound didn’t come from pain but the sudden, horrible fear that erupted from my belly as hands wrapped around my calves and yanked me backward. The high squeak of flesh on marble rang through the apartment as he reeled me in like a fish. He grabbed my forearm and squeezed until the tendons became too useless to hold the blade. The knife clanged against the marble floor as fresh blood rained down around it. I whimpered against the hold and thrashed, desperate to remember something,anythinghelpful.
Richard wrapped his hands around my neck. He grunted, eyes bulging as he sank his gloved hands into me. His face turned red, forehead vein popping as vitriol and power coursed from him into the hands crushing my windpipe.
Rather than tear at his hands for release, my fingers flew for his ears. I tugged as hard and fast as I could on his sensitive extremities until he yelped in surprise. It scarcely bought me the time to draw a fresh breath before he recovered from my swipe. He raised a hand and hit me so hard my jaw nearly popped out of place. My ears rang. Pain and panic devoured me as my vision vignetted. Richard’s malevolent shape towered over me. I rallied to claw for his eyes when he struck me again. I clung to the outer edges of consciousness like it was a metal bar lathered in oil. A vein in his forehead throbbed as he went in for the kill. This time when he wrapped his fingers around my neck, I scarcely had the ability to scratch at his arms.
My last thought before unconsciousness began to pull me under rang through my mind as clear as a bell:
Be sure to get skin under your fingernails so they can avenge your death.
Chapter Seven
Scratch. Evidence. Justice.
Rot in prison, motherfucker. Let my pretty, smiling face grace the news beside your disgusting mugshot as they announce your place on death row.
If I was going down, I’d drag him to Hell with me.
They were the last thoughts as the darkness closed in before…
