Page 7 of Seth
Seth tsked.Where did he even come from?
Blowing the air of irritation out of his lungs, he looked at the heart. He should put it in the icebox, but he didn’t want to part with it. Tonight couldn’t get any messier, so he had no reason to let go of his possession so soon. After all, this was the only thing left to him from Justin.
Without releasing the heart, he started his car.
* * *
Lostin the greenof wild grapes and maple trees, Seth’s villa presented a modern combination of glass, stone, and metal. Built on a hill, it meant much more than just home to him. Overlooking the whole of Vienna, it inspired him at night, when the drowsy cityscape flirted with him, winking with yellow lights. It protected him from prying eyes with mirrored glass made of polycarbonate capable of stopping bullets. But most importantly, it was built above a bunker left after the Second World War and had three emergency escape routes that weren’t on any map.
It took Seth four years and eleven changes of construction team to erect the five thousand square feet building filled with secret rooms and passages. When it was finally finished, this place became his small kingdom.
Seth undressed in the garage without turning on the lights. Leaving the heart resting in the icebox, he dipped his hands in the basin containing an oxygen detergent solution before scrubbing his hands and nails with a brush. Whatever he used tonight would be burned along with the plastic coating the inside of his car. Wiping his hands with a towel, he took a quick shower in the garage bathroom, thoughtfully checked his body in the mirror for any injuries, then dressed in a white linen t-shirt and pants.
It took twenty minutes to collect his bloody garment, remove the plastic coating from the car, and put everything on a metal tray of the furnace in the basement. When the first precautions were done, he relocated the icebox upstairs. The horizon had already lightened, rippling with pink and yellow. The first blade of the awakening sun stabbed the sky.
He watched the impenetrable darkness bleed, shrink, and retreat. The new morning came, but it didn’t bring any relief or calm. Instead, it awoke a distant rage that stormed through the desert of his soul. It wasn’t quite there yet, but he could hear its roaring at the corner of his consciousness.Why?
He’d gotten Justin’s heart. The heart was essential, the sand, blood, and flesh not so much. He could still proceed without them, or that’s what he thought. Then why did he feel robbed? Why was he mad? Why did he want to take a knife and stab the heart time after time until it lost its form? Why couldn’t he forgive Justin and forget about his betrayal?
Opening the icebox, he caressed the heart with his fingertips. Still and slick, it didn’t respond to his touch.Even in death, you chose someone else. Why? Why not me? I loved you more than anything.
His jaw tensed. He didn’t want to get mad. Justin’s death was supposed to extinguish his boiling agony, to stop the caustic betrayal from decomposing his soul. Yet, it didn’t.I won’t let you escape again. I’ll find him and kill him. You will be mine and mine only.Give up. You were always meant to be mine.
He picked up the icebox and went to the basement where, behind the fake wall in the refrigerator room full of chemicals, a glass jar filled with buffered formalin solution already waited for Justin’s heart.
Adrenaline keptGustavoawake all night. He tried to sleep but, whenever he drifted, the dark eyes surfaced in his memory making his heart race. Intelligent, confident, lethal, they warned and beckoned him at once.
With a gleam of daylight, and not rested at all, he gave up on sleeping and relocated to his office to find the first reports waiting for him in his email.
Sipping his espresso, Gustavo printed the files and started leafing through the autopsy report. The wounds on the boy’s throat and chest had been inflicted with a sharp but short knife. The same knife butchered through his ribcage. No signs of rape, no semen presence. The drug test also came negative, but the complete toxicology report wouldn’t be ready for a few weeks.
Folding his hands behind his head, Gustavo reclined back in his leather chair. If not for the traces of foreign saliva in the victim’s mouth and all over his face, the evidence leaned toward a non-sexual motive.
The chemical analysis revealed that the white powder beneath the body was high-quality silica sand—a wildly used material for all kinds of industrial production. Except this one was chemically pure, transparent, fine. Sand like this found wide usage in glass manufacturing.
What kind of a ritual is that?Gustavo hummed.What can be possibly done with a human heart and silica sand?
Nothing came to mind. His gaze drifted through the vast, two-story office. The yellow lights coming from several displays highlighted a wine collection, Spanish muskets, swords, guitars, and books contrasting with the dark wood and brown leather interior. On the walls between displays, antique canvases hung in heavy frames.
Looking at them always helped Gustavo think. Right now, his eyes gravitated toward a painting with a striking contrast of light and dark above the staircase leading to the second floor where he kept his library. Over five feet high and more than four feet wide, the canvas was the only seascape from the brush of Rembrandt1. The play of light on the picture reminded Gustavo of the moonlight glinting off the bloody heart.
On the painting, a small vessel was at the mercy of the whirling sea and angry sky. High waves lashed at the boat as the wind tore the sail. A yellow lick of light across the dark picture sharpened the sense of peril, but it also brought a promise as the same yellow glowed around Jesus’ head.
Sitting on the dark side of the boat, the son of God portrayed a splash of serenity among the madness. His disciples scattered over the vessel, all kinds of emotions on their faces. Panic, fear, resignation, determination but very little hope—a perfect representation of the fragility of the human mind and body.
The biblical scene was supposed to represent faith, but Gustavo had always associated it with the strength of the human spirit. To him, it was all about the play between light and dark. The sharp contrast divided the Disciples of Christ to those who fought against the storm and those who were resigned to their fate, pleading for mercy but doing nothing to save themselves. While the first group belonged to the light and the vessel’s bow, the former one drowned in shadows at the stern.
For Gustavo, this painting also represented his own conflict with religion. Long ago, he’d refused to kneel in front of the God he had never seen, the God who had never answered his prayers. For him, Fortune favored the strong. The light always glowed around those who fought for their lives. And as long as he drew breath, he swore to stay in the light.
His mind drifted.
He remembered the first time he’d laid his eyes on “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee2”. He’d only glimpsed it from afar, at a black-market auction in Romania, but it instantly stole his heart. He couldn’t rest until the canvas took its place on the wall of his mansion. Tonight, he’d experienced a similar feeling. He just couldn’t let the beast go.
Did the boy know his murderer? Did he beg him to stop? Was the beast as serene as Jesus when he slit his throat? Did he grant his victim his love and forgiveness? Was that why he kissed him? He kissed his cheeks, his mouth, and took his heart, his blood, so he could keep them. The murder wasn’t sexual, but was it an act of love?
I interrupted him, yet he showed me the heart. What did it mean? A sign of forgiveness? A mark of death? Whatever that was, it was freaking breathtaking.
He almost laughed at the memory, but the smile died on his lips as he recalled the cold eyes framed by the demonic yet beautiful face. The wish to see the man again swelled.
