Page 42 of Seth
“What do you think he was doing here?” Diego raised his brow refusing to speculate. “He ran out of money. He was checking if I keep any cash here.”
“Hmm…” Putting the empty glass on the small coffee table, Diego got up. “I’d hate to agree with him, but the kid has a point. Mayr would have slashed your throat today if not for me. What will you do if he comes again?”
“I’ll be waiting,” Gustavo grinned, and his blood warmed with anticipation. “Now, get me a first aid kit, the wound is burning.”
* * *
Seth stood in the basement,the dead arm in his hands. Justin’s rigid fingers slacked as his flesh defrosted. Moving them, toying with them, felt strange as if he was playing with a puppet, not human flesh. With his thumb, he rubbed the small, pale knuckles, and once again thought how delicate Justin had been, how frail, how beautiful. Almost perfect.
He didn’t want to part with Justin, didn’t want to let go of his arm so soon. Still, he tugged a metal tray out of the furnace and placed the arm on it. The yellow and red flames in the depth cheerfully sparked anticipating the feast. They stretched their tongues to the human flesh, and the tiny, light hair on Justin’s arm curled from heat. The nasty smell filled the air.
Seth turned on the air vent, and sent the tray back into the furnace. The fire sparked and attacked the arm. He sighed. Odd jealousy toward the fire poisoned his blood as he watched it consume the last remaining part of his former lover.
He didn’t know how much time passed, but as if paying his last respect, Seth couldn’t move until only ashes remained on the tray. The flame lost its interest in the insubstantial remains and retreated to the back of the furnace.
Seth pulled the tray out and set it aside on a metal workbench. The black ash that painfully resembled the black rust streaming from the top of SkyBlade from his dreams, trapped his eyes. In a trance, he couldn’t blink or swallow. Without registering his actions, he reached his hand toward the steaming pile of ash, scooped a handful, and poured it back onto the tray.
His skin sizzled, but like always, he didn’t feel pain or heat. A powerful jolt of energy bolted through his body, recharging him. Vivid images filled his head, and the next instant, he stood in front of the furnace again, filling the melting chamber with silica sand.
* * *
The long-awaited downpournailed dust and pollen to the ground. The temperature dropped, and for the first time in days, Gustavo opened the windows to let fresh air into the office. It’d been three days since Hans walked out on him. He didn’t call, didn’t show up, but to Gustavo’s surprise, he didn’t miss him all that much because his interest in Seth had acquired the characteristics of an obsession.
He watched the footage of Seth’s invasion about ten times, with every loop getting increasingly intrigued. A billion questions occupied his head to the point he had trouble sitting at home and waiting for Seth to leave his villa.
On the footage, the transparent rectangle moved from building to building. It disappeared and reappeared like a poltergeist. The footage looked manipulated as if someone threw a witness protection filter over the places where Seth appeared, but the expertise he required denied any modification.
To distract himself, he visited the rest of Seth’s projects—viZZion and Breath.
Drastically different from Flames, they still had something in common—glass.
For many, the tall skyscraper viZZion was just another tower, but Gustavo instantly recognized the familiar pattern in the design. Mirrored glass, clear and tanned, began with a checkered pattern, but the higher it went, the darker the colors appeared. Perfect squares changed shape, creating a symmetrically opposite mosaic where birds, black and white, emerged from both sides fitting each other like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Using nothing but glass, Seth transferred the pattern from M. C. Escher’s1woodcut “Day and Night” onto the building.
Inside viZZion, he found a web of shimmering glass, black spiders hanging from threads with eyeballs instead of their bodies. The sculpture had a tiny title plate stating, “WEB OF E?ES” and Seth’s name, but the glyphic ? and the grunge font that nearly erased the first E in the last word made Gustavo wonder if the real title of this work should have been “WEB OF LIES”.
The third and the last finished project, Breath, presented tall twin towers with smooth, rounded forms and a honeycomb pattern made of glass and metal. On the ground floor, a giant, black rock occupied a deep recess. From afar, it resembled a monolith of obsidian or a meteorite. Eight feet high, three feet wide, the sculpture had three rough faces that looked like unprocessed stone. The front face, opposite the grand entrance, glinted with a mirror-smooth surface. The glass so dark, it reflected everything in front of it. And only those who approached the sculpture and looked in the depth of it could see a hand reaching to the surface from the inside, the air bubbles surrounding thin fingers. Behind the hand, very vague and uneven, a male silhouette drowned in shadows, but Gustavo didn’t have a problem with identifying his gaping mouth and eye sockets. When he stood in front of the sculpture, his face morphed with the silhouette. His eyes disappeared as if gouged out, cheeks hollowed, and a gaping mouth substituted his own. In front of it, a helpless hand reached forward, creating the illusion of him drowning in the glass. A tiny silver plate below the sculpture had Seth’s name and the title “Shallow Depth”.
Seth’s creations haunted Gustavo in his dreams and occupied his days. The last one looked too real, too alive. The thought that a dead body was cast in the glass possessed his mind. Even now, with his shoulder propped against the wall next to the window, he couldn’t chase the image of the drowning hand out of his mind. His gaze traveled over the garden, settled on the river. Above the rippling waters, heavy clouds hung low, but the showers of sunlight still slithered through, casting golden waterfalls over the earth.
If you create things like this for public attention, what do you keep locked in the dark rooms of your house? This is unfair. You came to my home, yet I’ve never been to yours.
He turned to his desk, picked up the phone, and dialed Diego. As soon as the tone died, he said, “Find people who can–”
The door to his office creaked open, and a blond, curly head peeked inside.
“Who can what?” Diego’s voice, coming from the speakers, sounded both amused and puzzled.
Gustavo cleared his throat, watching a shy smile stretch Hans’ lips. “You know what? Forget it. I’ll call you later.”
He terminated the call and crooked a finger at the boy.
White, ankle-length jeans hugged Hans’ hips and thighs, a blue shirt revealed his collarbones, and a dark belt hugged his waist, making it look even more slender. He didn’t wear socks, and Gustavo’s eyes naturally gravitated to the prominent bones of his ankles. Heat washed over his body and concentrated in his groin.
“I thought you didn’t want to see me ever again?” he murmured, lowered into his chair, and rested his back against the cool leather. His elbow found the armrest as his index finger brushed over his lips. Hans looked delicious. The soft curls, Hans always tried to tame with gel, stood out, unruly, as if he’d just left a bed, exactly the way Gustavo liked.
Lips stretching in a shy, guilty smile, Hans ran his palms over his butt and dropped his chin to his shoulder, showing Gustavo his perfect profile. “That was impulsive of me, but you aren’t mad, are you?”
He glanced up and batted his lashes. The pearly rows of his teeth caught his full bottom lip. He acted fake, yet Gustavo couldn’t care less. He carried no illusions about the nature of their relationship. It wasn’t love but a mutually beneficial partnership.
