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Nineteen
Tick Tock
Hattie came to bail me out.
I felt like a caged animal locked up in the holding pen with the other inmates, some of them already having spent days in there. Every second felt like an eternity. My mind was playing sick tricks with me, conjuring every possible horror filled scenario it could come up with, each one worse than the one before. When they finally notified me bail had been made, I was going out of my mind worried about Dominique.
I promised her I wouldn’t leave her alone, but I lost my shit. He needed his head smashed in, and I barely contained myself from doing it. How the hell could another officer say things like that to her after the horror fest at my house?
After Dominique left her restaurant, Hattie came to the precinct. It was the first time I’ve ever seen her undone.
“We’ve got to hurry, Ignatius, my bones tell me something bad is coming.” Hattie gripped my arm and practically dragged me from the police station when I came through the door. I know, I felt the same thing the entire time I’d been trapped in there.
“I’m driving,” I snapped when we got outside. I was going to run every fucking light on the way there.
Hattie did nicely for herself. She drove a new BMW 5 and she lived in a three-story townhouse in the French Quarter. I don’t know how I knew where she lived, I just did. The streets are already crowded with the upcoming Mardi Gras when we pull away from the jail. The party goers are out in full force, falling into the roadways and clogging everything up. We have to go around the outskirts. It’s going to take us twice as long to get there. I’m about to explode from the sheer frustration.
“What did she say to you?” I drill Hattie sitting beside me in her luxury car.
“She was upset, naturally,” Hattie exclaims in her French Creole accent.
“I know she was fucking upset. That scumbag cop said some terrible things to her.” My grip tightens around the steering wheel as the earlier rage blows up inside me once again.
From the corner of my eye, I see Hattie turn to face me. “What exactly did he say?” Her tone is level.
I glance at her, the fury parting somewhat, leaving suspicion, and a whole lot of questions. “He said that if she were a normal girl, she’d be upset a sicko left a woman’s head at their door. He said she wasn’t a normal girl.”
Hattie’s eyes are fixed on me, but it’s not me she’s looking at. “Dominique is not a normal girl,” she murmurs. Her vision comes into focus. “And you’re not a normal man, Ignatius Beauchamp.” Her eyes skim over my features, reading me like a blind person would with their touch, I can almost feel it whispering over the plains of my face. “But you knew that already. You feel it inside you.” Her gaze locks on mine. “Don’t you?”
Yes, goddamn it, I do. Sometimes I become it, the darkness and the danger, and I let it take control. Like when I fucked Dominique in the back of the house by the fire. It was as if I were tripping, drugged on some hedonistic aphrodisiac. I almost wanted to consume her flesh, that was how insane I was with the need to take her.
But I don’t say any of this to Hattie. Funny thing is, I have a feeling I don’t have to. She probably already knows in that way she has.
“None of us with the old blood in our veins are normal, Hattie. We’ve all got the ancestors inside us.” I turn and pin her with my glare. “Don’t we?”
“That we do. Which is why he wasn’t mocking her.” She turns to stare out the front window, her hands curled into tight fists. “He was acknowledging it.”
“What the hell are you saying?!” I slam my palm on the horn. Fucking move!
Her eyes get that panic look to them. “What I’m saying is he’s fascinated with her.” She turns to face me once again. “How exactly did you end up in jail?”
This can’t be fucking happening. Sick dread settles in the pit of my stomach and squeezes the air from my lungs.
“He said ‘your boyfriend isn’t much of a threat’.” I have to choke the words past the vice grip around my throat. “Oh, Jesus mother fucking Christ!”
I want to be sick.
“Don’t blame yourself, I would have reacted as well.” Hattie reaches over and squeezes my arm to comfort me. “At least she’s safe at my house.”
“Get 911 on the phone!” I bellow. “He knows she’s there!”
Her head whips around to face me, her eyes wide and full of terror. “How could he know that?!” She’s dialing her cell phone.
NONONO!
“Because I yelled to her to wait for me at your place, that’s where I’d meet her when I got out!” I slam a fist into the steering wheel.
Hattie covers her mouth with a hand. “Oh, my God!”
