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“… From my corpse,” she finishes.
“Yes.”
“Will it scar?”
Christ…
“I’m not a doctor, Katya. I’ll do my best, but you can always visit a cosmetic surgeon later if you want to. In any case, it will be hidden by your hair. Now… Close your eyes.”
She huffs a laugh, bitter as bile. “So I won’t flinch?”
I take her chin between thumb and forefinger, angling her to look at me. “So I won’t.” She blinks, lips curving a little before flattening again and she squeezes her lids closed.
Retrieving my knife, I hold the blade in the flame from the hob few seconds, give it a moment to cool, then straddle her. Unravelling my belt, folding it double, I push it at her mouth. “Open up. Then bite down.”
She obeys me, lying quite limp, not reacting when I ease the towel away. Or even to the wet coolth of the rubbing alcohol as I splash it over her neck and shoulder blades, then over my own hands.
Oddly, she’s stopped trembling. It happens that way sometimes, when the calm of inevitability settles.
So brave…
Would I be that calm?
Perhaps, but then, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to harden to the risk of pain and injury. What has Katya had to prepare her for something like this?
Nothing.
The lighting, raw and white, glints from the blade-edge more brightly than her diamonds. The dragon writhes with her every movement, a bronze-eyed glare, accusing me.
What has she done to deserve this?
There has to be another way.
There isn’t.
Romano must believe she’s dead.
I place my palm over the back of her head. “It will be over soon.”
Laying the edge of my knife flat to her skin, as though I were slicing the pork rind I practiced with to blister during roasting, I cut…
The blade is sharp. The gash very fine. She shivers, whimpering through the belt, but she holds still.
Three more slices outline the dragon to one side, a matching triad to the other. With the final cut, below the tail, Katya quivers under me. Blood seeps from the cuts, liquid rubies trickling over the mother-of-pearl of her skin.
Easing the blade under the topmost cut, I lift, then peel the skin away from raw red flesh…
Convulsing, Katya shrieks through the belt, tries to thrash under my weight, then falls limp and silent…
She’s still out, so, easing a little more skin free from one side, then the other, to stretch it as far as my limited expertise allows, I stitch the raw wound as best I can. Cleaned and dressed, it doesn’t look too bad.
Scooping up the still unconscious Katya, I lie her, stomach-down, on the bed, pulling blankets up and over whilst trying not to contact the injury. The sheet, pulled up to just below the dressing between her shoulder blades, is very white against the dark gloss of her hair.
The tattoo, I package flat in plastic wrap so Romano can see his ‘proof’, then sandwich it between a couple of ice packs.
Blood-stained towels and cloths bundle up nicely into the plastic sheeting. Taped up, with a bit of effort I have the approximate shape of a bagged corpse to deposit in the back of the car.
I wipe down working surfaces and the floor, red-streaked water swirling down into the waste. Paper towels, I flush down the lavatory, then flush again, this time with one of those green-liquid cleaners under the rim.
