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My knees wobbled. I’d climbed to my feet. When that had happened, I couldn’t be sure, but the urge to slink back down to the ground was potent. To cower, to escape, to put as much distance between the spider-man and myself as possible.
Across from me, Amadeo was eerily still. Nothing but his lips were moving.
“Don’t you touch her,” he seethed in a tone that I imagined was eerily calm. So calm, so cold, it sent shivers down my spine.
The spider-man laughed, unperturbed, and kept coming.
“I’ve done many unsavory things, mate,” he said, half-turning to look at Amadeo, “but touching my own niece?”
My insides turned cold. Not shivers. Ice cold.
But it couldn’t be true. This man had killed my parents. His own flesh and blood?
The spider-man shrugged. “I suppose we all have our limits.”
Limits? What limits? He’d murdered my parents right in front of me.
“But Jasper here,” he continued as he motioned toward the staircase, to the feet, the legs, the torso of another man descending them. “He has no such blood affiliation, nor do I think he’d be bothered if he did.”
The man stepped off the stairs. A man with a shaved head, his scalp covered in black tattoos. His eyes were nearly as black as his tattoos, and when he smiled at me, I could see his black soul.
I gripped the post behind me as the spider-man stopped moving and the man with the black soul kept coming. Closer and closer until he stood right in front of me, so close, I could read some of the words of the tattoos.
“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10:28,”read the tattoo across his right temple.
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death. Revelations 6:8,”was written just beneath the first.
Bloody scriptures. What kind of psychopath tattooed biblical scriptures about death and murder on his head? There were more of them, on his neck and even on the backs of his hands, all of them verses about murder and death.
He took one more step, and I could feel his hot breath against my cheeks. He reached up and ran one finger down my tear-streaked face, and though his finger was warm, his touch felt cold. When I jerked away, he grabbed my chin with his other hand, and his fingers bit into my skin, holding tight.
He turned my head toward the spider-man.
“Where’s the money, Heidi dear?” he asked, enunciating like I was a toddler, making the spider legs wriggle with every movement.
“How the bloody hell would I know?” I asked, tilting my chin up as much as the grip on it would allow and feigning a courage I most certainly did not possess.
“I suggest you think very hard… unless you want Jasper to help jog your memory.”
Jasper-the-psycho smiled as he released my chin and withdrew a small knife from his jacket pocket. He flicked it open with a skill that did nothing to bolster my courage.
I tried to circle the post to escape, but his free hand shot out and grabbed me by the neck. His fingers dug in on either side of my throat, holding me still without compressing my trachea.
The hand with the knife moved. I could see the glint of the steel, and every muscle in my body tensed, waiting for the fiery stab of the blade.
Instead, he slipped the knife beneath the top button of my shirt, dug in, and flicked, nicking my skin as the button popped off.
The nick burned, like I’d doused a cut in alcohol. I bit down on my lip, fighting the urge to cry out.
He moved lower, slipping the blade beneath the next button. When he sliced the thread, he nicked my flesh deeper, and a warm trickle ran down into the fabric of my bra beneath my breasts.
He smiled when I cried out, and in that smile, I could see everything he intended to do to me. My death wasn’t to be quick. It would be slow and painful, rife with every agony and defilement a man could inflict.
My heart pounded like a drum. I could feel the blood whooshing past my ears. Every ounce of courage I’d try to muster threatened to flee.
“Heidi!” Amadeo shouted so loud it reached my ears clear.
I looked at him, and I couldn’t say whether it was a comfort or not to see the cold stone expression he wore.
