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A choice I made knowing that Devyn is a potential threat. She heard enough of the damning details of what transpired the night I killed Wellington to piece together the facts. Only I couldn’t let her suffer a fate that I myself evaded.
Lying on the cold floor of the cave, as I stared into her haunted eyes, I commiserated with the immense pain I saw there, and I couldn’t let her be brought in like that. Not without knowing the full truth.
Why a brilliant and intelligent woman suddenly decides to try to deify herself and ascend into theÜbermensch.
There are things she said to me during her ritual that shook me, that raise even more questions.
A part of me understands the lure, the addiction. I tasted the frenzy. I let myself become lost to it. The numbing balm is easy to be seduced by. If Devyn was provoked by her pain, then I’ve already walked in her footsteps.
And I can find her.
I touch my forearm, where the inked words of Voltaire have been defaced, the wound Devyn tore into me stitched in sloppy needlework with black thread by Kallum. Which is fitting, since it was Kallum who gave me the words to begin with.
When the verse came to me before I was assigned to the Hollow’s Row case, I thought it was a remnant from an old college class. I’m good at giving the inexplicable a logical explanation. Kallum’s words from that night imprinted on me, seared so deeply I branded them onto my body.
I see Kallum rolling up my sleeve in the hotel room, feel his heartbeat thundering under my palm as he traced his fingers over the tattooed words. On the bridge, he told me I inked my own sigil in script, that I recite my affirmation daily, my own way of keeping the past buried and forgotten.
Where do you think your subconscious picked up on that?
Despite the humidity, I shiver at the memory. He knew exactly where I got my affirmation, and why I inked it into my skin. He was just waiting for me to remember.
I drop my hand from the stitched injury. There are a number of scars desensitizing my flesh, layers of painful memories. Little by little, we are altered by life as it chips away at us. Most of the time, we fail to notice those subtle alterations. Then there are the catastrophic changes that alter us irrevocably.
The woman who I was before is a stranger to the woman I am now as I stand here, looking over a storage unit that holds the only thing I feel is of value to me enough to save.
The cases of the dead.
The evidence of how I became one of them.
With that, I haul another file box over and empty the contents of my tote, the bagged evidence of Alister’s attempted assault on me. The skin cells I scraped from beneath my nails, the torn clothes I was wearing at the time. All of it goes into the bottom of the box before I seal the lid.
The evidence will need to be destroyed, as it’s now evidence that could incriminate Kallum as a motive for Alister’s murder.
I dip under the roll door and lower it to the concrete, securing the combo lock in place. Then I head toward the black SUV where Agent Hernandez leans on the door. Shades drawn over his eyes, he looks up from his phone.
“Get what you need?” he asks.
I hold up the notebook in answer. “Did Agent Rana reply to our request to interview the recovered locals?”
The derisive frown pulling at his mouth says how asinine my question is.
“Right,” I say, walking around the vehicle. “That would be absurd, as I’m now a victim.”
Agent Rana, the new lead on the task force, would have me removed not only from the case, but from the town if it was within her power.
She doesn’t trust me.
My irrational behavior at the Alister crime scene might have helped influence that.
But seeing as I’m now a witness in regards to Devyn Childs, I’ve been remanded here. Technically, I should no longer be working the case as a consultant to the Hollow’s Row Police Department. As a victim, it’s considered unethical, but that hasn’t stopped Hernandez and me from conducting our own side investigation.
Annoyed with my limited options of wardrobe today, I gather my black skirt and step up into the passenger seat of the SUV. While Hernandez navigates the vehicle through the narrow streets toward the precinct, I clutch my notebook and stare out the tinted window.
The setting sun slashes the sky in gashes of burnt orange, outlining clouds in a seam of blazing red, the color of violence. The tall trees are black silhouettes against the neon backdrop, a stark contrast to the drawn and morose elements of the town.
There’s something wrong with this place. An emptiness, a hollowness that aches beneath the gothic architecture of its charming exterior, like a bated breath waiting to exhale.
I felt it the very first time I entered the killing fields, a brand of evil all of its own. It doesn’t dwell in the trees, or the houses. It festers in the people.
