Behind the Hands That Kill

“Yeah, Artemis—who the fuck else would I be talking about?”

  “What does it matter?” I say.

  “It’s just a question. Do you still think about my sister?”

  “No.”

  Apollo seems only mildly surprised—I cannot tell if he believes me. I am a skilled liar by default—except when it comes to Izabel—but if I am slipping as much as Apollo believes me to be, then he will probably know that I am lying about this. I do think about Artemis from time to time. She was the only woman who ever came close to being as important to me as Izabel is.

  The memory, to this day, haunts me.

  Fifteen years ago – Two days before the abduction

  My eyes sprang open and my hand instinctively went for my gun on the nightstand. But the sweet, hysterical laughter, and the thin, delicate fingers digging into my sides, brought me into reality quickly.

  “Happy Anniversary,” Artemis said, nuzzling her head into the side of my neck; she sat on my waist, straddling me on our bed; her hands still worked futility to tickle me.

  I smiled up at her, reached up and cupped the sides of her face within my hands and pulled her down to kiss me. Her lips were soft, careful, as if she worried she might break me. She had always been that way with me; I thought it both amusing and endearing at the same time.

  “One year ago today,” she said, her mouth inches from mine, “I met the only man in the world who can put up with my shit.” She kissed my forehead, then straightened her back and rose into a sitting position atop me.

  “Are you going to let me up?” I asked. I could easily get away, and she knew it, but I enjoyed giving her more power over me than she really had.

  I felt her thighs tighten against my hips; she grinned.

  “No,” she said, “I want you to stay in this bed with me for the rest of your life.”

  “If that is what you want,” I said, matter-of-factly, “then that is what you will get, my love.”

  I felt myself growing beneath her; the palms of my hands moved up her thighs and I clutched her hourglass hips within them.

  Curiously, Artemis cocked her head.

  “What?” I asked.

  She sighed lightly, looked away from my eyes for a moment long enough to make me wonder if she was ever going to answer.

  “When you call me that,” she began, “sometimes it feels…”

  “It feels what?”

  She sighed again, a bit deeper this time; then her dark eyes fell on mine with a sense of urgency that made me uncomfortable.

  “Forced,” she finally answered, and I blinked, stunned. “I don’t know, it just…I don’t know.”

  “Speak your mind,” I told her, moved my hands up and down her bare thighs in hopes of comforting her. Of course I could have asked the obvious question: Are you insinuating that I do not love you, Artemis? But I needed to stay as far away from that topic as I could.

  Artemis frowned, pouted, the way she always did when she was trying to get me to baby her. I liked it—that childlike frown, and babying her. I reached out and grabbed her around the waist, pulled her down on top of me, and with a little less aggression than she had with me, dug my fingertips into her sides.

  A peal laughter filled our small apartment bedroom; she kicked and screamed. “Please stop! Victor please! I’m going to pee—PLEASE STOP!”

  Of course, I didn’t stop.

  And, of course, she did pee.

  When I saw the look on her face—I was on top of her by then—that blank, horrified expression that could only be caused by pissing one’s self, I finally stopped tickling her, and I roared with laughter. I laughed so hard and for so long that tears steadily seeped from the corners of my eyes.

  “Victor!” Her size-seven foot hit me square in the chest and sent me flying across the bed.

  It made me laugh even harder—I thought I might piss myself, too.

  Present day…

  I snap out of the private reverie.

  Laughter. Smiles. Tickling. That was a time so long ago, when I was the one still wet behind the ears, despite my progression in The Order. Still so young. So incredibly foolish. But most of all, vulnerable. Needless to say, I learned from that mistake.

  Or so I thought I did.

  “Judging by that look on your face,” Apollo says, “I don’t believe you.”

  I look over at him.

  “Yes,” I answer with honesty this time, “sometimes I still think about Artemis.”

  Izabel

  The woman holding me hostage in this room looks over at me, expecting some kind of response, knowing it’s the moment she’s going to get one. A shift of my facial expression? The tensing of my shoulders? The holding of my breath? How about all three?

  “I don’t want to hear this,” I tell her, looking away from the speaker on the desk where I’ve been listening to Victor talk to some guy for several minutes now.

  “You don’t have a choice,” she says.

  She’s wearing all black, every part of her covered but her head and her hands. Black boots that stop just below the knees. Black bodysuit that zips up the front from her navel to just beneath her chin. Black hair pulled into a tight braid that drops to the center of her back. Black eye shadow. Even the gemstone on her only ring is black.

  “Does it bother you?” she asks, stepping toward me with a gun in her right hand.

  “What exactly?” I can’t look her in the eyes.

  The soft sound of laughter finds my ears.

  “That the man you love,” she begins, drawing closer, “loved someone before he loved you.”

  I laugh lightly, though it’s fake. And forced. Swallowing my pride, I keep the woman in my sights, but keep my eyes on the wall beside her.

  “Why would that bother me?” I say, pretending that it doesn’t. “It would be ridiculous—everybody has a past.”

  I can sense the woman smile, I can feel her eyes on me, studying me, laughing quietly at me like a bearded woman in a freak show circus.

  Then I feel the cold metal of her gun press against my temple.

  “Go ahead. Shoot me. I have a feeling before this is all over, you’re going to anyway.”

  There’s a pause, and then she says as if she’s bored, “As much as I’d like to, me killing you wasn’t part of the plan.” Not sure I’m comfortable with the emphasis she put on ‘me’.

  “Well, if using me to get Victor to talk was part of your plan”—smirking, I turn my head to look her in the eyes, despite the barrel of the gun—“then you’re going to be disappointed.”

  She smiles, and the gun falls away from my head.

  “That’s probably true,” she says. “Because a man like Victor Faust—specifically Victor Faust—is incapable of choosing a woman over his nature.”

  She has no idea what Victor would do for me—I know, but I don’t want her to know, or this could end badly for both of us.

  “But surely you knew about Artemis,” she says. “Or did he have you believing he’s never been in love with anyone but you before? Think you popped his love cherry, huh?”

  I want to smack that mocking look off her gorgeous black face, but she’d probably retaliate with a bullet in my glowering white one.

  “I don’t care what Victor did in his past, or who he loved.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yeah.” I nod, pursing my lips defiantly. “Pretty sure.”

  She smiles. Ah! I hate that!

  “I wonder if you’ll change your mind before you walk out of here—if you walk out of here.”

  Both of my brows rise curiously. “So then it’s a choice?” I ask, leery of the prospect, and the conditions surrounding it.

  Her smile melts into a mysterious smirk; she looks at me sidelong, without moving her head, to follow my movements, which are few.

  “That’ll be Victor’s decision,” she answers, cryptically, and for some reason I can’t figure out, a chill moves up my spine.

  The woman walks back over to the de
sk, fits her thumb and index finger on the volume knob of the computer speaker, and Victor’s voice fills my tiny cell of a room.

  Victor

  The Stone Family are royalty in the crime world, primarily Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Brazil. And the siblings—once a total of seven—were all named after mythological deities. Osiris Stone, the eldest, is who started all of this fifteen years ago. Gaia Stone, the second eldest, was a black widow. Ares, third eldest, did not live up to his ‘God of War’ namesake—I killed him as he ate a pancake, sitting on a barstool in a Waffle House; his embarrassing death brought shame upon the Stone Family. Hestia, fourth eldest, was in a Guatemalan prison last I heard, and murdered nine prisoners in her first two days—she was the deadliest one of them all. Then there was Theseus; nothing special about him—I killed him too.

  Apollo and Artemis, the youngest of the Stone Family, were born eight minutes apart, Apollo’s cord wrapped around his sister’s neck. The family, coming from a long line of superstitious people, thought that when the twins grew up, there would be jealousy and conflict between them, and that Apollo was destined to kill his sister because he tried to do it in the womb with his umbilical cord.

  But that was not what happened.

  And that was not how they lived.

  And that was not how she died.

  Apollo and Artemis were as close as twin brother and sister can be. Vengeance—it is most certainly what fuels Apollo now. But money always lit a fire beneath him, too. As with the entire Stone Family. And now he has me. And now he can have everything he has ever wanted since his sister’s death—his revenge, and my head for the biggest payday of his life. And it is my own fault that we are here.

  “So then shall we get on with it?” I suggest. “No need to drag this out, I suppose. What do you want?”

  Apollo’s smile softens, but behind it I know there is nothing but malice.

  The chair legs, uneven on the stones, tap against the floor as he stands. He walks around my cage, his eyes never on me, but I know they are watching every move I make. Then his tall figure disappears into the shadows again, and although I cannot see him, I can plainly hear his voice.

  “I know you probably wonder why I never came after you for killing my mom and dad and two of my brothers.”

  “I never thought about it much,” I say, “to be completely honest.”

  “But you’re thinking about it now—aren’t you?”

  He knows that I am. No need to answer the question.

  Apollo moves around in the darkness; I cannot make out what he is doing, but I get the distinct feeling I am not going to like it.

  “Then tell me,” I urge. “Why haven’t you come after me sooner, for killing them?”

  He shrugs. “Dear ol’ Dad and Mommy Dearest deserved what they got. Ares was a smart-mouthed little shit and I’m still not that fucked up over his death, if you wanna know the truth. Theseus?” He shrugs once more. “He was like a blip on a screen—easy to miss—and he fucked my girlfriend, so there’s that.”

  Growing tired of the runaround, I ask, “Is that what you want, Apollo—the conversation?”

  I don’t have to see him grin to know that he is.

  “Actually, Victor, that is exactly what I want from you.”

  His answer surprises me.

  “You…want to talk?” I ask, leery. “About what?”

  “About you, of course.” He steps out of the shadow, carrying a cattle prod in one hand. Interesting. Perhaps I am just too accustomed to the macabre interrogation methods of my Specialist, Gustavsson, but I am curious as to what Apollo expects to get out of me with a simple cattle prod.

  Waving his hands in gesture, he says, “I want to know all that I can about the man behind the hands that kill, the man I hear about in dark corners, the man I think of whenever I eat a fucking pancake”—he points at me with the cattle prod—“I used to love pancakes; had to ruin that for me too.”

  “Then your revenge will be that much sweeter,” I say, not trying to provoke him, but surely it does anyway.

  A long, deep sigh rattles in his chest; his shoulders rise and fall heavily.

  “Yeah, I guess it will,” he says, and leaves it at that.

  Apollo turns as a door opens behind him, flooding the dark, dank room with dull gray light from what appears to be a hallway.

  I practically throw myself against the bars of my cell, gripping them in my hands, furious that I can go no farther, when I see Izabel, bound and gagged, sweat and blood and grime dripping from her face. Behind her is a woman. Tall and angry. Brown hair pulled into a ponytail behind her. A birthmark underneath her left eye. Breasts bursting out of her blouse. A knife in a sheath around her upper thigh. She looks Latin, with no Haitian roots like Apollo.

  Izabel’s eyes find me almost immediately when the woman pushes her farther into the room. She loses her footing; with her hands tied behind her back and no way to cushion the fall, she hits the stone hard. A sharp muffled sound and a painful grunt follows. I grit my teeth, my eyes staring the woman down with purpose and malice, with retribution and threat. She smirks, turns on her open-toed heels and leaves the room.

  Izabel raises her head from the stone, and she tries to speak, so desperately, to tell me something, to warn me, I do not know, but her words are muffled and I can make nothing out.

  Apollo moves in behind her—I grip the bars harder, grind my teeth together more harshly, wanting to get at him, daring him to hurt her. What am I doing? This will get me nowhere.

  Upon realizing I am acting absurd, I drop my hands at my sides and steady my erratic breathing.

  “There is no need to hurt Izabel,” I say calmly—on the inside I feel the rage vying for control. “I will cooperate, Apollo; all you need to do is tell me what you want.”

  He lifts Izabel to her feet, his hand gripping the rope binding her wrists behind her, and shoves her harshly onto the chair just feet from my cage, close but not close enough. I look only at her; many emotions are well-defined in her eyes, but not one of them is fear. Anger. Vengeance. And desperation—mostly desperation. But for now, nothing will be getting past her lips; a thick cloth has been packed tightly inside her mouth, and another has been wrapped around her head, tied within her dark auburn hair.

  Apollo looks at the wall, pauses in some kind of concentration, and then turns back to me, and although I find his behavior peculiar, I focus only on Izabel, and what he intends to do to her.

  Izabel’s entire body tenses and her face twists with pain before she falls over sideways and out of the chair; the static sound of the cattle prod rings sharply in my ears long after it’s gone. So it is Izabel who will suffer the torture if I refuse to speak—knife, box cutter, fire, ‘simple’ cattle prod—suddenly there is nothing simple about any of it.

  “That’s enough, Apollo!” I grab the bars again, letting the rage have the control, my teeth crushing together so hard that pain shoots through my lower jaw and up the back of my skull.

  In my peripheral vision I see Izabel, lying on her side against the stones, trying to catch her breath, but my eyes and my focus remain on Apollo.

  He places the cattle prod on the floor behind him, and then approaches the cage.

  Yes, that is it—come closer, Dead Man Walking, and give me one opportunity, just one, and I am going to take it.

  He stops just shy of the opportunity.

  “Let’s begin,” he says, taunting me, “with Safe House One.” His smirk deepens, and my confusion grows.

  “Safe House One?” I ask.

  “Yeah. That’s what I said.”

  “I do not understand—what about it?”

  Apollo helps Izabel back onto the chair; she tries to wrench her arm from his hand; words that can only be of a profane nature push through the fabric in her mouth and come out as a series of high and low sounds. But her eyes say everything her voice cannot: “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

  “Her name was Marina, if I remember the way Artemis told
the story.”

  Marina…

  I try not to look at Izabel anymore, but it is difficult to avoid. I just hope she does not see the guilt in my soul.

  “So, Artemis told you about Safe House One—how is that relevant?”

  “My sister told me everything about you before she died,” Apollo reveals. “She and I were close, being twins and all; she didn’t keep secrets from me.” He seems lost in a memory suddenly, the pain of losing his sister evident on his dejected features. But he shakes it off, looks at me again. “Except your sexual relationship”—he waves a hand dismissively—“I drew the line with that shit.”

  “Why do you want me to talk about Safe House One?”

  “Marina,” he corrects me.

  “Why do you want me to talk about Marina?”

  For a fleeting moment, Apollo’s eyes skirt Izabel sitting on the chair.

  Ah. Now it makes sense. Now I understand—everything. And my heart stops beating; I feel a crushing sensation in the pit of my stomach.

  This is it.

  Today, it all ends.

  Finally, I make eye contact with the woman I love, still hoping she does not see the guilt, but in my heart I know that she does. There is a brief but distinct flicker in her eyes as she gazes at me; the fact she is no longer attempting to speak is proof that Apollo has her attention.

  “Izabel?” I whisper, but not in an attempt to conceal my voice. “You probably know why we are here. Do you know why?”

  Izabel nods slowly—she has an idea, but she cannot possibly know what I am about to tell her.

  Ignoring Apollo’s amused gaze, I keep my eyes only on Izabel.

  I take a deep breath. “We are here because of me,” I say. “And you are…” I cannot finish the sentence; my breath feels like it’s fleeing my lungs; my heart pounds in my ears and in my stomach.

  I look away from her, but the sound of her mumbling voice beneath the fabric brings me back, to face her—to face and to accept and to tell the truth.