J. Redmerski - Behind The Hands That Kill

Artemis glares coldly, unforgivingly. She leans forward and says, “And just so we’re clear, I never had an affair. The baby I told you I aborted was yours, Victor.” She pulls away.

“I know,” I say, at first under my breath. Then I raise my eyes, and my voice. “I did not believe it then, because I had had a vasectomy, but—”

“You didn’t want to believe it,” she cuts in sharply.

I shake my head. “No. I did not want to believe it.”

I feel her fingers digging into the flesh of my jawline; her warm, sweet breath on my lips. “Thinking that it wasn’t possible I’d been carrying your child,” she goes on, squeezing, “making yourself believe that I’d cheated on you, it all made it easier to do what you would’ve done anyway.” I see her eyes sweep over my mouth. And then she touches her lips to mine. “You would’ve killed me that night no matter the situation—even if I was still carrying your child.” She squeezes harder, nearly breaking the skin with her fingernails, and then she releases me abruptly, pushing my head backward.

“Say it, Victor,” she demands. “You would’ve killed me even if I was still carrying your child.”

For the first time since I had forced myself not to, I look right at Izabel; my face full of regret and apology and shame. “Yes,” I answer Artemis without looking away from Izabel. “I still would have killed you.”

Tears seep from the corners of Izabel’s eyes. A suffocating silence blankets the room like a stifling heat.

It can’t be true…

It can’t.

I feel like I’ve woken from some strange dream, like one of those dreams that seem normal in the beginning, but halfway through, things begin to defy all sense of sanity and logic. Now I’m sitting here on this chair, awake, feeling out of touch and out of time, wondering what the hell just happened, as an uncomfortable feeling sweeps over me, and I never want to dream that dream again.

Was I right all along? Was I right to be afraid of Victor, to wonder if he could ever kill me if the situation were dire enough? Had Niklas been right in saying, ‘How long will he allow you to compromise him? Victor is experiencing his one moment of entitled weakness right now, just like I did with Claire. Just like Gustavsson did with Seraphina. And look at what love did to Flynn, right in front of your eyes. It’s my brother’s turn now, like a rite of passage, but how long will it last?’ Had Nora been right? ‘ Anyone can be in love, Izabel, and I can tell by the look in that man’s eyes that he is in love with you. But a man like Victor Faust can’t stay in love forever. Like Fredrik’s type can’t live without love, Victor’s type can’t live with it. And the more that it gets in the way of his duties, and the more human you make him become, the closer you push him to his breaking point. He’s just like me. And one way or another, he’ll instinctively do whatever it takes to restore the balance to the only life he’s ever known.’

I feel like now I have my answers.

And I know…(a sob rattles inside my chest)…I know that not only will I die today, but also by whose hands.

Raising my head again, I look only at Victor; the tears streaming down my face are itching, and I wish I could move my hand to wipe them away.

“I still love you, Victor,” I tell him, not caring that Apollo has a knife against my throat; he doesn’t cover my mouth with his hand this time. “No matter what you’ve done, or what you will do, I’ll always love you.” The words are as true as they ever were, but this time they taste strange and final in my mouth.

But I need Victor to understand that I understand him . I need Victor to know that I’m more like him than he realizes, and that I’ve almost always been…

“Sarai, baby,” my mother whispered to me; her body odor, mixed with strong perfume and cigarettes, choked me as she laid next to me on the soiled bed. “You forgive me, don’t you? I never meant for any of this to happen. I just…wasn’t thinking straight.” I saw the whites of her eyes briefly in the darkness as the heroin began to swim through her bloodstream. She smiled euphorically as if she’d touched the Face of God. I set the needle down on the tray at the foot of the bed.

“It’s OK, Mom,” I whispered back, and loosened the tourniquet from her wiry arm. “I forgive you…”

Victor looks at me, but he doesn’t respond. Not verbally, anyway. His eyes tell a different story. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it is.

Artemis’s laughter rings in my ears.

“After all this,” she says to me from inside the cell, “you still have love for this…barbarian?”

“Yes,” I answer without hesitation.

She shakes her head. “Such a dumb, love-struck girl.”

“ You loved him,” I counter. “You knew he killed Marina, and you knew, in a roundabout way, why , yet you still loved him.” I round my chin, defying the cold blade pressed to my throat. “And you still love him now . He slit your throat and left you for dead, and he admitted that he still would’ve killed you if you were carrying his baby, yet you’re still in love with him— dumb and love-struck doesn’t even begin to explain you.”

Artemis scowls, and Apollo wrenches my head backward vigorously in reaction to it.

She steps away from Victor and approaches the cage exit; the guards shuffle backward carefully to make way for her. I watch Victor in my peripheral vision, and see him start to follow, but he stops when Apollo’s hand makes a threatening movement against me.

Artemis exits the cage without incident, and stands in the opened doorway. She motions a hand toward us. “Bring her now,” she orders, and I’m violently extracted from the chair and brought to my feet; all the way to the cell, Apollo’s knife blade is kissing my jugular. Artemis moves out of the way of the door, and then I’m kissing the stone floor when Apollo shoves me through the opening.

Victor’s hands are behind me before I can even raise my head, and he’s lifting me into his arms. “I am so sorry, love,” he says, and presses his lips to the top of my head; his arms encircle me.

“I remember when he used to call me that,” Artemis says, whimsically. She closes the cage, twists the key in the lock afterward, and then pockets it.

She walks around in front of us, then she reaches out her hand to her brother. Already knowing what she wants, Apollo places the knife he had been holding to my throat, into her palm, her long, slender fingers collapsing around it. Stepping up closer, she leans over and slips the knife through the bars, setting it on the floor inside the cell.

“If it looks familiar,” she says to Victor, “that’s because it is.”

Straightening her back, she turns and walks away, taking her twin brother with her.

“I’ll give you something that we never had,” Artemis says, stops, and turns to see us once more. “A moment alone together before you kill her.”

My heart stops.

“I will not kill her,” Victor says calmly…uncertainly?

The blood in my veins turns to ice; his arms tighten around me.

Looking back, Artemis smiles and says with eerie confidence, “Yes you will. I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life.”

She and Apollo exit the room, leaving us with the armed guards.

Trying to ignore the feeling in my gut, I turn to Victor quickly, my wrists still bound behind my back. “We have to get out of here,” I say, frantic. “Cut me loose.” I turn around, putting my back to him, and my wrists into his view. “Hurry, Victor!” I don’t care that the guards are watching. I don’t give two fucks that they’ll surely stop us when we manage to use the knife to pick the lock of the cell door. I don’t care! We have to do something—