Alma Katsu - The Taker

“I knew that I was not the first man she had been with, so I asked who had taken her virginity. A brother? A male relative, no doubt-who else would be able to get close to her? It turned out to have been her father. Can you believe that?” he asked, incredulous, snorting as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. “He was the chief, a patriarch used to having his way. But by Uzra’s fifth birthday, he could tell by the girl’s coloring that he was not her father. The mother had been unfaithful and, by the green of the child’s eyes, had consorted with a foreigner. He said nothing, merely took the mother out into the desert one day and returned without her. By Uzra’s twelfth birthday, she had taken her mother’s place in his bed; he told her that she was the daughter of a whore and no blood relation to him, so it was not forbidden. She was to tell no one. The servants thought it charming that the girl was so affectionately disposed toward her father that she could not bear to be apart from him.

“I told her none of it mattered. I was not going to give her to that superstitious sultan. Nor would I send her back to her father so he could force himself on her one last time before handing her over, like a coward.” Over the course of Adair’s story, I had managed to take Uzra’s hand and squeezed it, from time to time, to let her know I commiserated with her, but I saw in her dead green eyes that she had taken herself to another place, away from his cruelty. Jonathan, too, was quietly embarrassed for her. Adair continued, heedless of the fact that he was the only one enjoying his tale. “I decided to save her life. Just like the others. I told her that her long ordeal was over. She was to start a new life with me and she would stay with me forever.”

Once the opium had had its effect on Adair and he’d fallen asleep, Jonathan and I crept away. “Good God, Lanny, what am I to make of that story? Please tell me he was being fanciful, that he was exaggerating…”

“It’s odd… he said he saved her life, ‘just like the others.’ But she’s not like the others, not from the story he just told.”

“How so?”

“He’s told me a bit about how the others came to be with him, Alejandro, Tilde, and Dona. They had done horrible things before Adair met them.” We slipped into Jonathan’s room, which was next to Adair’s but smaller, though it did have a good-size dressing room and a view of the garden. And a door that led straight into Adair’s chamber. “I think that’s why he picked them, because they’re capable of doing the bad things he requires. I think that’s what he looks for in a companion. A failing.”

We shed a few layers of clothing to get more comfortable before lying on the bed, side by side, and Jonathan draped an arm protectively over my waist. The opium was affecting us, too, and I was on the verge of falling asleep. “It makes no sense… Why would he choose you, then?” Jonathan asked drowsily. “You’ve never hurt anyone in your life.”

If ever there was an opportune time to bring up Sophia and how I’d driven her to suicide, this was it. I even drew in a breath to ready myself but… once again, I could not. Jonathan thought me innocent enough to question my place here. He thought me incapable of evil and I couldn’t spoil that.

And, perhaps as telling, he didn’t ask why he had been selected, what Adair saw in him. Jonathan knew enough about himself to believe something evil lurked within, something deserving of punishment. Maybe I knew it, too. We were both failed, in our way, and chosen for a punishment that we deserved.

“I meant to tell you,” Jonathan muttered, sleepy, eyes already closed. “I will be going on a trip with Adair soon. He told me he wished to take me somewhere… I forget where, exactly. Perhaps Philadelphia… though after that story I can’t say I’m looking forward to going anywhere alone with him…”

As I pulled his arm tight against me, I noticed through the thin gauze of his shirt a mark on his arm. There was something sickeningly familiar about the dark mottles veiled by his sleeve, so I pulled the loose garment back to see thin black lines incised on his inner arm.

“Where did you get this?” I asked, sitting up in alarm. “It was Tilde, wasn’t it; she did this with her needles?”

Jonathan barely opened his eyes. “Yes, yes… the other evening, when we’d been out drinking…”

I studied it closely; it was not the heraldic shield, but two spheres with long, fiery tails, interlocked like two fingers hooked together. It might have been different from the one I bore, but I’d seen it before-adorning Adair’s back.

“It’s the same as Adair’s,” I managed to say.

“Yes, I know… He insisted I wear it. To signify that we are brothers, or some such nonsense. I did it only to end his badgering.”

Touching my thumb to the tattoo, I felt a coldness ripple through me; that Adair had put his mark on Jonathan signified something, but I could not figure out what that might be. I wanted to beg him not to go away with Adair, to disobey him… but I knew the inevitable outcome of that folly. So I said nothing and lay awake a long time listening to the steady, peaceful rhythm of Jonathan’s breathing, unable to shake the premonition that our time together was coming to an end.

Luke wakes to the sound of human misery. He is disoriented, as he always is when waking from a nap, and his first thought is that he has overslept and is late for his shift at the hospital. It isn’t until he nearly knocks the alarm clock-never mind that it’s not ringing-off the nightstand with a wild grope that he realizes he’s in a hotel and there is only one person with him, and that person is crying.

The door to the bathroom is closed. Luke knocks gently and, when there is no answer, pushes the door back. Lanny sits hunched in the bathtub, fully clothed. When she looks over her shoulder at him, Luke sees that her eye makeup is streaked down her face in black daggers, like a frightening clown in a movie.

“Hey, you okay?” he asks, reaching for her hand. “What are you doing in here?”

She lets him help her out of the bathtub. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” He leads her to the bed and lets her curl up in his arms like a child. “I’m sorry… I’m just starting… to realize…,” she says in ragged bursts between sobs.

“That he’s gone,” Luke finishes for her so she can continue crying. It makes sense; up until now she has been concentrating on getting away, not being discovered. Now the escape is behind her, the adrenaline subsides, and she remembers how she got here, that she now has to deal with the fact that the most important person in her life is gone.

He thinks of the many times he walked past someone crying in the hall at the hospital, someone who had just been given bad news, a woman hiding her face in her hands and a man standing beside her, numb and struggling. Luke cannot count the times he’s stepped out of the operating room, pulling off his gloves and mask, shaking his head as he walks to the waiting spouse, stony in the face of her stubborn expectation of good news. He learned to build a wall between himself and the patients and the next of kin; you couldn’t let yourself be drawn into their pain. You could nod your head and share their sorrow, but only for a moment. If you tried to take on their burdens, you wouldn’t last a year on the hospital floor.

This girl shaking in his arms, her sorrow is endless. She will fall in her pit of grief for a long time, tumbling down with no way to stop. He supposes there is a formula for how long it takes for the pain to lift, but it’s probably tied to how long you’ve known the deceased. Of course, there is no relief coming for her. How long will it take for Lanny to tolerate the daily pain of Jonathan’s absence, let alone live with the fact that she was the one who dispatched him? People have become unhinged over less, carried away by sadness. There’s no guarantee of surviving something like this.