Mistress of Redemption (18 page)

paralyzed with it. It made him want

to touch her even more.

You’re not alone.
She’d said it to

him, but did
she
know that? Had

something so terrible brought her

here that she thought nothing could

match it, isolating her forever?

He thought he saw something else

glitter at her eye, a copper-colored

teardrop about to fall. Obeying a

compulsion he didn’t completely

understand, he leaned forward, broke

through that field and placed his lips

over it, over the corner of her eye.

She stiffened. He’d surprised her

again, so he didn’t push it, didn’t

bring his hands into it. He just

brushed her with his lips, letting that

one tear moisten them, pressing his

forehead against her temple, closing

his eyes, absorbing her tense

vibrations.

“You’re not alone, either,” he said.

Her jaw trembled. She nodded

toward the stage.

“Watch, Nathan.”

Reluctantly he turned his gaze there.

He found himself looking into a

dining room. An attractive man sat

there, holding the hand of his dinner

companion, a beautiful redhead with

pale skin. A great deal of it visible,

since they were both naked, eating

pizza on fine china, laughing.

Obviously lovers enjoying a

weekend of playful fun. As Nathan

watched, the man rubbed a slice of

the pizza across her breasts, smearing

sauce and cheese there in a primitive

display, bending his head to suck the

food off her skin. She enjoyed it for a

moment, her chin lifted. Then she

pushed away. Standing up on the

chair, she stepped onto the table,

spread her legs and put her hands on

her hips, making a stern face as he

caressed her ankles, his hands

moving up her calves. “That’s a very

bad boy, Alex. Isn’t that what your

wife would say?”

She went down on all fours,

positioning her breasts before him,

hanging them over his plate. “You

clean every bit of that off with your

mouth, or you’ll get a very severe 70

Mistress of Redemption

paddling.” Her eyes darkened with

lust, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“Play the games with me you play

with her.”

“They’re not games, Pamela.” His

voice got rougher, lower, his gaze

rising to meet hers as he flicked his

tongue over the sauce. “You’re my

Mistress… See? Your nipples just

hardened. I’ll teach you to love

making me beg.”

As they bantered, a shadow moved

into the doorway. Watching. When

that shadow stepped out into the light

of the stage, Nathan saw Dona in

slacks and blazer, a professional

career woman with the look of

someone returning home from a

business trip. From the darkness

around him came a rush of sound, an

invisible audience oohing like a class

of dramatic schoolchildren, knowing

someone was going to be in very big

trouble.

“Dona, stop.”

He couldn’t turn his head from

observing the stage to look at her,

couldn’t move at all. The darkness in

the theater was absolute. He

wouldn’t have been so sure she was

still there, except that whenever she

was absent, like when she’d gone to

see “Him”, it felt different. Almost

like they were two magnets.

Magnets. His thought resounded in

Dona’s head as she watched him

through the darkness. Like Lucifer

had said. They couldn’t help but

believe in one another. The way he’d

kissed her just now, when he’d never

reached out to a woman without

calculated intent. It made her want to

crawl over the seat into his lap, be

held in those strong arms.

She could sleep there, cradled

against him, his heartbeat steady

beneath her ear.

The voices on the stage drew her

attention away, making her remember

why such musings were dangerous.

“Dona…” Alex displayed the

expected deer-in-the-headlights look.

His gaze darted between the two

women. Pamela was frozen on the

top of the table. “You’re…home

early.”

“Earlier than you think.” Dona’s

voice was high, thin, but Nathan

heard the hint of steel in it that he’d

recognized from the first moment

when she ordered him into her car.

He also felt her pain like a full

cannon blast in the chest. Blowing

everything to pieces, an agony of

disintegration of everything she was

or knew.

He knew what that felt like. He’d

experienced it before he’d even had a

solid sense of self to call his own.

For the first time in his life he thought

that maybe it had been easier to be

shattered early, rather than like this,

when enough time had passed to

allow a person to spin dreams so

strong that they became a part of her,

like a vital organ or limb.

He was seeing too much. More than

she had seen or felt in herself when

what was happening on the stage had

actually occurred. Dona didn’t

understand how this involuntary one-

sided telepathy would help. If

Nathan’s soul was as poisoned as

Lucifer thought, all He was doing

was arming Jonathan, because by

letting her see what her charge was

feeling, it was stripping her

emotionally, making her feel

vulnerable.

Why was Lucifer doing this?

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Joey W. Hill

“I’ve been here long enough to see

you eat more of that pizza than you

should. You know your cholesterol

numbers aren’t what they should be.”

The Dona on stage glanced at

Pamela, who looked as if she wished

to be anywhere else in the world. “I

guess worrying about that was a

waste of time, though, wasn’t it? A

person has to
have
a heart to get heart disease.”

A titter of audience laughter. It was

so obscene against the frozen

paleness of Dona’s features on stage

and the wooden quality of her voice

that Nathan felt nauseous.

“Cut it out, Dona.”

Suddenly, he was able to look

toward his current Dona. See her

silhouette. Her eyes met his, glittered

in the darkness. “That’s a very

appropriate comment,” she said.

Pamela screamed and his attention

jerked back to the stage. Dona had

taken two steps forward and

wrapped one hand in Alex’s

shoulder-length hair to pull his head

back. In a fluid motion, she shoved a

kitchen knife into his left pectoral.

When Pamela’s knees went out from

under her, she landed on the plates,

breaking one. The wineglasses fell

over, rolled to the floor and

shattered, spreading wet burgundy

across the table linen. As she

scrambled backward, blood sprayed

out from Alex’s chest over her, over

all of it.

“So, let’s see…” Dona grunted,

jerking on the knife as her husband

convulsed in death throes, his hands

batting ineffectively at her. “There it

is. You do have one, don’t you?

Lucky I’m a surgeon. Otherwise I

wouldn’t have known where to find

such a small thing.”

Nathan swallowed, unable to look

away but wanting to do so with all

his will when Dona pulled the man’s

heart out of his chest, severing the

attached arteries as matter-of-factly

as she would have cut strings of

cheese to free one of those slices of

pizza from the main pie. Her blood-

spattered face was an indifferent

mask, her blouse soaked with his life

fluids. When she turned on her

practical black heel and advanced on

Pamela, her husband’s lover fell off

the table, trying to get away. Dona

backed her into a corner where the

woman remained on her knees, arms

up to protect herself as she babbled,

sobbed, her gaze latched on that

terrible thing in Dona’s blood-soaked

fingers.

“It’s a large house, Pamela. I’ve been

here since last night, a ghost flitting

from room to room, staying just

outside your notice.” Dona’s face

was pale as a departed spirit, her

dark eyes like a vampire’s. Flat,

emotionless. It clicked in Nathan’s

head. She shut down when she was

feeling too much. He suspected that

would have figured into her ability to

be a surgeon, a successful one, for

the opulence of the home strongly

suggested she’d been important in her

field.

“For thirteen hours I’ve been

watching the man who made an oath

to me proclaim his love for another.

Fuck her, share thoughts about me

with her. You knew he was married,

but you were more than willing to

help him break that oath. My soul

died, Pamela, watching the two of

you.” The Dona on stage cocked her

head, considering the knife in her

opposite hand. Pamela curled back

into herself, arms clasped over her

legs as she became a ball, rocking,

keening hysterically.

72

Mistress of Redemption

“It’s okay if they kill me for this,”

Dona continued in a reassuring tone.

“Why would I want to live in a world

where the person who promised to

love me above all others…forever…

would do something like this?”

As if sensing imminent danger,

Pamela uncurled abruptly and made

an attempt to scramble past her. Dona

thwarted it easily, putting her foot in

the middle of the woman’s chest and

slamming her back on her ass in the

confining corner. Then she squatted,

bringing herself eye to eye with the

redhead and holding the tumescent

mass of blood and muscle before her

horrified face.

“I’m going to call the police, Pamela.

But before I let them come rescue

you, you’re going to eat this. Every

bite. If you vomit, you’ll eat it again,

until it stays down. Then we’ll call.

Okay?” Her lips drew back from her

teeth in a smile that was a death

threat.

Pamela’s wide eyes registered it.

“You wanted his heart? You’re going

to have it, every faithless bite.”

The theater dimmed, blessedly, but

Nathan wished he could block his

ears. For the next fifteen minutes he

heard the sounds of Pamela pleading,

gagging, choking, pleading more, then

finally her broken whimpers as she

obeyed Dona’s will and did the

unthinkable. The theater was

completely dark when he heard the

sound of a phone being dialed and

Dona’s voice.

“Yes. I’ve killed my husband and his

pathetic whore is in shock. Please

come right away to…”

The voice faded, Dona giving details

as calmly as if she was prescribing

blood pressure medicine to a patient.

When the stage lights rose, it was just

a velvet curtain. The two of them sat

in an empty theater.

Nathan turned his head, studied

Dona’s profile. She did not move.

Her attention was on the stage, her

dark hair elegant and upswept, her

neck pale and almost fragile beneath

the clasp of the amber necklace.

“You were known as the Scorned

Wife,” he said. “That case was…”

“Thirty years ago. I refused counsel,

pled guilty and let them put me to

death. I didn’t care. I thought my soul

had been eaten, the way that heart

was eaten.” Her gaze turned to him

now, a deep well of things so

frightening that neither he nor any

man he knew would have been brave

enough to meet her gaze. He looked

down at her lap, at her clasped

hands, the fingers twisted together in

a knot. He heard her mocking

chuckle.

“It wasn’t.”

The theater went dark again and

Nathan could see nothing, only hear

Dona’s breath next to him, the sound

of her voice drifting over his skin.

“I wish I could look back on that now

and say I don’t know who that Dona

was.

That I can’t relate to her and don’t

know what possessed me. Every act

you commit, you commit consciously,

even if it’s so unspeakable that you

make yourself believe something else

compelled you to do it. Those hours I

spent in the house while they 73

Joey W. Hill

didn’t know I was there… Touching

their body heat on my mattress where

he and I had loved one another, so

many ways. Watching her rifle

through my closet while I stood a foot

away from her in the shadow of my

dresses. Listening to her make fun of

me with the information he’d given

her about me, about our relationship.

I knew it was insecurity, making fun

of what you don’t understand. The

adulteress’s guilt at taking what she

knows is rightfully another woman’s.