CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Bleeding From More than One Place

Charles carried the food and I hooked my arm around his elbow as we walked down the street. I glanced at my watch. It had been almost exactly half an hour since I entered the restaurant.

“Has the man who was supposed to check on Charles come yet?” I asked Rhuk without making a sound.

“He’s already come and left. He saw you, and unless I was mistaken by his body language, he thought Charles would have his hands full with you for the whole night. I don’t know when he’s planning to return, but your timing for leaving the restaurant was impeccable. No one will notice he’s missing for the longest amount of time possible.”

We entered the lobby of the hotel. The floor was red and the walls were black with reddish-brown swirls. Christian had got us a room near the top of the hotel, one of their finest rooms. It was the longest walk of my life from the desk to the elevator. The longest ride inside an elevator, and somehow it was an even longer walk from the elevator to the room.

“Where’s your flirty mouth now?” Charles asked roughly on the way to the correct room number.

“Be patient.” I let go of his arm and put the keycard in the slot, opening the door for him.

He turned on the lights and went in.

I followed him inside, turned around, and locked the door. Quietly, I went up behind Charles, put my arms around him, and began unbuttoning his coat. I had to see something before I called Christian to join us. I had to make sure that we were not making a mistake and this man had really had a heart transplant recently.

I tossed his coat aside and was about to follow suit by taking mine off, but Charles was all over me before I got the chance. I almost ripped the air from his lungs as his hands groped me in places Christian hadn’t even touched yet.

“Wait,” I said, putting a hand up to stop him. “Don’t you want to hear about me and Christian Henderson?”

He had been ravaging my throat. “You still want to do that?” he asked. “I can hear about it after.”

I chuckled, holding him at bay. “Christian had a good sense of timing. He knew how to make me want him so bad I was foaming at the mouth before he gave me anything.”

Charles dropped his hands and straightened. “Oh?”

“Yeah. He’d make me undress him. I don’t think he ever once undid a button or a zipper on his own clothing, or mine. He made me undo it all. Don’t you want to see how he did it? Don’t you want to hear the words he would say as he forced me to uncover him with his tongue?”

Charles’ mouth was watering. He had to put his lips together and swallow twice while I was talking.

Of course, I was making everything up. This was just an excuse so he would let me unbutton his shirt so I could see if he had a heart transplant scar down the center of his chest.

“Sit on the bed,” I commanded.

Charles did what I said immediately and waited. “So… what did he say?”

It was time to get creative. Christian had never treated me like a piece of meat and I was scraping my brain to imagine what he could say that would accomplish everything I said it did. I started with the biggest stall I could think of… a compliment. I began, “He’d start with a look. The one you’re giving me right now is perfect, just like him. That look that said he wanted me, but I was a minor, so he wasn’t going to lay a finger on me. I’d have to crawl down his pants myself if I wanted him.”

“Do you really think he wasn’t doing Beth if he was doing you? I bet he was doing you both,” Charles said darkly.

“He told me he thought she was gross and needy. Why would he have bothered? He could get anyone. Why bother with Beth?” I answered haughtily.

“I think that because…” Charles said slowly. “I walked in on them. He was definitely doing something with her. And you’re right, it was gross.”

I crawled on the bed next to him and absently ran my fingers across his chest, fingering the buttons before undoing them. There was suddenly something that made me curious, so I hesitated in getting what I had come for. “It was okay for him to nail someone like me, but not for him to nail someone like Beth?”

“Nah, he can nail both of you as far as I care,” Charles said, trying to put his hand between my legs.

I moved out of the way. “Get control of yourself. Christian would never touch me before I touched him.” I wanted to ask Charles more questions, but if he was going to attempt something like that, then I needed to put an end to all of this. I resumed unbuttoning his shirt.

Three buttons down, I got the answer to my question. He had the same scar I once had down my chest.

The bed frame was made with beautiful iron-wrought posts and intricate ironwork between them. I looked at the metal swirls, considering the possibilities. Feeling the curse of Lady Macbeth, I took control, ordered matter, untangled the design of the wrought iron from the headboard, and used the vines to pin his wrists beside his head and wrap another around his neck. He struggled, but the iron moved as fast as pythons and pinned him.

It didn’t choke him, but he screamed.

I blocked the sound so no one heard it.

“Enough of this nonsense. You have something I want.” I approached him and ripped the wig off his head. “You aren’t Graham anything, Charles. Stop pretending.”

His eyes went wide and he screamed again, but no one could hear him. Angry, I blocked the sound waves from hitting me either, took a chair from the desk, and placed it beside the bed. I sat on the chair with ladylike grace and crossed my legs. “Do you know who I am?”

He couldn’t answer. He was coughing, since his thrashing had constricted his trachea against the iron around his neck.

Putting everything aside, I wondered how much of the operation I could accomplish on my own. I closed my eyes and tried to do what I did with all matter I could control. I tried to command the cells in my heart, inside his body, to come to me. They wanted to obey. I could feel them under his skin, but his body was blocking them. The problem was that I didn’t have the power to control the cells in another person’s body. All the cells in Charles’ body were stopping me from taking what belonged to me. Brandon would have to cut him open.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I opened my eyes and waited for Charles to stop sputtering.

He was odious, ugly, and awful. I had been forced to let him touch me in private places after I was already so disgusted about him seeing me naked.

Obviously, I already knew we were going to kill Charles, but would that give me any satisfaction? I could call Christian and Brandon to cut my heart out at any moment, but I needed a minute.

His throat, arms, and hands were held down by iron. His legs flailed. I noticed a few decorative iron loops at the foot of the bed and let them bring his feet into circlets. I knew all about that. It was very effective.

I told my chair to scurry over to the side of the bed and I asked the iron to bring Charles closer to me like dark obedient snakes.

Once he was close enough, he stopped fighting, and instead, he began searching my face for answers.

I gave them, allowing my face to relax into my own features.

He let out a gasp of recognition.

“Was everything the scientists told you true?” I asked with a crooked grin.

He nodded and tried to angle his chin so he could wipe his spittle on his collar. He couldn’t reach it and it collected in a nauseating droplet at the point of his chin.

“Charles,” I said slowly. “I’m going to kill you tonight. I’m sure you know why, you little thief,” I said as I walked my fingers across his chest.

“What are you going to do with it?” he sputtered. “You’re already immortal. What use could you possibly have for Christian’s heart?”

My expression went sour. “You get lied to a lot,” I said as I ripped a dirty blond eyebrow off his face.

He winced.

The adhesive clung to my fingers until I ordered the line of hair to fall away and float slowly downward like a feather until it met its end in the trash can. Charles’ eyebrows were now blonde and red. “These don’t suit you. Did someone say they did? That you deserved them? You deserved to look like him? To look like the version of him that I fell in love with? I ripped off his other eyebrow.

He gritted his teeth that time, expecting it.

“They told you they gave you his heart and you believed them because they cut it out of his body?” I dropped the other eyebrow and it joined its partner in the garbage. “Except Charles,” I said, scraping his hair net off to reveal his natural red hair. “It wasn’t his heart. It was mine.”

“What?”

“I only want to make one thing clear to you before I call the men in who are going to murder you. What you saw that morning in the conservatory… that kiss you found so offensive… it was none of your business. Christian and I had already traded hearts years before and absolutely everything you think you know about him and me is bullshit that someone told you so they could control you.”

The look on his face was exactly what I needed to see so that I would be able to move on from this after he was gone. Finally, he understood that there was no way out. The tragedy hit Charles and a single tear ran down his cheek. It was especially poignant for me because he was still wearing Christian’s hazel contact lenses… probably the exact ones Christian used to wear. His whole kit had probably been taken from his cabin in the woods and given to Charles as a gift.

Even still, with his spittle glistening down his face, the steak sauce staining his cheap suit, and his stare that was unreasonably like my Christian’s, I still didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t chase Christian for years to become a murderer. It was tempting to blame Charles, to tell him that none of this would have happened if he had not sold Brandon out. Everything would have been fine if he hadn’t become a goon and followed my father in his twisted schemes. It didn’t matter what I wanted to yell at him about how wrong he was. It was too late for him to correct himself now. I’d already said what I needed to say. He’d be dead in ten minutes.

I took out my phone and texted Christian that I was ready at the hotel.

“Beth,” Rhuk whispered in my ear, interrupting all that flamed and froze inside my mind. “Trinity is alone at home.”

I waited. There’s no way Rhuk would have told me that for no reason.

The diamond continued to explain, “She’s just begun contractions. They’re stronger than she expected. She’s called Brighton, but he is in a meeting and has his phone off. She’s not yet at full term and he’s not expecting her to need him.”

“Do you think she’s in trouble?”

“If she doesn’t get to a hospital soon… she’ll be in big trouble,” the stone admitted.

“Where’s Christian?”

“He’s in the lobby with Brandon.”

I went down the hall to meet him.

“They just got in the elevator,” Rhuk warned me before I got on one going in the wrong direction.

I waited, paced, controlled the sound waves coming from Charles, and waited. The elevator door dinged and the two men emerged.

When I saw Christian, I skipped the greetings and told him the situation. “Rhuk says Trinity went into early labor and she’s alone.”

Christian reached out to me. “What should we do?”

“We’re not far from her. I could be there in ten minutes if she needs me to help.”

“What about our guest?” Christian asked, pointing his chin toward Charles.

I pinched my lips together. “I’m blocking the sound waves, so no one can hear him scream.”

“I suppose Rhuk could order the matter to continue doing that until you come back. Do you want to take Brandon with you?” Christian offered, walking with me into the room.

Christian momentarily forgot what he was talking about as he entered the hotel room and saw Charles entangled in the bed frame. “Nice bed,” he said, as he made room for Brandon and me to follow him inside.

Charles heard Christian say that.

“Brandon?” Charles had stopped coughing and was now able to talk. He looked up and saw the man whose head they cut off. “Hey, what are you doing here?”

Brandon didn’t answer him and unrolled a collection of surgical tools on the desk and muttered, “It will make a huge mess.”

“I’ll be back in time to clean it up. Even if I’m gone all night, you guys can keep housekeeping out of the room until morning, can’t you?”

Charles began yelling at the top of his lungs.

“Oh, shut up!” I insisted. “No one can hear you. No one will know you died in this room and anyone who asks a single f-ing question about what happened to you will be inexplicably strangled by their necktie. Shut up!”

Brandon stood aside for Christian to choose a blade from his tools. Christian selected a knife from the collection. Holding it between his hands, he turned to me. “I’m not asking you to do this, Beth, but I won’t do it unless you ask me to. All my life, I’ve killed people. I’ve let people die. It’s part of the life cycle and as we live forever, we see a lot of death. If you can’t bear for me to do this, you have to say so now.”

He stopped talking and waited for me to reply.

I thought of saying something to Charles, something more about how wrong he had been, but I closed my mouth without saying those words. They didn’t matter now. Even if Christian had shot him in the face instead of the leg when we left the compound, Dr. Bobby would have found someone else to put Christian’s heart into.

I said it. “Kill him.”

Christian sliced the blade clean across Charles’ throat without hesitating. The blood was everywhere and on everything. I should not have been proud of the way he accomplished it, doing it with determination and no visible satisfaction. I felt that moment was not a moment where the two of us should have bonded, but it was.

He wiped the knife and returned it to its place among Brandon’s tools. He turned to me and started undoing his coat. They were going to do the surgery and I had hoped to stay for it.

“We can manage this part alone,” Christian insisted. “Come back when you’re finished helping Trinity.”

I took his hand in mine and kissed the knuckles. His other hand was in my hair.

“Everything will be fine. Go to Trinity.” He let go of me.

I took a few steps away from them. “Neither of you can leave this room before I come back,” I said before I locked the two of them inside.

Whatever I felt about seeing Charles murdered before my very eyes would not be analyzed. I needed to get to Trinity.