The blood sprayed in a fine red mist, speckling the wall behind her head. Darien stepped back after the blow, wiping the gore from his baton with the corner of his shirt. He watched with a bemused grin as Hawkins struggled back to her knees. She could feel her broken ribs grinding together as she moved, and she winced at the pain. She knelt on all fours but couldn’t seem to raise her head; the room spun wildly, which didn’t help. The blood flowing from the wounds to her head was pooling on her chin and she could hear the sound of it dripping down onto the floor, sending satellite spatter in all directions. She had already lost too much blood; her limbs felt like lead and waves of nausea washed over her, likely brought on by the head trauma. She tried to stand again, but she stumbled and fell back to her knees. Darien laughed.

“You know, I really must thank you for coming, Agent Hawkins. I would have hated to miss out on such a wonderful diversion. But you know, it would have been even better if I had had some of my tools with me. You really should have told me that you were coming,” Darien smiled pleasantly. “I hate having to improvise.”

“Oh, you needed to be told that I would be coming? And here I thought you knew everything,” Hawkins replied with mock surprise. “You must be slipping, in your old age.”

“You think you’re funny, Agent Hawkins?” Darien asked coldly.

He kicked her hard in the side, sending her sprawling to the floor again. Gasping, she coughed blood onto the tiles. She didn’t hesitate though; she immediately began trying once again to push herself to her knees. She felt a bit like a turtle, struggling to her feet over and over, just to be flipped on her back again. An observer, she reflected, might have wondered why she bothered getting back up, but the answer was very simple. If she let him think that she was down for the count, if she let him get bored, Darien might turn back to the monitors behind him and that would be the end. She had to keep him engaged, not matter what it meant for her.

“You know, your mother thought she was funny too,” Darien smiled wickedly.

This was the first time he had mentioned Grace, but Hawkins had expected him to try and use her mother’s death to hurt her. It wouldn’t work. Nothing he said could surprise her, she already knew every detail of her mother’s death. So, she didn’t rise to the bait.

“Yeah, my mom was a funny lady,” she gasped between coughing fits.

“Not so funny in the end,” Darien replied. “Unless you find it entertaining to watch someone crying and begging for death. She died like a coward.”

“You can say whatever you want about how my mother died, I don’t care. I know how she lived, that’s what matters.”

“Funny you should mention how she lived,” Darien chuckled. “Have you ever wondered why I didn’t kill you back then?”

Taylor Hawkins had wondered that, often. She wondered why she and her father had survived, when so many other families had been killed. Of course, she would never give him the satisfaction of admitting it. He continued anyway,

“Of course you did, smart girl like you. And because I like you, I’m going to tell you. It’s because you were much more useful to me alive. When Grace put the two of you in that safe house, under protective custody, it was better than I could ever have hoped for. I watched her every night in that empty apartment; she knew that you were both out there, but she couldn’t see you. She knew that you might die at any moment by my hand, and that she could do nothing to protect you. At night, she would hug a picture of the three of you together and cry herself to sleep. It was perfect,” he laughed. “Eventually, she stopped going home all together, slept in the break room at the agency, if she slept at all. Not that I minded, it was more convenient to watch her, there. The fact is, your very existence caused her such terror and pain every moment, that there was nothing I could have done that would have made it worse for her,” Darien smiled, remembering the incident fondly. “Every moment that she dreaded your death, she unravelled just a little bit more. It was a thing of beauty. I just couldn’t bear putting an end to her misery by killing you. So, I guess you could say that you hurt your mother much more than I ever could have.”

Hawkins remembered being in protective custody, she remembered when her mother dropped them off with the agent who was taking them to the safe house. Her mother had told her it would just be for a little while. Instead, that was the last time she had seen her alive. Looking into the face of the man who took her mother from her, all she wanted was to make him suffer, the way he had her.

“Of course, I did make every effort,” he continued, revelling in her anger, her impotence. “It is what I do, after all. You have seen the crime scene photos, haven’t you? Studied the effects of strychnine poisoning?” Darien watched her cringe. “Of course you have. Well, let me tell you, Taylor, it is so much worse than you can even imagine. The hours of agony she endured were everything I had imagined that they would be. In fact, I think it is my favourite death, and I have seen so many of them. I still hear her screams in my sleep, when I’m lucky,” Darien sneered.

Hawkins clenched her fists until her fingernails drew blood. It made her sick, the way watching people suffer got him off. And it scared her just how much she wanted to kill him, how much she wanted to watch him bleed. How much his suffering would please her.

“You want to hurt me, don’t you, Taylor?” he drawled, studying her face.

“You?” Hawkins gave a short, laboured laugh, trying to sound nonchalant. “You aren’t worth my time.”

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“That’s too bad, because the rest of the time you do have on this earth belongs to me, whether you like it or not,” Darien smiled a bone-chilling, reptilian smile. “Like mother like daughter, I suppose. Neither one of you were good enough to stop me, in the end.”

“You know, you may have killed her, but that doesn’t change the fact that my mother was a stronger person then you will ever be,” Hawkins coughed. “Each of the agents you killed, they were all smarter, more talented, more respected by their peers, but then, you knew that, didn’t you? That is why you killed them, after all, to show people you were as worthy as they were. Even if it was a lie.”

“I am easily more skilled than any of those fools. I proved it every time! Each one of those so called ‘brilliant’ agents played my game and they lost!” Darien gloated. “And before they died, they all begged me for mercy. They all knew that they were no match for me. They were weak, pathetic.”

Hawkins spit blood derisively,

“Your game was rigged, and you know it; it proves nothing. Those men and women, they deserved better than to die at your hands. You’re nothing but a weak, impotent little man, basking in their reflected glory.”

Darien’s eyes burned with rage.

“We’ll see if you can still say that when I’m done with you.”

He reached down and calmly removed the handcuffs from his belt, but it was clear he did not intend to restrain her. Instead, he reared back and whipped her across the face with the heavy metal ring. She cried out. He brought the heavy metal cuffs down across her back again and again, until her shirt was in tatters and her back was slick with blood.

“You are just like the rest of them,” he snarled. “You think you are superior, that you are smarter than everyone else. All of those agents who treated me like a second-class citizen because I was only in security. They all thought that they were so much better than me. To you, I am just some glorified mall cop, aren’t I?”

Darien punctuated each sentence with another lash.

“Do you know what they told me when I applied to be the assistant director, years ago? They told me that I lacked the appropriate ‘skill set’. They said that I lacked the mental capacity to do investigative work, and so people of that ‘calibre’ would never accept my leadership. A mediocre man could never hope to control the brilliant, they concluded. I was more suited to work this dead-end job, the place they stick all the kids who joined right out of high school. This was where I would stay, where my ‘skill set’ demanded that I stay. But I knew that they were wrong, and I knew that I could prove it. So, I challenged their very best; the same agents they felt would never have respected my control. And in the end, I had control over all of them; I alone determined who lived and who died. Those agents were paralyzed by fear at the mere mention of my name. And none of them could touch me. As Parabellum, people finally learned to give me the respect I always deserved.”

Hawkins had managed to push herself up, sitting against the wall, leaning heavily on it to support her weight. She listened silently as he continued his rambling tirade.

“You know, I followed all of the rules when I started here. I was obedient, I was professional. And what did it get me? Nothing! But that first kill,” Darien closed his eyes, savouring the memory. “It was like being reborn. That was when I learned what it was like to have real power, real control. I discovered that there was no better feeling in the world then holding a man’s life in my hands, and then snuffing it out. You can’t truly understand how transcendent it is, until you experience it yourself. This pathetic job ended up being a blessing in disguise; it gave me everything I needed to become the greatest serial killer in recent memory. All the agents here are too arrogant to realize it, but the truth is, this is my building, and within its walls, I Am God. In my years as Parabellum I demonstrated that to everyone. People died when I said they died, and no case got solved if I didn’t want it solved!”

“Until now,” Hawkins mumbled.

“What was that?” Darien glared at her.

“I solved it,” she elaborated. “I know who you are, I know what you did. I have the evidence.”

“Yes, I suppose that is technically true, for all the good it did you. But personally, I don’t count a case as solved until the criminal has actually been apprehended,” he laughed. “Though it does remind me, I wanted to ask how you put it all together.”

Hawkins normally wouldn’t tell a man like Darien a damn thing, but there was more than her pride at stake right now. She knew that she was badly injured, and she wasn’t sure how many more hits she could take. What she needed was to keep him talking, even if it was just for a little bit longer.

“It started with your partner, Craig Ferrier,” she began slowly, milking her injuries to delay the story. “He left his DNA on the stamp used to mail one of your letters.”

“Ah yes, Craig. I should have known. He would have been dumb enough to actually lick the stamp. All I had him to do was mail a few letters, maybe run a few errands for me, and he couldn’t even manage do that right.”

“Is that why you killed him?”

Darien laughed,

“No, I killed him because I didn’t need him anymore. In my time as Parabellum, I have used many tools, but once you finish with them, there is no need to keep them around. Old, useless tools get thrown away.”

“Tools? You mean like Duane Tompkins and Andre Martin?”

“Exactly. Scum like that are just a means to an end. If I leave them alive, they become loose ends that would surely trip me up, eventually. No need to take unnecessary risks.”

“Well, I guess the jokes on you then,” Hawkins chuckled. “It still gave you away, in spite of all of your efforts.”

“How so?”

“3 dead NIA agents, all killed in supposedly random muggings, all corresponding to the time when Parabellum murders were occurring? That’s no coincidence. It became obvious to me that you had killed them. So I went back to those cases, and that is where I found your DNA. You got your blood on Craig Ferrier when you stabbed him. Very sloppy. But the DNA, obviously, didn’t hit anything in the database. I started to look into their lives more carefully, and that was when I found that their phone records had only one person in common: you.”

“Well, well. I guess I should have been more careful communicating with those three. I never imagined that anyone would ever link their deaths, let alone tie them to Parabellum.”

“No one did, until now. I was planning to get a sample of your DNA to confirm my theory, but Blake ended up giving me the confirmation I needed instead.”

“Well, I do concede that it was exemplary work finding me, Agent Hawkins. It is just too bad that it took you so long. Now it’s too late,” Darien grinned triumphantly. “After today, no one will ever get the opportunity to discover my identity again. This was always to be my final glorious act as Parabellum.”