They are his bridge.

For me, I’m not here to save lives or this town. I’m not here to serve justice. I don’t need a fucking bargaining chip.

My muse owes me.

And I’m here to collect.

My bridge will be built of blood and bone. Fear and unadulterated lust.

We sacrifice that which we love to obtain our passions.

Before I meet Halen in the hallway, I use a butterknife to remove the plastic covering of my ankle monitor. Breaking the circuit is what gives off the signal to send an alert. I bypass the circuit and unscrew the pins. I remove the band and set the bracelet next to the receiver on the dresser, giving myself free roam until the morning.

We’re silent as we descend the steps of the emergency stairwell and exit on the backside of the hotel.

Halen removes the car keys from her pocket. “Once I know your truth,” she says, stopping at the driver-side door the rental car. “You’re not simply going to hand yourself over.”

I hold her gaze across the roof of the car. “The truth sets you free.”

Mouth pinched in a hard line, she nods slowly. “Right.”

She has never appreciated the honest answers I offer her.

“Here’s one more truth for you to puzzle over,” I say as she opens the car door. “Your suspect needs to feel threatened someone else is more worthy than him of ascending.”

Tossing her bag in the backseat, she says, “And who would be more worthy…?” Her voice falters as the whole picture starts to come into focus.

With the crescent moon hanging in a sea of fiery stars above her, Halen touches the diamond at her neck as understanding dawns.

“You have to perform the rite,” I say, confirming her suspicion. “Invoke Dionysus. Descend into the depths. Make your suspect believe you’re closer than him to ascending into the overman. This will lure him out of hiding far faster than a search party.”

It can only be her. Her pain and suffering is a siren’s song to the lost. Her insatiable frenzy to reach divine madness elevates her to a celestial temptress.

“What are you going to do to me, Kallum?”

“I’m going to bathe you in a libation,” I say, my blood heating at the mere thought. “I’m going to make you the ultimate temptation.”

“You’re going to sacrifice me.” Her breathy allegation slips over my skin.

To effectively give us both what we desire, I will make Halen into a pagan goddess. Adorn her head with a crown of bone, pose her against a barren tree, right under a ring of moonlight, where I will bathe her in blood and worship her body before I devour her.

Seduction of the mind, body, and spirit. The sacred trinity. At the height of frenzy, I will take all of her.

This is my ritual.

The time has come to awaken my muse.

“No, sweetness. I could never sacrifice you. I’m far too covetous over my desires.” I lick my lips with aching hunger. “You’re going to ascend.”

OceanofPDF.com

13

Awakening

Halen

T here is an abyss for us all.

Every walk through life shapes a chasm where our darkest fears and deepest regrets erect the walls of our tomb. Not the physical place where we’ll lie and claim peace, but the void of our despair. It’s far darker than any grave, and more terrifying than any physical death.

It’s the utter certainty of our aloneness.

For all the love and happiness and connections we cleave to in life, such rare, blissful moments can only be experienced because of the suffering we bear. This was Nietzsche’s core belief, and it’s one I painfully accept.

Our abyss tears at our lives like demons ripping apart souls in the bowels of hell. That helpless pain is a torment so unbearable, we may even plead for the oblivion of death to end our anguish.

The suspect is weak in my eyes because of his fear—because he clings to his life, striving to avoid pain, so fearful of falling into obscurity.

But Nietzsche believed that self-overcoming could only be attained by suffering and solitude. There is no path to enlightenment but through pain.

His method to overcome his fear and pain was his own personal descent into the abyss of his mind—one which he never reemerged from, where he languished in the depths, his mind lost to madness.

Or was his madness an escape, a form of true enlightenment where he found a higher wisdom?

Reality is subjective.

I can’t pose any elevated argument, but I can claim with cold, clear logic that acceptance of our demise is not a strength. Overcoming fear of death is not courage. It is not looking the monster in the eye and overpowering our fate with bloated ego to immortalize ourselves.

True strength is having the fraught will and calm surrender to accept our heartsickness, to awake every day and feel our pain, embrace our suffering, and choose to live in spite of our great losses.

I’ve stared into the face of death.

I’ve fallen to my knees and wept before the monster.

I’ve sank into the darkest chasm.

But it wasn’t my death that frightened me; it was the loss of those I have loved most in this world that tore me into an endless, yawning abyss.

All the broken fragments of my life are filed sharp. The more I tried to piece them together, the larger the seam I tore.

My darkness stretches into an infinite void.

And that dark void of my soul is what beckoned Kallum to the jagged crags of my cliff. It called to him. He looked right into me and slithered inside.

I thought I was lost until the devil found me.

I crave the respite he offers from the pain, the numbing balm I feel in his arms that soothes the unbearable ache in the middle of my chest, and the blissful forgetting his touch brings, surrendering my torturous thoughts to the nothingness.

That is his sinful seduction.

And my sin is the desire to be seduced.

His evil calls to mine.

The temptation to want , to desire , to be alive with passion will stir my soul with frenzy until I succumb to his madness.

But, madness is more bearable than pain. Maybe that’s the only wisdom Nietzsche uncovered.

And maybe that’s how I allowed Kallum to slip in unnoticed, like a demon slipping into a dream and turning it into a nightmare.

That waking nightmare is all around me as I move from behind a tree and enter the ritual site.

The night sky is a soulless black that strangles the fiery embers of stars above the killing fields.

The reeds have been cleared away. Markers flag the perimeter of the circle. A ring of fire crackles in the center. The firelight dances on the planes of Kallum’s face, shadowing the contoured hollows.

He is the grim reaper bathed in beauty and illusion.

Yet, as much as I’m remaining on this case out of the desire to do good, I’m not a martyr.

I envy the suspect. I am jealous of his delusion that offers even a moment of peace. If the option was presented to me to sacrifice one life to bring back my family…

My parents. Jackson. Our baby.

The damning truth is, I’m not sure I would make the selfless choice. I’m not standing in this field to save thirty-three victims from the abyss.

I am the fucking abyss.

I’m here to slay the demon taking up residency in my hollow soul.

I pull my bundled clothes to my chest as I walk toward one of the evidence tables. I feel Kallum’s intense stare tracking me, then hear the rustle of his footsteps. I touch the diamond at my neck, close my eyes to take one moment of solitude, then I reach behind my neck to unfasten the clasp.

The abrasive feel of Kallum’s fingers brushing my nape sets off a riot in my pulse. Hands shaking, I drop my arms and wait for him to remove the necklace.

The chain slips along my collar and, as he turns me around, he brings my hand up and drops the necklace into my palm. It hasn’t left my neck since I placed it there after Jackson’s funeral.