Peace and violence cannot reside simultaneously; one is always the answer to the other.
Despite what my sweet muse claims she wants, my painful affliction is knowing exactly what Halen needs—and it’s not the good guy.
When I wanted her to see the man, she saw the devil in me, and yet that’s not what she fears.
The grim truth is, such constrained morals and actions can only result in violence.
As Agent Alister demonstrated tonight. With his tightly laced veneer in the FBI. Rule abiding. Law enforcing. Good doing. He is a man of high morals. He fights the evil in the world.
And when those tightly wound constraints snap, he becomes that very evil. I’m not here to be his judge or jury. He’s already failed by the world’s standards. But by succumbing to his weakness, he made a grave fucking mistake with me.
For that, I will be his executioner.
The agent eyes me now from across the fluorescently lit holding cell. Arms tensed at his sides, he balls a bloody cloth in one hand. His dress shirt torn at the collar, his pallid skin is sheened with nasty purple bruises from my fist and scratches from Halen’s nails. His nose is broken; a dark-red seam slices across the bridge.
Standing before the cot, I stare at his busted face, my mouth twisted in smug satisfaction. My knuckles ache with throbbing heat as my hands fist, and I latch on to the pain, let it ground me, rooting me where I stand as the desire to commit carnage thrums through the cells of my body.
The need to end me is banked in the hollow pits of his eyes. Ego wounded, pride destroyed, he can’t walk out of this holding cell and leave me standing.
Before I even entered the building, I tasted Halen’s fear, a hit so pungent, the bitter aftertaste of clove still clings to the back of my throat. That alone is a violation he must suffer for.
Wrath resounds within me, and I see Halen all over again—his hands holding her down, tearing at her clothes—and I know before I leave this room, I will paint the off-white walls red with his blood.
“You want to finish this like men,” I say to him, stoking the waning flame of his damaged ego. “No authorities or rules. No bullshit interviews or paperwork. Just one primal man facing off against the other.”
He spits a stream of bloody saliva at the floor in answer.
My crooked smile stretches. I’ve derided psychology in the past, largely in part to Jung’s absurd attempt to incorporate alchemy in his psychological theories.
After much reflection, however, I’ve realized psychology is not unlike philosophy in some regard. According to the architect of chaos magick himself, Peter Carroll declared when symbolism and terminology is stripped away, all methods of magick are fundamentally the same.
Belief in our will manifests our desires.
At its core, the psyche is a primal beast.
Our nature is to consume, to create. To hate, and love. Feel passion, and obsession. The totality, the balance. Death must exist so that life can exist.
There is nothing more primary than our desire for love—and our inevitability to destroy it.
All our lovely bad and beautiful things are derived from violence.
“The only people who know what happened in that office are you, me, and Halen.” Her name is a razor dragged across my bones. She’s out there, right now, where I can’t protect her.
Because of him.
I tamp down the fury vibrating my fucking sinew and say, “And the only ones who know what will happen in this cell are you and me, Alister.”
“The only thing that’s about to happen is you’re being sent back to whatever fucking psycho facility you belong in. And Halen?” He takes a daring step forward. “That cunt is off my case.” Disgust curls his top lip as he glares at me through his swollen eyelids. “Hope she was a good fuck worth your freedom, Locke.”
Rage is a fire-hot branding iron shoved beneath my flesh. Alister turns toward the holding cell door, reaches for the handle.
“What’s wrong, Alister? Rules at the FBI made you soft?” My chuckle is mocking. “Damn, maybe I fucked the wrong pussy.” I unfasten the top button on the placket of my shirt, then snap the rest open, discarding the rumpled garment to the concrete floor.
His shoulders tense, the jab hitting its mark square in his fragile ego. When he turns to face me, all pretense is wiped from his hardened features. His gaze absorbs the stag skull inked on my chest, and a flicker of uncertainty registers behind his steely façade.
“When you show your face tomorrow,” I say, baiting him further, “all anyone will talk about is how you got a beat down by a fucking philosophy professor.” I touch the chaos star tattooed on my shoulder, feeling the pulsing drumbeat ricochet against my rib cage, the resounding demand for carnage. In a display of insult, I open my arms wide. “I don’t have a scratch on me.”
He grinds his molars against his feeble attempt at control.
“The whispers will circulate then,” I continue. “About how the asinine agent tried to rape—”
“Shut the fuck up,” he seethes, fury igniting his short fuse.
Monsters don’t like to be shown their reflection.
With a knowing sneer, I dip into my pocket and produce the pull tab from Halen’s jeans. I hold it up, my finger pressed to the broken prong.
Alister’s incensed expression wavers, the evidence of his attack on her held between us.
An interruption comes as three hard knocks at the door. Breaking his locked stare, I shift my gaze to the door. The sight of Agent Hernandez through the glass trips my heart.
“Where’s Halen?” I shout.
Alister reaches behind him to open the door, never taking his eyes off me. “What do you need, agent?”
Hernandez glances between me and Alister, his features contorted in confusion as his eyes land back on me, shirtless. “She’s missing,” he announces. “I can’t find Halen, or get her on her phone.”
I’m barreling toward the door before the last word leaves his mouth. Alister places his hand over his Glock fastened in his chest harness, issuing a nonverbal warning. My steps halt, every muscle in my body strung tight and ready to snap.
“She’s probably off getting herself into more trouble,” Alister says to the agent. “Get Agent Rana and the team on it. I don’t want to be bothered.”
My eyes narrow on him. He’s not concerned for her safety, nor does he think she could lead to the suspect. He wants the department cleared out. He wants us alone.
Curbing a dark smile, I move my focus past his shoulder to Hernandez hovering in the doorway. “Find Devyn,” I order him around my clenched jaw. “She’ll help locate Halen. Go now.”
With one last unsure glance between me and Alister, Hernandez nods and takes off.
Alister loiters in the doorway like a taunt. Tossing the bloody tissue to the floor, he pivots just long enough to shrug out of his gun harness and set it outside the cell. Then he closes and locks the door, sealing us inside. He places the key on the sill beneath the glass window.
Another taunt.
“She’s in danger.” The sharp tong of the pull tab bites into my fisted palm.
“And I sent every officer and agent out to search for her,” he says. “No one will accuse me of not taking a concerning matter with a consultant seriously.”
I run my tongue across the smooth surface of my teeth, a flame of malice licking my viscera. It’s in Alister’s best interest for Halen to simply disappear.
And goddamn it, my little Halen took the first opportunity she got to put herself right in the path of the Overman. Her fucking logic and misguided belief in some ultimate good.
Holding the zipper tab between the fingers of my left hand, I press the broken edge of the tong to my right pectoral, breaking the skin. I carve a line into my flesh opposite of the sigil on my right, the symbol for my muse.
The revulsion overtaking the agent’s face spurs me on, and I drag the brass diagonally to complete the symbol, a line of Latin uttered beneath my breath as I charge the sigil.
