SERPENT HEART

Ren Tachibana
 Copyright © 2022 Ren Tachibana
All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living
or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or
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Cover design by: Ren Tachibana

To: B.H.N
 Contents

Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
i. in plain sight
ii. humour
iii. seventeen
iv. the fox is near
v. mercy
vi. kaleidoscope
vii. hangman
viii. tick
ix. bishop
x. le fou
xi. monster
xii. the howling wolf
xiii. reputation
xiv. family
xv. docha
xvi. alpha
xvii. lover’s knot
xviii. la petite mort
xix. human
xx. interest
xxi. remedy
xxii. unlikely
xxiii. pain
xxiv. nothing
xxv. companion
xxvi. mercenary
xxvii. a lover scorned
xxviii. the line between
xxix. hunted
xxx. world-eater
xxxi. the spider’s loom
xxxii. unspoken
xxxiii. madness
xxxiv. killer
xxxv. false idol
xxxvi. father
xxxvii. winter
xxxviii. surrender
xxxix. serpent heart
 i. in plain sight
She stares into the unblinking eyes of the dead man and breathes out.
“Howard Perez,” Captain Lowell says aloud, the stout figure with iron-
colored hair standing at the desk, leaning, fingers pressing upon the laptop’s
keys to change the images on the monitor. Detectives shift in the dark
briefing room, glassy eyes on the gruesome display flickering before them.
The blood looks strange on the television, like a child’s fruity drink
spilled around that pale, pale face. “He was found in a warehouse
downtown. Restraint marks on his wrist and neck—.” Another flicker,
another image. “—and the medical examiner confirmed the presence of
etorphine and that the cause of death was the stab wound in his chest.” He
clicks again.
The picture of a small black line on marble white flesh sends a ripple of
whispers through the detectives. Gables leans toward Butcher and mutters,
“Just like the others.”
“This is another of the Hangman’s victims,” Meringue put in, sitting
idle in his plastic chair, mustache crooked from the lip curled underneath.
The coffee cup on his table is empty. “It’ll get nabbed by Major Crimes or
the Feds before any of us can crack the folder open.”
A murmur of assent fills the room.
Catherine Themis sits in the back, forgotten in the peripheries, her pen
flicking across the yellow pad of paper. Her round glasses reflect the
pixelated blood of Howard Perez. None of the detectives glance at her as
she continues her diligent note-taking for the captain. She can feel the
subtle tick of her worn watch humming against her wrist.
“Be that as it may,” the Captain rumbles. He glowers at Detective
Meringue as the screen flips to the living face of Perez, a photo provided by
the erstwhile family. “A connection to the Hangman hasn’t been verified.
Since you’ve been so kind as to volunteer, Meringue, you can take the
lead.”
Good-natured ribbing ensues. They know the truth already; all the
markers are there. The location. The bound wrists. The rope at the neck.
The single stab wound carefully bypassing the sternum and the ribs,
penetrating the heart.
“How does he do it?” they’ll ask later as they huddle about the bullpen,
drinking that swill they call coffee. “How does he take down his victims,
these hardened men? How does he subdue them? How does he get close?”
 The watch ticks against Catherine’s wrist.
She stares into the unblinking eyes of the man she killed and breathes
in.
***
Murder, Catherine has come to learn, is considered the domain of men.
No one understands why. Not truly. Researchers have bandied theories
for generations, considering methodology and temperament and identity,
upbringing and customs and sheer serendipity. Women aren’t wired for it,
they say. Historically, men have been rewarded for acts of violence, praised
for their mastery, while women learn that violence isn’t very becoming for
them. It’s evolutionary.
Catherine scoffs at the notion. Evolutionary. As if half the Vikings who
dragged their weary bodies from their longboats weren’t women, as if
lionesses on the savanna weren’t the ones who took home the kills, as if
childbirth wasn’t the consummate act of violence and love and life braided
together. Men scratch their heads, confused, and think ‘women aren’t made
that way’—but Catherine knows better. Catherine knows women might be
the most violent creatures to walk the earth.
The bullpen is in constant motion; the noise alone deafens, shakes
through the floor and jars bones, voices droning and the bars to the holding
cell opening and closing with heavy, sharp clangs. Beat cops mingle with
the detectives, interspersed with suspects and lawyers, office aids and
muddled citizens. Catherine sits to the side of it all, her desk the lonely
bastion of an office administrator, headphones in but the music off, her
hands making idle motions across the keyboard as she works.
“The case has already been pushed higher,” Meringue says to Gables,
both aging men, vestiges of the old guard, flanking the water cooler as they
drink their fill.
To literally gossip by the water cooler—how cliche. Catherine simpers
and tucks a red curl behind her ear.
Meringue swallows, sighs. “Feds sent somebody.”
Catherine pauses.
“Shit, already?”
Meringue nods and takes a sip of water from the recyclable cup. “Yeah.
Supposedly Perez was suspected of having connections to the cartels,
helping them get mules across the border, along with the rest of the
racketeering he’s been charged with locally.”
 “So, they were watching him.”
“Yeah. After he got off on the racketeering, the feds were hoping to nail
him on smuggling and drug trafficking.”
Catherine stares at the blinking cursor on her open word processor,
blank reports waiting to be filled, notifications flickering in the dock from
detectives needing files pulled or their egos stroked.
“Do you think it’s the Hangman?” Gables asks, the question superficial,
bored, his attention on his belly and the blueberry stain splotching his
stretched shirt. “Damn, Mandy just got this from the dry cleaners.”
Meringue’s eyes glitter with something unknown, something like hatred
at the mention of the moniker, but hate needs a target just as much as a
bullet needs a gun, and the Hangman is a vaporous figure he can only guess
at. “Yeah. Didn’t get called to that scene, but the file’s got all the makings
of a Hangman kill. The M.O. matches.”
“Whole Hangman case is gonna have to be turned over to the feds
now.”
Gables and Meringue share mirrored sighs of exasperation, of flagging
masculine pride. Every detective here is a big game hunter, and the oldest of
their number have either grown complacent or desperate, wanting to move
up. They need that shiny set of antlers to mount on their wall to impress
those who hold power over their pension and retirement fund. The
Hangman would make a magnificent trophy indeed, but they all know it
will come to this: the wheels of bureaucracy turn, and larger, better-paid
sharks come for the better fish.
Catherine resumes her typing.
The detectives pass by without ever seeing her.
 ii. humour
Catherine can say that blood is, perhaps, her least favorite part of
murder.
That’s something they say, something about poison being the choice of
weapon for women, that firearms and knives and blood are hallmarks of
masculine violence. Catherine hates the sound of gunfire and thinks
shooting a man is perhaps both the fastest way to kill and the fastest way to
be caught. Guns and gun powder leave traces, presence, registration, and
serial numbers, and she once heard a lab tech brag about lifting a partial
print from a spent slug buried in a man’s sternum. Sheer luck it wasn’t
destroyed. Sheer luck brought the perpetrator in.
A knife is in many ways better and worse: better in its anonymity, in its
banal traces, worse in its closeness, in its intimacy. The penetration of metal
through flesh, breath mingling, eyes meeting, is the most intimate act two
strangers can enact with one another. No sweaty tumble in the sheets can
compare, though Catherine can admit to her revulsion of all the blood.
When she sees it on her hands, it reminds her of the antiquated studies
of humours. Blood is the humour of passion, of lust, a symbol of the
unsound mind and the loss of inhibition. The mere sight of it is said to have
sent men and women into a frenzy. Catherine thinks about Shakespeare,
about Lady Macbeth, about a madwoman walking the night and furiously
scrubbing her hands, unable to wash the blood from her palms and fingers.
Blood, that symbol of guilt and impassioned foolery.
Catherine doesn’t feel much of anything when she washes her red hands
and the water runs pink around the drain. Maybe there’s a sense of
annoyance at the gummy substance clinging to grooves of her skin,
somebody else’s lifeblood filling those lines of fortune carved across her
palms. She doesn’t smile, doesn’t panic. Instead, she lathers an astringent
soap until her skin is pale, scoured, and unblemished once more.
The ghost of her newest victim always stands behind her when
Catherine looks into the mirror above the sink. It’s a ghost, but not in truth.
It’s a lingering impression in her head; a remnant stitched together in
memory, the worst pieces of the dead like fingertips in her mind that clamp
down and bruise. It is the shadow of a person, featureless, nebulous, a
thousand stars spangled where the void pretends to be flesh and the cosmos
meet in a spinning dance of color, of nothingness. Ashes to ashes, dust to
dust.
 She stares and never gives apologies because apologizing would mean
nothing, would only negate the necessity of their death. The dead cannot be
revived with a simple sorry. Better for the end to be certain. Better for the
end to be desired.
Catherine stares into the nothingness assuming a human shape and does
not apologize. She washes her hands.
***
Two days pass.
Next to her, the ghost leans a hip on the desk’s edge. Words come
despite the lack of a mouth.
Do you think yourself clever enough to evade the FBI?
Catherine’s eyes glance from her computer to the black shape,
narrowing, but she doesn’t respond. She’s not mad. Not truly. Not yet.
Sightless eyes watch her, constellations roving across its adopted form
as the imagined creature brushes its fingertips across her brow, over her
eyes. You knew the FBI would be called in if you weren’t careful. You
weren’t careful. Overzealous, overzealous.
She continues answering her emails. Many of the messages come from
the detectives too overworked to look up menial information, such as the
weather and traffic patterns and addresses. They need references for
information, or frivolous requests to send flowers to their aggravated wives.
Catherine thinks she’s bought a bouquet for every wife on the force at some
point.
Catherine turns to go to the break room and barely contains a flinch
when she comes face to face with the ghost. The emptiness of it fans across
her cheekbones, her narrow features, around her skinny throat. The
guillotine’s rope wears thin, Hangman. The blade’s falling.
“Caty!”
She smiles through the ghost at Officer Castro. He is fresh-faced and
not yet cynical, sandy-haired with a scar on his ear from an impetuous
piercing in his teenage years. He calls her Caty because he doesn’t know
her name, didn’t pay attention to her first patient correction, nor the second,
nor the salutations on the bottoms of her emails that read Catherine Themis.
Others in the precinct called her Cate or Cathy or Cat, but never Catherine,
as if she wasn’t worth the effort of her full appellation.
Her eyes narrow.
“Officer Castro,” she replies with a slight nod.
 “Aw, I’ve told you! It’s Nathan, not Officer Castro.”
She simpers, and the ghost drifts behind him, shadows spiraling across
his throat, tightening in silent question. Catherine almost scoffs.
Her ghosts always want to know why not this one? They question her,
silent and judgmental, wondering what brought about their end, what
separates them from the living who do not earn a visit from the Hangman’s
noose and knife. Catherine’s answer is always the same.
Because you deserved it.
“Did you need something?” she asks, her voice light, eyes trained on the
badge pinned to the front of his navy shirt. Dedwich Police Department.
Protect and Serve.
She concentrates, repeats five things she sees, counts to ten in her head.
The ghost of Howard Perez fades in the peripheries.
“I wanted to ask if you’d already had lunch.”
“Yes,” she lies. “My break was earlier.”
“Oh.” The slight creasing about his brown eyes belies the officer’s
composure, and Catherine ponders how long he was watching her, waiting
to ask her to a meal. She makes no apologies for the lie and waits to see if
he’ll call her on it, if Nathan Castro will try. “That’s…maybe tomorrow,
then?”
“Maybe.” Catherine swivels in her chair again, tucking her knees
beneath the desk, straightening the ironed hem of her skirt.
“I’ll see you later, Caty.”
“Have a nice lunch, Officer Castro.”
He leaves, sullen but hiding it in the adopted machismo, and Catherine
watches him go.
Her eyes linger on the suspects lurking in the holding cell, some leaning
on the bars, others sitting on the benches, some grim-faced and anxious,
others simply too inebriated to function, never mind that it is barely past
noon. There’s a particular smell that clings to the place; vomit and dust,
bleach and oil and whatever ethnic cuisine one of the detectives nuked in
the microwave that day. The odors compete for dominance over the softer
scents of cheap cologne, cigarettes, and old shoes. Some detectives put air
fresheners on their desks, but Catherine has long forsaken that battle.
The captain paces back and forth by the window in his office, the cord
of his desk phone following him like a lifeline. The ghost is back and stands
in the room with him, blurred by the blinds and the man’s rapid movements
and the hazy burn of the fluorescents against the brighter afternoon
sunlight.
He’s on the phone with the FBI.
A bold jump in assumptions. Catherine takes in his agitated gait, the
muffled thump of his voice, and decides her assumption might be correct, if
incredibly vague.
The black suits from the Bureau have only visited her branch of
Dedwich’s police force once during Catherine’s tenure. She remembers the
expectation, the metaphoric kowtowing, and poorly disguised sneering.
Like hungry mutts, the Dedwich detectives resent rolling over and showing
their bellies to the passing wolf.
Will you be clever enough to survive?
The ghost is behind Catherine now. It radiates cold like a new blanket of
morning frost, and her skin prickles against the sensation, seeking to throw
off the phantom touch that is nowhere but in her own imagination.
You should run now. Overzealous. Overzealous.
Catherine stands, staples a thin packet of documents together, and goes
to hand it to one of the younger detectives. Everet Butcher looks up from
beneath his teetering burden of unsolved murders, the man glassy-eyed,
weathered, stretched too thin, and he sighs a quiet thanks for the newest
stone thrown on his chest. Dedwich is a dangerous place. The dead cling to
the walls, watching, judging, bordered in white and have you seen me?
She knows some of those faces have been claimed by others, by
different monsters who adopt humanity’s visage and slink through the
underworld. She likens those missing faces to poor, fragile-winged
sparrows who flew too close to the predator’s swiping paw and paid the
ultimate price. Some are children. Some are elders. They are all creeds and
races, religions, genders, and they smile together from a wall of the
forsaken until their face disappears behind someone else’s, and they are
forgotten again.
The ghost seethes. Why pity them? You helped put them there.
Catherine grinds her teeth as she resumes her seat at her desk, her
posture sharp, her muscles tight. She squeezes the edge of a pen too hard,
and it snaps, prodding the meat of her palm. Catherine glances down at the
small bead of blood welling on her skin. No, she didn’t put those faces
there, because Catherine Themis doesn’t hunt sparrows; she hunts the
beasts who aspire to be monsters, and she has gotten very, very good at it.
She brings her hand to her lips and licks the wound clean.
 iii. seventeen
She is seventeen the first time she kills.
They stand in an alley stained by neon lights and midnight shadows; her
eyes are red-rimmed, and her throat is ravaged by rage-induced screaming.
Isaak Peak is one more shot of stolen whiskey away from hurling his guts
when he starts bragging about how he did it, how he killed Kayla Hoffman,
how he got away with murder.
It was Kayla who Catherine first met when they bumped into one
another in the lunch line and exchanged gap-tooth smiles.
Kayla, who spent more nights at Catherine’s house than her own, two
girls wrapped in sleeping bags as they stared at that plaster ceiling and
traced faces in the cracks.
Kayla, who draped a gold necklace around Catherine’s neck in seventh
grade and said, “Well, you are my best friend, right?” while her dark cheeks
burned with color.
Kayla, who told Catherine exactly forty-two nights before she died that
she might be in love with Isaak Peak and begged her best friend not to give
her that look because “He’s not a bad guy.”
Forty-two nights later, they call Catherine to identify the body because
Kayla’s mother has passed on, and her father disappeared so many years
before. They leave Catherine as the final mooring to Kayla’s sinking ship,
and she feels herself suck in the same drowning waters as her dead friend
when she looks upon her bruised, ruined countenance ringed by a halo of
wet curls on a sterile metal table.
“She didn’t drown, man, not really,” Isaak Peak brags to his leering
buddy. They’re in the seediest bar downtown Dedwich has to offer, and
Catherine is there because it’s the only place—the best place—for a minor
to get drinks. Catherine is there because she doesn’t want to feel or to think.
She wants to cripple her mind for one more night, just one more night.
Three hundred and sixty-two nights have passed since Kayla’s end, and
Catherine sees Isaak Peak drinking cheap, scummy liquor with a smile on
his deceptive face and a girl at his hip, slurring his words as he tells them
about poor little Kayla Hoffman. She was so eager to grow up, to please, to
part her thighs—and Isaak says, “She didn’t drown, man, not really. I held
her under. I did what you do with all whining bitches.”
It has been four hundred and forty-four nights since Kayla whispered, “I
think I love Isaak Peak.” Three hundred and sixty-two nights ago, Catherine
sobbed over the ruined form of a girl who could have been her sister, and
thirty-one nights have dribbled by since Isaak Peak was cleared of all
charges based on lack of evidence.
He sits in a bar smelling of spilled beer and pot smoke, and he laughs
about an innocent, naive girl’s death. He doesn’t see Catherine because no
one ever does. She is thin and small-boned, bespectacled and sallow, kept
together by live wires of grief and rage: a marionette setting fire to her own
strings.
The line for the restroom is too long. Peak goes into the alley to take a
piss, foul creep that he is, and Catherine follows. She screams at him—up at
him—and he grins, two moles under his right eye dappled like spilled ink,
and he asks, “Who are you?” Catherine wants him to know. She wants him
to know so badly she pushes Isaak, the thud of flesh solid under her
quivering palms, and he careens into the brick wall at his back, too drunk to
stand.
Catherine shoves him again, again. She grabs him by the shoulders, her
fingers twisting and clawing at his leather jacket, and she slams him bodily
against the stone and mortar. She doesn’t know where the strength comes
from, only that it is a byproduct of something, of two volatile emotions
meeting inside her head, thrusting adrenaline into her veins, into her hands,
and all she sees is that cocky grin and Kayla’s blank, dead eyes.
He puts up a token protest, slapping at her arms, vomiting on their
shoes, then his head bounces on the bricks one last time, and Isaak Peak
slumps on the bottom of the dirty alley beneath Catherine. She pants, wide-
eyed and trembling, as blood crests and spills from the crown of his head. It
glitters in the neon.
Something breaks and roars inside her, roars like the rising sea, brackish
like the salt on Kayla’s dead skin, on Isaak’s dead lips, on Catherine’s damp
lashes.
She runs home, not caring that it’s miles away, not caring how her lungs
burn or how her broken fingers ache. She is seventeen the first time she
feels someone’s lifeblood turn into a sticky mess on her skin. She’s
seventeen when she has her last drink. Sometimes she still sees Isaak Peak’s
ghost, his specter, that last imprint of him upon this world stuck inside her
head like a fucking disease. He wakes her up in the middle of the night,
crouched over her bed, two moles beneath his right eye, asking, “Who are
you?”
 She is seventeen when she first realizes women are the most violent
creatures alive.
***
Catherine is twenty when she takes her next life.
He isn’t Isaak Peak, but he’s close, a facsimile of her first monster, older
and stronger and more vicious for his intent, rather than his slurred,
maligning apathy. They even look somewhat alike: tanned faces, bleached
teeth, light hair, odeur de richesse clinging to the fashionably distressed
clothes bought with their daddy’s cash. Isaak Peak had been on the outs
with his family, but Luke Elliott is not, and the privilege shows.
He is a petulant boy in a man’s body demanding more, building
monuments in the desert even as he refuses to see how the sand devours his
legacy like Ozymandias. College track star, quarterback, heartthrob—look
on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Three girls all claim he’s the one, that
they’re getting married in the spring. Boys snap to attention when he passes
by. Luke Elliott scours his name deep with every achievement, builds
himself an empire brick by brick, and still he seeks more, more, more.
King of Kings indeed.
Catherine is still bird-like in build and small in stature, her red hair
brushed and braided, her glasses cleaned, her nails clipped. Those who do
see her behold nothing but a quiet, delicate young woman of immense
scholarly aptitude, studying Shakespeare and psychology and anatomy in
her free time. No one realizes the bird has changed, has relived that night in
downtown Dedwich over and over and over again. She presses her fingers
together as if expecting them to still have that tacky kiss of blood on them.
Catherine is something else entirely now.
Three years of obsessive Krav Maga courses taken in the evening have
passed her by, and the adder coils low in Catherine’s chest, her body tightly
wound, her mind tethered by the continuous ticking of the ugly watch on
her wrist. She sits in class, and the ghost of Isaak Peak breathes down her
neck.
Who are you?
Luke Elliott sees her and covets because Catherine doesn’t see him. He
sits next to her in their shared introductory courses and steals her textbooks,
saying, “Let’s share, yeah?” She doesn’t want to share, but Luke brushes
aside her refusals. He puts his number into her phone, his pen marks in her
books, and the scent of his deodorant on her clothes when he throws an arm
around her shoulders.
“We’re not friends,” Catherine snaps when he persists.
Luke Elliott smiles. “What do you mean?” No one has denied him
before.
Catherine thinks of Isaak Peak and the sound of his body hitting the
ground.
When entreating her fails Luke Elliott, he decides he will simply take,
that she is just as confused as the rest of her gender: malleable, pretty, the
coquette who must say no but who clearly means yes. He follows her into
the empty parking structure, pins her against the side of her car, and the
metal bites as hard against her hip as his arousal does.
She snarls, tells him to back off, and he twists one of her arms until her
eyes water.
“C’mon, stop messing around,” he mouths against her neck, teeth in her
skin as if he thinks to devour her. The audacity acts like a ripcord to
Catherine’s rage, but her monster isn’t the same emaciated animal who
lashed out in that neon-lit alleyway and savaged Isaak Peak. Instead, she’s
become the snake whose venom confutes her size, and she needs only to
bite, to sink her teeth in once, to destroy.
Her elbow swings into his kidney, stunning him, then the heel of her
foot slams into his knee. Luke goes down and would have, perhaps,
screamed at the twisted angle of his leg, but Catherine’s fist strikes his
throat and chokes the sound.
It looks like his football career is over. Poor King of Kings. Nothing
beside remains. Round the decay—.
Catherine could stop. She stands at the cusp of becoming something
other, not something greater or lesser, only other, something not her. It’s as
unfamiliar and strange as the alien depths of the ocean. Like the striking
balance between shadow and light, there is a delineation, and Catherine sees
it, registers the fall of darkness against her toes, her face, her hands.
She steps into it.
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare—.
Furious, she throws Luke Elliott to his back. A breath issues from his
lungs as his heavy body slaps the pavement and his arms snap out, swinging
wildly in alarm, and though his fist glances across Catherine’s jaw, she
needs only to strike him in the solar plexus to stun him again.
 She isn’t trained to subdue; she’s trained to ruin.
With a knee grinding into his sternum, Catherine presses forward,
forearm on his throat, and leans down.
The quarterback—the former quarterback, the would-be rapist—chokes
and scrambles for purchase, and Catherine’s hold restrains both his torso
and his hands. She stares into his face, as vengeful as the sea and just as
detached, seeing Luke Elliott and Isaak Peak and all those hateful, vapid
people who look upon her and sneer.
“Do I look like I’m messing around?” she whispers.
His cheeks are blue, his eyes bloodshot.
Luke Elliott’s end is not as quick as television makes it seem;
strangulation is a messy conclusion, dangerous, seconds passing into
minutes, waiting, muscles quivering with exertion, a thin film of
perspiration soaking the back of Catherine’s blouse. He lays still after some
time, and she breaks his neck with one clean, solid blow to the jaw, turning
his head at the proper—or improper—angle. He is a boy wearing the flesh
of a man, spoiling the kingdom that stretches at his feet, baiting the viper
with taunts of her impotence.
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Catherine stands. He is not Isaak Peak. There is no blood but for her
own, her knuckles bleeding where they scraped the concrete. She uses a
sterile wipe from her purse to steal her fingerprints from his flesh, her blood
from the stone, the mist of her breath off his face. Then, tucking the wipe
into a pocket, Catherine kicks Luke Elliott’s legs aside, gets into her car,
and drives away. Her hands shake on the steering wheel as she watches the
oncoming headlights flicker across the highway.
The impression of him wakes her in the night, nothing more than a
smear of black and ultraviolet constellations, crooning, “Stop messing
around.”
When they announce Luke Elliott’s death in class, some people cry.
Some girls embrace and affect loud, wracking, tearless sobs. Some boys
hang their heads or clap each other on the shoulder in consolation.
Rhonda Tillman has to stand and leave the room. Others are inclined to
think she’s in weeping hysterics, but Catherine hears her peals of laughter.
Marissa Meeks—quiet, pale, considerate Marissa Meeks, who always sits
as far from Luke as possible—smiles into her hand, eyes shimmering with
relief. Catherine sees that smile and shares one of her own.
 Her hands no longer shake.
C’mon, stop messing around.
***
She is twenty-nine and spell-checking criminal reports when the FBI
comes for the Hangman, but Catherine Themis is only seventeen, grieving
and naive and angry, the first time she wipes someone else’s blood from her
fingers and feels the snake rise in her chest. She is seventeen when she steps
into the dark and never looks back.
 iv. the fox is near
Catherine hears the elevator ding and doesn’t think anything of it. She
concentrates on her work, on the nonsense shorthand written by Detective
Gavin Gables on his wrinkled report. His stunted view of the scene fixates
only on the obvious rather than the details. It grates upon her nerves.
Of course, Catherine isn’t there to judge his capabilities—not while at
the precinct. When she goes home and sheds the skin of Catherine Themis,
civilian administrator, and assumes the face of Catherine Themis, unknown
killer, then she will consider the sub-par work ethic of Gavin Gables. She
will consider him much like a snake considers a bloated, aged mongoose: is
he fast enough to give chase? Have those teeth ground down to nothing, or
is there enough bite left to end me?
The elevator dings. Catherine stares at her monitor and thinks of
nothing until motion catches her attention.
From the corner of her eye, she watches a small stream of suited,
nondescript men file from the elevator and make for the captain’s office.
Unlike the lawyers or the civilians or the detectives, the Federal Bureau's
drones are just that: drones, highly efficient workers in their uniforms,
walking above the masses like mounted riders following the baying of their
hounds. The fox is near, the fox is near. Catherine can hear the howling too.
She thinks of a painting she studied at university, Arbo’s Asgårdsreien,
and its depiction of the Wild Hunt. From a distance, it looks like a low,
roiling black cloud over a scorched plain until the viewer sees the bodies
churning in its depths, the teeming horde of snarling men and bare-chested
women wielding spears as they steal unsuspecting souls to join in their
never-ending search. The Wild Hunt is said to herald horrible change—war
or famine or the end times—and Catherine likens the image to the FBI.
She keeps her eyes averted, lowered, though she tries to mimic the same
bitter curiosity as the rest of the precinct. Being truthful with herself,
Catherine admits her curiosity is genuine; they’re here for her, after all,
even if they don’t know it.
Yet. They don’t know it…yet.
The agents step into Captain Lowell’s office, and he ends his call,
gesturing at the chairs before his desk in invitation. He adopts the role of
host with better skill than his detectives, who’ve done little to wipe the
agitation from their expression. They do manage to remain in their seats and
at least pretend to be preoccupied. They shuffle papers, prod mice, make a
show of picking up their phones but say nothing into the receivers, eyes on
the captain’s window and the men moving inside. A passing officer knocks
over a mug of coffee and swears.
Catherine types the words ‘Domestic dispute’ three times before
catching her mistake.
“Jim, a word?”
Captain Lowell sticks his head out of his door and beckons to Detective
Meringue, who has the foresight to gather the thin folder containing the
details of Perez’s death before he goes into the office. She expects that will
be the end of it; the bureau will take Meringue’s case, slip it into the catalog
of Hangman crimes, and go about their hunt. Catherine touches her watch,
feels the pulse of it, the subtle, almost psychosomatic vibration of the
ticking, and times her breath to every seventh tick.
In the distance, she hears the bugles being lifted and blown. The hounds
bay their clamorous song.
I thought you were the snake? Perez mouths against her ear, grip tight
on her throat, squeezing. Now you are the fox being run aground? Both are
clever, and both are quick, but which are you? The one that bites or the one
that runs?
She doesn’t answer because she doesn’t answer delusions.
“Catherine?”
She stops typing dispute because somebody has said her name. Nobody
says her name.
A stranger stands by her waste bin. Catherine can’t place her at first,
can’t decide which wandering group she belongs to and why she’s by her
desk. She’s taller than Catherine and just as narrow in proportion, dark-
haired and dark-eyed, dressed in a blue cardigan and denim pants with a
comfortable, wrinkled t-shirt. Her pale, unpainted lips move, and the pin-
straight curtain of her hair sways with the idle motion of her body. The
smell of clean linens meets Catherine’s nose.
“Catherine Themis,” the woman says, because she does not ask. It is not
a question.
“Yes?”
“You don’t remember me, do you?” The woman smiles, fond and gentle
without recrimination. She extends a skinny, callused hand for Catherine to
shake, and Catherine does so, keeping her grip light and unassuming.
“Addie Lincoln. We graduated together from Dedwich U.”
 That isn’t saying much, considering the university's popularity and the
size of the graduating classes—but Addie Lincoln knows Catherine Themis
enough to call her Catherine and not Cathy, Caty, or Cat. Something cold
fills Catherine’s bones, an ineffable dread born of the primal instincts
mankind can no longer claim as their own. Not consciously, at any rate.
The woman, Addie, lets out a small huff of laughter. “Sorry, I’m not
surprised you don’t remember me. How often do those in first place think
about those in second?” Her smile lingers. “I was valedictorian—after you
turned it down. Though I still graduated second in our year.”
“Oh.” Catherine has nothing else to say, and so she releases Addie
Lincoln’s hand, meeting her dark gaze for a moment before looking away.
“I’m, ah….” Not sorry. Can’t be sorry, doesn’t know why she would be.
“What brings you here?”
Before she responds, one of the black-suited FBI drones approaches.
“We need you in there, Special Agent Lincoln.”
Addie Lincoln nods, smiles, and says, “Be seeing you,” before
following her counterpart to the captain’s domain.
The cold feeling starts to creep into Catherine’s heart, and so she holds
onto her watch—tick, tick, tick—and counts her breaths.
***
The FBI does not take the Perez case and leave. No, the FBI takes the
Perez case and stays.
They commandeer a conference room, and the drones come marching
in, two by two, with field labs and binders and portable corkboards. The
bullpen is unaccountably busy with new bodies, both federal and local,
officers and no-name cops filing in, perps lingering overlong, just wanting
to catch a glimpse or feel themselves a part of the action culminating like an
oncoming rainstorm.
Catherine just wants to stay dry.
She avoids the conference room, has no real reason to be there, and so
she misses the initial flurry and the process of tacking up visuals of the
victims and crime scenes. Many investigators have turned to more digital
avenues—but she’s told the lead profiler, Adeline Lincoln, is a firm believer
of tactile learning. She is a person who wants to feel, smell, and taste rather
than simply see. Catherine avoids the room given over to the FBI for their
usage. She avoids the agents and, whenever possible, smothers the genuine
curiosity continually drawing her attention to the shut door and covered
windows.
It was self-preservation, a desire to know if the hounds had caught her
scent, the urge to touch a bruise despite knowledge of the pain. It is the
reason she took this job in the first place.
She gets asked for coffee of all things the next morning as if the agents
couldn’t quite tell the difference between an intern and an administrator
minding her own business. So Catherine writes orders on a scrap of
notebook paper—no fat, low fat, foam, skim, extra cinnamon, hold the ice
—and heads to the neighboring cafe that serves the precinct and the
courthouse across the avenue.
Catherine returns, bearing two carriers full of varying cups, and walks
to the conference room, her posture stiff and her expression passive, calm.
She’d spent the morning painting her face with eyeliner and base and blush,
not unlike a warrior of old smearing mashed berries and goat blood on his
skin to appear ferocious in an impending battle. This meeting may not be a
meeting of swords, but Catherine knows she walks into a different kind of
war altogether.
“Deputy Grove? The door, if you would—?”
“Oh, of course….”
A passing colleague opens the door, and Catherine crosses the
threshold.
She enters a gallery of familiar faces tacked upon scuffed walls and
corkboard. She looks at each section and sees another panel devoted to her
design, pieces put together one sliver at a time, never quite catching the
whole. It’s a masterpiece of humanity’s worst faults: selfishness,
callousness, self-destruction, and foolish pride.
Catherine’s design is exacting, dedicated; every photo and sheet of data
is a brush stroke upon the canvas they dubbed Hangman. Perverse hope
exists here, every thought—we’ll catch him, we’ll find him, justice will
prevail—audible behind the printed labels and carefully taped note cards.
Catherine knows every name written there, recites them in her darkest
hours, memorizes their every flaw. Their victims' names slip over her
tongue like saccharine wine, the blood of a nameless god forgotten in the
caprices of life.
At times, Catherine recognizes their faces quicker than her own.
 Twenty-three ghosts stand at the edges of the room. Agents pass through
the empty voids and say nothing, feel nothing, even as the blank faces turn
and Catherine stumbles under the weight.
It’s not real but feels real to her.
Why, why, why, they chant in her head, and Catherine responds once,
loud as she dares, quiet as she can.
“Because you deserved it.”
“Oh, Catherine.” Adeline Lincoln sits at the head of the overburdened
table in her dishabille, a pair of jeans and a stretched cardigan, her black
eyes dancing in the hum of fluorescents. She holds a broken pen in her
hand, and the ink stains her palms. “Thanks for the coffee!”
“You’re welcome,” Catherine replies as she sets a carrier down on a
blank section of table, looking pointedly at a teetering pile of folders.
Lincoln pops up to her feet and comes over to shift the paperwork, freeing
more space. “I hope everything is correct. They were a bit swamped at the
shop—.”
Her voice catches; a quick, clicking inhale as her throat closes and her
eyes linger on a vacancy between the wrathful impressions of her victims.
There is a name on that board, pictures too, papered in layers like the
intermingled sheaves on a thatched roof.
Lincoln sees Catherine’s attention wander. “It’s a lot to take in,” she
says in a quiet, patient voice, and she lays her hand on Catherine’s arm—
then takes a soy confectionery nightmare dripping cream from the carrier.
“Seeing it all can be startling if you’re not prepared for it.”
It’s not a lie; Catherine has never confronted the overwhelming
evidence of her crimes before. The dark scenes that haunt her nightmares
are burnished in vivid floodlights, their bodies and blood grotesque in the
camera flash. She leaves her victims quiet in the dark—a final dignity they
often denied their own victims—and she does not look back. The
authorities shine a light on their ugliness and bring it back to life.
Even so, that is not the reason Catherine pauses.
It is the space between the specters, the name on the board typed in bold
font, and the face of a woman she has never seen before. She has killed
more than what the FBI knows—Isaak Peak and Luke Elliot didn’t find a
home here—but those deaths belong to Catherine Themis, and these deaths
belong to the Hangman. Twenty-three bodies have swung under the
Hangman’s hand, twenty-three names etched on the inside of Catherine’s
skull, on her soul, burnt to her bones like breathing, bleeding tattoos—.
But there are twenty-four faces on the wall.
Twenty-four names.
What in the hell?
“Yes,” Catherine agrees as she hands out coffee and lowers her gaze.
Her smile feels off, but she doesn’t try to correct it, letting Adeline Lincoln
think it weak and odd because the sight of blood makes her vulnerable.
Catherine has always hated blood.
“Yeah, it’s definitely…surprising.”
 v. mercy
To Catherine, mercy can be as treacherous and two-faced as the lack
thereof.
Shakespeare states the quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as
the gentle rain from heaven, but the same dripping mercy turned itself on
Shakespeare’s Shylock and denied him his pound of flesh. It almost stole
his life. When the roaring floodwaters came for Shylock, when those
merciful men and women tore the Jew from his faith and forced him to
kowtow to a God he scorned, was that mercy?
It is a tricky thing, like justice—blind, bumbling justice, who dares not
judge on the fault of character even as the tripping of her jargon-laced
tongue binds her hands. Mercy denies men and women the needle and then
sentences them to a cage for fifty, sixty years. It institutionalizes and robs
them of what made those criminals people. Mercy sneers, “At least you
have your life,” as if it is a consolation prize, a cheap participation award
handed out at the end of the ceremony as the recipient’s parents wince in
the back row. They wince because their child’s greatest accomplishment is
being born and showing up.
To Catherine, mercy can steal purpose from a person like it stole God
from Shylock; mercy will rip a life to pieces, throw the remains through the
bars of a cage to lay bare and broken and bleeding, then hiss, “At least you
have your life.”
There is only one form of mercy Catherine accepts, and it is delivered
not by the rains of heaven but by the edge of a carbon-steel knife plunging
through a heart.
***
She leaves work at the end of her shift, at precisely six o’clock, and is in
the elevator, then out of the building before the great clock on the
courthouse’s front flicks to six-oh-one. Dedwich is a place eternally on the
cusp of becoming, suspended between town and city, between forest and
concrete, between north and south, a constant resident of the middle ground
—neither here nor there. Woods limn the peripheries and fold beneath the
bulging edges. Developers clear more and more land in the name of
expansion and leave the lots vacant when the economy tanks. Signs bearing
the words “New! New! New!” sway in the breeze, now weathered and
bleached by the sun.
 An ugly place, Catherine has nonetheless called Dedwich home for
almost three decades.
Keys bite into the flesh of her palm as she walks to her car parked in the
lot, leaving behind twenty-three names and a twenty-fourth she doesn’t
know. Catherine owns a mid-range sedan with a mid-range price tag painted
an unassuming beige; she’s often been told her vehicle suits her, that people
couldn’t picture her driving anything else. Catherine is a plain woman, a
woman who could be beautiful if, but only if, and she has no patience for
the vacillating qualifications of if. She assumes this mask: simple little
Catherine, the administrator, who never wears black, who dabs her lips with
a gloss called Simply Coral, whose skirt hem lies exactly one inch below
her fingertips and whose heels are never more than two inches tall. It’s hard
to guess her age—twenty? Thirty? Forty?—and it’s hard to look her in the
eye. It’s almost impossible to see her at all.
This is what Catherine wants.
She journeys close by, only needing to drive a few blocks through the
budding, early evening traffic to arrive at the squat, fortified building
belonging to Dedwich General. It sits on the bank of a wide tributary—an
offshoot of the Monongahela River—made sluggish by ice and the thick
bushels of decaying foliage clogging the overpasses. A smell lingers there,
sweet with rot, sour from the heat of the day settling in the wet mulch. The
hospital’s lights glint lurid and foul on the murky waters, and Catherine
turns her eyes away from it as she takes a space in the visitor's lot and heads
inside.
The lurid gleam of the river seems to follow her inside, dimming the
dated fluorescent fixtures that exude a yellow sheen. It’s a color that
reminds Catherine of smokers’ teeth or aging paperbacks. Bleach and
antiseptic replace the river’s smell, and the water’s lapping disappears into
the muted wail of sirens and pages and sneaker-clad nurse feet. She
approaches the main station, and the overtaxed woman seated there
brightens.
“Oh, Cathy,” she says with a gap-toothed grin. “How you doin’?”
“Well, thank you, Joslin,” Catherine replies. “Is Dr. Morse available?”
“I think he’s in the O.R. at the moment but should be out soon. You can
go on to his office, don’t you worry, and I’ll send him to you when he’s
free.”
 Catherine gives her thanks and departs, already knowing the way. The
visitor badge is sticky on her blouse, and she curls the edges, stepping out
of the paths of doctors and nurses who don’t see her, venturing deeper into
the building where the patient rooms and medical theaters give way to
administrative departments. Dr. Morse’s office is a cozy space on the
second floor afforded one window overlooking that ugly river. Catherine
slips into the darkened room and sighs with relief when the sounds of the
hospital fade to the peripheries.
Degrees and medical licenses from prestigious universities paper the
wall behind the cluttered desk. All have a palpable film of dust upon them
—all but for a simple wooden frame hung at hip height, in direct line of
sight for whoever sits at the desk and swivels in the chair. Lomonosov
Moscow State University's degree isn’t for medicine, rather linguistics, and
the frame bears the fingerprints of frequent handling as if someone often
turned to brush the glass in contemplation.
Catherine sinks onto the couch, shifting aside a stack of books and loose
scratch paper, laying her hands on her knees so she can sit upright and quiet
in the dark. Her watch ticks in time with the clock on the wall—tick, tick,
tick—and she watches the dust motes drift in the light peeking through the
window’s blinds. The computer is silent, though light in the tower indicates
it’s on standby. Three fountain pens sit next to the blotter, all three tipped in
eighteen-carat gold, monogrammed and lacquered in ebonite, arrayed in a
perfect line. An actual wax seal press sits off to one side.
Grubby coins rest in an ashtray that has never held a cigarette, and
Catherine adds her spare change, two quarters and a dime.
Thirty minutes later, the door opens to admit a slim, shuffling figure. He
wears a practicing doctor's white coat, his hair silvered and his tanned skin
weathered, though he is well-preserved for a man in his late fifties. Grisha
Morse, a cardiothoracic surgeon, spends most of his dwindling autumn
years acting as a general practitioner or a professor for the program offered
at Dedwich University, becoming wearier and wearier as the days between
active duty and retirement grow thinner. Like Dedwich itself, Dr. Morse is
caught on a threshold of becoming, but the future is a mire of possibility,
and no one—not even the doctor himself—can know what awaits him.
The lights come on. The surgeon sees Catherine and doesn’t startle; his
blue eyes glitter and glint like the churlish river beyond the covered
window, his lips peeling back in a wide smile. “Catherine,” he
acknowledges in a wheedling baritone made heavy by a Slavic tongue. His
words linger in a way Catherine has never known how to describe, like the
final peal of an aria soaking into the theater walls, into the audience’s
collective chest, a parting hum without meaning, only presence. For all that
he is aged, slender, and incrementally slouched, Grisha Morse has presence.
“Hello, Grisha,” she says. “They told me you were in the O.R. Good
day?”
“Da,” he replies, pleased. “But any day you have the time to visit me is
a good day, my Catherine.”
Twelve years have passed since Grisha Morse and Catherine Themis
met over her dying father's hospital bed. His end hadn’t been a quick thing;
Bertholdt Themis had clung to life with uncommon tenacity, snagged like a
hooked fish gasping and suffocating on the bank with just enough water to
prevent that one, final mercy. That’s what Bertholdt’s death had been; a
mercy, a mercy begged for in between gasping breaths. The drugs had
glazed his skin in perspiration like an addict’s sweet candy, his heart beating
without permission—and Grisha Morse delivered mercy with a two-
milliliter syringe.
Grisha is what Adeline Lincoln and her cohorts would refer to as an
angel of death. The poetic connotations of the technical name fit the doctor,
as biblical angels are not kind, and Grisha’s mercies are not kind either;
instead, they are a deliverance given to those lucid enough—dead enough—
to beg for it. Bertholdt had not been the first, and he would not be the last,
only the eighth, nothing more and nothing less. Dr. Morse is discerning and
does not kill for the thrill or enjoyment. Grisha is a godly man who prays
for his victims in a way Catherine never will, on bended knee at their
bedsides long after their bodies have found residence in the morgues. His
Russian sermons are given over folded hands and pressed sheets in a voice
that sounds like home.
When Catherine’s father went on to Grisha’s heaven and his
temperamental God, she sat in a chair next to the doctor—and she
remembers that fucking chair because of how crooked the legs had been
and the inevitable teetering stands out livid in her memory. “I killed the man
who drowned my best friend,” she told Grisha. “He held her down and
laughed.”
And Grisha Morse looked Catherine in the eye that day and said,
“Good.”
 In the present, the doctor says, “Have you eaten?” and cracks open his
humming mini-fridge.
He knows Catherine’s demons. He patches her up when her demons
prove too strong, provides support in the darkest of times, and though
Catherine sometimes muses she might meet her end in Grisha’s needle one
day, she doesn’t fear the man. He calls her ‘my Catherine,’ like she’s a
fledgling he plucked from the bushes before the cat could eat her, and
instead of returning her to her nest, he put her in his breast pocket and has
kept her ever since.
“No, I missed lunch.”
Grisha tuts under his breath as he removes plastic containers from the
refrigerator and inspects the contents. “Then eat, and then you will tell me
what brings you to me today.”
Catherine accepts a container, the plastic cool against her fingers, the
salad crisp and the vinaigrette tasting faintly of strawberries, or perhaps
that’s her imagination. She uses a real fork from a silverware set because
Grisha has no patience for flimsy cutlery. The surgeon sinks into the chair
behind his desk, but instead of waking his computer, he reclines and
watches Catherine eat. The lights shine on his bifocals.
“They’ve handed the Hangman case to the FBI,” she says as if
commenting on the decor, not on the manhunt that could potentially claim
her freedom and life. Grisha straightens. “They’ve decided to set up their
base in the Rightwood precinct.”
“That is your precinct.”
“Yes.”
He shifts, hands steepling. “Are you frightened?”
“No.” A cherry tomato breaks on her tongue and bleeds. “You are the
one who taught me fear has no place in what I do, aren’t you? I am either
caught or I am not; there is no middle ground.”
“I would say there is always room for the middle ground, docha, but
perhaps I am asking the wrong question. Are you anxious?”
Catherine lifts a shoulder and drags a lettuce leaf through the red
dressing. “That’s not why I’m here today.”
“Oh?”
“No. Not that I don’t enjoy your company, Grisha.” She smiles then, a
fleeting thing, like the flicker of a snake’s pink tongue. “I saw an anomaly
while they were putting up records of the Hangman’s kills.” The surgeon
waits with all the patience of a saint as Catherine mulls over her thoughts
and stabs a crouton. “It was…difficult to look at it all, garish really; a bit
like a black and white film restored in technicolor, and I didn’t like to see it
—but I counted the victims. That’s where the anomaly is. There should
have only been twenty-three names. There were twenty-four.”
The chair creaks under Grisha’s weight as he lets out a gusty exhale.
“Twenty-three now, docha?”
Catherine meets his gaze and does not waver. He knows her demons,
walks among them when he must, shares them with his own.
“Have they made a mistake with this twenty-fourth? Or have you? Is it a
person from before the Hangman?”
She shakes her head and finishes her meal, the plastic lid clicking into
place as she seals the container and places the fork on top. “I’ve never heard
the name before. She’s not one of mine.” Debbie Kozlov. The syllables
weigh strangely on her tongue, a moniker Catherine has never tested or
whispered into the pliable grain of her sheets at night, a name for a face that
has never appeared in her night terrors. “It’s odd, though. Her death fits my
supposed modus operandi—all the markers the police have, and all the
subtle ones, too. It is…uncanny. A perfect rendition of my work.”
Catherine speaks, and Grisha pales, stiffens, and for an instant, she fears
a single breath could shatter him like so much dust caught in the breeze. He
blinks, and suddenly the person behind those shifting bifocals is not Grisha
Morse, the genial surgeon, but Grisha Morse, the angel of death, veteran
combat medic of the Soviet-Afghan War, and the man who once told her
‘Killing is both the most human and inhuman act we preform’ before he
pushed the needle’s plunger and sent her father off to his end. “You are in
danger.”
“Excuse me?”
Grisha rises, goes to a reprint of Levitan’s Vladimirka Road that
Catherine has always disliked, and lifts the frame from its hooks. Behind
the painting resides an iron safe with an older swivel dial and silver handle.
The surgeon twists the dial as he speaks, then removes a sheaf of documents
and a bundle of sequential bills taken from a bank. “You are in danger,
docha. What you have described to me, I have seen it before. You know
I….” He breathes. “You know you are not the only…person I am
acquainted with.”
 She knows. Grisha Morse collects killers like a priest collects
confessions. Though he is not as familiar or friendly with the others as he is
with Catherine, he looks into their eyes, those sharks of Dedwich circling
that stagnant pond, and he hands them medical aid or words of wisdom or
information when necessary. Catherine disapproves, but it is not her place
to tell the doctor how to live his life. They ask after her, those killers she
won’t commend, those fools who see only the murderer and do not think to
look beyond. He sends them off with a harsh word of reprimand. Do not
seek the Hangman, or you will visit the gallows.
“I don’t know his name. The others don’t know it either. They know
only that he mimics death, like a possum, and he mimics it perfectly.” He
shoves the money and papers into Catherine’s hands as she sputters, a
passport sliding out of the folder, a false identity and forged credentials
Catherine never knew the surgeon had for her. Something warm curls in her
heart. Grisha’s care pleases and frustrates her, as these documents are quite
incriminating.
“Grisha, what is—? You shouldn’t keep this stuff in your office safe.
What if they suspect you of something and investigate?”
“If they are far enough in their investigation to have a warrant and the
cause to search my safe, then I am caught, and there is nothing more I can
do.” He shrugs but doesn’t smile. “It does not matter, Catherine. You must
listen to what I am telling you now. You must leave, and not only leave, but
disappear.”
“Why?”
“Because of him.”
“Who?”
“Him.” Grisha’s hands frame her face, warm and inviting, hands that
have saved lives and condemned them with the same interchangeable ease.
“They do not know his name. They only call him the Kaleidoscope.”
 vi. kaleidoscope
As a girl born in the quiet years before one of Dedwich’s many
revitalizations, Catherine has little in the way of possessions as a child.
What she carries with her are memories, recollections of long winters spent
in the den by the fireside, her mother—an academic—reading poetry and
teaching her all the subtlety of iambic pentameter. There are memories of
idle, sticky summers with sweat on her skin and condensation on her
fingertips, holding out glasses of sweet lemonade to her overworked father.
He is last in a long line of Themis boys, broad-shouldered and blackened
from the mines, his skin always gray, never really clean, and Catherine likes
to think about his smile and the gentle squeeze of his rough hand on her
arm.
The possession she can best visualize out of her juvenile debris is a
slender bronze kaleidoscope.
Her father comes home with the toy wrapped in gauzy tissue paper, a
present for her seventh birthday delivered early because he can’t bear the
wait. It would be an odd choice in a better town, in a better place, in an
urbanized city where suburban kids want compact disc players and the
newest gadgets coming out of Japan. However, rural Dedwich kids still
have cassette tapes and black and white televisions with only four channels.
Young Catherine sees the little kaleidoscope and gasps in delight.
It is a delicate instrument of oiled brass, peeling paint, mirrors, and
colored glass, perhaps commissioned for a rich woman’s parlor in a time of
excess. It was forsaken in a country yard sale to be picked up by a weary
coal miner. Catherine spends days peering through the narrow viewer,
watching how the light plays with the many varied reflections. She sees the
image of a butterfly, blue and purple and green, patterned over and over into
the infinite; she twists the tube’s barrel and the image distorts, becomes a
spider, veiled in yellow and red and orange with eight legs or perhaps a
million, she could never tell.
Again and again, Catherine sees the butterfly become the spider, and
though she tries to spot when the change begins, when the light switches
angles and shines through a new layer of glass, she never can. The butterfly
is the spider. There is no difference; it’s all light and glass and mirrors
inside a kaleidoscope. Anything seen is an illusion.
She wonders where that old toy is when Dr. Grisha Morse tells her
about the killer other murderers have come to fear, the killer who is as
ephemeral and intangible as the images in a kaleidoscope.
***
That evening, Catherine stares at her bedroom ceiling, sheets twisted
about her bare legs, and exhales. Grisha’s voice echoes in her head.
“You must go, docha, before this Kaleidoscope comes for you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He mimics the…work of others, takes on their identity, and more often
than not, disposes of his inspiration so they will not interfere. The
Kaleidoscope is a master who devours his muse. If he is mimicking the
Hangman, Catherine, you must leave. You must.”
But Catherine doesn’t leave. She pushes the money back into the steady
hands of her mentor, her friend, and returns home. She won’t allow people
to take what is hers, not anymore, and the Hangman belongs to Catherine—
belongs to her like a crown of thorns, paints her face vermilion like those
warriors of old, the barbs digging deeper with every passing day. The
ghosts of her victims linger here, in the tentative dark of her apartment
bedroom, like streaks of black against the softer gray of the night’s tired
embrace. She hates their attention, hates the psychology behind it, how
these apparitions born of her own mind judge and mock and watch with
blank, empty attention. Catherine can do nothing to banish them.
Every death is a bruise, blood welling below intact skin. Those bruises
linger, green and black and yellow and blue, an Impressionistic painting
upon the psyche of a feral mountain child born to a coal miner and a
disgraced lecturer. She’s a child who grew to become a demure,
bespectacled administrator living in the heart of Dedwich City. Like the
butterfly and the spider, there is no difference, not really. Both are Catherine
Themis. Both are the Hangman.
She rises, dressed only in her underwear and a loose shirt, and sits on
the end of her bed. From the other side of the mattress come a few muted
thumps of a wagging tail before Virgil, her Border Collie, sits up to blink at
his restless owner. Catherine plays her hand over the dog’s muzzle, his
breath hot and damp on her palm, then sinks her fingers into the thick fur
behind his ears to scratch. Virgil surrenders with a final beat of his tail and
nestles into the duvet, exhaling for dramatic effect.
Standing, she crosses the room, a modest expanse outfitted with cheap
imported furniture assembled out of a box and the occasional knickknack,
her books and texts relegated to a single bookcase by the desk. A miniature
of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne resides in the desk lamp’s little halo, and
Catherine stares at the entwined figures, at Daphne’s changing body and the
bark lapping at her heels. She tilts the replica to slide out the silver key
taped to the base.
She takes the key to the living room, a space that rivals the bedroom in
austerity, and peels aside the corner of the large area rug. She counts four
floorboards from the wall then pries the selected board up. It comes easily,
the nails long since blunted, the edges worn. Catherine lays on her belly, the
floor cold against her mostly bare skin, and reaches into the revealed
crevice. The only light bleeds through the front window from the street
lights, but she doesn’t need to see, can count the moments of dead space
between the ticks of her watch and breath as she shifts aside a thin sheet of
insulation and lays her warm hand on the cold front of a safe hiding in the
crawlspace.
The divots engraved into the numbers and dashes between them are
tactile under her questing fingertips, and Catherine twists the dial to the
needed code, her eyes unfocused, her inhalations steady, her arm submerged
into the dusty dark below. The key slides into place and, with a flick, the
deadbolts throw themselves aside, and Catherine opens the safe. She curls
her hand around the straps of a duffel bag stuffed into the safe’s interior and
heaves it upward through the slender hole gaping in the floor. She drops it
onto the floor.
There are many items in the duffel that Catherine cannot have
inquisitive eyes seeing. Clear bottles of sevoflurane and etorphine clink
together as the bag shifts, needles packaged together and stuffed in a field
kit she keeps accessible at the top of the mess. Carbon-steel knives glint in
the dark, and two pistols with their serial numbers filed off exude the smell
of oil and weigh the bag down. Tidy envelopes stuffed with equal amounts
of cash line the bottom. Other incriminating items fill the insides, but
Catherine retrieves only a folded set of black clothes, a shampoo bottle, and
a keyring.
She goes to shower, stripping her own scents in favor of masculine
odors, taking the time to straighten her curly hair so Catherine can brush the
loose strands out and secure them in a tight bun. She wears a pair of black
jeans and a black turtleneck with a collar loose and thick enough to be
pulled across her face in a moment of necessity, donning a wool cap, a pair
of leather gloves, and brown contacts to complete the ensemble. Her
silhouette becomes androgynous, neither male nor female, simply straight
and unyielding like a blade. She wears nothing remarkable, nothing that
should impart a drastic change to her person—but Catherine fades into the
peripheries, or perhaps she grows stronger. She’s never really decided what
the truth is, but when she looks in the mirror, the Hangman looks back.
The ghost of Howard Perez leans into her ear and whispers, “And you
thought I was a monster.”
Catherine tugs on a pair of boots with a common, mass-produced tread
and cinches the laces, tucking a burner phone into her back pocket while
she palms the keys she took from the duffel. A door adjoined to the
bathroom opens to the alley—a strange engineering decision that plagues
the landowner, perhaps added to convert the bathroom into a mudroom in
the winter. The extra entrance baffles prospective renters and is likely
barricaded in the other apartments mirrored across the complex. Catherine
utilizes it as an easy exit route. The light outside has long had its wires cut.
She returns the key to Daphne and Apollo, leaves the desk lamp on, and
walks out the bathroom’s rear exit, letting the door come quietly shut
behind her. She sets off at a brisk pace, lungs full of cool air, her spare car
keys hard and grounding as they sink into her palm through the leather
glove. Her feet make no noise on the pavement as she hurries along quiet
suburban alleys and skirts the lights of the liquor store at the street’s end. A
compact sedan waits several blocks over in a rideshare lot, and Catherine
settles in the driver’s seat with practiced ease. She flicks on the radio to
some innocuous local station and ignores the noise.
A winch rattles among unused bundles of rope on the backseat floor
beneath a gray tarp, but Catherine has no use for those things tonight.
Instead, she drives through the city’s heart and enters the county limits.
Crumbling smokestacks rise through the untamed wilderness, and the
addresses have long since disappeared beneath the graffitied spray of gang
signs, the walls pockmarked with the bullets shed in a fight for territory.
There is a darker element here, too, unnamed but observed, wild cannibals
drifting down from the mountains to claim the fallen, or creatures like
Catherine the gangs know to leave alone on principle, on instinct. Some
buildings bear the sloppy sigil of a noose with the words “Heaven is full,
the gallows always have room,” stenciled underneath.
The first time Catherine read the words, she smirked at the cheek of it.
 She parks along the side of the highway where the sedan isn’t readily
visible by vandals or the authorities and gets out, gravel popping underfoot
as she lets the door come quietly closed and doesn’t bother to lock it.
Catherine lays her fingers against the watch hidden below the cuff of her
long-sleeved shirt. She spaces her breaths seven ticks apart—in and out—
then sets off at a casual speed.
It is a dangerous thing, searching for a new display site while the FBI
are loose and hunting for her, but as knowledge of the FBI’s involvement
hasn’t been made public yet, Catherine knows it could—would—seem
suspicious for the Hangman to ghost just as the agents rolled into town.
Doubt would turn upon the department itself, and the feds would scour the
precinct for any sign of a leak. So, in a perverse turnabout, Catherine
needed to kill again in the upcoming weeks to lessen suspicion.
Not that it matters, she told herself as she walked and listened to the
breeze whistling through the thick trees and the echo of Grisha’s voice in
her head. Once you’re caught, you’re caught. As Grisha says, don’t struggle
in the noose of your own making. It just cuts your neck.
She wanders a barren service road bordering several blocks of derelict
warehouses and abandoned steel mills; her stride slows to mimic what a
prospective stroll would be like burdened under the weight of an adult body.
The Hangman understands the necessity of rules and planning, so Catherine
has rigorous criteria each site must meet. They cannot be within view of the
main road, must exhibit low foot traffic, and must have sturdy beams
capable of supporting a hanging body’s weight. The site must be reachable
while carrying a body, a winch, ropes, and a satchel of cleaning chemicals.
She purposefully leaves the car far enough to present a plausible distance
between its location and proximity to the crime scene. Finally, Catherine
must be able to execute the Hangman’s design in ten minutes or less to
minimize prospective risks.
Catherine writes her observations in a black notebook with the stub of
an artist’s pencil, her words flowing in a code designed as a report of insect
activity of all things. It’s not difficult to see in the moonlight and the distant
haze of Dedwich proper. Still, she knows how to write in the dark, going by
the feel of indents on the paper. She blinks against the itchiness of her
contacts and measures time with every breath.
Crossing a byway smelling of wet garbage and something floral,
Catherine sees wildflowers bursting through the cracked asphalt in bouquets
of blue and red and yellow. Ahead is a warehouse suited to her needs: the
rolling steel door is rusted but raised high enough for Catherine and any
prospective morbid payload to duck beneath, permitting a measure of
privacy—or at least obscurity. The black maw beneath the door’s oxidized
lip waits and would terrify a different woman—the entire neighborhood
would terrify most, be they a woman or man. It’s the kind of place that
sends shivers along the spine and percolates sweat on the brows of the well-
groomed—but Catherine isn’t afraid. She tucks away her notebook and
heads inside.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Catherine straightens and hears the steady fall of liquid strike the dust-
covered concrete below. The light adjusts—and she comes face to face with
one of her own crime scenes—a crime scene that is not her creation. A body
hangs from the rafters like an overlarge cocoon from a tree branch.
A second person lingers in the dark, and his amusement strikes high like
the warble of morning church bells. A chain creaks, and the rusted door
comes crashing down.
“Hello, Hangman.”
 vii. hangman
Grisha once asks Catherine about her methodology, asks “Why hanging,
docha?”
She shrugs as she picks over a light meal of fettuccine. The world
continues to pass by their window, the diner abuzz with afternoon patrons
sharing quick lunches and idle gossip. None of them see the two killers in
the corner booth. None of them care to look. Catherine is twenty years old.
“Why not?” she counters, pressing a napkin to her lips.
“It does not seem very much like you. That is why I ask.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Her fingers play over the blunt edge of her
knife, nail catching on the dull serrations. “It speaks of male machismo, like
posing next to a stag all strung up after the hunt. No one would suspect me.
Women who kill try to cover it up, like sweeping the shards of a vase under
the rug before their husband comes home. Male killers glory in their kills
and displays, especially if they have a god complex. Or they dump the
bodies like a chicken carcass. Hanging is also laborious. It takes a lot of
upper body strength.”
She doesn’t tell him the methodology hones the beast in her chest, gives
the anger and fury snapping in her veins something to focus on before they
burst out of her skin like hot, wet blood. He already knows. Grisha’s eyes
linger on the watch gleaming upon her narrow wrist, and Catherine touches
it. Remember your breathing, docha.
The surgeon takes a bite of his eggs and chews in thought, his bifocals
bright in the sunlight coming through the window. The translucent stubble
on his cheeks glows silver and white. “A fully grown man of decent
strength utilizing leverage and his weight could hoist a body a few feet into
the air and secure the rope, but it would be nigh impossible for a woman
your size. Women are, traditionally, not as strong nor as heavy as their male
counterparts. How have you managed?”
“A modified winch,” Catherine says, spinning a finger to mimic the
turning of a small wheel. “The strength needed is still great, but the
necessary exertion is lessened on my upper body.
“Hmm. A simple solution, da.” He sets aside his fork and the corner of
his mouth twitches. “Sometimes simple solutions are the best. I still worry,
though.”
“I know.”
 “Do not let the rope run along your arm. That is a fool’s mistake. They
will find DNA.”
“I know, Grisha.”
He gives the bottom of her chin a fond tap. “That’s my girl.”
They drink iced tea in silence and the beads of condensation drip from
the glass on Catherine’s thin fingers.
Two days later, the newspaper slips through the mail slot on her door
and lands on the mat, headline blaring the words, The Hangman Takes
Another.
***
Catherine stares at the crime scene and knows it does not belong to her,
despite all appearances otherwise. The body is displayed in perfect mimicry,
like a mirror angled to capture her art splayed upon a canvas—but any child
could say that the image within a mirror is not the same. It is reversed,
sometimes distorted, and some aspects of the original can never be
recreated no matter how one shifts that glass or angles the lights.
The most glaring deficit lies not two feet from the steel column where
the rope’s end feeds through the eyelets. The tether is looped three times
and completed with the slipped double constrictor knot Catherine prefers,
but the pitted concrete below—oil-stained and scraped by years of harsh
treatment—lacks the fresh scratches her winch always leaves behind. Her
eyes flick from the column to the body, and she sees a nameless face she
doesn’t know, a portly man in his early forties. His clothes are too mussed:
Catherine is petite and pretty enough to get close to her acquisitions before
slipping them the needle, whereas this killer needed to grab the nameless
man, needed to hold and restrain him.
The Kaleidoscope is an impressive mirror, but impurities mar his glass.
“Hello, Hangman.”
A shadow parts from the wall and speaks to Catherine as the door
comes down. She feels the reverberations trembling in her legs. He’s a
vague outline of a person, a voice that slithers out of the dark and nips at
her ear, all teeth and words and bleak, glinting eyes that catch the soft luster
of the moon. The lake of cooling blood between them is as black as spilled
ink.
“Well, I assume you are the Hangman,” he continues, unbothered by
Catherine’s lack of response. A soft accent curbs the harsher angles of his
words, something born in mist-filled countrysides, a voice more familiar in
the moors of England than the unsightly slums of Dedwich. “You haven’t
run screaming yet, after all. A small mercy. I was of a mind to start
believing you weren’t ever going to show up, even after I put all that effort
into deciding where you’d hang your next lark.”
How did he know? Catherine wonders even as she remains silent. Had
there been some unforeseen pattern to her sites? She is meticulous in
choosing new areas in the vast, grungy wilds of Dedwich’s crumbling
industrial jungle, but even random selection can present statistical
likelihoods. Several buildings in the vicinity could suit Catherine’s needs,
but this one is ideal; she knows the Kaleidoscope has identified at least one
facet of her routine, and it chafes. It holds her down like a single pin
through the wing of a butterfly.
“No questions for me, then? Nothing to say? My, I thought you’d be
more interesting than this, at least up for a bit of conversation. The
infamous Hangman! Dedwich City’s very own cult legend. Averaging more
than two kills a year for the past decade or so, well on your way to
becoming one of America’s most notorious killers. Is that why you do it?
For a thrill?” He moves closer, his profile nondescript in the dark, the filmy
burnish of the midnight sky giving just enough delineation to separate him
from the overwhelming black. “I am not judging, of course, whatever
your…kinks are. It’s no business but a man’s own, am I right, Mister
Hangman?”
Catherine peers into the dark and wonders if he has a gun, if he’s still
carrying the knife he used on the man dangling from the steel support. She
doesn’t see the glimmer of steel in the weak light and he would have to be a
fool to keep the murder weapon longer than necessary. Catherine knows the
Kaleidoscope is no fool.
No matter his nefarious intentions, the man before her is dedicated to
his schemes and is insightful in ways she finds difficult to comprehend. The
questions she wants to snarl resounds like the peals of battered bells in the
space between her ears.
Her body sways, ready, her breath held.
The Kaleidoscope is disappointed. He came expecting someone
boastful, someone brash—but instead, he finds Catherine: silent,
withdrawn, calculating, a dozen plans formulating behind the flat brown of
her contacts. It’s Grisha’s voice she hears now, cautioning, the steady
drawling of his advice interspersed with Russian like flecks of gold in a
sheet of implacable rock.
She counts the seconds between breaths. Tick. Tick. Tick.
The Kaleidoscope moves, hand rising, something clenched within the
gloved fist—and Catherine strikes. In an instant, she crosses the space
between them and lunges, her palm coming down in a vertical strike. The
slap of leather on leather resonates as she tries to grab hold of his wrist,
tries to twist and snap his arm like a low-hanging tree branch, and the gun
he holds goes off with a bang.
The sound deafens Catherine and her prey, and for a moment, all she
can hear is the hollow roar of blood in her ears. The sudden burst of ignition
leaves violent spots in her eyes, and she digs her fingers into his flesh,
thinking the Kaleidoscope might be laughing.
The element of surprise is lost, the handgun clattering to the warehouse
floor as he wrenches himself free of Catherine’s hold with unexpected
strength. She aims for his eyes and throat with swift, unremitting blows,
lashing out at any part of her attacker that could incapacitate him and give
her the killing edge. The indignity of his actions cuts like broken glass and
Catherine seethes, wanting to break him, wanting to tear down the tower he
has built on the identities of others.
You won’t take the Hangman from me, she shrieks in the privacy of her
mind. Not when it’s all I have left.
A punishing fist lands a hit on the top of Catherine’s knee and pain
radiates down her leg, leaving the limb momentarily numb. She stumbles—
stumbles as she hasn’t done in years, not since she was young and feral and
as unrefined as the coal her father spent his life digging out of the earth.
Though not a large man, the Kaleidoscope is powerful, and the precision of
his blows speaks of the same rigorous training Catherine has undertaken.
The moment his knuckles grind into her chest, she knows that she has,
perhaps, made a mistake in taking this opponent on.
She steps back and loses traction when her foot lands in the cooling
blood. Catherine slips and throws herself to the ground before the
Kaleidoscope can capitalize on her weakness. Her shoulder hits the ground,
and she rolls, something hard biting into her flesh, and when Catherine
finds her balance again, she holds up the gun. A savage grin that would
never grace the lips of her civilian administrator persona stretches across
her mouth when she takes aim at the Kaleidoscope and pulls the trigger.
 Nothing happens.
Son of a bitch, he only put one bullet—!
He darts forward, and Catherine throws the gun toward the outline of
his head, the weapon whistling through the air as it misses and strikes a
pillar. The echo of metal on metal shakes the ground beneath them as the
man grabs hold of her arm, and Catherine twists, the seams in her sleeve
popping as she snarls and swings her foot out toward his knees. Her heel
glances across his shin to no effect. The Kaleidoscope bears down upon her,
and she is too slow to find her balance, her shoes slick, her leg aching from
where his fist struck the bone.
A second later, Catherine struggles to breathe past the arm curling
around her neck.
Her mind reels, thoughts spinning, and she continues to writhe and kick
and lunge until they are both covered in dirt, panting, and only one of them
is getting the requisite air. The taste of copper fouls her tongue, bitter as
rust, and the blood oozes from her broken nose. Catherine holds the taste
between her lips as darkness feathers the extremities of her vision. The
multitude of ghosts she’s accrued over the years sit like a haunting choir,
waiting for the Hangman to die.
The Kaleidoscope fights to find the proper leverage needed to snap
Catherine’s neck and runs a hand across her scalp, dislodging the wool cap,
and her hair spills free in a dark red river.
The body behind her stiffens, breath held, and the words, “Bloody hell,
you’re a woman!” come out in a sputtered exclamation.
She pounces on his astonishment and gets a pleasing gasp of pain when
her elbow bashes into his mouth. Springing forward, she brings both hands
down flat on the concrete, her lungs heaving in the fetid air. Catherine bolts.
Catherine is fast enough to evade the grasping hand of the Kaleidoscope
and darts from the building through a dilapidated entrance on the other side
of the main floor. Three bounds beyond the threshold, she loses herself in
the crumbling network of byways and sketchy passes, the night frigid
against her wet face, her knee throbbing, the ground disappearing quickly
beneath her soiled shoes.
Her gasps come wet and uncoordinated, and the threat of darkness still
spots her eyes.
Bushes crash against her legs as she runs through the woods adjoined to
the district and makes a sharp, harried arch in her return to her vehicle. She
fears that if the Kaleidoscope knows how to find her, watching her car will
prove no great feat—but Catherine isn’t a shirking violet. It will be just as
dangerous for him to approach her as it would be for her to approach him.
She’s thankful to find the car keys still in her pocket, jabbing into the flesh
of her thigh, and Catherine would sigh in relief for that tender mercy if not
for the sorry state of her lungs.
The highway stretches barren and dark through the midnight wilds, and
Catherine remembers nothing of the drive home, only the grounding touch
of the steering wheel under her hands and the all too fast thud of her heart
chasing the radio’s static. How, she demands of nothing, of no one. How,
how, how, HOW—.
How did he find her? Only hours after Grisha warned her—. How many
did he string up in her name before finding Catherine, before choosing the
right warehouse? How many faceless innocents? How dare he corrupt her
gallows, how dare he besmirch her methodology, how DARE—.
Catherine is walking. The alley is still cold, still empty aside from the
slap of her boots through the dirty puddles lining the ugly grooves. She can
hear nothing over the roar that rises in her ears like the drowning waters
that took Kayla Hoffman—and suddenly she’s behind that neon-lit bar
again, and Isaak Peak crumples beneath her, blue light in her eyes, red on
her hands, and Catherine screams—.
Breathe, I have to breathe!
Her thoughts bleed through the white noise of her rage, and she grapples
for the wall outside the rear exit to her apartment, panting. Catherine
reaches for the watch under her sleeve. Her fingers come into contact with
chipped glass, and she chokes. The watch is broken.
Breathe! But how can she? How can she breathe when her heart is
racing, her head screaming, and Catherine can’t see anything beyond the
thickening shadows of her ghosts, her lifeline frayed and her body unable to
remember just how exactly to take in air. Isaak Peak laughs, asking, “Who
are you?” in his drunken slur, and Catherine doesn’t know how to answer.
Who the hell am I?
The others are there, all parroting their parting words, and Catherine
clutches at her head, begging the noise to stop, feeling the Kaleidoscope
lean in and croon “Hello, Hangman,” like a lover, like he knows who she
truly is—and she gasps again. Desperate, she slings her fist out at the wall,
cracking plaster, cracking her fingers, and splitting her knuckles under the
gloves’ thin leather.
Pain slices through the delirium and produces a single ripple of clarity.
Catherine grasps hold of the sensation and manages to get inside.
 viii. tick
Dr. Morse comes for her not long before the dawn.
Catherine manages one cohesive text message asking for aid before fury
again swallows her whole, and she rouses hours later to find herself
kneeling on the bathroom mat in a puddle of tears and blood and silver
glass shards. She can’t remember when she broke the mirror in her haze. A
thousand pieces of herself glare back at Catherine, and it is almost worse
than the judgmental glaring of her ghosts.
The light flickers on. Grisha is there, still in his white coat, ruffled about
the edges from a long, long shift at the hospital. He casts one lingering look
over Catherine curled like a dying flower on the floor, sighs, then goes to
the sink. Bits of mirror crunch beneath his leather loafers, and Grisha
ignores the mess in favor of opening the medicine cabinet, rifling through
the tidy orange bottles until he finds what he seeks and holds it to the light
to check the prescription. A white pill slips into the palm of his hand.
“It was him,” Catherine blurts, the words muffled by the raised knee she
presses her face against, her arms cinched tight about the leg. “It was him. I
don’t know how he found me—.”
“I did warn you,” Grisha says as he shuts the sink’s drain and allows hot
water to fill the basin.
She snarls, wordless and furious, and Grisha lifts a brow, his bifocals
slipping. “Remember your breathing, Catherine.”
“Fuck your breathing exercises—!”
He takes a step forward, and she quells, taut as a violin string, her eyes
black behind the cover of her burning contact lenses, chest heaving. Grisha
lifts her sleeve, takes one look at the broken remnant of her watch and
unclips it, tossing it aside. He removes his own—a far more expensive item
—and presses it to the inside of her wrist.
“Breathe. Now.”
The steel of his tone forbids disobedience, and despite the festering
indignity tearing Catherine’s chest to shreds, she does as she’s told and
holds the watch against her wrist as she counts intervals of seven, forcing
her breaths into sync. Grisha returns to the sink and adds soap to the water
as he rolls up his sleeves and finds a clean cloth in the cabinet. Catherine
watches him with wary eyes.
“Come here.”
She doesn’t move.
 “Come now, docha. Let me help, and then you can tell me what has
happened.”
She breathes, and soon the world loses the garish hue that hurts her
vision, and the phantoms don’t press quite so close, migrating to the
peripheries of the bathroom like spiders seeking dark crevices in which to
hide.
Suddenly, Catherine is once more herself—or simply the version of
herself that is not incoherent with anger. Virgil lays beyond the shattered
mirror, watching her, and Grisha holds out a steady hand, waiting. She
knows him; he has been here before, at that very basin, waiting to wipe
clean the blood and sew shut wounds, working to reveal the woman who
exists behind the violence and the rage and gnashing teeth.
Her leg hurts, and she tells him as such.
“I will check it in a moment. Come, Catherine.”
At last, she rises to place her hand in his, and the wreckage crunches
under her boots, Grisha’s warmth reassuring, grounding. Catherine is dizzy,
exhausted, and still somewhat disoriented as the surgeon realigns her nose
with a grueling crunch of cartilage and cleans the blood with hot water and
soap that smells strongly of oatmeal. He fastens the watch properly to her
wrist, though it flops to the side, too large for her bird-like bones, and he
tugs off her gloves to reveal a broken hand.
“What happened here?”
Heat infuses her face. She stares at the red, swollen skin over the ripped
flesh. Idiocy. “I punched a wall.”
The corners of Grisha’s eyes fold in pleasant crinkles as he chuckles.
“Oh? And did the wall put up a good fight?”
“Better than I did.”
Grisha reprimands her and continues to inspect the damage. A
deepening shade of pink tinges the water and morphs from an innocent
blush to the heady shades of wine. He helps her remove the contacts and
perches her glasses on the bridge of her nose. She is more Catherine Themis
now than the Hangman, and her shoulders slump.
“I don’t understand how he found me,” she says at length, her voice
weak from screaming, raw at the edges like the skin on her knuckles. “I’ve
been so…so careful. So methodical. First, I messed up with Howard Perez,
not realizing the feds were watching him, and now this? Grisha, am I
making mistakes? Am I—?”
 Going mad?
But she doesn’t say those words, doesn’t dare give them form.
“No. Not mistakes. I believe, how do you say, that you have been the
lone hunter for a long time, da? The woods have become…crowded. You
are crossing rifles. You must be more careful than ever now.”
She winces as he dabs antiseptic against her wounds with all the
professionalism he’d display in his ward. “I left so much DNA there. Blood
and spit and no small amount of hair, I’m sure. I might as well have laid
down with a tattoo on my forehead saying, ‘Why yes, I am the criminal
you’re looking for.’”
“We will consider what to do about that in the morning, docha.”
He finishes binding her hand, and Catherine limps over to the tub,
sitting on the ledge and jerking down her pants without fanfare to bare her
thin legs and injured knee. Grisha touches her skin with clinical detachment
and frowns as he probes the edges of her mottled skin.
“The bone is bruised but not broken,” he mutters. “Subperiosteal
hematoma, I would guess from the epidermal bruising, but it does not
matter: your hand is more concerning. You will need to rest both and
possibly visit the hospital if the hand does not lessen in swelling.” The
surgeon straightens. “You should bathe and get some rest, yes? I will
dispose of these clothes and find your night things.”
So Catherine sequesters herself behind the shower curtain and drops the
incriminating articles on the bathroom floor as the water groans in the pipes
and hits her in an icy deluge. She hears Grisha retrieve the clothes before he
paces out of the bathroom, then back in, glass clicking as he sweeps up the
broken mirror and disposes of the pieces in the waste bin. He sets her
pajamas on the counter and shoos Virgil in his low, rumbling baritone—
then the door is shut, and Catherine is alone again. She holds her broken
hand high above her head, above the water, and the watch slips down her
forearm. She stares at her rippling reflection on its face and listens to each
tick, tick, tick.
When she exits the bathroom in a curling haze of hot steam, she finds
Grisha is still there, now sitting at the desk with a ratty copy of Byron found
from Catherine’s shelves. He perches it open on his knee and seems a
different kind of specter in the yellow shine of the desk lamp: a holy vision,
an amoral median in a sea of infinite gray who might just lead a soul to
heaven or straight to hell, depending on which way the wind is blowing.
 “I will stay until morning,” he says without preamble, flipping a page.
What he doesn’t say is just as audible for all that it is unspoken: just in case.
Just in case he follows you home.
She lays in bed, and Virgil lays on her, a solid weight of fur and loyalty,
his tail thumping on the mattress again, nose burrowing in the sheets drawn
over her chest. The surgeon hums softly in thought, breathing in steady
increments of seven, and Catherine thinks about how Grisha loves his
patients like children he never had. She’s caught him crooning lullabies at a
catatonic’s bedside more than once. “Bayushki bayu, bayushki bayu.” The
words would spin like candy floss, weightless and sweet. “Spi, ditya mayo
radnoye.” He sung the song to her, too, when she sat at her father’s bedside
long after the light had faded from his eyes, swallowed by pupils blown
wide, and she leaned into Grisha’s shoulder, his strength, as the expatriate
murmured, “Bayushki bayu,” and stole her tears.
Later, when she found the time to translate the words, Catherine almost
cried anew. “The time will come when you will learn the soldier’s way of
life, boldly you’ll place your foot into the stirrup and take the gun.”
Catherine has said the words to herself in the dead of night, when the ghosts
cling too close and refuse her peace, “Sleep now, my dear little child,
bayushki bayu.”
The watch ticks, and Catherine breathes out.
***
Two days later, she is in the parking lot outside the precinct, and the
wind curls about her, pouring through her, a cold and uncomfortable caress
that speaks ill of Catherine’s current state of mind. Her face is heavy with
the thick makeup a mortician’s cosmetologist might use on a corpse, and the
irony isn’t lost on her, nor does it stop her skin from aching or feeling oily.
It does, however, stop inquisitive stares or the questions her black eyes
might elicit from a den of nosy police officers.
The sunlight is bright, the clouds bulbous but white and free of rain.
Around her, the distant noise of an afternoon in Dedwich continues, car
doors slamming and cell phones ringing, people chatting, and engines
turning. Catherine wonders if it ever stops, if there is ever a time of day in
which this noise finds its death and silence reigns.
She forces her thoughts to lighten as she walks and thinks about buying
Grisha a gift of some kind to thank him for his aid and to apologize for her
slip in behavior. His watch remains on her wrist with several of the links
now removed, and though Catherine told him it is too auspicious a piece for
a civilian administrator, the surgeon had shrugged and promised to replace
it when he found the time.
Other thoughts crowd her head, and she ponders what to do about that
place, about that crime scene lurking in the fallow industrial wonderland of
Dedwich’s decay. She wonders if she should return and clean it up or if
doing so would be too risky. It has been two days. She does not have much
more time to decide.
Her heels click on the asphalt and her expression sharpens once she’s
alone. A glimmer of the Hangman rises beneath her bland face like the
quick flash of green scales in the underbrush. She sees Adeline Lincoln
strolling on the sidewalk with a cup from the coffee shop in hand and her
head tipped back, the woman deep in thought. Others are heading home, but
Lincoln is returning to the hunt.
A shiver wracks Catherine’s nerves.
“Hangman.”
It is almost enough for her to scream, almost enough for her to pray that
her phantoms have coalesced into physical color and shape, because the
alternative is too much for Catherine to accept. She stops in her tracks and
stares at the figure waiting by her car door.
She doesn’t know him. He is average in height, lean in build, with dark
hair that shifts in the wind and gray eyes that don’t blink. He shows sharp,
bright teeth bared in a genuine smile and is older than Catherine—or,
maybe, younger? His features are pleasant but unremarkable, pretty in the
way that Catherine is pretty: if, and only if—that wretched little qualifier no
one can ever seem to grasp. His most distinguishing features are a fading
bruise on the right side of his mouth, a tidy black line of stitches crossing
the lip, and a chipped lower incisor that interrupts the straight line of his
grin.
In an instant, he could be anybody. A slight shift of his features would
render him unrecognizable, and Catherine viciously hopes the cut on his lip
—the one she delivered with her elbow—scars.
“Hello,” the Kaleidoscope says, casual as can be, rocking a bit with his
hands in the pockets of his black peacoat. “Cold day, isn’t it?”
She reaches into her open purse and wraps her fingers around the handle
of her gun—the gun licensed legally, the one she carries just in case her
demons ever find themselves walking about in the flesh.
 “Ah,” he tuts, his smile still in place. “I would prefer it if you didn’t
shoot me, please. Gunfire is such an ugly business, after all, and how would
you go about explaining why you shot a civilian in the parking lot of a
police station, hmm?” He peruses her appearance and doesn’t move as he
does so, eyes trailing over her plain, mildly colored apparel, her legs, the
binding around her bruised hand. “My, that warehouse must have been dark,
or maybe I need to see an optometrist: how did I ever mistake you for a
man?”
Catherine’s lip curls, and nothing civil remains in her savage face.
“Keep looking at me, and I’ll rip your balls off with my bare hands,
Kaleidoscope.”
He laughs. “So you do know about me! Delightful.”
“Why are you here?” It is not the question she wants to ask. Instead, she
wants to ask—demand—how he found her, how he knew, how he
discovered the Hangman, and how he saw her through that vicious guise.
“To parlay, as the pirates say.” He shifts to retrieve something from his
pocket, and Catherine stiffens, wary, but it is only a phone. He gives the
screen a few light taps, and Catherine’s own phone blips. She is almost too
full of dread to retrieve it.
An email from a sender encrypted in a blur of strange, random symbols
sits in her inbox and, without taking her eyes off the man before her, she
opens the email and reads the news article shared within. It details a half-
hearted arson investigation in the county limits where a familiar warehouse
burned to the ground yesterday morning. The attached picture shows
nothing but a crisp husk still belching black soot through the trees.
Catherine narrows her eyes.
“You’re welcome,” he says without waiting for a response. She cannot
tell if he is mocking her or if he is as utterly unaffected by her hostility as
he seems.
“You helped yourself,” she retorts, the words little more than a hiss. “I
am not the only one who bled on that floor.” He shrugs. “What do you
want?”
“What do any of us want?” The Kaleidoscope tucks his phone away
again and Catherine notices how clean his hands are. She stares at his long,
thin fingers and the slight discoloration on his knuckles from their scuffle.
“And by any of us, I mean people like you and I.” He takes a step forward,
and she freezes, anticipating violence, but he cannot act, not here, where
Catherine is the familiar face and thus the more reliable testimony. Should
they fight, the police will take her word over his. “I won’t hurt you, you
know. Not now, anyway. Isn’t it nice to take off the mask, if only for a little
while? Or do you enjoy pretending your hands are perfectly clean all the
time?”
He is level with her, their sleeves brushing. The Kaleidoscope reaches
out to tuck a piece of folded paper into the breast pocket of her coat, and his
breath brushes her cheek. Warm fingertips ghost over her wrist. “See you
soon, Catherine.”
Then he is gone, a gust of air moving, and her heart races in her chest,
fear and anger and curiosity fulminating beneath her flesh as Catherine
touches her front pocket, paper crinkling, and her hands shake.
“Catherine?”
Adeline Lincoln is there, sipping coffee through a green straw with her
dark eyes seeing too much, smelling of dust and printer ink and fresh
pastries, a spot of raspberry jam smudging her lips.
Catherine slips two fingers under her own sleeve and presses them
against the watch. Tick. Tick. Tick.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Catherine replies by rote, swallowing, clearing her throat. “Yes,
I’m fine.”
Lincoln looks past her, then back at Catherine, dark hair curling across
her furrowed brow. “Who was that guy? He’s not giving you trouble, is
he?”
A laugh escapes Catherine; she cannot help it. “No,” she tells Lincoln as
she leans gently against the side of her boring sedan, her knees weaker than
she’d like to admit. She feels like a woman who just stepped off the tracks a
mere second before the train came barreling through. She is terrified and
exhilarated in equal measures. “I have no idea who he is.”
 ix. bishop
It flickers between her fingers, back and forth, back and forth, the muted
flutter of paper touching flesh, and Catherine stares at the jagged little
letters written in black ink.
The note handed to her by the Kaleidoscope contains only one line: a
time, a date, and a location.
It intrigues Catherine despite herself. She blames it on a natural human
inclination to flirt with death, l’appel du vide, as the French say; it’s the
need to prod a swelling bruise, an Existential drive to reassert one’s
dominance over life and death. The supposed thrill does little for Catherine,
but she skirted the end when she crossed paths with the Kaleidoscope, and
she wants to understand, wants to level the ground under her feet so the
world can be as steady as it seems in the crisp sheen of morning light.
Maybe she’s drowning and doesn’t realize. Maybe she’s trying to grab
onto anything she can in her choking, twilight hour.
That is why she is here. That is why Catherine stands outside a cafe
halfway between a revitalized suburb and a tired slum, her reflection
rippling in the glass, a blank-eyed woman people see but can’t remember.
She’s like those accumulated forty-five minutes in a day where the eyes
blink and move and blur out the world. Catherine exists in those fleeting
moments between sight and recognition, there but not, in a perpetual state
of forgettable apathy. Grisha would say the abstraction comes in with the
value of her truth: people know there is a woman who stands in her shoes,
know there is a woman living in her apartment, know a woman works at the
civilian administrator’s desk—but these are vague conditions attainable by
anyone who meets the criteria. The actuality of Catherine Themis isn’t
known, isn’t quantifiable, the truth of her like the wind in an open sky.
The Kaleidoscope has seen her. She wants to look back.
A small bell gives a tired chime when Catherine pushes in the door, the
comforting warmth eating away at the chill. The air smells of baked goods
and burnt coffee—the staples of a typical chain cafe, the veneer of newness
still gleaming on the patterned walls, in the polished grinders and spotless
refrigerated displays. She approaches the register and orders a cup of the
house roast, black without sugar, and searches the interior while she thumbs
through folded bills, handing four off to the barista. She moves to the side,
and her order comes, Catherine taking it and walking farther into the cafe
with her cup in hand.
 The Kaleidoscope sits stirring a mug of tea at a booth exposed to the
direct light of the sun, half of his face washed out in the glow, the other half
drawn into the shadows cut by the rays’ trajectories. Catherine sinks into
the seat across from him and marvels at the appallingly domestic display
before her. Two killers lounge at a booth drinking coffee and tea with no
one the wiser to their presence.
“Hello, Catherine,” he says without pretense, lifting his mug to take a
tentative sip. Steam curls around his smiling lips. “I wasn’t certain you’d
come. That’s a new experience for me, not properly guessing a person’s
next move. I’ve been marveling at the sensation.”
“And what now?” she asks in a low voice. “I answered your…
summons. So where does that leave us?”
“Not a summons. An invitation! I did tell you I wanted to talk, did I
not?”
“Is that all you want?”
“No, not precisely.” He traces the rim of his cup with one thin fingertip,
and his gaze lingers on Catherine, amused, one gray eye brilliant in the sun
and the other almost black in the dark. “My, my. The infamous Hangman. I
think I’m still in shock. So tell me, what do you know of me?”
She fights the urge to sneer. “I’ve been told you have the unfortunate
habit of slaughtering your muses.”
The Kaleidoscope chuckles. “Sometimes. When they’ve served their
purpose, I send them on their way.”
“And what of me? What will happen when I ‘serve my purpose’? Am I
going to find myself hanging from my own noose?”
“How dramatic. That’d be rather poetic, though, wouldn’t it? I do like
the imagery.” He drinks more tea, and his keen gaze flickers, taking in the
room, the street outside. “Your death isn’t my intention, however. When
you proved less than loquacious on our initial meeting, I thought to be rid of
you—imagine how utterly disappointed I was after putting forth so much
effort searching for the Hangman to find him completely disinterested in
conversation! I didn’t realize, of course, that you had certain reasons for
remaining voiceless.”
Catherine squeezes her cup hard enough to bend the cardboard, and she
forces herself to relax. “Is that what you want, then? Conversation?”
“Not entirely. I told you what I want.”
 She takes a drink and swallows, peering at the man as he adds another
dollop of cream to his tea and uses the corner of a paper napkin to clean a
stray droplet. “You want…to take off the mask. That’s what you said, isn’t
it?”
“Precisely.” He sips again, his manners refined.
“You want a partner.”
“No. How tedious. Like you, I would say I want a confidant.”
Catherine arches a brow. “Who says I don’t have a confidant? Who says
I’d want one?”
“That little whisper of madness I hear in your voice.” He smirks. “Come
now, do you think you can fool me? I’ve peeked in that head of yours. I
found you, didn’t I?”
“Yes—and I’d like to know how you pulled that off, exactly.”
The Kaleidoscope laughs. “Would you, now? You’re bold under that
cheap veneer. You won’t admit you need a confidant—but maybe we can
still come to an agreement? I’ll tell you how I found you. I’ll even show
you how I find the others as well. In exchange, you’re going to have to take
off that mask of yours and show me all the terrible things that hide
underneath.”
Her skins prickles at the low dip of his voice, and his mouth quirks, the
quick flash of his tongue tasting his lower lip before he drinks more tea.
“Why?” Catherine asks, her eyes narrowed and her coffee forgotten.
“Why me and not any of those you’ve disposed of before? If it’s because
I’m a woman—.”
“Of course not,” he replies. “Though it is a factor. Don’t pretend
otherwise. Not with me. You’re one of a kind, Catherine, and I fancy myself
a connoisseur of all things so tragically unique.”
She sniffs, and her apparent apathy pleases the Kaleidoscope.
“You made your decision when you walked through that door, didn’t
you? I wouldn’t think you the type to take the metaphoric plunge without
contemplating what swims in the water, without knowing you could eat
anything that dared try to take a bite out of you. There’s a special kind of
terror to the creature you are—a snake who’ll devour other snakes without
the slightest inclination toward mercy. I can see that in you. Did you think I
arranged to meet in a public venue for your protection? Oh no. This was for
mine; I know you would kill me in an instant if you could get those pretty
hands around my neck properly, no matter your curiosity.” He finishes his
tea and sets the mug down upon its saucer without a sound. “And you are
curious, aren’t you, Catherine? So very curious.”
She watches as he uses his napkin to wipe the rim of his cup and the
handle.
“Tell me, do you know any Nietzsche?”
Catherine crosses her arms, and he interprets the impatient gesture as a
positive response.
“‘And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back
into you,’” the Kaleidoscope quotes as he stands and buttons his coat.
“Am I supposed to take that as some kind of warning?” she drawls, eyes
on the killer tidying his clothes. “Some prophetic trash about not becoming
a monster? Not that you or any other trite forum dweller needs an excuse to
trot out Nietzsche.”
“No, dear Catherine.” He smiles and holds out a card to her between
two fingers. “You have long since become the monster. It was more a
promise; I long to peer into the abyss you have become, and I eagerly wait
to be consumed by it. There is nothing more exquisite than to know and be
known in return. That is what I am offering you.”
She takes the card, and he suddenly ducks his head, her breath catching
in her throat when the Kaleidoscope brushes his lips against her cheek. Too
close.
“You’ll be hearing from me.”
He is gone in the next instant, and Catherine is still there, uneasy and
mystified, a slim bit of cardstock clasped in her hand. She flips it, and the
black letters seem to suck in the light. There is a number and a name.
Bishop Eris.
 x. le fou
Grisha teaches Catherine to play chess.
She recognizes the effort the surgeon makes in helping her. His knack
for spotting the injured and helpless is eerie in its tenacity, though Catherine
fiercely rebuffs his earliest attempts of befriending her. She’s just a strange
spitfire of a girl unwilling to accept anything handed to her, and Grisha
endures the worst of her behavior.
She sits at the bedside of her dying father, breathing between the
unhurried blips on the EKG, hating that deplorable little room with its off-
patterned linoleum and scratched windows looking out over the ugly river.
She stares at the tile beneath her scuffed shoes, at the crooked lines coming
together, and hates, hates, hates it.
Her father lies before her in his eventual death bed, and Catherine sits in
that crooked hospital chair for what feels like days, could be years, hating
herself and her father, that damn floor, the uneven chair, and especially Dr.
Morse. She meets him for the first time at her father’s side, and she doesn’t
hear the words coming out of his mouth because everything is roaring in
her head: the gurgle of Bertholdt Themis’ breath, the groan of hospital
machinery, Morse’s level voice, her raging heartbeat.
The surgeon stops speaking and narrows his eyes, takes in the rapid gust
of her breathing and the fragile way her fists clench at the edges of her seat,
and he grabs her wrist. She almost attacks the poor man, but he swiftly tips
two little white pills into her sweating palm and lets go. He paces into the
adjoining restroom, from which he returns with a paper cup of tepid water.
He holds it out.
It isn’t the last time Grisha will hand her illicit pills, but it is the first
time, and Catherine marvels at his behavior long after the medicated calm
dwindles. She watches the surgeon from the corner of her eye whenever she
sees him, until finally she asks why he did it—after all, he could get in
trouble, could lose his license, or even his freedom.
Grisha Morse shrugs as if it doesn’t matter.
Of course, she later learns his crimes are far more severe than a few
shared pills, but she doesn’t know that at first. She lingers overlong in the
hospital after school and watches as the morphine drips into her father’s
veins, and Grisha is there to offer distraction. He gives a soft word shared
like communion wine, a question about her schooling or her dreams
measured against the sickly calm of her father’s wheezing.
 As a surgeon, he doesn’t need to see Bertholdt as often as he does since
the man is dying and nothing can be done about it. Catherine’s initial
impression of Dr. Morse is of a black-feathered carrion eater hovering at the
bed’s end, hungry as a crow waiting for his feast. But then, she realizes the
surgeon’s gaze remains fixed on her more often than not. He is not there for
Bertholdt; he is there for Catherine.
She spends more time at the hospital than at home in those final days.
She wastes away like the dregs of insurance payments and the figure of her
once proud father curling in upon himself. He’s an autumn leaf browning at
the edges until it shrivels and winter takes the last of its color, and Catherine
sits too long at his side, watching it happen.
Dr. Morse shoos her from the room with more frequency, sits her in the
cafeteria and forces bland but filling meals on her, and settles her in his dark
office like a surly reptile tipped into a terrarium. Despite herself, Catherine
likes his office because it’s silent and warm, and she comes to like Dr.
Morse because he seems to know all the things she can’t articulate. When
he tells her Bertholdt’s final request, she nods, agrees, and falls into the
tear-filled recollections of Isaak Peak’s last moments.
They start playing chess in his office though Catherine is reluctant and
too impatient for games of any kind, even ones of the mind. Grisha has
patience enough for the both of them; they sit across from one another in
the lowlight of the evening with Grisha’s battered, portable board on the
desk between them. His pager rests by his calligraphy pens, the clock on the
wall ticking loud in the silence like the throbbing of a steady heart. She is
utterly wretched at chess, and she tells the surgeon so at every opportunity,
yet he always smiles like he knows something she doesn’t—and he does, he
knows so much that Catherine can only guess at—and waits for her to sit.
They play a game.
“You are not utilizing your bishops,” he tells her, gesturing at the pieces
Catherine rarely touches. “You favor the rook too heavily.”
Her nose wrinkles as she takes one of the bishops in hand and rolls it
between her fingers, the plastic cold and scratched. “I like how
straightforward the rook is. The bishop’s, I don’t know, kind of useless. It’s
always boxed in, and I can’t do anything with it.”
“That is called a bad bishop,” he says, pausing their game to rearrange
the pieces to his liking. He points at the bishop he has left on the board.
“You can’t move this, yes? That is because you have left your pawns on the
squares of the same color. You can better utilize the bishop if you anticipate
its path and clear the way, like this—.” He shifts the black pawns about and
draws his fingers along the dark squares in sharp, swift lines, showing how
she could have danced about the board with ease had she pushed her own
pieces out of the way. “That is a good bishop.”
The principles become clear when Grisha explains the maneuvers, and
Catherine feels a fool for not understanding the rules the first time. Grisha
doesn’t apologize; he presses a watch into her hands when he teaches her to
breathe, plays chess when he teaches her strategy, and smirks without
remorse when she learns humility. Arrogance, he warns, kills paupers and
kings. She knows the value in conceding defeat.
“The English call it a bishop because of the top,” he comments as he
runs a nail along the bishop’s crest and returns the pieces to their former
places. “They thought it to be a miter. The French, however, call it le fou.”
Catherine snorts. “The fool?”
“Yes. But in this sense, the madman.”
***
“You didn’t give me your real name.”
Bishop Eris stands with his back to her, his elbows on the sun-bleached
rail, still wearing that black coat with the dual lines of dark buttons and a
flared collar. He is an ambiguous figure Catherine is wary of approaching,
unsure of what he plans to do. She thinks about that weathered chessboard
now tucked away in Grisha’s dusty office—thinks about good bishops and
bad bishops and what kind of bishop she might have stumbled upon here. It
depends on how quick the Kaleidoscope is to move his pawns.
He doesn’t respond to her accusation, doesn’t turn from the railing. He
gestures her closer and Catherine goes with calculated grace, her eyes
narrowed against the glare coming off the cold river burbling beneath the
footbridge. It is a carefully chosen meeting place in full view of two
avenues, secluded in the inclement weather. It spares the two murderers
from prying eyes.
“Ran me for priors, did you?” the man who calls himself Bishop says as
Catherine stands at his side. The water churns beneath them, threatening to
rise, the banks on either side frazzled with untamed brush and smooth rocks
where children play in the summertime. Need drives her here over curiosity
today because while she wants to know the Kaleidoscope, wants to peer at
the shifting glass until the image makes sense, she is still the target of a
manhunt, and it’s imperative to learn where she went wrong in covering her
tracks.
“Yes,” she replies.
“You won’t find anything.”
“Obviously.”
He snorts, and she notices the phone is in his hands, his fingers moving
with inexplicable ease. The screen darkens, and he tucks it away. “Lovely to
see you again, Catherine. My, is that a black scarf I see? So very
menacing!”
She cannot decide if he is mocking or teasing her; either way, his
comment is unappreciated. Her eyes glint with displeasure.
“Tell me, my beautiful garroter, about the first man you killed.”
Catherine doesn’t roll her eyes, but it’s a near thing. “Why? Are you
recording this?”
The Kaleidoscope shifts, eases his weight onto one elbow to face
Catherine and maintain his languid posture. “No.” He clears his throat and
takes on a tone of mock bravado, speaking directly into his lapel. “My name
is Bishop Eris, and I killed Debbie Kozlov on the fourteenth of September
to pay homage to the stunning skills of the murderer otherwise known as
the Hangman.”
Catherine scoffs and tucks her gloved hands into her pockets as she
glares at the river. Bishop’s eyes trace the contours of her profile. “There’s
no need to be ridiculous.”
“I have always had a particular fondness for the ridiculous.” He winks.
The stitches are still bold on his curved lip. “I did prove my point, though,
didn’t I? Go on. I want to hear about your first.”
She ignores the blatant innuendo. She knew coming here meant sharing
information; it’s what the man wants, after all, and so Catherine gives in to
his needling. “A college drop-out rebelling against his daddy and society in
equal measures. An inebriated pissant no one misses, I assure you.”
“I am assured. What did this reprobate do to you?”
“Who says he did anything to me?”
He observes her as his index finger taps against his chin in thought.
There is little to his person that is not deliberate, no uncomfortable shifting
or idle eye motions, each twitch of the hand a deliberate movement of
consideration. Tap. Tap. Tap.
 “No, not to you. To a loved one. A woman, I would guess. Something
sexual, perhaps, or murder. It would have to be violent, oh yes, violent
enough to give you that push, the push, that excuse for you to utilize all that
lovely violence positively dripping from your veins. Tell me you did it with
your own hands.”
Catherine’s attention remains faceted on the eddying tide as the ghost of
Isaak Peak laughs in her ear. The tacky feel of blood sticks her trembling
fingers together in her memory. “Enough. Tell me how you found me.”
He tuts. “Patience is a virtue, you know.”
Her gaze jerks to his, and Bishop smiles at the unyielding glower. “I
have little need for virtue.”
“Is this where you start threatening me to talk or else?”
“If I thought torturing you would get me anywhere, we wouldn’t be
here.” It is a lie. They both know it. Catherine is many things, but she has
never tortured her victims and doesn’t think she could do so unless given no
other choice. Her eyes linger on his crooked grin. “Don’t taunt me. I may
break more of your teeth.”
Bishop pouts, but there is something hard in his expression, in the
sudden sharpness of his tone. “Now, now, no need for violence. Is it my
imagination, or is your nose looking a bit crooked?”
“It’s your imagination.”
“If only everything in my imagination could become so…real.”
Catherine jabs him hard in the ribs, and he catches her wrist before she
can retreat, his fingers warm on her skin, squeezing, holding her in place.
“Let me go, or—.”
“Or what, Catherine?” His tone is more challenging than ever, and she
remembers the strength hidden in his otherwise unimpressive form, can
only speculate at the physique he’s hiding under thick wool and cashmere.
He defeated her once already.
Arrogance kills paupers and kings.
“If you’re going to hit me, you had best aim to kill,” Bishop sneers. “I
will not tolerate being struck. Do try to recall who you are dealing with
here.”
He releases her. Catherine snatches her arm back. The silence is thick
between them, as corporeal as a third body sucking the air out of their
lungs, and she steps back once, then twice, her boots echoing on the gray
boards of the bridge. Catherine turns to leave.
 “I found you by looking,” he says, bored, giving her pause. “It’s how I
find all of them.”
“What do you mean?”
He is slow in his approach and unapologetic in breaching her personal
space, comfortable in a way that has Catherine on edge, like he’s always
been there in her shadow lurking between the ghosts. All he has to do is
lean in, whispering. “Where do you look first, my lovely little monster?”
“What do you mean?”
The Kaleidoscope brushes his lips against her cheek and doesn’t answer.
“Until next time, Catherine.”
She leaves first this time, anger in the stiff slant of her shoulders and the
tightness of her stance as she paces to her car and slams the door. She thinks
they should call him le Fou instead of the Kaleidoscope, because he is both
a fool and a fucking madman. Again and again, she plays his words over in
her head. She spits vitriolic repetition for the remainder of the day, slams
her fists and knees and elbows into the punching bag at the gym, and sleeps
with Bishop Eris’ voice in her thoughts and his lips on her flushed cheek.
“I found you by looking.”
In the morning, she rises before her alarm and sits on the edge of her
mattress, rubbing tired circles against her temples. Virgil yawns, leans into
her side, and Catherine strokes his fur before heading toward the restroom.
“It’s how I find all of them.”
Her bare toes dig into the rug as she stands at the sink, tilts her chin, and
looks into the mirror. Catherine pauses.
“Where do you look first, my lovely little monster?”
Her fingers tremble when they touch the glass.
 xi. monster
Despite what the uninformed may claim, Catherine does not hate men.
She doesn’t particularly care for them, either. She watches day in and
day out as they march along the grubby hall to the booking office, and she
reads their crimes in black and white print: murder, rape, assault, theft. The
list never seems to end, all the anger and disdain symptoms and a lack of
control. She knows well the violence women are capable of, but it is men
who comprise most of her victims, men of despicable natures who evade
the blind fumbling of Justice only to find themselves on Catherine’s
gallows.
Not everyone who swings is a man, however.
The Hangman is particular; she follows prospective clients' routines
until she can predict their every step and trace their routes like she traces
the veins in her arm. She breathes in until she becomes the monster and fits
her feet into their shoes, following the paths they tread. She is there in the
moment no one else is, a snake in the grass, and when they dare step on her
tail, she strikes. Her pattern never wavers.
The Hangman is patient, particular.
There are exceptions.
There is—was—a target who does something unexpected. The woman,
Martina Knight, goes to the park when she is supposed to be on her way
home, and Catherine feels a sudden prickling at the base of her spine as she
follows. The sun swells low upon the horizon, a red disk balanced upon a
tightrope behind the black silhouette of Dedwich homes. Sharp crabgrass
and overgrown bushes surround a sandpit where children build castles
destined to crumble, the rusted jungle gym like an iron cage rising against
the sunset. It’s an ominous setting rendered ridiculous and maudlin by the
unfettered laughter of girls and boys.
Martina Knight sits on a bench, her curly blond hair caught in a rumpled
bun, her sunglasses large and obfuscating, her leg bouncing like an anxious
junkie waiting for her fix. She is, by all appearances, mild-mannered and
vaguely pretty like a portrait of pointillism—deceptive at a distance and
rather ugly up close, the edges of her countenance jagged where the lines of
makeup show.
You’re not supposed to be here.
Catherine slumps onto the bench next to Martina Knight and plays with
her phone, making idle motions with her fingers as if texting or emailing.
Knight holds herself still, then relaxes.
“Nice evenin’, ain’t it?” Catherine comments in a nasal voice.
Knight smirks, nods, face turning toward the sandpit.
“Which one of em’ is yours?”
Hesitant, the woman gestures at the conglomerate of children and
indicates a dark-haired boy who shares none of her characteristics.
Liar. Catherine’s teeth groan under the force of her clenching jaw, a
breath of forced indifference leaving her mouth as she returns attention to
her blank phone. Liar—LIAR.
Martina Knight has no children, no relatives, nothing.
Catherine’s instincts spark like wildfire, instincts born in her primal
mind, honed by her despicable deeds and tempered by the lifeblood of
thugs, thieves, and degenerates. This situation has never happened before.
The Hangman’s marks are slippery individuals fresh off the docket, and like
any good eel, they bury themselves deep in the rocks or silt, hide
themselves and their tendencies and their hunger until they feel safe enough
to strike once more. Knight is breaking the rules.
In time, Catherine sets an alarm on her phone, changes the siren to a
dull ring tone, and pretends to answer it when the timer runs out. “Yeah, I’ll
be right there,” she says to no one at all as she rises with a put-upon sigh
and strides away toward the parking lot. She ducks into the shadows cast by
an outbuilding before she reaches the cars and leans into the hot bricks at
her back. The hard edges bite her flesh.
That fucking LIAR.
Catherine squeezes her eyes shut and counts breaths. Normally, her prey
is more careful than this; they escape incarceration and forego criminal
activity to avoid further conflict with authorities, if only for a time—but this
is different. Unexpected. A break in the tidy pattern Catherine has knitted in
the image of Martina Knight, like a moth chewing through the threads and
filaments until the canvas is a pockmarked ruin.
Her ribs ache from the force of her breathing.
The Hangman tells her this place is too public; there are eyes here, not
many but too many, childish eyes, impressionable eyes, the tired eyes of
tired parents, and the jaded eyes of the disenfranchised. The sun lingers still
and there is little cover, no narrow alleys to disappear into, no unfriendly
dives where creatures like her can slink in plain sight.
 The part of Catherine that is half-wild with blood under her nails and a
head full of ghosts tells her Martina Knight should not be here, and she can
do nothing about it.
Harried voices make up her mind for her.
Knight leads the same dark-haired boy she pointed out earlier by the
hand, her bony fingers clenched tight about his, and the boy scuffs his ratty
tennis shoes when he tugs on his arm. Uncertainty plagues his childish face
and though Knight croons in the soft voice of a mother, a part of the boy
recognizes the glinting teeth moving in the dark, and feels the weight of a
predator’s attention like a tiger’s heaving breath on the back of his neck. He
hesitates and says, “Where’s mama?”
“She asked me to look after you for a little while. You’ll behave for me
now, won’t you? For her—?”
“I want mama!”
“You’ll see her soon, I promise! I promise—.”
They approach Knight’s dated sedan, and Catherine moves forward, her
hood yanked over her distinctive hair, her hands trembling—trembling—
until she has a fistful of Knight’s sweater. The woman reels, snaps, “What
the f—!” and Catherine slams her head into the car window. The sunglasses
crack and break when they bounce upon the asphalt.
The little boy stands tremulous and agape. He stares into Catherine’s
eyes, and she stares into his.
“Run to your mother,” she says, forcing her words to hurt, to terrify. He
starts but doesn’t move. Knight slumps on the ground between them like a
bleeding ragdoll. “Now!”
The boy takes off, and Catherine returns her attention to Knight as the
woman groans and shifts, her eyelids fluttering. Red stains her skin and the
cracked spiderwebbing on the window. Catherine looks at her and feels no
stirring of remorse, no compassion; she sees not a woman but a thing, some
chthonic being who crawled out of the earth itself to befoul the air and
devour the innocent.
She feels nothing but cold, clinical rage when she strikes Knight again.
She throws the unconscious woman into the sedan, takes the keys, and
drives away, leaving behind only a pair of broken sunglasses and a
nightmare for a little boy who, years later, wonders what might have been.
Catherine Themis doesn’t kill men. She doesn’t kill women.
She kills monsters.
 ***
She stands at the edge of the parking lot with her hands folded before
herself and observes the space where Martina Knight last saw daylight.
The glasses are gone, of course, and the painted lines between rows
have faded while the distant jungle gym rusted to nothing but a barbed,
sagging frame. A few couples and their children brave the grounds despite
the chill in the air. None of them consider her. She simply stands and waits.
Catherine doesn’t react when Bishop Eris arrives. He steps onto the curb
too close to her side and rocks on his heels, his coat brushing hers. “I see
you’ve figured it out.”
She says nothing at first, teeth clenched and her mind still trapped in the
past, chastising herself again and again for impassioned mistakes and
misdeeds. “You said you found me by looking. Where else do we initially
look but at ourselves? Humans endlessly compare and catalog faults, either
in others or in themselves, and always we come back to our own egoism. In
the end, it was simple for you, wasn’t it? All you had to do was find one
fault in the design.”
Catherine doesn’t point, but she does lift her chin toward the streetlight
positioned mere feet away. At the top of the light perches a security camera
directly facing the now empty parking spot.
Bishop joins Catherine in her silent vigil. No marker of her actions
remains, yet this place resonates with her, a physical landmark to attribute
Catherine Themis’ subversion of the Hangman. Knight had been a crime
closer to Isaak Peak and Luke Elliott’s deaths than to any other she’s
perpetuated in recent years.
“I let my anger get the better of me,” she continues. “Logically, I should
have waited. I should have followed her somewhere quiet, then continued
my work. But I—I couldn’t.”
“Because of the child.”
“…because of the child.”
Bishop Eris sighs as if he’s bored, and Catherine eyes him, the man
wearing the same coat as he had at their last meeting and the meeting before
that, and though his voice is as droll as ever, she sees real ire in his colorless
eyes.
“A calculated mistake. Those who prey upon children are—lesser.” A
perceptible tightening arrests his jaw and neck. “You spared the boy a
gruesome fate by disposing of the rubbish. Do you regret your decision?”
 “Not for an instant,” Catherine replies. “But it is an error that will most
likely be my undoing. Behold—.” She flicks a negligible hand at the lot and
scoffs. “My sword of Damocles.”
He shrugs. “So melodramatic,” Eris drawls. “In this instance, however,
I’ve covered your tracks, my tremulous drop of nightshade.”
“Christ,” she sighs at his horrid epithet. “I don’t believe you.”
“You wound me, truly.” He draws himself straight and moves an errant
lock of hair from Catherine’s cheek. She leans away. “Little heretic; you
have your prayers answered, are gifted deliverance, and still you
blaspheme.”
“I did not pray for deliverance,” she retorts. She takes a step off the
curb, tiring of his ridiculous attitude. This was not a place for flippancy.
“And you are not God.”
Bishop Eris only smiles, and when he loops his arm through hers,
Catherine doesn’t shake him off. They walk in the shabby, rundown park
without another word shared between them, and for a moment, Catherine
wonders if this is what normalcy feels like, if this is what genuine humanity
is like.
No matter what Bishop says, Catherine still believes Martina Knight
and a cheap security camera will prove her undoing.
 xii. the howling wolf
Addie Lincoln is thirteen years old when she takes her first life.
It isn’t a human life, no. It’s a white-tailed buck with a majestic spread
of antlers, and there are two feet of snow hugging Addie’s knees, her
shoulder throbbing from the rifle’s kickback because no matter how many
times she practices in the backyard, shooting old tomato cans and the
occasional soda bottle, Addie always forgets how hard the recoil can be.
Addie is alone. The cold air bites at her mouth like the kiss of an
aggressive lover, all teeth and no tongue to lave away the sting. Addie
swallows down the feeling until it prickles in her throat and claws at her
lungs. She lowers the gun, the shot still echoing through the bare trees and
against the distant spine of hills. She cradles her aching arm as she bites
down on her lip, and copper blunts the smell of spent powder.
The buck is on his side, and though the blood continues to seep and
stain the earth, it is already dead. Addie’s father taught her to make every
shot count.
“Don’t you pull that trigger unless you mean it,” he warned her, and
Addie hears his voice before she pulls the rifle up, before she exhales,
before she takes aim and lays a bare finger on the trigger. “And you better
mean it if you wanna fuckin’ eat. Secure it against your shoulder, girl.”
Still, she forgets.
***
Addie Lincoln is fifteen when she kills again, though she can’t decide if
he’s human or something else altogether.
She comes home most nights from school to the sound of their arguing;
her mom could shout with the best of them, and Addie’s never known her
father to speak in anything less than a sharp Northeastern twang, even when
his tongue is bloated with drink and his thoughts malleable like heated
butter. She wades through the crushed cans littering the floor and holds her
breath against the smell of stale beer soaking into the carpet. She listens to
the crash of plates hitting the walls in the kitchen.
The police sometimes come when her parents are too loud and the
neighbors can’t sleep, but they think her dad deserves a nag for a wife since
he decided to marry outside his “kind,” so they flip the sirens to quiet their
shouting and don’t bother getting out the cruiser. Addie watches them drive
by, her fingers twisting in the paisley curtains, their tires crunching on the
dirt road. The yard is a wild tangle of untouched grass, and gorse encircles a
wily elm separating her world from theirs.
The cops do nothing when her parents fight.
They look away when her mom comes out of the house sporting bruises
and a split lip.
They ignore the teary confession of her sister when she finally manages
to sputter the words between choked gasps. They twist recollections of their
father’s midnight visits into lewd, nonsense fairy tales dreamed up by a
damaged girl. Addie’s sister stops talking after that; the last words she ever
says are “I hope he dies,” and they find her swinging from the elm in the
front yard the next morning.
Addie still remembers the tacky feel of stale beer on the bottom of her
sneakers, the smell of blooming hollyhocks, the sound of the noose
creaking under her sister’s weight.
She and her father go out on a hunt when the season turns. The air puffs
from her mouth in white clouds and fills her lungs with familiar needles.
Her father walks ahead of her, crossing the ice, and Addie stops. She lifts
her rifle and finishes what the cops should have done long ago.
“Don’t you pull that trigger unless you mean it.”
Addie does mean it. The gunshot echoes in her skull, in the trees, in the
dale, like the creaking of the noose. The ice under him cracks and buckles
when she shoots again, and the waters rise.
They never do find the body.
***
Addie Lincoln is seventeen when she loses herself.
Her mom returns them to her people, to the Innu, who walked those
deep valleys of the north first and still claim the land as their own—though
they alone understand that the wilds belong to no one and will continue
long after human bones degrade to dust. They know the mountains and the
forest and the rivers. They understand.
Addie goes hunting with her cousins, but they don’t think she’s the right
color, don’t like the English that comes off her tongue, or her “city-girl”
ways. They don’t like Addie, so they walk her into the trees and disappear,
leaving nothing behind but a faint impression of footprints in the drifts that
vanish in hours. Addie wanders, alone, cold, terrified, thinking of red on the
snow, red on the ice, the gush of water through the cracks like blood from a
fresh wound.
 Like blood from the stag’s heart.
Like blood from her father’s head.
Her skin prickles and burns where it’s exposed. The wind strips her
flesh, and the sun blinds where the rays glance upon the wet layer of downy
powder. She is blind and bloody and feverish when she hears them, the
rapid footfalls of agile wolves circling through the ensnaring ribcage of
naked trees, their maws painted red from a fresh kill, and delirious Addie
wonders if the wolves ate out her father’s heart. She wonders, but there are
no wolves back home, and home isn’t home any longer.
She pants, mouth dry, the rifle rattling in her gloved hands. Addie is
certain the trigger must be frozen solid, and she forgot to tape the barrel in
her rush to follow her cousins from the lodge. Ice clings to the tip. She can
barely see, but she does spy the moving shapes, lupine figures dancing,
eager and bloodthirsty like all truly wild things. In the clarity found only on
the cusp of death, Addie knows we are all wild things, and though man
might not crawl on his belly, may have taught himself to walk upright and
gave himself a voice, the wolf is still there, still watching like her sneering
cousins watched her over the dinner table, planning her death. Wolves will
savage their young if they feel the need, and she realizes we are all wolves
just pretending to be sheep.
Addie falls to her knees, holds the rifle against her chest, and waits.
The pack spares her. They spare her, and Addie never knows why. She
only knows the warm breath of the alpha against her unmoving face, the
wolves leaving her to either die or claw her way back to civilization.
Addie does the latter.
She walks long into the night like the wolves are still with her, like they
never really leave, and when she sees the village’s lights flickering at the
mountain’s base, Addie Lincoln throws back her head and howls.
In the distance, she is answered.
***
Addie Lincoln is twenty-five and holds a .40 caliber G22 pistol over the
body of a dead man.
She stands in the middle of an arrest gone wrong, more slumped forms
on the ground than live bodies walking. Her breath is as coarse and cold as
it had been that dawn in the woods outside her home, when she sighted the
buck down the line of her barrel and fired. Smoke curls from the gun, and
her ears ring, the sound of the shots ricocheting off the pitted walls, her
hands steady but white around the knuckles. The yellow letters ‘FBI’ seem
to glow across the front of her vest.
There is a dead man at her feet. There is a dead man in the doorway.
There is a dead man under the table. A dead agent slumps against an
overturned desk, his front a gummy mess from taking a shotgun blast too
close to the chest. There are two dead agents behind Addie Lincoln and a
fourth who is injured on the floor, thumbing his radio with a bloody hand,
groaning, “Ten-seventy echo, requesting emergency backup! And for God’s
sake, send an ambulance!”
Addie is twenty-five when she walks into the air-conditioned field
office in Maryland to the sound of applause. They bring their hands
together and clap because Addie has killed three men and saved a fellow
agent—they clap because three men are dead, and Addie doesn’t understand
humans much, because if not for the shiny little badge pinned to her chest,
they would’ve handcuffed Addie for what she did. She wonders if that’s
why the badges are shaped like shields. It’s a tiny scrap of metal giving her
authority, and authority is the glass phalanx that turns murder into self-
defense, turns savagery into justice.
The old men in their suits glower as they clap, white pates gleaming in
the fluorescents, ponderous bodies swaying. They applaud because they
have to, because Addie is a hero, and they hate her for it. They hate Addie
Lincoln because she has the blood of a native in her veins and lacks the
proper equipment in her pants, because she graduated second in her class
from Dedwich University, though she still thinks of Catherine Themis with
her hungry, watching eyes sometimes. They hate Addie’s beauty, her
unnerving stare, the acuity of her aim, and the edge of her tongue.
They hate because she’s been tapped by the Behavioral Analysis Unit
and is on her way up, up, up.
They will try to defeat her, those dying titans, those moldering wrecks
of a chauvinistic ruin smelling of carrion and fear. The obstacles in her way
will be many, unending, and they will send her on the most challenging
missions, wanting to see her trip, fall, fail, die, but Addie doesn’t flinch in
the face of adversity. She howls.
Addie Lincoln is twenty-five when they pin a medal on her chest and
induct her into the BAU. She is twenty-five when she shakes hands with the
men who hide their hate behind yellowing teeth and tell her, “You’ll do
great things, Special Agent Lincoln.”
Addie smiles like a wolf.
 xiii. reputation
Addie Lincoln is twenty-nine when she is assigned the Hangman case.
Her superiors scrounge for the worst tasks to give her, the most brutal
killers and criminals ever to walk their jurisdiction. Addie knows some
intrinsic part of their hindbrains hopes Special Agent Lincoln will come
home in one of those sleek black body bags she keeps sending off to the
morgue whenever she’s out on assignment. Addie has a reputation; the
Bureau pushes her into the crosshairs of sociopaths and violent degenerates,
kingpins and terrorists and serial killers, and always Addie fires first,
leaving bodies on the ground and blood on the walls.
Addie Lincoln has killed ten people, one woman and nine men, in the
line of duty. Some of the monsters she hunts aren’t as prolific as she is.
She’s never so much as winged an agent, but some are skittish around her,
quick to pause and watch and move like twitchy rabbits, and Addie knows
they whisper when they think she cannot hear. The terror they feel is quiet
and insidious and unspeakable; after all, it is only a list of arguable moral
dictions that separates her from the criminals they despise.
Addie has a reputation.
“The media calls this one the Hangman,” her boss says as Addie lets the
file fall open between her hands. “Leaves vics much as you’d expect;
hanged, but it’s all staging. It’s a stab to the heart that kills them. He
operates out of those old steel and anthracite towns going to shit in western
Pennsylvania.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Addie says, because the bodies started to sway
while she still attended Dedwich U, and the bored students attributed the
killer a hushed infamy akin to Jack the Ripper. It attracted the same guilty
delight people show the legends of Bloody Bathory and Count Tepes.
“According to this, the first suspected kill was almost ten years ago—.” She
makes a mental note to search for anything older the first detectives might
have missed. “Why is this just coming to the Bureau now?”
“Because the bastard’s been careful.” Her superior grunts and hitches
his sagging trousers over his belly. “They’ve kept all their crimes in
Pennsylvania, mostly Allegheny and Dedwich counties, and the state cops
have been reluctant to hand it over. You know the kind of pissing contests
we always get into with the local sheriffs. However, we were looking into
pressing charges against the last body that dropped, Howard Perez, for
interstate smuggling. That makes it our case now.”
 Addie doesn’t require further clarification. In the back of her mind,
she’s always wondered if they’d ever caught the Hangman. He’s not
sensational enough to make the national news, but he’s become something
of a surreal cult phenomenon in the territory. He’s a proverbial bogeyman
like the Jersey Devil, hanging the unawares for their perceived sins and
disappearing into the night. Addie gathers her team—Moreno, Horn, Poole,
and a clutch of Bureau novitiates and technicians touting their specialized
equipment.
She packs a bag without much care or attention and heads to the airport
before the sun rises. As Addie leaves headquarters, the secretary laughs and
says, “Try not to kill this one, Supervisory Special Agent Lincoln.”
She returns to Dedwich, a city that hasn’t changed in the years since
Addie attended its university, which stands as the final shred of acclaim
boasted by the withering metropolis. Her team heads to the Rightwood
precinct, and as Moreno and Horn pester the local captain, Addie looks over
the crowded bullpen and makes an unexpected find.
Like Dedwich itself, Catherine Themis is exactly as Addie remembers
—dull in hue and unequivocally aloof, with sharp eyes and precise hands.
She hasn’t aged a day; indeed, Catherine looks colder and more polished
than ever, her slim fingers picking at the keyboard while she stares at the
monitor. There is something to the woman that Addie did not see before,
something that has matured as if Themis has shed one dull skin for another.
The difference escapes Addie, but it is different.
They exchange pleasantries, and though Catherine does not remember
Addie, Addie recalls how much she used to admire this woman. She
admires Catherine Themis because she is strange like Addie, quiet and
beautiful and fiercely intelligent, and Addie once looked up to her like a
weed in the roots of a great sequoia gazing at a canopy she could never
reach.
They cross paths from time to time, and Addie always wants to say
something, though she’s never been great with words. She learns how to act
by observing Horn and his wife interact, and when the wife gives Addie
uneasy glances, asking, “Curt, why is your boss staring at me?” Horn snorts
and replies, “Don’t mind her; she’s more sniffer dog than person most
days.”
Some part of her wonders why talented Catherine is a simple civilian
administrator, but that is a question for another time.
 Now, Addie sits cross-legged on the conference room table surrounded
by images of the dead, her lunch balanced in her lap, the ambient drone of
the Dedwich police milling behind the closed door. She leans against a
cardboard box filled with nylon nooses.
At her side, sitting properly on a chair, Special Agent Dustin Moreno
sputters, “Qué chingados—this food!” and slaps a dripping hamburger onto
a paper plate. He spits gristle into his napkin. “How can anyone eat this?
The food in this whole city is disgusting!”
Addie glances at her own burger. It’s lukewarm, and the meat is pale
from being in the freezer too long, slick grease congealing in the soggy bun
until it sags, disintegrating at the edges. Addie shrugs as she takes another
bite. Moreno shudders.
“Why am I not surprised you can stomach this garbage?”
“The food was never great here.” Addie pops a drooping fry into her
mouth. “I think it’s the coal. It seeps through the generations. No one can
taste anything anymore.”
Moreno mutters under his breath as he cracks open a bottled water and
runs a hand through his graying stubble. “And people wonder why this
place has psychos like this.” He raps a stack of evidence with his hand.
“They go crazy with hunger.”
“Not a psycho,” Addie hums and turns dark eyes to the gruesome
collage covering the room’s walls. She stares at a dozen faces from a dozen
angles and eats over-processed food, immersing herself in the scene. Her
brain is primal and uncultured because Addie Lincoln thinks like a killer
more often than not, and it’s harder to empathize with a smiling homemaker
than a hangman stringing criminals up in abandoned warehouses. Not a
psycho, she says, because the Hangman is many things, but not psychotic;
psychos move on the mandates of divine beings, are urged by voices others
can’t hear, and the only voice urging the Hangman is their own. They are
providing a service, nothing more.
She eats another bite and chews, thoughtful.
The door opens, and Agent Samir Poole slips into the room carrying a
binder under one skinny arm. Upon seeing Addie and Moreno, he balks and
asks, “How can you stand to eat in here? With all—this?” He is vaguely
green in appearance and can’t look up.
It’s just ink and paper, Addie wants to say. Ink and paper and they’re
not here, not really. They’ve been burned or buried and could care less if I
eat my lunch in front of their pictures.
“I’ve seen worse,” she says instead. It’s true; the Hangman is almost
fastidious in their methodology. Just a stab to the heart, through the ribs, a
bit of blood and drama on an otherwise blank and emotionless canvas.
There are steps, like the steps Addie takes in cleaning her gun: sevoflurane,
etorphine, knife, the noose. The hyoid isn’t broken, so they’re dragged
upward in increments, not dropped, and they don’t wake, don’t struggle. No
final words from the killer, no gloating. A showman whose audience is not
his victims but the authorities who find them.
Moreno snorts. “La Loba’s left worst than this,” he says as he bundles
his food in its wrapper and makes to throw it away in the bin. “This is pretty
clean—hey, rookie, don’t be sick in here, for God’s sake….”
La Loba. She-wolf. Addie has a reputation.
They immerse themselves for hours in the accumulated detritus of a
killer’s design. Stiff-backed and stern Special Agent Horn joins them soon
and, together with Poole, begins reexamining paltry witness accounts and
camera stills. Moreno plows through the veritable range of shared criminal
reports—for they are all criminals, these still faces pinned to the boards,
and local cops have long speculated that they share a common victim
somewhere. A pin that connects them all in a nice, cohesive web.
Addie doesn’t think so.
She paces around the table and puts her face close to the photos, close
enough that, had they the breath to share, she would have felt it upon her
cheeks. Poole always watches her from the corner of his eye with uneasy,
fretful shifting. Addie pays him no mind; she sees only the dead, and
through them, a shadow belonging to the one who stole their lives, and
every day that shadow coalesces, rippling less, firming, giving shape to a
being Addie longs to drag into the light.
Her fingertips skate over their blank countenances.
Approachable.
She touches bruised needle marks on their necks.
Medical knowledge. Smart. Methodical.
She looks at the wounds in their chests.
Strong. Patient. No hesitation. Decisive.
Addie pauses before the mini-shrine dedicated to Martina Knight, one
of the few women to be found in this grisly assortment. She places one
finger against the photo of Knight’s face so it lays flat and doesn’t reflect
the fluorescent light. Addie reveals a fresh, unhealed contusion rising on the
woman’s bloated, dead face. Knight was struck twice, once by a solid
barrier, then by a fist. Addie turns to the table and crouches to drag out the
box of Knight’s effects. She paws through the marked bags until she finds
the woman’s jeans. The knees are scoffed, the denim abraded—notations on
the clear plastic ramble on about particulates.
You were angry with this one. Something didn’t go as planned. You
never struck your victims bodily—except for her.
“Where is the lab report for this?” Addie asks aloud as she holds up the
torn pants.
Poole frowns but moves to answer, finding a stray paper in the pile. “It
says here they found traces of, ah, let me see…common aggregates—stone,
gravel, concrete—grass, car oil, and ground quartz rock.” He glances at his
fellows, his face open and young and exceedingly pliable. “I can’t quite
remember what ground quartz rock is—?”
“It’s playground sand,” Horn says as he drums his fingers on the table.
“They’re not supposed to use it anymore, as it contains crystalline silica,
which causes cancer in kids.”
“That can help us narrow down where she was when she was attacked,
can’t it?”
Horn shook his head. “Not really, no. Not in a place like Dedwich. All
the playgrounds and parks are old, and it’s not like they’re trucking in river
sand to replace the ground quartz rock in a city that’s barely limping by.”
Addie drops the jeans into the box again. “What was she charged with?
Knight, Martina.”
Moreno flips through the stack. “Eh….” He flips another page. “Three
counts of child molestation. Charged, but not convicted. Shit.”
The others share glances barely disguising their disdain, the thought
“Good riddance” resonating but never, never coming to air. Addie is
already at Knight’s board again, carelessly pushing aside reports and
ballistic sheets, finding the printed map of Knight’s home and her
neighborhood. Addie finds what she’s looking for and circles a playground
only a mile from Knight’s street with a fat red marker, circling it twice,
permanent lines of red like a bullseye tightening in rapid coils.
Oh, yes. She angered you—enraged you. Terms flicker through the
empty spaces of Addie’s thoughts—words like organized, mission-oriented,
revenge killer. She looks at the broken pieces of the Hangman’s design and
takes one step back, then another, thinking, asking, is this who you are
beneath the control? You wanted to kill her with your own hands, didn’t
you? Savage. Animal. Are you really as methodical as you seem?
“Let’s go,” Addie says without warning, and her team scrambles to
follow their supervisor out of the office and into the ugly Dedwich streets.
Horn and Moreno say nothing; Poole gasps about protocol, about arranging
searches, warrants, but Addie is already moving like a hound scenting
blood.
The door snaps shut. Out of sheer habit, she glances across the bullpen
over the detectives slouched at their desks. Catherine Themis is there; she
hurt her hand a few days ago, Addie isn’t sure how, but the beige wrapping
doesn’t hinder her diligence in typing reports and filing information.
Catherine moves as if sensing the attention, and their eyes meet for an
instant before Addie looks away.
It’s a strange thought, but she doesn’t remember the last time she had to
look away first.
***
Unbeknown to Addie Lincoln, she stands where her query stood only
hours before and observes the same barren parking lot. She sips a soy latte
from a disposable cup and contemplates the scene as her agents mutter and
groan at her back, waiting for orders or for something they cannot name but
have come to expect from their dark-eyed and cryptic commander.
Addie rocks on her heels and swirls liquid sugar around her tongue.
“There’s a camera,” Horn says, pointing out the faded device hanging
from a light pole. “If this is where Knight was taken, we might be able to
find an actual still—.”
Poole is already on the phone trying to find a number for Dedwich’s
rundown park services. Moreno whistles low, hands in his pockets.
“That looks like a lead, La Loba,” he says as he grins. “Hopefully this is
the break we need, eh? God, I miss home.”
Addie doesn’t.
She shuts her eyes and lets the image of the killer clarify just a little bit
more.
She has a reputation: quick-draws and gun smoke, missing limbs and
screaming perps, spooked therapists and commendations. Ten kills and no
regret.
 They give her the worst cases because Addie’s the best. They give her
the worst cases because they pray she doesn’t come back.
 xiv. family
Catherine thinks of her family and sees the halves of her own.
Bertholdt Themis is as reliable as the mountains he toils under, walks
with the ponderous weight of a golem pried out of the rocks, and drags with
him a trying legacy. The Themis family has lived in Dedwich since before it
became Dedwich; they helped lay the first roads and dug the first tunnels,
and Catherine’s forefathers dot the county’s hillsides, buried deep like the
city’s cornerstones.
“It means justice,” her father tells her. “Themis was the mother of fate,
the beginnings of moral judgment.”
Ester Green becomes Ester Themis six months before Catherine is born
—a product of flirtation and too much wine, she’s told. Ester embodies
everything that Dedwich is not: sleek and proud and bold in color. She isn’t
grayed by coal and dust, rising above the dirt and ashes like the phoenix
emerging from its destruction. Ester’s destruction is more demure than
death by fire; instead, she is a once-distinguished university professor
disgraced for plagiarism, though she denies the claims with her every
breath. She rarely leaves the house in Catherine’s recollections, always
pacing it from one end to the other like a wild thing caged, her hair red as a
robin’s breast, her mouth as sharp a jackal’s.
Catherine is named after the Brontë character. The irony doesn’t escape
her when she fights and suffers the ghosts that haunt her.
Bertholdt and Ester love one another, but they exist in disunion, for they
are denizens of different worlds that come to meet in the same house, eat at
the same table, and sleep in the same bed. A border is one line, but it
denotes two separate bodies that touch and do not blend. Bertholdt and
Ester are as different as Mars and Venus, with Earth in-between. Catherine
exists equidistant between two places where she’ll never wholly belong.
Family is the pillar of saints and sinners; good men give it credence, and
bad men lay blame at the feet of their upbringing. Catherine is no different.
Her mother names her for a spiteful, tempestuous woman, and she’s named
by her father as a symbol of judgment.
Catherine thinks of family and sees the pieces that have become her.
***
Bishop and Catherine sit across from one another at the same cafe they
met in before as if they hadn’t tried to kill each other six days ago. Eris
drinks Darjeeling, and Catherine has coffee without cream or sugar.
 For a long time, they say nothing; they sit in repose, an unremarkable
woman and an unremarkable man, existing without reason or conversation.
They are not friends or enemies while they sip their beverages and watch
the world go by. They merely are.
“Tell me,” he says. “What do you like to listen to?”
Catherine gives him an odd look; Bishop props his chin on his
interlaced fingers and watches her in earnest. He wears black gloves. So
does Catherine. “Are you serious?”
“Of course.”
“What an odd question.”
“Why? A man has other interests beyond his…work.”
She’s caught wanting to ask what exactly he does when he’s not
wandering about adopting the facades of various killers. Most criminals
have day jobs, after all. He is the image of a classic Englishman, dressed
well but not too well, a study in balance, a pleasant visual on the peripheries
of one’s sight—not unlike Catherine herself. Pretty, yet forgettable. If
questioned, not a single soul in that building will be able to describe the
woman and man sitting in the corner by themselves.
She’s certain he does something with computers or technology.
Catherine has met cybercriminals in the past, and Eris accesses Dedwich’s
networks with impressive, casual ease.
“I’m not sure,” she responds, lifting her cup. “Yourself?”
Bishop considers for a moment, then says, “Bach.”
Catherine scoffs into her beverage. “Pretentious.”
He laughs as he reclines on his seat, the move easy, practiced.
Predictable. “How brutal! Now you must tell me what you like. It’s only
fair.”
Lips curling in a slight smile, Catherine sips bitter coffee, then replies,
“I enjoy…folk music.”
“Folk music? How provincial.” Bishop speaks with a sliver of cruelty in
his tone. “Ah, but there we have it. You; provincial, and me; pretentious. A
pair of complements.”
She thinks about Bertholdt, and she thinks about Ester—parallel lines
running together but never crossing.
“Well,” Catherine says, setting down her cup. “I never escaped my
roots. I am here, in Dedwich, after all. You?”
 “Was that a covert attempt to ask me of my own childhood, hmm?” He
stirs his tea with slow, thoughtless motions, gray eyes faceted on the
revolutions. “Oh, the usual song and dance, I’m afraid. Mother, father,
younger sibling and a small dog with a tragically banal name. There’s no
mystery there. Not the origin story you’re looking for, I’d assume.”
Catherine wonders if he’s lying. She wonders if he’s telling the truth.
Around them, the voices of wayward people mingle and intertwine with
the muffled rumble of tires on the road and the idle tapping of shoes on the
tile. The air churns with cinnamon and vanilla and glazed sugar on drying
rolls. It’s a charming scene—too charming for a woman like Catherine with
her head full of dead whispering and ghastly scenes.
It sets her teeth on edge.
What right did she have to be there? To sit like this, to pretend
normalcy? The crow does not break bread with the sparrows. The wolf does
not sit with the sheep. The snake—.
“‘—Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of
comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself.’” She looks to Bishop,
and his mouth moves, his lip scarred, teeth broken, as he quotes literature.
“‘Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or
Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it.’”
She raises a brow. “I always despised that book.”
“Oh? Because it is pretentious?”
“I could despise it purely because she goes by Cathy, for fuck’s sake. I
hate that name.”
He chuckles, and the sound is more genuine than she expected. Their
cups sit empty on the table between them like flags thrown in the dirt; they
haven’t spoken of murder, haven’t threatened one another. Bishop took her
arm in that parking lot, and the next day Catherine sits with him as a
companion, as a friend. As something more. It baffles the mind. She isn’t
convinced she likes it.
“I thought all women liked Wuthering Heights.”
“That’s a gross generalization. Is that why you’ve memorized it? For…
women?”
“Pah. So crass.” He meets her innuendo with a lecherous brow waggle,
and Catherine rolls her eyes as she reaches for her drink—finding it empty.
Every swallow has brought them here, to the place where normalcy ends
and where the tidy horror shop of Catherine’s life has to open its doors
again. It is nice to pretend, for a moment.
Bishop Eris cleans the rim of his cup with the napkin and slides from
the booth. Catherine remains and waits for him to disappear, her eyes
focusing on nothing and everything at once, which is why she doesn’t quite
see the hand coming for her until it curls beneath her chin and lifts. She
gasps as his mouth touches hers.
He kisses with intrusive fervor, all teeth and heat and intent, the serrated
edge of his broken smile sinking into flesh, and Catherine doesn’t
reciprocate because she’s surprised and not certain this is wanted.
It ends as it began; suddenly, the taste of Darjeeling on her lips,
saccharine against the coffee’s bitterness. His breath is on her cheek and her
air in his lungs.
“‘Kiss me again,’” he croons into her ear. “‘And don’t let me see your
eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours!
How can I?’”
Catherine jerks free of Bishop’s hand, and his nails graze her skin.
“Until next time, Hangman.”
The Kaleidoscope leaves and Catherine soon follows, walking blindly
through an endless array of shifting human faces until she is once more at
work and immersed in the dreary task of data filing. All the while, the
wolves circle nearer and nearer, her ugliest deeds splayed in vivid color just
feet away.
Hours later, she lays in bed at home, dressed in loose pajamas with ever-
patient Virgil at her side, and she rises. Catherine paces her rooms until she
finds the tattered paperback she seeks; she peels back the cover to reveal the
yellowed inset, the words “Property of E. Green” neatly stenciled below the
title.
Catherine flips through her mother’s copy of Wuthering Heights and, in
the desk lamp’s glow, reads, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine
are the same.” She wonders if the man who calls himself Bishop Eris is
genuinely like her, if he, at heart, hides the same monster as Catherine, and
what that means for them—if it means anything all.
“This was my mother’s favorite book,” she says aloud to no one. Virgil
lifts his head off the counterpane. “She named me for Catherine because she
ended up buried between her two desires—and what was I if not the product
of Ester’s two desires; my father and her own world? Provincial or
pretentious. It ended up killing her, in the end. Stressed herself right into a
heart attack before I even graduated high school.”
Catherine shuts the cover and plays her fingertips over the faded letters.
“…I always hated this book.”
The taste of Darjeeling lingers still. She never much liked tea.
 xv. docha
When Catherine Themis graduates, only one person in a sea of
thousands is there for her.
She doesn’t know this at first and sits alone among her peers beneath
the hot sun, waiting for it to be over. Adeline Lincoln stands on the stage as
valedictorian. She speaks of their journeys in the collective voice as if she
has any idea of the paths they tread, of the hungering darkness Catherine
surrendered herself to long ago. She speaks of human kindness and
compassion, of intuition and courage. She thanks her mother and her sister.
She says, “The greatest purpose in our lives is the betterment of our world.”
Catherine stares at the sharp grass beneath her feet and holds the watch
beneath her robe’s sleeve.
They stand and walk one by one up the steps and across the stage like
the condemned going to the gallows. Their afterlife is a sentence of
corporate drudgery or self-immolation, burnt out by the intuition and
courage Adeline Lincoln beseeched them to embrace. Catherine walks
when her name is called, shakes the hand of a woman she’s never met, is
given a diploma cover sans the actual diploma, then returns to her seat.
Then, it is over. Graduands become graduates, caterpillars to butterflies,
though Catherine feels no different than she did moments before. She’s just
hot, agitated, and melancholic. Catherine can’t bring herself to smile, stuck
among people she’s never taken the time to know. She clutches the diploma
holder and gazes at her knees.
Hats fly like terrified birds into the sky, though Catherine doesn’t throw
hers. People stand, bodies surge from their seats, and she rises, too, turning
from the crowds of faculty and families. Catherine makes for the exit and
the parking lot beyond. Like a background actress to these people’s lives,
she’s a nameless, faceless presence going unremarked whether she is there
or not.
“—therine!”
She is at the gate, heels digging into the turf, mortarboard in her hand.
“Catherine!”
Her name cuts through the music and laughter, and so she turns, puzzled
to find a familiar slim figure in a pressed suit coming towards her from the
stands. His bifocals flash in the sunlight, and then Grisha Morse is standing
before her, smiling, his hand coming out to cup her shoulder. Catherine
takes a breath because that hand feels hotter than two hours in the sun,
heavier than it should be by far.
“Wh—what are you doing here, Dr. Morse?” she asks, stumbling over
the words, and Grisha laughs.
“Well, I knew you weren’t expecting anyone else to come,” he says in
answer, his hand still on her shoulder. “And I asked you before to call me
Grisha, Catherine. Please.”
She stares at the man as if he might vanish into the heat, a mirage
summoned by a lonely woman who’s kept company with her ghosts for too
long. Her heart is, at once, too large and too small; it aches in her chest, in
her throat, and struggles to pump blood to her dizzy head.
Catherine’s eyes prick with tears as she takes a step forward, then
another, and embraces the doctor. A soft “oof!” of surprise escapes him
when she tightens her arms. The scene is not so dissimilar from those
around them, older men and women hugging robed children to their chest—
for they still are children for all that they’ve matured. Catherine thought she
had no one, no parents, no home aside from the empty house waiting,
waiting, echoing with the dead dreams of forgotten lives.
Grisha Morse is warm against her cheek in a way her ghosts can never
be, and Catherine clings tight.
“Ah, docha,” he says, voice rumbling in his chest like earthquakes
moving in the deep. “I am very proud.”
Catherine steps back, and she smiles.
***
Grisha lifts her hand into the light and studies the scraped knuckles.
“It is healing,” he says, neither a positive nor negative remark, merely a
statement of fact. “It would heal faster, of course, if you took some time
off.”
Catherine shrugs. “I need to work. I can’t afford to draw attention to
myself by missing days.”
“I believe using a few sick days is the opposite of drawing attention,
Catherine.” He disinfects the shallow cuts, then begins to wrap the hand
again. “Besides, you know that is not what I mean. I am talking about the
gym. Punching things.”
She takes her hand back before he finishes and tightens the wrap to her
preference, tucking the end in to hold it in place. “I need the outlet more
than ever. I’m…stressed.”
 Grisha’s brow rises as he reclines in his desk chair, watching Catherine
as she retreats from the stool and finds a new seat on the couch. “You are
always stressed. What is exacerbating the issue?” When Catherine says
nothing, just continues to sit and fidget with the fresh bandages, his sharp
gaze wanders toward Levitan’s Vladimirka Road. He hums. “It is not too
late for you to leave. I have everything prepared; money, documents. I have
contacts in Russia who could set you up with a very nice life.”
“My Russian is terrible.”
He shrugs, the corner of his lips quirking. “It does not matter, da? There
is no extradition and a few too many corruptible lawmen.”
Catherine sighs as she leans back and stretches her neck and shoulders,
the quiet prevailing through the small, ghoulish pops of vertebrae moving
into place. Her hand aches, as does her leg, and the mottled bruise is hidden
beneath her skirt but no less painful in its intensity. She holds onto the pain
like she holds onto her breathing, a thrumming pulse, a live wire against her
flesh and bones. The acuity of it leaves her temper short and irritable.
Grisha presses his suit. “I know I have made overtures of this nature
before, but they were…theoretical. The situation has changed, yes? It is not
theoretical anymore; the FBI has come to hunt the Hangman, and the
Kaleidoscope has set his sights on you. It would be best to leave the country
for at least a few years, and you can return if their investigation crumbles.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Catherine retorts with heat. “This is my home.”
“You are being obstinate now, docha. I know you care for Dedwich, but
it is simply a place, nothing more.”
Catherine’s eyes flash toward him, then away, lingering on the lines of
light sketched upon the floor by the blinds. “I can’t leave. What’s that
expression you like? ‘Rabota ne volk—v les ne ubezhit’?”
“‘Work’s not a wolf, it won’t run to the woods.’” Grisha crosses his
hands over his middle as he observes the woman sitting in the darkest part
of his office. “You’re right.”
She turns to him with her brow furrowed in question. The surgeon grins.
“You are right about your Russian being terrible, that is.”
Catherine grumbles as Grisha chuckles, then his humor fades, and he is
again regarding her with keen attention. “But I cannot say you are right to
stay. This is not…work. Catherine, look at me. Tell me what will happen if
this Kaleidoscope finds you again—.”
“The Kaleidoscope and I have an understanding.”
 Grisha’s brow rose. “An understanding?”
“Yes. He—we’ve met on occasion after what…happened. He won’t—.”
Catherine fumbles for the watch beneath her sleeve, not caring if Grisha
looks alarmed as he rises from his chair. “He’s amicable.”
“He is a liar and psychopath,” Grisha says with gravitas. He stands
before her, the hem of his white coat brushing her knees. “That is what he
is.”
“So am I,” Catherine retorts. A phantom hand lays itself on her neck
and presses in, fingers sliding through flesh and bone into the nadir of her
being, and she feels nothing but cold.
“No,” the surgeon says. “No, you are not. We have discussed this
before, many a time.”
“Your denial does not make it any less true.”
“Psychopathy manifests distinct characteristics, including amoral
behavior, a lack of—.”
“Yes, I know,” Catherine snaps, meaning to rise, but Grisha’s hand kept
her pinned in place by the shoulder, the grip shifting from friendly to stern,
restraining.
“A psychopath is amoral and manipulative. They possess a glib,
superficial charm, an inflated sense of self, lack empathy, and, above all
else, have a pathological need to lie.” Behind his bifocals, the surgeon’s
eyes shine bright and unremitting, refusing Catherine’s pitying debasement.
“He is a liar.”
“Everyone is a liar. You’ve never even met him.”
“No, but I’ve many an associate who has been inconvenienced, hurt,
blackmailed, and ruined by the Kaleidoscope.”
Mentioning his associates causes Catherine’s eye to twitch; she
remembers her status then, a collected curiosity Grisha has tucked into his
pocket, cherished above others, but a curiosity nonetheless. Despair fuels
her. Like a boat unmoored, she feels adrift and alone despite the presence of
her confidante and mentor. If anything, his presence only solidifies that
loneliness.
“Isn’t it nice to take off the mask, if only for a little while?” The
Kaleidoscope—Bishop—whispers in her ear, and it is loud, too loud, for
Catherine to hear much else. “Or do you enjoy pretending your hands are
perfectly clean all the time?”
Grisha says she’s not crazy, and she wonders why she feels like she is.
 Grisha says she’s not a liar, and Catherine can’t remember when she last
told the truth.
Catherine Themis and the Hangman used to be the same person, but the
woman is receding into the idea, and there exists a pressure in her middle,
desiring vengeance and punishment for them, and for her. When Grisha
says, “You are more than this need to destroy,” Catherine doesn’t believe
him anymore. The surgeon has not lost his way, not like her. He is a priest
taking on the sins of others, and he is clean, forgiven. He remembers to
breathe. Catherine doesn’t.
“Do you enjoy pretending your hands are perfectly clean all the time?”
“Catherine!”
She lurches, gasps, and Grisha’s fingers tighten upon her wrist. They
stand several feet away from the couch, and Catherine doesn’t remember
how they got there, doesn’t remember why Grisha holds her or why his
cheek is red with a promising bruise. She blinks and looks at the man as if
she’d never seen him before.
Grisha levers her into a chair with little effort and twists her face toward
the light. Disoriented, Catherine leans away from his probing touch when
the surgeon removes her glasses and checks her eyes and her pulse. “Stop,”
she mutters.
“You are having more of these dissociative episodes than usual, docha.”
“I’m fine.”
An incredulous scoff leaves the man, and suddenly there is a white pill
in his hand, balanced on her lip between his fingertips. Catherine has lost
seconds again, her mind reeling as she takes the pill and swallows it without
water. Grisha takes her wrist and holds it tight, his eyes on the clock as he
measures her slowing pulse. After a minute, he nods.
“What is your name?”
“That’s not necessary, really.”
“Is that your answer?” He raises a brow and Catherine grits her teeth.
“Catherine Themis.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Dedwich. Dedwich General, your office.”
“What is the date?”
Her mouth opens, closes, a moue of frustration.
“What is the time?”
 Again, she says nothing, and when Catherine squeezes her eyes shut in
self-recrimination, he touches her one last time, featherlight brushes of
callused fingertips against her cheek and a fond kiss on the brow.
Undeserved warmth spills through her like the first burst of spring rain
overcoming the winter pall, and paper flutters against her hand. Catherine
catches the paper on instinct and squints at the documents pressed by her
thin, pale fingers.
“Docha,” Grisha says. He says it as if he means it, like Catherine is
worth more than the speed of her knife and the endurance of her flesh,
worth more than the noose and the ghosts and the hollow, aching thing that
festers in her chest. Daughter, he calls her. Grisha Morse once handed
Catherine the tools to her destruction, raised the Hangman from nothing,
and now he gives her the means to find salvation.
If only she had the strength to rise from the dirt and take it.
“You need only accept,” he tells her, stepping back. “Whatever the
Kaleidoscope is, you will not find a monster like your own in him. I know
you’re searching for a connection, for someone like you, but he is not like
you. Accept this and leave the Hangman to her gallows.”
Catherine stands and lays the documents on her vacated chair. “I….”
She lifts her eyes no farther than his chest. “I can’t.”
She leaves the surgeon there, numb and distant from herself, and she
doesn’t look back. Catherine keeps her eyes forward because she can’t
stand to see his disappointment.
 xvi. alpha
Addie Lincoln has met many men like Leon Vargas, and none have left
her with a favorable impression.
He is a smarmy office drone granted authority over a small,
inconsequential fiefdom within city government. He holds to his rule with
bloody single-mindedness, sitting behind his metal desk like a king resting
on his laurels. He’s bland and tasteless; Addie looks at him from the corner
of her eye and doesn’t see the styled hair or the pressed shirt or the bleach
stains on his overlarge teeth. She sees only an obstacle to overcome, and her
hands twitch inside the sleeves of her sweater.
“It’s going to take some time,” Mr. Vargas says, shifting his coffee mug
so the handle spins round and round, the scratching sound soft under the
constant drone of the heater. Horn tucks a discreet finger into his collar and
tugs, though the heat has already crawled up his long, pale neck, painting
splattered patterns into his skin.
“The FBI’s going to have to submit a report, and we’re going to have to
go through our records to get what you need. Each park’s managed by a
different company, you see, and we have to make sure—verify—which
company was handling that particular park on that particular date. We
employ the private sector, you know, supporting small businesses and the
like….”
Each time he says ‘we,’ Addie flicks her dark eyes about the dismal
space in derision. Dedwich’s recreation department is a faded, back-end
office well on its way to becoming a storage closet. Vargas’ desk provides a
single spot of order in an otherwise pointless, listless tumult of boxes and
filing cabinets.
“We require this information for our ongoing investigation, Mr. Vargas,”
Moreno says, thumb brushing his badge, bringing subtle attention to it. “It’s
important. Lives may be at stake.”
“Is this about the—.” The simpering man drops his voice into a false
stage whisper and leans forward, eyes intent on Moreno’s unimpressed face.
“The Hangman? Did you find someone else? You know, after the drug
dealer? I don’t remember his name. It was all over the news, of course, and
the local channels religiously follow the Hangman’s business—.
“We’re not at liberty to discuss the particulars of our case.”
Vargas leans back with a soft noise of disappointment and rests his
hands on the desk’s edge, the slant of his posture dismissive, bored. He
glances at Addie when she begins to rock ever so slightly in her boots.
She’s uncomfortable with the red tape and mind games. Horn and
Moreno watch her as well, and the former tips his head toward the hall in a
silent bid for Addie to follow his lead. The older agents know perfectly well
who’s in charge, just as they know that Addie would sooner sink her teeth
into Leon Vargas’ neck than beseech the Samaritan in his heart.
Addie paces from the crowded office through the musty confines of
Dedwich City Hall, stopping when she reaches the parking lot below the
day’s watery sunlight. Poole leans against one of the rented utility vehicles
in his tidy suit and plays with his phone—until he spots Addie coming
nearer, at which point he thrusts the phone into his pocket and shuffles to
stand straight.
“Are we leaving?” he asks, and Addie shakes her head.
“No, I just needed some air.”
Addie opens the car door and takes a seat, riffling through the center
console as Poole looks on and nervously fiddles with his tie. He watches
her as he always does, warily, uncertainly, always on the verge of asking if
he’s done something wrong or if he’s upset her or Horn or Moreno. He’s
young—green, eager—and greedy. For all that the Hangman’s left many
bodies behind, they’re not classified as dangerous; mission-oriented
revenge killers don’t stray from their object, and it’s a good case for Poole
to cut his teeth on. Minimal risk, for him, at least.
He simpers and stares and swallows when Addie comes too close, and
yet Samir Poole would take her job if he could. He would cut Addie’s throat
to please those decaying carcasses in Washington who’re terrified of her,
though they’d never say as much.
She wishes he wouldn’t look at her like that.
Addie finds a granola bar and rips it open with her teeth, sitting on the
edge of the seat with her legs swinging into the open air like she’s a twelve-
year-old out on a playdate. The taste of chocolate and stale oats settles her
otherwise unhappy blood pressure, and she relaxes, looking up at the bleak
sky, thinking about homicide with the kind of sangfroid ordinary people
attribute crocheting or stamp collecting.
She tries to paint a picture of the Hangman in her mind. Addie lays out
the proverbial pigments, dyes, brushes, and oils. She presses her fingertips
to the canvas and it gives like flesh, warm and resilient, and though she
projects a shape upon the surface, draws her hands down and around to
provide the killer form, the shape evaporates.
Something about this vigilante defies form. They are the implacable
beast and the harrowing angel, the knife and the needle, mercy and ferocity.
Addie places herself—or, what she pictures as herself, an ordinary and
empathetic mimicry, a human instead of whatever she’s become—at the
Dedwich park, and across from her stands Martina Knight like two
opposing chess pieces on a board of her own design.
“I’ve marked you for death,” she whispers aloud, staring at Knight’s
frozen visage. “I want you for my gallows, so I followed you here. You
made me angry. I struck you—stopped you—took a risk, but you didn’t die
here. No…I maintained control, even in a fit of rage. I’m in control.”
Addie blinks and comes back to herself, to the municipal parking lot
with her sticky fingers and torn granola wrapper on her lap. Control. It
typifies the killer. She wonders what happens when the Hangman loses
control. She wonders if there are bodies that haven’t swung and if they lie
broken and shattered at the bottom of this city’s scummy rivers.
Who are you? she wants to ask. Who have you become?
“Boss?”
Addie lifts her gaze when Poole speaks, and she sees Moreno and Horn
approaching, both wearing matching looks of impatience—but Addie spies
paper in Moreno’s hand and perks up.
“Yeah, yeah, we got it,” Moreno says before she can question. He shoos
her over from the passenger seat and takes his place, Horn rounding the
SUV to the driver’s side. Addie throws back the console to sit between the
two while Poole slides into the back. Moreno hands off the torn paper with
an address scribbled in the margins. “That guy’s an exhausting pendejo.
Had the information right in front of his face the whole—anyway, we gave
the number a call on the way out and no one picked up.”
Typical. “Let’s go,” Addie says, handing Horn the paper as the car
starts. He grunts his acknowledgment, and they drive away.
***
They needn’t wait long for a warrant; a phone call to one of their
technicians waiting at the Rightwood precinct summons a detective—
Gables, Addie recalls—bearing the proper paperwork and a determined
frown. Addie snaps the document from his hand and stuffs it into a shirt
pocket; she is the first through the door.
 Viteri Surveillance, owned and managed solely by Jonas Viteri, operates
out of a nondescript office building on the other side of Dedwich’s murky
river. It’s a hollow carapace on the city’s fringes where the rent is cheap and
the ambiance cheaper. The walls are crooked, the plaster falling to pieces,
the roof thick with a decade’s worth of fallen pine needles. If anyone else
works in this place, they’re quick to douse the lights and lock the doors
when the police cruiser rolls past the rusted gate.
Addie walks the dark hall with none of the apprehension the others
display. Enough washed-out sunlight leaks through the perfidious dirt and
haze to guide her way, and Addie eventually finds the correct number by the
right door and comes to a halt. She sniffs the air and frowns.
Horn attempts to bypass her when Addie remains stationary, and as his
hand nears the dusty handle, she takes hold of his wrist, pulling him back.
Horn meets her gaze, and Addie releases him.
“What is it?”
Addie sniffs again. “Smell that?”
He takes in a breath, nostrils flaring, and so does Moreno. “Ah, shit,”
the latter mumbles under his breath, already fumbling for his phone. Poole
—green Poole with his wide eyes and by-the-book demeanor—looks on
with confusion, and Addie only cocks a brow.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“Do you want to?” Addie replies. Irritation flares in Poole’s eyes, and
she hears the thoughts behind that gaze—I’m an agent, I’m an agent, and
not nearly as neurotic as you. I can do this. Addie hears him, smirks,
bundles her sleeve over her hand, and opens the door.
In an instant, Poole is sick on the floor.
Splayed not four feet past the threshold, a body lies like a child in a
snowbank forming angels in the ice, arms and legs akimbo, the butcher
blade stabbed into the ponderous belly like a flag staking its claim. Arterial
spray from the ravaged neck speckles the walls, the ceiling, the cabinets,
and the static screens. Delicate vines of ruined film wreathe Jonas Viteri,
hard drives—both external and external—shattered into a million worthless
pieces on the ugly carpet. The heater is set high and has expedited
decomposition, flooding the hall with the smell of new rot.
The largest defunct monitor has a bloody noose drawn on its surface, a
surreal, disparaging insignia left for Addie’s team to find.
“Oh, dear,” she drawls. Poole sicks up again.
 xvii. lover’s knot
Catherine knows something has changed the moment she arrives at
work.
The change exists in the air; it buzzes in her lungs and against her skin,
raising the fine hairs on the back of her neck as she darts careful glances
about the bullpen and takes in the focused expressions of the gathered
detectives and officers. Gables wears an anxious look, and Captain Lowell
speaks low and hurried in the ear of an officer Catherine doesn’t know. She
sits at her desk and pretends she doesn’t see.
They’re going to catch you.
Shadows press close to the edges of Catherine’s vision and assume
shapes like hands coming to cover her eyes, fingers that curl and crush and
scour her skull.
What did they find? What did you miss? What have you done?
She licks her lips and stands, cold to the marrow of her bones, and
though her watch ticks on her wrist—tick, tick, tick—the beat feels distant.
The silent thrum dissipates into the surrounding white noise until only her
breathing remains.
Catherine squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them again.
Be calm. Think.
No one notices her. They stare instead at the conference room annexed
by the feds, the blinds sealed despite the door being left open for easy
passage in and out. Catherine stares, too. She wants to see what they’ve
discovered, what they’ve found out, but she needs a reason beyond sheer
curiosity to walk through that door. Curiosity evokes curiosity in return; to
look is to invite inspection, scrutiny, a cross-section of interest Catherine
Themis can little afford.
She needs a diversion.
One of the lead federal investigators leans against the table by the
chugging copier, reviewing paperwork. She cannot recall if she knows his
name; he’s tall, lean, hair cut close to the scalp. His bearing is that of a
military man having traded his fatigues for a black suit, and Catherine
studies him from beneath her lashes until she has a firm guess on his
disposition. The fed is tired; he’s been up all night, given his slight
dishevelment and lax posture, and his portable coffee cup stays within an
arm’s reach at all times. Catherine’s gaze hones in on the cup.
 She snatches a folder from her desk and parts it in her hands, perusing
the contents without seeing a word as she begins a slow circuit around the
far side of the bullpen. She pauses once at Officer Castro’s desk as if
interested in something she sees. Then, Catherine moves quickly, striding
with purpose toward the copier, forcing herself to stumble in her heels and
reach out for balance. To anyone watching her, the plastic coffee cup is an
unintended victim in her momentary lapse, and certainly the fed sees it as
such, grasping her by the elbow rather than leaping for his beverage. For
perhaps the first time, Catherine is thankful for the male propensity to
coddle clumsy women.
“I’m so sorry,” she laments, affecting the softest look she can. It sits
heavy and awkward on her face like the makeup she uses to hide Bishop’s
bruises. Catherine is not soft.
“It’s fine. Are you all right?” the agent asks—though his gaze goes to
the fallen cup, black coffee sluicing across the old carpet. His square jaw
ticks.
“Yes—I wasn’t paying attention. Oh, I’ve made such a mess—.” She
crouches and picks up the coffee between thumb and forefinger, grimacing
as she hands it back. “I really am sorry about that.”
He grunts, irritable from lack of sleep and, now, a lack of caffeine. He
chucks the disposable cup into a convenient bin.
“I should do a coffee run,” Catherine says as she straightens and presses
her folder against her middle. “It’s the least I could do, and I think everyone
could use the boost today.”
The agent brightens and actually looks at Catherine for the first time,
taking in her tidy clothes, her neat hair and glasses, her earnest expression.
In ten minutes, he’ll remember the coffee but forget the face who offered it;
she could give her name, and he wouldn’t have the chance to forget it
because forgetting implies remembering in the first place.
“That’d be great, thanks. I take a regular dark roast and—ah, gimme a
second, I’ll write down the boss’ order….”
He exhumes a bent cahier from his breast pocket and scribbles out the
feds’ preferences, tearing the sheet free. Catherine takes the order and
smiles, promising she’d only be a few minutes before she tosses the useless
folder on her desk again and walks from the bullpen.
The smile slips from her face, replaced by nothing at all, an apathetic
expression for an apathetic mood. Catherine’s mind focuses on her goal
rather than the rote motions of her body. She walks to the coffee shop,
places a group order for the detectives and agents, then returns bearing two
filled carriers.
Catherine distributes beverages amid appreciative murmurs—then takes
the second carrier in hand and slips into the conference room. Again she is
confronted by the sheer magnitude of her crimes, and Catherine forces
herself to look, to bear witness, as two dozen dead faces stare empty of life
from flat corkboard walls. Again, the awkward dissonance strikes her. She
left these monsters to their darkness, and the police dragged them back into
the light, each murder a pin drop in the echoing desolation that is Catherine
herself. Or, rather, The Hangman.
The source of the department’s discontent occupies a new shrine on a
new corkboard. A new corpse—a new victim she’s never laid eyes on
before—has been dredged up and laid inside this transitory church
dedicated to the Hangman’s avarice. Catherine finds herself staring at the
collage despite her reservation.
It’s malignant, like a cancer rotting on the peripheries of the Hangman’s
design. It’s ostentatious and bloody in a way that even her sloppiest
mistakes never were. At first, she can’t make sense of it. It’s garish and too
bright, too red, and then Catherine discerns the body, the knife, the blank
monitor, and an unfamiliar face staring into the void, terror frozen forever
in still eyes. She hates blood.
“Hey, Catherine.”
She’s broken from her questioning reverie by Adeline Lincoln’s voice.
The woman sits cross-legged in the chair before the latest kill, dressed as
casual as ever, watching the coffee in Catherine’s hands with focused
single-mindedness.
Suddenly wrong-footed, Catherine replies, “Hello, Agent Lincoln,” and
hands off the sweetest drink of the bunch.
“Addie.”
“What?”
Adeline’s dark eyes swivel from the cup in her small hands and fix on
Catherine. “I want you to call me Addie.”
Catherine doesn’t know how to respond, so she doesn’t, instead going
about the room and the burdened table to deliver the ordered drinks. The
technicians and the other agents—three, she counts—are at loose ends and
reevaluating evidence, leaving the space before the newest kill to Adeline—
Addie—alone. Addie’s watching Catherine again as she approaches, empty
carrier folded under her arm, her gaze roving to the board. Catherine’s
glasses slip down her nose, and she carefully pushes them back into place.
“It’s gruesome,” Addie comments as she sips overly sweet foam. “Not a
quick kill, this one.”
A picture of a black monitor reflects the camera's flash; the flash reveals
a bloody, lopsided noose superimposed on the screen, drawn with a finger,
probably. “Forgive me for being inquisitive,” Catherine says, her teeth on
edge, her ears ringing. “But I was under the impression that the Hangman,
well, hangs people.”
“The Hangman hangs people like we hang shirts.” Catherine quirks a
brow, and Agent Lincoln—Addie—continues, gesturing at the older bodies.
“It’s just a shirt, or a hanger. It’s the final step in a process, isn’t it? Wear
the shirt, remove it, clean it, hang it. If you were to ask how he kills people,
it’d be more accurate to say the Hangman drugs and stabs them. Nice and
tidy, really. Kind of fastidious in the end.”
“That still begs the question of what that is.” Catherine points to the
new body.
“That?” Addie frowns and looks at the board. “That’s not the
Hangman.”
“No?”
“No. Nothing could be further from their work, their design. Jonas
Viteri had a few misdemeanor arrests under his belt but nothing to warrant a
visit to the gallows. This was aid—a favor, or perhaps a tribute.”
“Could it be an act of random violence? Dedwich isn’t exactly a city
concerned with safety.”
Addie snorts and pulls the hot coffee from her lips. “Mhm. I mean, it
could always be serendipity; a true psycho dedicating his work to his idol,
perhaps an intelligent sociopath trying to divert attention, or even a person
Viteri wronged coming back for some brutal justice. Improbable, but in the
greater scheme of things, not impossible.” The agent reaches and touches
the photo, playing her fingers over the noose’s bloody loops as if painting
the dreadful thing herself. “Almost reads like a gift to me. A lover’s knot.”
Addie lifts her hand. “I don’t think this person realizes the Hangman’s not
going to appreciate the gesture.”
Catherine wonders how much Addie Lincoln truly sees, because
Catherine—the Hangman—is far from appreciative. Rage kicks and curls
in her gut with a physical presence. It was him. It had to be him. What is he
doing? Does he think he can play with me and get away with it?
Straining to remain calm, Catherine asks, “Why do you think that? I
would assume a serial killer would love this kind of gesture.”
“Well, you’d assume wrong.” Addie shrugs, unrepentant. “The
Hangman’s a loner and isn’t looking for flattery. The whole hanging shtick
is all smoke and mirrors—y’know, the ‘don’t look behind the curtain!’
scene? They’re a vigilante providing a service, not a madman pretending
they’re God. No, I believe Viteri here was killed for the Hangman as some
kind of overture because Viteri had information we needed. See that there?
This picture, hidden under this bit? All the monitors broken, the computer
tower shattered? We thought he might have some actual footage of the perp
—first look we’d ever have, if we were lucky, and yet….” She unfurls her
fingers to display the empty palm, the physical embodiment of nothing to
show.
Catherine is transported back to the park, hovering below the camera
and the watching sun as Bishop Eris leans into her ear and hisses, “Little
heretic; you have your prayers answered, are gifted deliverance, and still
you blaspheme?”
He dares call this deliverance?
“Do you think somebody leaked this Viteri guy?” she asks, forcing
herself to glance over her shoulder as if nervous.
“No.” Addie sips her coffee. “Viteri’s been dead for nearly a week, long
before we went to see him. Compositing a possible scenario, I would
speculate this; somehow, someway, the Hangman knows he’s in danger.
Someone who knows him well enough saw his weakness, his soft spots, and
stepped up to bolster them.”
Dread replaces the rage in Catherine’s middle, and her leering ghosts
press ever closer, blotting her vision until it becomes hard for her to tell
what is real and what isn’t, who’s there and who’s not. She grips the back of
a chair with a white-knuckled fist.
The detective’s dark eyes stare into the dead man’s as Catherine holds
her breath. “Someone wanted to help our vigilante. Someone told him about
the investigation and knew enough to get a reaction.” Addie studies her, and
Catherine studies Addie. “Someone in your precinct knows who the
Hangman is.”
 xviii. la petite mort
To Catherine, anger is both her Achilles’ heel and Paris’ poisoned
arrow.
It is the weapon she wields and the blade leveling her low; the inferno
capable of magnificent strength—if she’s willing to feed herself to its
destruction. Grisha spent years tempering that blaze, dashing the embers
and teaching Catherine how to swallow the flames because she isn’t strong
enough to let it go, to spit the sparks from between her teeth and allow the
rage to bleed out. The anger—the violence—defines her. Sometimes, it is
all Catherine has.
She knows it will be her undoing.
After speaking with Detective Lincoln, she spends the remainder of her
workday at her desk, concentrating on trivial tasks while struggling for
control, for whatever equanimity a creature like her is entitled to. Benjamin
Franklin once said anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good
one—and Catherine thinks Franklin was full of it because this anger—for
Eris, for Lincoln, mostly for herself—fuels her. It is the anger that suspends
fear, suspends uncertainty.
Catherine tries to count the clock's wayward ticking, but the seconds
disappear into her thundering heartbeat until nothing remains.
“See you later, Cathy!” Officer Castro says as Catherine gathers her
purse at the end of her shift—and she almost turns around, almost screams,
“My name is Catherine, goddammit,” and yet she refrains, settling for a
simple, vacant glance. The elevator doors open, then slide shut. She keeps
her trembling hands inside her jacket and waits, waits….
Instead of going to her car in the lot, Catherine chooses to stride across
the avenue and delve deeper into the industrial park, finding a desolate
stretch of empty or soon-to-be empty shops where she is afforded no
attention beyond thoughtless glimpses. Catherine stands in an alley’s
shadowed mouth and dials a number on her phone.
It rings twice before the call is answered.
“My, my—lovely Catherine, what a surprise.”
The familiar voice tips her over the edge, and Catherine is snarling,
sheer stubbornness grounding her in the present. “Listen to me, you
pretentious asshole,” she hisses. “Whatever your sadistic little mind is
dreaming up, whatever your angle, I won’t tolerate you playing a game of
chicken with my life! What do you think you’re doing? How dare you—?!”
 A pause follows the echo of Catherine’s yell, then, “This sounds like a
conversation to be had in person.”
“I’m not—.”
“I’ve sent the address. I can’t wait to hear what’s brought on this
magnificent strop.”
Dead air meets Catherine’s wordless shout, and she clenches the phone
in her hand, willing herself not to hurl it at the grungy brick wall and watch
it shatter. She leans on that wall instead, feels the uneven edges bite into her
scalp, and tries to remember Grisha’s calming voice. The words warp inside
her skull and, as Catherine bites into her lip, another voice not belonging to
her ghosts or her mentor comes to her.
“Who was that guy? He’s not giving you trouble, is he?” Addie Lincoln
says, and laughter bursts in Catherine’s chest. She doubts the woman
hunting her would ever ask after Catherine’s welfare if she knew how far
the civilian administrator has fallen.
“No, nothing could be further from their work, their design.”
“What do you know of my design?” Catherine mutters, wanting to reach
out, wanting to grab Addie by the shoulders, the neck, wanting to make her
see. “What do you know about anything?”
“I don’t think this person realizes the Hangman’s not going to
appreciate the gesture.”
Catherine’s phone pings. Sucking in a breath, she studies the sent
address, memorizes it, then deletes the message. She holds her breath until
she’s walking toward the station again, and the air pulls from her lungs like
dragon fire, flickering plumes of white framing a pale, stoic countenance.
Someone calls her name when she returns to the parking lot, but they are far
enough away for her to feign ignorance. Catherine starts her car and drives.
The address brings her to a district on the outskirts of Dedwich—which
is a misleading connotation in and of itself, because Dedwich is a
borderland on the outskirts of somewhere, a place always near somewhere
else, never a destination. It’s merely a designation—a fallen byway, a pit-
stop, a vestigial organ that serves no purpose other than to exist.
If it ever had a name, the district is unfinished, the shell faded, the bones
rising stark and clean like ribs through grass, picked clean by carrion.
Catherine has considered the area for the Hangman’s purposes, but the
buildings are too visible, the roads too wide, the structures populated by the
homeless, hungry, and strung out. The buildings don’t suit her needs, but
they suit Bishop’s.
Catherine parks some blocks over from the development and walks the
distance, giving her temper more time to cool—or perhaps build, she isn’t
sure. One addict, either male or female, obscured by the lurking gloom,
darts from an alcove and attempts to mug her, but Catherine throws them
off without breaking her stride. The address she seeks lacks a door, so she
walks straight into the building through the gaping entrance, through the
opaque plastic sheets left by construction crews long since gone. She hears
a subtle, distant humming above her head, and Catherine narrows her eyes
until she spies a new twist of cables tacked against the exposed rafters.
Following the wires leads her farther into the hollow domicile.
Bishop Eris sits cross-legged on the concrete floor, fingers typing on a
mechanical keyboard with backlit keys and loud, tactile switches. Around
him congregates a loose wall of monitors, some old and some new, some on
and some not, flickering data graphs of video feeds and various things.
There is a mattress behind him, made up with folded sheets and a red duvet,
and by it sits a shut cooler, a battered suitcase, and several droning
computer towers garnished with extension cords, external hard drives, and a
jury-rigged coolant system.
Catherine watches him as he watches those screens. His expression
remains flat, and the images reflect off his wide eyes in a hazy whirl of
color. He soaks in the information, a subtle tick of his muscles moving like
a marionette, mimicking what he sees.
He registers her appearance without turning his head and enacts a swift
macro, the monitors flipping to an innocuous screen-saver as Catherine
stops just shy of his odd nest. The final click of her heels echoes through
the skeletal, half-formed walls.
“I would have thought they’d turn the power off for this area years ago,”
she comments, gazing at the wires and how they spiral from the ceiling like
plastic and metal stalactites.
“They did.” Bishop stands, slowly, carefully, watching her. “Hello,
love.”
“How do you keep them from stealing your things?” She points towards
the archway she entered from and takes a half-step to the right. Bishop
mirrors the motion. “They’re desperate, hungry. Not above taking from the
likes of you.”
 “You’re not wrong, but I assure you, a keen master need only punish
one dog for the pack to understand.” He smiles, and it’s all teeth. Catherine
sneers. “So tell me; what have I done now to earn the Hangman
ignominious ire?”
She snarls. “Jonas Viteri.”
“Is that the bloke with the surveillance cameras?”
“Yes!”
Bishop’s scarred lip curls. “I did you a favor with that one. Should I tell
you what he did with his cameras in his free time? No…I think I’ll spare
your sensibilities.”
She takes a step forward and so does he; if the Kaleidoscope is
intimidated, he hides it well.
“Aren’t you curious, little Catherine? Little Catherine with her righteous
anger and her pride.” He reaches out and strokes one finger along her jaw.
“I asked you before if you enjoy pretending your hands are perfectly clean
all the time. Do you? Do you like playing pretend? In your world, are you a
misunderstood girl who balks at the sight of blood? A girl who looks upon
violence with hypocritical conceit?”
He begins to circle her as Catherine’s eyelids flicker.
“I say hypocritical because it’s in all of us, you know. In all of them—
those liars with pretty faces, morality’s sycophants. They’d tear you apart at
the slightest provocation; take off the mask, Catherine, and the rest of the
world will howl for your blood.”
She screws her eyes shut and shakes her head, his voice permeating the
spaces between each heartbeat, a pulse within a pulse. “That doesn’t give
you the right to—!”
“To what? To take the law into my own hands? To protect myself? To
protect you from your own folly?”
“I—.”
“Is that not what you do, Catherine? You drive the knife deep, wrap the
noose tight. You have a view of this world and make it yours—when you’re
not cowering behind normalcy. Who are you to judge me simply because I
do not pretend I am a sheep? I killed him. I left a message. Do you not do
the same?”
She turns into him, and the Kaleidoscope has his hand at her throat. The
featherlight touch of his fingertips hovers against her skin; a promise,
perhaps, for violence, for absolution. He isn’t smiling. Instead, his gray eyes
grow wide, and his pupils drink in the light until they gleam like the black
stones found in the river’s belly. “You come in here wearing your anger like
your cape, your costume, and what did you think you were going to do,
little hero? Are you going to attack me because I did something you didn’t
like?” he scoffed. “Don’t forget who you are under that mask, Catherine.
Don’t think yourself better than the monsters.”
Shaking, she grabs his wrist. Bishop’s fingers tighten when hers do.
“I told you before; if you’re going to hit me, you had best aim to kill. I
promise I’ll do the same.”
She moves, and he does as well—but not to strike her, not to kill. His
lips crash against hers, warm breath scalding her chilled face, and Catherine
freezes, biting down, earning a sudden gasp and a sharp thrust. One hand
continues to hold her neck while the other comes around to pin her hips to
his, and with strength belying his slight, unimpressive frame, Bishop jerks
Catherine off her feet.
It’s a different kind of violence from the one she came for, one no less
primal for its intensity, the urge hot in her blood, in her heart, in her mind,
as Catherine’s nails sink into Bishop’s flesh and draw blood. They break
apart when their lungs heave for air, and the layers between them are torn
aside, the buttons from her blouse clattering on the concrete, his shirt
ripping at the collar when it stretches too far. They kiss again, and Catherine
bites too hard, tasting copper, and Bishop laughs as he licks into her mouth.
She wants to destroy him—devour him, to shred his confidence and
self-assiduity or take it as her own. He is nobody and everybody; the
kaleidoscope, the spider and the butterfly—and every shift of light and
glass and shadow in between. They’ve left bruises on one another before
and they do so again, because there is little difference between fighting and
fucking, at least in Catherine’s mind. Both are a contest for dominance, a
fierce tumble of sweaty limbs and uttered swears, bruises left on lips and
thighs like chalk outlines on the floor.
Catherine is spiraling in body, in mind, too angry to care if it hurts, too
conflicted to know if it doesn’t.
“Tell me what you want,” he murmurs into her throat, her neck, her
collarbones—and Catherine says nothing, only threads her fingers through
his soft hair and tugs. She doesn’t know what she wants, barely knows who
she is; even with Bishop Eris inside of her, all she can think about is Isaak
Peak, his drunken face above her own, two moles beneath his right eye,
looking at Catherine—looking at no one—and asking, “Who are you?”
Blue neon and the smell of cheap liqueur fill the room. The sluggish
sound of blood drips on the pavement—drip, drip, drip—the crack that
echoed like thunder when Luke Elliott’s neck snapped, the steady creak of a
noose stretched taut from a steel beam. Kaleidoscope’s laughter surrounds
her, and Catherine can’t breathe.
When it is over, when she lays upon her belly with the duvet slung low
against her back, there’s no comfort, no warmth; nothingness suffuses
Catherine until it aches in her fingers, in her chest.
“‘You desire but do not have, so you kill,’” Bishop quotes as his hand
skates along her spine. His mouth follows the trail and his tongue laves her
skin like a branding lash. “‘You covet but you cannot get what you want, so
you quarrel—.’” He bites down. “‘And fight. You do not have because you
do not ask God.’”
In monotone, she returns, “‘An evil soul producing holy witness is like a
villain with a smiling cheek.’” She closes her eyes against the sheet below
her and whispers to herself, “And you are not God.”
Catherine has done stupid things in anger; she’s screamed herself hoarse
and cut her flesh, has broken walls and floors and bones—has cracked
skulls and killed men in the throes of her worst rages, but she has never
done this before, has never fallen into quite so many pieces. She is shattered
and cannot see the way back.
La petite mort, the French call it; the descent beyond the crest, the fall,
the loss, a small death. For Catherine, who has cleaned someone’s lifeblood
from her hands, who has long since stepped into the dark without looking
back, it seems the greatest death of all.
 xix. human
Four years before the Kaleidoscope darkens Dedwich’s streets,
Catherine is twenty-five and knee-deep in the river’s waters when she
learns an important lesson.
The summer is substantial, a cloak stitched of sticky heat and thick
humidity. It clings to her skin, her hair unmanageable in its tie, cicadas
buzzing in the dense woods while the mosquitoes did their best to eat the
unawares alive. Catherine hates the river, and yet, for the moment, it rushes
cool and welcome against her feverish skin.
She stares at the phone clenched in her hand long after the screen
darkens and goes out.
“Docha,” Grisha says, a plaintive note in his deep voice. “You are
scaring the fish.”
Catherine retreats closer to the shore and to the relaxing surgeon, who
stands on the bank with a fishing pole in his hands, the line clicking as the
water draws it slowly through the reel.
“What are you looking at that has you so serious?”
He extends a hand, palm up, waiting, not asking, and Catherine gives
him her phone without thought. Grisha turns on the screen, and the sun
flashes against his bifocals as he angles the device away from the light. He
reads out, “‘Isa Crespo, thirty-four, has been taken in for questioning on the
death of her husband, Andre Crespo, thirty-seven, believed to be the
Hangman’s fifteenth victim.’ Ah, I read this nonsense this morning. Is this
why you are distracted today?”
“Is murder not a good enough reason to be distracted?”
Grisha snorts and continues to peruse the article. “You know my
sentiments on distraction. Death, for us, is old hat. You are feeling…guilty,
yes? Worried for this woman you have inconvenienced?”
Catherine listens to the water, the reel, the susurrations of air through
the untamed trees and breathes out. “I…I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know!” she retorts, voice carrying over the river.
“Because regret’s a worthless emotion—because I don’t regret killing the
asshole, but I regret that—!” She gestures at the phone in Grisha’s hand.
In a sharp tone, he tells her, “Lower your voice. Breathe in, breathe
out.”
 Catherine realizes she’s panting and does as she’s told. The river laps
soft and impartial at her toes; freckles dot the pale skin, mud on her heels, a
scar on the right arch where she once slipped helping her mom carry
groceries into the house. The world is less garish when air fills her lungs
and lightens her chest.
“Guilt is an emotion every person feels,” Grisha murmurs when
Catherine calms. “Do you not think I feel guilt when I speak with grieving
families after I have sent their loved ones on to meet their maker? Do you
think I felt nothing when I helped Bertholdt along? When you cried into my
shoulder?”
Catherine doesn’t understand. She was there; Bertholdt wanted his end,
rasped and begged and cried for it. Brow furrowing, she asks, “But why
would you feel guilty?”
“Because I am human, docha. Just as you are human, and guilt is a very
human thing to have. We are defined by our mistakes—our faults—just as
much as we are by our strengths and aspirations.” He smiles, friendly and
gentle, the face of a man who has seen far more than she has or ever will. “I
would argue you are more human than those you put in the ground, my girl.
I wish you could see it, too.”
The breeze pulls through Catherine’s loose hair, Grisha’s lawn shirt
speckled with water. They could be anyone at that moment; two souls on a
riverbank in the height of summer, seeking succor from the heat and
interminable apathy. Here, where the daylight silences her ghosts and sets
her skin aglow, Catherine remembers the red-haired girl she used to be, the
girl who loved Kayla Hoffman more than she ever loved herself.
Sometimes, she forgets that girl, and sometimes she cannot help but
remember.
She forgets this lesson, too, in the dead of night when she wakes to the
faceless amalgamations hovering over her bed, drinking in her air, stealing
her mind one day at a time. She forgets why she started down this road; she
forgets Kayla, she forgets herself. The shadow of the Hangman grows long,
and the line between woman and killer blurs when she shuts her eyes. She
fears only one will survive.
The rod jerks in Grisha’s grasp, and the phone, held loose as he scrolls
with his thumb, slides between his fingers. “Oh—blin!” the surgeon swears
as the river swallows Catherine’s phone and the reel whines, the line
extending into the current. He sputters apologies in Russian as he fumbles
for the ruined phone and tries to bring in the fish attempting to tow him into
the river’s depths. The image makes for such a funny picture, Catherine
starts to laugh.
Taken by surprise, Grisha blinks and begins to chuckle, running a rueful
hand through the short hair on his nape. “I am sorry for my carelessness.”
Catherine grins. “That’s part of being human, right?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
***
She rises from the sheets and drags her arms through the sleeves of her
torn blouse. Catherine fingers the loose threads as she sits on the mattress’
edge, staring at nothing, feeling nothing.
The smell of Bishop clings to her skin. He touches her again, and when
his fingertips skate along her flank, Catherine flinches away, her jaw aching
from how tightly she clenches it. She returns each piece of clothing to its
proper place like a ritual; the blouse hangs open, but it disappears behind
her coat’s zipper. Fingerprints smudge the surface of her glasses, and
Catherine’s lips thin when she cleans the lenses.
Bishop keeps asking her if she finds relief in taking off the mask—an
insipid, repetitive question resounding ad naseum, and Catherine cannot
answer because she doesn’t know the answer. Relief is an alien sensation
she understands only in the abstract; it comes when she breathes in and
escapes when she breathes out, ephemeral in its presence and application.
He speaks as if the mask is physical, as if Catherine could peel it from her
face, and yet she can only dig her nails into flesh and bone. Relief, he says.
There is no relief from herself.
“Mistakes,” Grisha murmurs inside her head. “We all make mistakes.
“Leaving so soon?” Bishop drawls, watching her from under lowered
eyelids.
“Yes.” She needs to feed Virgil, needs to wash, clean the taste from her
body and mind. What am I even doing? She fights the urge to hide her face
in her hands. What have I done?
“Hmm.” He hums and rolls to his side, the rumpled sheet slung low on
his waist, head propped on his raised arm. Bishop shares no quips, no pithy
half-truths or leading comments; bruises darken his mouth, and sweat has
mussed his usually tidy hair. Distantly, she hears the wind pull at something
metal, and the clatter of a solid object striking concrete echoes in the
building’s hollow shell. Bishop registers the sound yet doesn’t react. “I’d
apologize for the accommodations, but I’m sure you’re well aware of
Dedwich’s shortcomings.”
Catherine sucks air through her teeth as she pulls her heels on. She
stands.
“It is…a squalid little city, isn’t it?” Bishop sits up. “I can’t see the
attraction. Have you ever been to London, my Catherine?”
“No.”
“Great city, London. Paris?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Prague? How about something local? Boston? New York?”
Catherine watches the blank monitors and smooths her blouse’s crooked
collar when she says, “I’ve never left Pennsylvania. I haven’t really left
Dedwich.”
“Why?”
His tone sounds innocent enough, though she has misgivings about
where this conversation is leading. Catherine waits, silent again, for Bishop
to get to his point. The sheet pools in his lap, and the shadows dip where
muscle and bone form natural hollows in his form.
“You could leave, you know,” he croons. “See those places I mentioned.
I could take you.”
Catherine stares.
“What is there here for you to leave behind? You’ve no family. No
friends. Your job?” He smiles and bears broken teeth. It’s not a smile at all;
more a jackal making faces at something it wishes to eat. “We could make it
simple. It would look like an accident, love; Catherine Themis dies in the
Dedwich that she loves so, and the Hangman…well, who's to say where the
Hangman goes?”
She finds it ironic both Bishop and Grisha tell her to leave town, both
for different reasons; because Bishop wants her to embrace the monster, and
Grisha wants her to be the woman. Neither realizes Catherine cannot let go
of either, not yet, and she is not about to follow the words of a man like
Bishop Eris simply because she lost her mind for an hour or so.
“I’ll think on it,” Catherine replies because she’s enough sense left to
play coy in the presence of a killer. What do you want, she once asked him,
and he said, what do any of us want. He claims he wishes to take off his
mask, that he wants to remove hers, and yet Catherine has to wonder if the
Kaleidoscope can even understand the concept. Masks hide things, become
us, and Bishop…Bishop Eris is as placeable as sand, a thousand masks over
a thousand identities, no one and everyone.
Catherine could rip into her soul and find the fallible human lurking
there. Could Bishop say the same?
What is a mistake for her is a calculated ploy for him. She knows this.
She cannot allow herself to forget the man once tried to kill her. Not again.
He shrugs one shoulder, smile falling, and rolls from beneath the sheet.
As he walks to the adjoining washroom, nude and unabashed, his back
gleams silver like his eyes, and Catherine traces the network of aged scars
crisscrossing his skin like railroad tracks. They congregate in greater
numbers toward his buttocks and thighs, and she realizes they come from a
belt, or perhaps a cane, repeatedly striking until blood flowed and wounds
gaped wide.
‘Take off the mask,’ she scoffs in her mind. The Kaleidoscope
disappears. You first.
 xx. interest
The rain pattering on open umbrellas provides a fitting background to
the grumbling and groaning coming from the officers meandering along the
empty streets. Addie doesn’t mind the rain, doesn’t mind wet hair and damp
clothes and chilled cheeks, breath escaping in ghostly plumes, but she
remains dry beneath her own umbrella, twirling it ever so slightly side to
side. Moreno reminds her that appearances are important.
Two officers and a detective Addie can’t name assist her team in
canvassing the neighborhood, and they have spent the better part of two
days stomping these weathered streets, earning wary glances and slammed
doors to the face. They convene in the morning at the Rightwood precinct
and pore over a map; in the center of this dying estate lies the park where
Addie is certain Martina Knight earned the Hangman’s wrath.
Despite the chill, Moreno fans himself with Knight’s photo and
grumbles, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
Addie stops twirling her umbrella and eyes him critically. “You’re out
of shape.”
Moreno snorts. “We live on food wrapped in paper or served in plastic
baskets; of course I’m out of shape.”
Addie hums, and he huffs.
“Don’t give me that, La Loba. We can’t all be built like wolves.”
Lost in thought, Addie shrugs and the umbrella leaning against her
shoulder swirls in a lazy circle. The quiet snick of a door closing echoes
through the rain, and Agent Horn approaches where they stand at the
crumbling curb, his expression disappointed as he walks from the shut door
and ducks under Moreno’s umbrella.
“Nothing,” he reports as he brings out a crumpled cigarette pack and
taps it against his palm. “I think it’s unlikely we’ll find what we’re looking
for, honestly. These people don’t trust law enforcement enough to tell us
anything.”
“They view the Hangman as a kind of hero,” Addie comments. “Always
have, even when I was in school here. A champion of the underdog, very
Batman-esque, yeah?”
Moreno smirks. “What do you know about Batman?”
“I watch television.”
Moreno and Horn snort, understanding all too well how daytime
programming can confound and baffle Addie. Horn lights his cigarette and
blows the smoke into the rain, crouching slightly to remain below Moreno’s
umbrella. “My point still stands,” he says.
Addie isn’t convinced but doesn’t argue. She watches instead, and
blurry faces watch them in turn; this is a lower-income area, and the people
residing in the drab complexes and small homes resent government officials
in the same way Addie used to resent her hometown cops. She used to be
one of those blurry faces. She understands them.
Horn continues to smoke, and Moreno drones in thick male tones to his
colleague about their next destination as Addie’s mind wanders. She spins
the umbrella again. Across the street, a dark-haired boy lingers overlong on
his parents’ porch. He glances once, twice, three times in the direction of
Addie and the other agents, then bites his lip.
“Hmm….” Addie tilts her head and unceremoniously shoves the
umbrella into Horn’s hands, causing him to drop the cigarette.
“Hey—! Lincoln!”
Puddles break under her sneakers and soak the cuffs of her jeans as
Addie hops the curb and crosses the asphalt, stopping when she reaches the
low chainlink fence barring passage into the sodden yard. The boy sees her
coming and rises to his feet. Addie knows he is torn between running inside
—hiding—and speaking with her; when she was his age, she doesn’t know
if she would have had the courage to do more than scowl and swear.
“Hello!” Addie says.
The boy hesitates and bites at his nails. “H-hello,” he calls back, voice
drifting through the cold rain. He takes one step off the porch.
“My name is Addie. What’s yours?”
“…Jean.”
“Hi, Jean. It’s nice to meet you.”
Tentative, the boy dismounts the steps and approaches the fence. He is
reticent; if what Addie suspects is true, his being cautious of seemingly
innocuous women is explainable, though she ponders why he would speak
with her at all. Martina Knight died several years ago, and Jean would have
been a child then—but not much younger than he is now, only shorter and
with a voice not prone to breaking at inopportune times. He might not have
understood what had almost happened with Knight until later in life, but the
memory remains strong.
“…you’re one of those cops asking about that…that lady.”
 “Yup.” Addie tucks her soaked hair behind her ears and pops her elbows
onto the fence’s top rail, ignoring how the links poke at her skin. Jean sizes
her up and finds what he sees satisfactory, or at least different enough from
the beast in his memory to be safe. A different woman from Knight must
have restored his faith in the fairer sex, or Addie doubts Jean would come
within ten feet of her. “Do you want to talk about that lady, Jean?”
He doesn’t meet her eyes. “…I wanna see the picture.”
Addie blinks, then dips two fingers into her flannel’s front pocket and
tugs the bent photo free. Her colleagues would have hesitated in light of the
boy’s age, but she forges ahead and lets Jean look down at the water-
speckled image of the woman Addie suspects tried to hurt him. It’s his right
if he wishes. Jean takes one glance at Knight’s visage and flinches away.
Addie folds the photo in two.
“You’ve seen her before.”
“On the news,” he replies immediately, staring at his shoes. “A-and….”
“At the park, right?”
Glum, Jean nods. “…yeah.”
“Did that lady try to take you somewhere?”
Jean nods again, and a small breath leaves him.
Water drips on the bones of Addie’s face, clinging to her lashes, her lips,
the loose strands of hair like black webs on her skin. It is cold, but she has
been so much colder before. “You’re not in trouble, you know. Whatever
happened, whatever you saw that day in the park. You don’t owe anybody
an explanation.”
“That lady’s dead now,” Jean says quietly.
“Yup. She probably deserved it.”
He stares. “I thought cops weren’t supposed to be saying stuff like that.”
Addie just shrugs. Across the street, Poole joins the other agents and
makes as if to join her, but Moreno aborts the motion, keeping the younger
man back.
“…You’re gonna put the Hangman in jail, aren’t you?” Jean sounds
dejected by the possibility. “Mama says that any kind of killing is a sin, but
I don’t think I agree with that, not really, cos’ my teacher was telling us
about how some prisons have death row, and those people are sentenced to
die by a jury, and sometimes cops just kill people minding their own
business and don’t go to jail or anything. I don’t…I don’t really see the
difference between what the Hangman does and what you do, I guess.”
 Thunder rolls, low and distant, and the rain eases to a palpable mist.
“Sometimes I don’t either.” The difference is a frail line to walk in Addie’s
mind; ten bodies have been sent to the morgue riddled with her bullets, and
the FBI banks on her reputation to send them another corpse laced with lead
or to not come back at all.
Troubled brown eyes look into Addie’s own as the boy on the cusp of
becoming a young man struggles with an inner moral dilemma. “…I think
she saved my life at that park. I don’t really wanna betray that. Not really.”
“‘She,’ you said?”
“Well, yeah. The Hangman. The Hangman’s a woman.”
Addie smiles like a wolf.
***
Heads turn when Addie and her crew walk into the cafe. It’s a quaint
place, on a road leading from a nicer suburb to a tired slum, and though
Dedwich is by no means a small town, it forms natural cliques; those who
live here have done so for years, decades, for generations, and they grow in
clusters like mushrooms over a buried corpse. Outsiders draw inevitable
attention.
Conversation lulls as Addie and the other agents take an empty booth
not far from the door and sink onto the cushioned benches, the four of them
still damp from the passing rain. The waitress takes their order—two
glasses of pop, water, a coffee, salad for finicky Samir, two fried dinners,
and a hamburger—and leaves them to their relative seclusion. One by one,
Addie meets the eyes of those discreetly observing their gathering, and one
by one, those eyes look away.
“Still can’t believe it,” Moreno mutters as he rolls his shoulders and
relaxes. “I would have never guessed it’s a woman.”
“It seems infeasible,” Poole says as he accepts his water from the
waitress and carefully sets it down. “I mean, the strength alone needed to
hoist the—the bodies up….Does that fit the profile?”
Horn responds, “Doesn’t factor into the profile,” and takes a sip from
his glass of fizzy pop. “Serial killers are almost exclusively men. I don’t
think Moreno or I have ever heard of a woman convicted of anything like
this, not while we’ve been at the bureau. PC culture tells us women are
equal in everything—and they are, don’t get me wrong—but historically,
women are one-off killers and shy away from overt violence.”
“Do you think the boy Agent Lincoln interviewed was mistaken?”
 “Maybe,” Moreno admits. “Kid was scared. That puta madre had him
by the arm. Maybe it was a man he saw.”
Addie scoffs.
“You don’t think it’s possible?” Horn asks with a raised brow. “More
mature and coherent witnesses get facts wrong all the time.”
“Jean was scared, not blind—or deaf.” Addie tears the tops off several
sugar packets and dumps them into her coffee, crumpling the paper in her
fist. In her thoughts, she hears the boy’s nervous blathering still; I didn’t see
her face, I didn’t, I swear, but she told me to run to my mama and that’s all I
wanna say. “Women have always been capable of committing the same
violence as men, but social mores and gender roles form our expected
behaviors just as virulently as the geography of birth affects one’s accent.”
She looks at each of them in turn. A capable team, though Poole annoys her
more than not; Addie has killed and wounded more in the line of duty than
all three of these men put together. “Besides, the next time you question if a
woman’s capable of killing, just remember: we deal with far more blood
than you do.”
Poole pulls a disgusted face, and Horn laughs openly, earning several
curious glances from the locals.
The bell above the door chimes. Cool air filters through the diner,
carrying a familiar, clean smell, one Addie only ever seems to catch in
passing, and she perks up, spotting her quarry shrugging out of a gray coat
at the entrance. In this unguarded moment, Catherine Themis’ face is blank
and unyielding, green eyes like those of a jade warrior, carved into the
resemblance of flesh by hammer and chisel. She appears to find whoever
she’s come to meet, as the hard look softens into something passably
friendly, and she folds the coat over her arm, starting forward.
“Hi, Catherine,” Addie says as the other woman passes their table.
Catherine glances down, surprised, but is quick to recover.
“Hello, Addie.” She keeps walking, and Addie watches her go.
Moreno starts to chuckle just as their food arrives, and though he waits
until the waitress departs again before saying anything, Addie already
knows what the next words out his mouth will be. “I don’t think she’s
interested, la loba.”
Huffing, Addie drinks her coffee and ignores him. Interest or not, it
doesn’t matter to her; Catherine fascinates Addie and has for years, ever
since Addie had the privilege of sitting next to her in a literature class at
Dedwich University. For sixteen weeks, Addie watched those graceful,
long-fingered hands taking notes or flipping pages or moving idly,
deliberately, a glimmer of an old watch beneath a sleeve, pastel polish
painted on tidy, clipped nails. She never knows what to say. She feels
tongue-tied whenever Catherine looks in her direction, but there is
something to the other woman Addie longs to understand, something
ethereal and real that begs for a gentle touch of acknowledgment.
Addie doesn’t understand, and so she watches. She watches and learns.
“I think she has a boyfriend,” Horn comments. “Isn’t she from the
Rightwood precinct? She’s not an officer, is she?”
“Detective, maybe?”
“No, all the detectives are men.”
“Catherine’s the civilian administrator,” Addie mutters without much
thought. She tips in her seat to get a better view of the booth Catherine
slides into and sees she has indeed come to meet with a man, but not her
boyfriend. No, Catherine’s body language is still harsh, on edge, and Addie
remembers that average-looking man from the precinct parking lot.
Catherine said he was nobody.
“Does the sex of the suspect impact how we look at the victims and
crime scenes?” Poole asks, disregarding the shift in mood to drag their
attention back to murder and ruin. “Perhaps the Hangman has an
accomplice who does the heavy lifting, so to speak?”
Addie tunes out while they confer. Ten minutes later, one of the
waitresses behind the counter turns up the television, and Addie blinks as
she comes back to herself, watching the vapid anchor announce local news.
“…investigations into a series of ghastly murders has yielded new
results for federal agents and the DPD today. A potential witness to the
abduction of Martina Knight, who was found dead in 2013, has come
forward and may yet reveal clues to the identity of the criminal who has
been regionally sensationalized as ‘The Hangman’….”
A ripple moves outward from the wall-mounted television; shifty
glances get thrown about the crowded space, murmurs, questions, and
speculations tinged by worry. Dedwich is a dying city and, not unlike the
university, the Hangman is a final bastion of self-worth; she gives this place
an identity in a world consuming their borders bite by bite. The capture and
arrest won’t be popular here. Perhaps superficially it will, but not in the
city’s heart. Addie might even be reprimanded if she shoots this one.
 She bites her burger and chews.
A resounding bang rattles plastic cups and slices through the quiet
rabble. Heads turn again, but not towards Addie or the FBI; instead, those
spinning heads find Catherine and her companion—who might not be a
companion after all. Catherine has grabbed him by the wrist and slammed it
into the table, knocking over a glass and salt shaker, releasing him almost as
soon as his grunt of pain dies. She casts a weak, reassuring smile about the
diner—then leans into the man’s space and hisses something unintelligible
before she rises, grabs her coat, and departs.
The man remains behind. He shrugs and laughs off the attention, and yet
Addie sees how he carefully tucks his arm against his chest, the wrist either
broken or badly bruised. Though he smiles—lower teeth broken, a fresh
scar on the lip—those gray eyes burn with rage.
“Shit,” Moreno laughs as conversations resume. “That looked like a hell
of a disagreement. You still interested in that, la loba?”
Addie turns to the window, searching in vain for a flash of red hair that
has already disappeared. “Yes,” she replies. “Yes, I am.”
 xxi. remedy
The hot water cascades over Catherine’s upturned face, and for one
blessed minute, she feels clean, redeemed, and untroubled.
Then, reality returns, a knife sliding through the threads composing her
tenuous reality, leaving Catherine nothing but the frayed ends and cut cords.
She’s tired, wary, and frustrated. Her skin blisters in hues of green and
yellow and blue, a garden of violence planted in flesh, and the water burns
red where it trickles.
Unconcerned, Catherine brings her head beneath the shower’s
downpour and shuts her eyes.
For two days, the FBI has been absent from the precinct, though
vestiges of their presence dot the peripheries, their technicians and interns
still buzzing about the conference room and monopolizing the elevator as
they travel from the lab in the basement to the bullpen and back again. The
world is conspicuously quiet outside of Catherine’s head. Inside her skull,
the ghosts still croon and laugh and mock, deriding her peace and honing
her mistakes into sharp knives.
Those knives flash quick and searing against her nerves in the dead of
night, and Catherine wakes with the taste of Bishop Eris still on her lips and
Virgil’s weight against her middle. Her fingers sink through brushed fur,
and every night Catherine sneers at the ceiling, wishing for control she can
never seem to grasp.
She tries to reach out to Grisha when the dreams are too much, but he
hasn’t answered. Catherine thinks he’s angry—as angry as Grisha is capable
of being with her. Perhaps he’s disappointed in her stubbornness, or perhaps
he means to force the fledgling bird from the nest, force her to fly on her
own.
The bitterness of it chokes her.
A blip from her cell brings Catherine’s attention to her gym bag sitting
on a chair at the dry end of the stall, and she kills the water, listening as it
swirls and gurgles in the drain. She dries off, then fishes the phone out from
its pocket.
Eris has sent a time and an address—an address Catherine knows.
Muttering under her breath, she stuffs the phone away again and
dresses, replacing her contacts for her glasses, sliding into her short heels,
and layering makeup on her bruised face with a practiced hand. Catherine
little desires meeting anyone at the moment, let alone Bishop—she wants to
see Grisha, knows she could go to the hospital, knows he would welcome
her, but she’s a prideful little monster and can’t bring herself to hang her
head—but she decides to get the inevitable conversation over with.
She leaves the gym dressed once more in her bland office garb and
drives across downtown Dedwich to the little cafe she has met Bishop in
twice before. A crowd mills inside the place, the day late enough to attract
an older demographic eating dinner before the night sets in. Catherine
walks inside, damp air blowing against her back, and sheds her coat.
Bishop sits in his usual seat with his usual tea, gloved hand lightly
clasping the mug’s handle as he stares in her direction with warmth in his
gaze. False warmth, Catherine tells herself, replicating the expression,
feeling all the more tired for immersing herself in the lie. Some days she
doesn’t know if she’ll ever stop lying; some days she fears what would
happen if she did.
“Hi, Catherine.”
The voice doesn’t come from Bishop, and Catherine flinches, glancing
down at the table she’s passing to find Adeline Lincoln staring at her with
dark, curious eyes. Rattled, Catherine blinks and takes a breath, unnerved to
find a gaggle of federal agents in this innocuous space.
Life is filled with too many coincidences.
“Hello, Addie.”
She keeps walking, pushing aside her inquisitive thoughts concerning
the special agent, and concentrates instead on the predicament awaiting her
with a cup of Darjeeling in his hand.
“Hello, my Catherine,” Bishop says as she sits. “Coffee?”
“No.”
“Suit yourself.” He sips from the mug and sighs, eyes sliding shut.
Catherine thinks a man like him doesn’t deserve to be so content. “The
police are here.”
“That’s the FBI,” Catherine corrects, not bothering to turn around and
look at the agents. She can feel their attention glancing off the back of her
head, courtesy of Agent Lincoln. “They’ve undoubtedly been working in
this area.”
“That park’s not far from here,” he comments, one finger tracing the
mug’s rim. “Do you think they’re still fumbling about for clues like a virgin
on his wedding night?”
 Unimpressed, Catherine looks around the cafe, studying the decor and
the patrons, lingering on the stubborn water droplets still clinging to the
window glass from the earlier rainfall. She feels like one of those drops,
growing heavier with her neuroses, waiting for the sudden, swift descent
into madness. Being here is madness. Everything I’ve ever done is madness.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
“What?”
Bishop lifts a brow. “Now, now, let’s not feign idiocy; you heard me
perfectly well.”
“I heard you fine; I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
Hence why I said what.”
Sucking air through his teeth, Bishop retorts, “A decision regarding our
last conversation. I assume you can remember that far back, yes?”
“Well, you know what they say about assuming.”
“How trite.” His movements are less refined when irritated, Catherine
notices. When Bishop sets down his cup, it clicks hard against the saucer.
“Are you going to stay in this wretched hovel of a town, then? Have you
resigned yourself to the FBI’s custody? Because that’s where you’re going
to end up, my lovely Hangman.”
His voice is just barely low enough to avoid being overheard, and
Catherine narrows her eyes, the implied threat ghosting over her. “Don’t
presume to pressure me.”
“Don’t presume you have the luxury of time.”
Catherine mulls over what she wishes to say in reply, then the waitress
behind the bar turns up the television’s muted volume. The news is playing,
and Catherine finds herself riveted by the scrolling bulletin.
Hangman witness steps forward.
Her world teeters upon a precipice, incredulity and horror scorching
logical thought—a witness, a witness, how could I have a witness—and
Catherine reaches below her sleeve, squeezing the watch hidden there as
tightly as she can. Around her, a dozen people sit, including FBI agents and
a man who might very well try to kill her again—a mistake, a mistake, I
make so many mistakes—so she can’t mess up, can’t break down—.
Bishop frowns as he listens to the talking anchor, tilting his cup from
one side to the other, thoughts flitting through his gray eyes faster than
Catherine can register them. He blinks and lets out a soft sound of
exclamation. “Ah, the boy. They must have that boy you so nobly saved.”
 Catherine shuts her eyes. She tries to breathe past the tight vise
squeezing her chest and thinks of the dark-haired child she ripped from
Martina Knight’s hands and knows she should have waited, should have
done things differently, and yet emotion wars with the Hangman’s cold
logic. She wouldn’t have acted any other way. She knows she wouldn’t
have. To Catherine, the boy represents the last shreds of her humanity, an
example of what little she has done right in life, and she wouldn’t have left
him with Knight for a second more.
“I must admit I didn’t consider him,” Bishop says, his interest piqued. “I
don’t think of children much at all, to tell the truth. Yet…he wouldn’t be
much of a child anymore, would he? No…perhaps the situation can still
be…remedied, hmm?”
Catherine opens her eyes. Blood roars in her ears.
Bishop moves as if to touch her hand or her arm, and Catherine lunges,
striking out without thought, fingers coiling about his wrist to slam it—hard
—against the table. A pained gasp rips through his teeth. Catherine tightens
her grip.
The cafe is silent; Catherine forces herself to let Bishop go, lest the
police are called, but she cannot look away, cannot pretend she cares for the
attention now aimed in their direction after a lifetime of anonymity. She
leans over the table, smelling Bishop’s cologne and tea, hearing his harsh
breathing, and simply hisses, “Don’t.” She is too angry for anything else.
Then, Catherine’s on her feet and all but running from the booth, from
the Kaleidoscope’s furious glare and the droning news station. Catherine
swallows cold air and breaks into a jog, not knowing where she’s going, not
remembering where she parked, simply wishing to put as much space as
possible between herself and the place she is—the person she is.
Her ghosts edge nearer and nearer, nebulous hands sinking into her
bones, her heart, trailing her into the coming night without missing a step.
Perhaps the situation can still be…remedied—.
Who are you—?
C’mon stop messing around—.
Catherine presses her palms flat against her ears as she comes to a stop
on a quiet suburban street, hidden between a cinderblock wall and a dying
oak tree. “Shut up,” she whispers, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up—.”
 She knows, now, the Kaleidoscope does not seek a companion in her,
not like Catherine does. Take off the mask, he says, and Catherine does want
to take off the mask—just not in the way that Bishop Eris understands,
because he understands nothing of Catherine or of the Hangman, not truly.
He seeks to destroy all that she is, all that she could be, and to strip from the
Hangman what gossamer veils of righteousness she yet retains. He is a child
poised to rip the killer apart to see how she works.
Remedy the situation. No, Catherine wouldn’t allow him to kill the
dark-haired boy for her own failings.
She lowers herself to the wet grass among the oak’s roots and holds
onto her watch like it’s the only buoy in an endless, drowning sea. Whatever
the Kaleidoscope is, Grisha says in her ear, you will not find a monster like
your own in him.
Catherine puts her head between her knees and weeps.
 xxii. unlikely
Catherine wraps her scarf around her throat one layer at a time until it
sits heavy like a noose over her collarbones, and she tucks the edges into
her coat while her lips tip in an awful smile.
Another day passes, though she’s little recollection of it. The drones
continue to drone, and Catherine sits idle at her desk, waiting for the
hammer to fall or for the FBI’s heavy, overbearing tread to pass her by. She
feels as if her pieces have come unglued, breaking at the edges, and one
solid blow would shatter the illusion of Catherine Themis beyond repair.
She despises that fragility, that unraveling cord of humanity, and knows that
if the illusion breaks, the remnants won’t be a broken little girl, but instead
a beast—a beast who won’t stop until she’s put down.
She rides the elevator to the main floor, then walks through the doors to
the parking lot. Catherine’s a forgettable woman in a moving tide of officers
and detectives, criminals and thieves, lawyers and advocates, all eager to
leave or reluctant to arrive. Her breath snakes out, cold and white, then
slithers back in.
She walks forward. In perfect mimicry to the day not so long ago
wherein she approached her car and found a killer waiting for her, Catherine
sees Bishop Eris from the corner of her eye, standing too close and looking
far too assured of himself. He wears a brace on his wrist not unlike her own.
She knew she’d see him soon.
“Hello, Catherine,” he says, and Catherine says nothing, one hand
dipping into her purse, the other tight upon her keys. “No hostile greeting?
No pithy quip? Haven’t got over our little spat yet, I see. My, how terrible
dull, my lovely black widow.”
She clicks the fob on her key chain to unlock her car, opening the door
—only to snatch her fingers back before the Kaleidoscope slams it shut, the
bang reverberating through the soles of her feet. Bishop now stands not a
foot away with a hand braced flat on the car window. His composure slips
like rain on a window—or wet paint heaped too heavily on a vertical
surface, bleeding downward in thick, viscous drips, thinning enough to
expose the tarnished veneer underneath. He spreads his feet and keeps his
jaw tight, eyes like honed metal glinting gray and white and black all at the
same time.
“You don’t get to ignore me,” he whispers. “That is not how this game
gets played.”
 “I am not playing games.”
“Oh? And here I thought you enjoyed how we…play together.”
He steps in too close with a practiced arm angled to block her hand
from rising from the purse, blocking access to the gun nestled between her
wallet and her phone. Catherine doesn’t go for her gun. She flicks the keys
in her other hand, palming the innocuous tiki key chain picked up at a
garage sale of all places, and she presses her thumb against the worn switch,
sliding out the hidden switchblade. The Kaleidoscope’s presumptuous move
into her personal space hides how her hand dips between his legs, and the
man freezes when he feels the hard edge of a knife digging into his upper
thigh.
They stare at one another, their breath mingling, and balance upon a
precipice. He could, perhaps, still kill Catherine. She’s witnessed his
deceptive strength, his speed, and knows he could bash her head against the
car or break her neck—but not before she sliced into his femoral artery.
He’d bleed out in minutes. Whoever the victor is, they’d be blood-soaked,
and the police would descend on them in seconds.
“My, my. Catherine,” he sighs, fond frustration in his tone, violence in
her quivering grip. “What are you doing, love? I thought we were past this.
We should be partners. You don’t want to be at odds with me. Why are you
being so difficult?”
She thinks about a fable she once read in the footnotes of an abnormal
behavior psychology textbook, an old tale about a farmer who finds a viper
wounded in his crop. He heals the snake, and it, in turn, bites the man,
killing him. With his last breath, the farmer asks the viper why, and as
Catherine leans into the Kaleidoscope, teeth near his ear, breath on his neck,
she hisses its reply; “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”
She is not a dog to be lured home, bound and leashed, growing fat on
table scraps. She is not a bird to be caged. She is a snake—cold-blooded
and wild, instinctive, lying low upon the earth where she drags her belly in
the dirt because she is a liar, a sinner, a thing to be feared, and she will not
let herself fall prey to his false guile again. The man who calls himself
Bishop Eris is a spider; he is Tolkien’s Ungoliant, weaving his web in the
world’s darkest corners, ever-hungry and feasting until he devours himself.
Catherine would feed him no longer.
She thinks the metaphor has gone over his head—until he grips her by
the arm and her back hits the car, knife still bare like the poised fang of the
proverbial viper, and she lets it prick his flesh through the fabric of his
trousers.
“Hey!” comes a shout, then, “Fuck off, asshole!”
The Kaleidoscope retreats before Addie Lincoln can lay a hand on him,
the agent drawing level with the pair, her eyes narrow in reproach and
suspicion as the Bishop glares at Catherine and ignores Addie entirely.
“You won’t like what happens next, Catherine,” he promises. Fury wakes
cold and ugly in his smile, and it presages terrible things to come.
“I said fuck off,” Addie growls. He does, walking backward for a few
paces before whirling about and ducking into the late afternoon traffic
crowding the sidewalks. The detective turns to Catherine and sees the little
switchblade still in her hand, though a second later, it’s once more the
gaudy key chain that doesn’t match Catherine’s monotone aesthetic. “Are
you all right?”
“Yes,” Catherine replies by rote, straightening, fresh bruises licking
against her shoulders and elbows. “I’m—fine.”
Her heart races, a thousand beats on a snare drum, like fists on a dark
prison wall, her hands shaking and mouth dry. You won’t like what happens
next.
Whatever the Kaleidoscope is, you will not find a monster like your own
in him.
The spider, and the snake. Both hated by many, both very different from
one another. The beginning of the end is now, and she can do nothing but
brace herself for the impact.
Addie stands at her side, seeing too much, too little. There is a small
hand on Catherine’s wrist that is not her own, and the alien warmth seeps
into her like a brand, like a fresh cut bracing her mind without any of the
attached pain. It is…a curious sensation, and Catherine cannot help but
stare as the roaring in her head subsides.
“Addie,” she says, the name still foreign on her tongue. “You’re on
break, are you not? Would—would you like to come to my place for a cup
of coffee?”
A calculated move; Catherine thinks the Kaleidoscope will lash out in
his anger, not a real move forward on their chessboard, but an opponent is
most vulnerable when they least expect an attack. Catherine won’t give him
the chance to weaken her before she can properly prepare for what happens
next. Addie Lincoln will prove a perfect bulwark, and there’s nothing in
Catherine’s apartment she wouldn’t let the woman see anyway. It barely
reflects her presence there at all.
The detective brightens, though there’s a knowing look in her dark eyes.
“Sure,” she says. “I’ve got some time. I’ll go with you.”
Catherine drives them back to her home, careful to keep herself calm
even as she watches the mirrors and feels her breath stutter slightly out of
tune. Addie taps her fingers on her knee, careless as could be, and yet
Catherine notices how she also glances at the mirrors. Silence waits
between them and the radio’s insolent crackling, and it remains unbroken
by mutual consent. They arrive soon enough.
The muffled tip-tap of claws dance on the floor as Catherine unlocks the
front door, and she lets her impatient border collie come running out of the
apartment. Virgil makes a beeline for Catherine, then spots Addie and
bounds over, nosing her legs as his tail wags. Addie grins, ruffling his fur.
“What a cute boy you’ve got!”
“I apologize for the dog hair,” Catherine says without thought as she
sheds her coat and hangs it on the hook by the door, dropping her purse on
the couch in passing. The door comes shut with a soft thump, and Addie
hums in recognition. Nothing seems out of place, but Catherine doesn’t
relax until she’s paced from the living room to her bedroom, bathroom, and
back again, cataloging her home from top to bottom and finding no
discrepancy.
Not yet, she thinks. He really must have thought I’d change my mind, so
he hasn’t done anything yet. He’ll try something, though.
Addie doesn’t sit on the furniture; instead, she sprawls cross-legged on
the woven rug, proving she cares little for the dog hair as she rubs Virgil’s
fur and lets the traitorous mongrel flop into her lap. He presents his belly
for scratching, and the detective obliges. Catherine’s pulse slows as she
watches Addie, and the hard, anxious fog in her mind recedes.
She feels no regret for spraining the Kaleidoscope’s wrist—no regret for
breaking their association and retreating into herself. The loneliness is
crushing at times, but Catherine is a solitary creature. Her only regret is not
listening to Grisha when he warns her the Kaleidoscope is not the equal she
craves or the lifeline she needs. She regrets allowing her hunger for touch
and affection to supersede her better sense; she regrets giving him that small
death and may yet regret giving him a more permanent one still if he
manages to get his hands around her neck.
 Catherine sets about making coffee, lost in her own thoughts.
If Addie is at all uncomfortable invading another person’s personal
living space, Catherine cannot tell; she shows no deceit in her curiosity as
she sits on the rug, laving Virgil with attention, and inspects Catherine’s
shelves.
“Is that Simon and Garfunkel?” Addie pops upright in a single, fluid
motion—much to Virgil’s disappointment—and goes to a shelf. Catherine
has little in the way of music, most stored on her phone in this digital day
and age, but a few CDs have survived to find homes among her books.
“And Bob Dylan? No way.”
At the counter, Catherine sets out two mugs and shrugs. “I’ve a soft spot
for ‘the Sound of Silence.’”
“I wouldn’t have thought you liked folk music.”
You’re not alone in your surprise. “Why?” Despite being a woman
steeped in death and stained monochromatic in her administrator persona,
Catherine enjoys the softness of folk music, those crooning voices and
acoustic guitars singing about love and adventure and faith, all things she’s
never had and never will. The truth of her might be hidden in those
melodies, a girl humming bluegrass revival and Americana, plotting murder
in her mind.
Addie grins and tucks her hair behind her ear. “You’re very rigid, yeah?
I mean, you give off a very….” She waves her fingers before her face.
“Proper vibe. Like, classical music or—I don’t know—Christian bands?”
Catherine can’t help herself; she snorts and wrinkles her nose, covering
her mouth. Virgil cocks his head, confused, and she realizes her dog has
never really heard her laugh. The Kaleidoscope likes classical—or, at least,
in this iteration, he pretends to like classical. Maybe the farce is not a farce
at all; maybe his psyche is so skewed he can no longer distinguish what is
real and what is a fiction of his own creation. Even the spider can be lost in
the winding web.
“What do you like to listen to?” Catherine asks, and Addie doesn’t
hesitate.
“The Moody Blues.” She takes out a scratched jewel case belonging to
one of Dylan’s older albums. “‘Nights in White Satin’ is my favorite.”
Catherine loosely crosses her arms over her chest. She leans on the
counter’s edge and dredges up watery memories of hot summers and a
crackling radio on the front porch, Bertholdt humming along to old
seventies ballads, Ester chiming in with the odd bar or two, never in key.
“Isn’t that about unrequited love?”
“Probably.” Addie returns to CD to its place. “I just like the music. I
was never very good at understanding what people say, or write. I get
intentions more than words—intentions and actions, that sort of thing.”
“Understandable. That’s what literature really is, when you strip it of its
pomp,” Catherine replies with a casual hand gesture. “It’s all about
intention, the meaning. No one but the author will ever truly understand all
the vagaries of a work, so the metaphors, the allegories, personifications,
and projections—all of that is more subjective. Understanding the intent is
far more important in the end.”
Addie’s eyes light up as she listens, and Catherine is struck by the
notion that this has been, by far, the most ordinary—if brief—conversation
she’s had in quite some time, exchanged with a woman who might very
well ruin Catherine’s life. Adeline Lincoln is a strange woman but no
stranger than Catherine herself.
The coffee pot beeps, and she turns again, pouring into the mugs. Her
face feels…warm.
Addie comes nearer and accepts her drink, holding the cooler rim
between two fingers as opposed to the handle, and they sit at Catherine’s
cheap, wobbly table. Virgil follows along and stares at their visitor, clearly
still intrigued by her presence. His tail thumps against the floor when
Addie’s fingers dig into the dog’s fur in search of the best places for
scratching.
Silence settles between them again, warm and without expectation,
Catherine’s shoulders slipping until she almost hunches, exhausted, over her
steaming beverage. Addie is content to spoon sugar into her cup until it
seems more syrup than drink, her hand playing over Virgil’s head, fingers
soothing his scarred muzzle and soft ears.
“I’m going to be blunt,” Addie says. “You invited me over to make sure
that guy wasn’t here, or that’d he find himself in jail if he did show up.”
“Perhaps I simply enjoy your company?”
Catherine only means to tease, to keep the mood light, but Addie
flushes a vibrant red, and Catherine reciprocates. Well, then. Addie clears
her throat. “You work for the police, you know. You could report this guy if
he’s bothering you.”
 Of course Catherine realizes this; she also realizes an overt escalation in
hostility will be returned, as the Kaleidoscope is nothing if not petty,
arrogant, and horridly biblical in his repercussions. An eye for an eye leaves
the whole world blind. He will retaliate for today; Catherine expects
nothing less from a monster, but she’s enough sense not to push a man if
she lacks her own balance. “I could.”
“Will you?”
“Most likely not, no.”
“Why not?” The question is merely curious instead of accusatory, as if
the special agent truly wishes to understand rather than cast judgment.
Catherine meets her eye and studies the other woman.
“I…prefer taking care of my own problems.”
A thoughtful expression takes over Addie’s face, and she returns her
attention to Virgil. “Hmm. What’s his name?”
Catherine traces the edge of her teeth with her tongue. Against her
wrist, the watch beats steady and sure, tick, tick, tick, and she breathes in
increments of seven, thinking, weighing her choices. It is a risk, and
Catherine rarely takes risks, as she prefers to align her life like neat bricks
in a line, knowing every step, every layer. Her mind is unreliable, and so
she supersedes reliability with routine. It is a risk, and Catherine hates risks.
“Bishop Eris,” she replies. The name is as false as his motives—Eris,
goddess of disorder and chaos my ass—and both Catherine and Addie
know this, sharing eye contact for a brief second until the latter looks up,
mouthing the name to herself.
Catherine’s thoughts wander again. There’s a special kind of terror to
the creature you are, Eris croons in her head. A snake who’ll devour other
snakes without the slightest inclination toward mercy. Throwing the other
killer to the mercy of the FBI could be construed as one snake devouring
another. It’s a curious sentiment, and as Catherine swirls bitter liquid around
her tongue, she thinks about what kind of monster she is. She would hazard
a guess at the Kaleidoscope, if she did not already know he considers
himself God. He recognizes she’s dangerous but overestimates himself;
what fear does God have of the snake? But the man who calls himself
Bishop Eris is not God, and Catherine has let her ruminations go on long
enough. She centers herself, concentrates, and studies the fed—who
presents nothing but more mysteries for the green-eyed murderess to
consider.
 “May I ask you something, Addie?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
Catherine sips black coffee and forces her face to be curious rather than
apprehensive. “I know you can’t share any particulars about the
investigation and I’m not asking you to—but a few of the detectives have
been muttering about the Hangman being a woman? Do you really think
that’s possible?”
Addie’s brow quirks. “Why not?”
“Statistics prove it unlikely.”
“Statistics exist to form patterns so we can see what falls outside the
pattern. They don’t preclude outliers, only point them out. There’s nothing
written in female DNA that stops us from murder and violence, no
evolutionary quirk that stays our finger over the trigger—only taught
behavior and one’s own morals. So, again, I ask why not?”
Lacking an answer, Catherine accedes her point with a gentle tip of the
head. “You’re right. It just seemed unlikely to me.”
Addie’s face is blank when she looks at Catherine again, black eyes
wide as oubliettes, assessing, challenging, and Catherine doesn’t look away.
They stare at one another, and Catherine thinks this is the closest she has
gotten to actually taking off her mask in years; two predators with empty
eyes waiting for the other to make a false move, waiting to lunge.
“I’ve shot and killed nine men and one woman in the line of duty,”
Addie remarks without inflection, without blinking. “Does that seem
unlikely, too?”
Catherine’s eyes widen, and she sees Adeline Lincoln truly for the first
time, failing to wipe the wonder from her eyes, the twitch in her fingers. In
the grips of mania, she almost responds, “I’ve killed twenty-six people, three
with my bare hands,” but doesn’t, grinning instead, knowing it is
inappropriate, skating the line between proper, dull civilian and lonely,
famished reptile. “No, it doesn’t.”
They drink their coffee, and their eyes don’t stray.
 xxiii. pain
Pain is the altar on which Catherine lays all her sacrifices.
It is her confessional, her dark booth dimly lit in the back of her mind,
where she rests her head on the loosely woven mesh and mutters her sins to
a faceless man. There’s no guilt in her, no regret, because Catherine acts on
instinct and does not apologize for that. She apologizes for other things—
for being an odd and often difficult daughter, for not wreaking violence
soon enough, for the ones that never deserved to be broken, stolen,
molested, or beat to death. Pain is a tithe paid for not recognizing what
Isaak Peak was before she lost Kayla forever.
As violence has come to define her life, so too has pain come to define
Catherine’s measure of humanity; it is the cauldron from which her ghosts
bubble over, the place where nothingness assumes shape, and where the
violence—the need—is born. It is the box in which she stores the cries of
hurt children and the smiles shed by bruised, vindicated women, those
women who rejoice when justice, sweet justice, is met at last. Catherine
pulls forth pain from that box like yellowing photographs, precious
memories held and captured, given physical weight.
Bruised knuckles are evidence of a war won. The blisters that form over
her palms beseech forgiveness from victims not her own, from silent bodies
in desolate morgues and sad eyes who cannot forgive, cannot forget, cannot
let go. She bites her lip when the ghosts crowd too close because each one
belongs to her, each a burden she takes on to assuage the nameless, vicious,
and vindicated creature living in her skin.
When her blood pours through her fingers, Catherine remembers the
feeling. The shock subsumes her in a static void, but the pain stretches out
before her, a red thread tangled in her grasp, drawing taut to lead Catherine
forward when she’s too lost to know the way.
She holds on because only monsters don’t feel pain.
***
“Bullshit,” Addie Lincoln says, the hard, voiced consonant
accompanied by a puff of steam. “Really, I call bullshit. How could you not
have read The Grapes of Wrath?”
Catherine shrugs, the corner of her mouth turning up against her better
judgment. “Never have.”
“It was a requirement for Religious Iconography in Literature—English
six-oh-seven, or whatever, and I know you were in that class with me.”
 “I do believe I cheated a bit on that one and used e-notes.”
Addie lets out a scandalized noise and starts laughing. Her voice carries
as they move along the ice-slicked sidewalk, both women holding coffee
carriers, though Addie has already found and swilled her own, leaving an
empty cup in one of the respective slots. “I now have Catherine Themis’
dark secret; she used e-notes to cheat through lit classes.”
Their discussion begins with a superfluous comment in the station;
Catherine asks Detective Lincoln if she is enjoying her stay in Dedwich, to
which Addie wrinkles her nose and recounts various horror stories
associated with motel living. Then, they are sent out for coffees in the mid-
morning rush, and as they walk and wait in line, Addie comments how she’s
been forced to watch continual reruns of the 1940 The Grapes of Wrath
movie adaptation on the only channel offered by her motel’s lousy
television.
Catherine confesses to having never seen the movie nor read the book,
and Addie expresses her disbelief.
“I should have done that,” Addie grumbles, hunkering down in the folds
of her scarf. “In hindsight, I don’t think Professor Packard would’ve noticed
the difference or even cared.”
“He was tenured,” Catherine says and snorts softly. “So long as bodies
landed in his chairs, I doubt he cared about anything.”
Addie mutters under her breath a litany of complaints about reading the
book twice, not understanding the Christian allusions, and Professor
Packard’s horrid, nasally cough. “The movie’s easier to get, I guess. I have
seen it six damn times now….”
There is a curious tightness in Catherine’s chest, one she doesn’t have a
name for, and she fights the urge to knead at it like a physical ache. It
doesn’t hurt—no, this isn’t pain, and it isn’t wholly unpleasant. Rather, the
feeling seems to suspend her darker mood, cast light where none exists,
gives Catherine…joy, inexplicable pleasure, in what will undoubtedly prove
the winter of her young life.
It’s a dangerous thing and all the more precious for its tenuous,
flickering existence.
Addie’s phone rings in her back pocket, and she groans, bringing them
to a halt by one of the many empty, derelict benches lining this part of the
avenue. “Give me a second here….”
 Catherine waits as Addie sets her carrier on the bench and fumbles for
her phone, flicking strands of dark hair from her equally dark eyes when
she grunts “Lincoln,” into the receiver. The detective turns her back, but
Catherine listens to the one-sided conversation with passive interest,
deciding Addie is addressing a rather grating lab tech given her dry,
withering tone.
Catherine takes her black coffee and lets the heat sink into her fingers,
sipping slow. She watches everything and nothing until her own phone’s
short, impersonal ringing jerks her back to reality.
She doesn’t recognize the number. She accepts the call but says nothing
when she holds it to her ear and allows the caller to speak first.
“Hello, my Catherine.”
Sneering, she moves to end the call, and Catherine hears the
Kaleidoscope’s decisive bark of, “If you know what’s good for you, you
won’t hang up.” She replaces the phone at her ear, and though she’s said
nothing, Bishop softly laughs. “Good. I adore your rebellious little heart,
love, but after a time, it does get ever so…taxing.”
Catherine purses her lips and turns where she stands, making a discreet
half-circle with her eyes scanning the avenue, the road ahead, the adjacent
line of shops, and the cafe she and Addie had just left. He has to be near.
“Looking for me? You needn’t bother. No, this brief tête-à-tête will have
to suffice for today.” Catherine’s eyes narrow, her breathing sharp,
aggravated. “I imagine you’re burning to ask why I’m calling.” The
Kaleidoscope exhales, and the intimate sound so close to her ear curls
Catherine’s lip. “You aggrieve me, dear Hangman—aggrieve and burden, if
I may be so bold, and after I’ve done so very much for you. That security
footage had a rather nice view of your face, you know.”
“Then hand it over to the feds,” Catherine whispers too low for Addie’s
ears. “I did not ask for your assistance, your deliverance, as you call it. I
don’t need it. I’m not a child playing games; I’m an entirely different kind
of beast, Kaleidoscope, and you’ll know it before the end.”
“Is that the way of us, Catherine? If we cannot be friends, then we must
be enemies? You don’t want me as your enemy.”
Her mind whirls with potential threats, a thousand threads spinning in
various looms, weaving patterns in the dark. What could he do? He couldn’t
submit evidence against Catherine, as it wouldn’t endure scrutiny in a court
of law. He could plant evidence he’s accumulated and let detectives find it,
yet such avenues open themselves for doubt, speculation, and exposure.
He could bring attention to Catherine, and at the same time, he could
further remove her from suspicion—a game of chance, one in which
Catherine is placed to influence the outcome in her favor. After all, that’s
the entire reason she’s remained as a civilian administrator at the
Rightwood precinct.
He knows this. He has to know this—so what is he planning? What is
his goal?
Through the receiver comes a familiar, distant clicking, soft but urgent,
sending dread through Catherine like a stone through water. It sinks fast,
deep, and settles with palpable weight—the kind of dread that overwhelmed
her at seventeen, when she stepped into a morgue and saw a sheet draped on
a table, waiting to be peeled back. There’s sweat on her brow and the back
of her neck despite the coming winter chill. Blood roars in her ears so loud
she almost misses the Kaleidoscope’s parting remark; “I told you, you won’t
like what happens next.”
The Kaleidoscope has a gun.
He can’t kill her—can’t, won’t, shouldn’t—but what does Catherine
know of his motivations? For a creature who cannot define his form, who
must steal the faces of others like he steals their lives, what drives them to
pull the trigger one last time?
She needs to move, to run, but stands still on a quiet avenue in broad
daylight, cold air in her lungs, body rigid as steel—because she doesn’t
know where the threat will come from, can’t anticipate how to dodge, duck,
how to absorb the impact—.
Bracing herself, Catherine glances at Addie and—.
She remembers the parking lot with her switchblade in hand and the
Kaleidoscope’s cold, hungry eyes on her own. She remembers Detective
Lincoln’s warm hand grazing her arm. Are you all right?
You won’t like what happens next, Catherine.
I said fuck off.
For an instant, those cold gray eyes had swiveled to Addie and burned.
The phone slips from Catherine’s grasp, and she finally moves, breath
caught in hollow lungs, her arm extended, lunging, the flat of her palm
striking hard against the detective’s back. Addie swears when she’s thrown
forward—and then fire tears into Catherine’s arm, a solid crack! shattering
the afternoon when wood breaks and splinters fly from the bench. She hits
the ground and gasps, glasses sliding, half of her body chilled by the
pavement. The carrier topples and stings where hot coffee spills against her
hip.
They’re shouting now, voices belonging to people Catherine doesn’t
know, screams erupting in the distance like startled sirens across leagues of
water. Above it all, Addie Lincoln speaks calm, efficient numbers— “Ten
thirty-two, ten thirty-three, ten fifty-two,”—and though Catherine thinks she
knows those numbers, they flit through her fingers, there and gone. She
tries to rise, but a hand rests warm and heavy on her sternum.
“Goddammit, Catherine, stop moving.”
Liquid seeps hot and sticky beneath her, and Catherine stares at a gray
sky, thinking about gray eyes and the mistakes she’s made, about heartbeats
and the pain she feels—not in her immobile arm, but in her head, her chest.
She thinks about a cafe halfway between somewhere and nowhere and a
little corner booth where two killers can sit and drink mediocre coffee. The
Kaleidoscope sips Darjeeling and tells her, “You have long since become the
monster.”
If that’s true, why did her feet move?
Why does it hurt?
“Addie,” she whispers as her vision blurs and her lips struggle to move.
“Addie.”
“Stop moving, just—.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Catherine?”
“I’m—.”
***
Beep. Beep. Beep.
It comes again, the monotonous drone, machinery grinding and buzzing,
her body lulled into a false sense of security. She lies prone on a surface too
hard to be called a bed.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Catherine sucks in a breath, and the beeping accelerates.
“Docha.”
Sorry. The word catches in her throat with nowhere to go, and it falls to
the wayside where all worthless regrets are bound to die.
 The effort to open her eyes hurts more than Catherine can admit, and
she wishes for nothing more than to shut them again when the sterile light
burns against her retinas and blurs the world. A warm hand lingers on her
sweaty brow, brushing aside damp hair, thumb caressing small, fond circles
on her skin.
“Catherine, can you hear me?”
She swallows once, twice, and then forgoes searching for her voice in
lieu of nodding.
The light dims, and Catherine exhales with relief, throat clicking when
she swallows dry, stale air. Something cool and wet touches her lip, and she
allows it into her mouth, the ice melting, soothing the sore, tired ache.
Catherine opens her eyes as the weight of her scratched glasses settles into
place.
“Are you awake now?”
“Grisha,” she acknowledges, shifting. Her left arm is unresponsive but
there, heavy and numb and partially bound to her chest, the touch
mimicking the phantom press of Addie Lincoln’s palm against her
pounding heart. “Where…?”
“Where do you think?”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Hospital,” she manages, tugging on the wires connected to her right
arm, frowning. That much is obvious.
“Do you recall what happened?”
“…yes. I was…shot.”
The surgeon nods as he settles in a visitor’s chair at her bedside, the
clipboard with her medical information dropped on his knees. He again
brushes her hair away from her eyes, his face solemn, the room dark but for
the half-light coming from the dimmed overhead fixture. When he takes her
hand, Catherine runs her fingertips against the grooves and creases worn
into his skin.
“You lost a considerable amount of blood, but otherwise, the injury is
sound. A flesh wound, you would say—through and through.” He releases
her hand to trace a small line against the bandages binding her arm. “Close
to the brachial artery, but the caliber used was small. Most of the damage
occurred in your triceps, just here. Your surgeon acted quickly and will tell
you to expect a recovery time of six to ten weeks, but I know you better
than Dr. Einer. You’re going to experience weakness in the hand, your grip
strength will be subpar, and you’ll have difficulty bending or extending
your elbow.”
Grisha retrieves an orange prescription bottle from his pocket and sets it
on the nightstand. “Elevate it at night or when you rest to decrease swelling.
Take two of these ten minutes before doing anything I would disapprove of.
These are not good for you, da? Too many, and you will be back in here
shopping for new kidneys.”
Catherine grunts, then grins, though the expression falls when she
reaches for the doctor and Grisha hesitates before letting her retake his
hand. “You were right, you know.”
“I often am, yes.”
“I—. Why am I like this? Why am I constantly tearing myself between
the ideals of the monster and the wishes of the woman? Why can’t I
choose?”
“Because you are neither, Catherine; you are good, for all that you do
bad things, and the Kaleidoscope is not. He is a boy looking for new toys to
break, and he has found one that will endure in you.”
“I am not his toy.”
“Then do not play his games.” He squeezes her hand and beams, the
expression soft, sad. Grisha Morse picks up the pieces of Catherine Themis
more times than she can count, and in her weakest moments, she
remembers she is but one of a menagerie. Sometimes she remembers even a
man who collects gruesome things can find and hold something precious.
“He wasn’t aiming for me,” she whispers. “He was—.”
“Aiming for your friend?” Grisha finishes, a knowing look in his light
eyes. “I am not kept abreast of police matters obviously, but da, I know this.
The detective is rather loud when agitated and has…a very colorful
vocabulary when on the phone.” He props an elbow on his knee and leans
forward. “The Kaleidoscope is a child who does not share his toys well.”
Catherine licks her dry lips and remembers the dread that moved her,
the feel of Addie’s hand on her chest. “I don’t know why I did it,” she
confesses as she stares at the ceiling. “Everything I do is deliberate.
Everything I do is in the name of survival. In that split second, I knew he
was going to shoot her; I knew that was where the bullet would be coming,
and I—I threw myself into it. I don’t know her that well, but I was—I was
willing to die for her at that moment. I don’t…understand. Why did I do
that?”
 “Ah, docha,” Grisha sighs. “What do any of us understand of
admiration or affection? We have as much control over these things as we
do…the wind, or a rainstorm. Sometimes the storm stays, and sometimes it
moves on. You did not think with your head, but rather your heart,
Catherine. At that moment, you chose the possibility of physical pain over
the possibility of pain here.” He brings their clasped hands up to her chest.
“Because it would have hurt worse had you chosen to stand aside and do
nothing.”
Catherine furrows her brow and thinks she understands, because she
realizes she is not as faultless as she once believed. Catherine is not a fluid,
anonymous character like the Kaleidoscope, assuming other lives because
she has none of her own. She is a snake who sheds her skin, only to grow it
back stronger than before, and should the man who calls himself Bishop
Eris point a gun at people like Grisha or—or Addie, Catherine would step
in front of it every time.
It doesn’t seem rational, but when all is said and done, humans aren’t
really rational, are they?
Catherine looks at Grisha sitting tired and drawn at her bedside as if
he’s been there for hours with his hand still in hers, and she says, “Otets.”
He startles because, for all that he has planted the seeds and watched
Catherine grow into the woman she has become, she has never called him
father before. Grisha smiles and laughs.
“Now, now, be careful, docha. You will break an old man’s heart. You
are going soft on me.” He bends to press his lips to her brow. “Rest now. I
know you want to be out of here, and the sooner you rest, the sooner you
may go.”
He settles again, removing her glasses, and Catherine shuts her eyes
against the blurry sight of him sitting in his white coat with her medical
chart balancing on his lap. He sings, “Bayushki bayu,” while the evening
grows, and Catherine remembers all the words. “The time will come when
you will learn the soldier’s way of life, boldly you’ll place your foot into the
stirrup and take the gun.” The innocence of children like a dream caught on
a midsummer’s eve, left warm in the flowerbeds grown fat from spring rain.
She breathes in time with his voice and thinks of a town grayed by coal
dust and a girl who is only seventeen when she wakes from childhood’s
final fleeting dream and lets innocence slip through her fingers like Isaak
Peak’s lifeblood.
 xxiv. nothing
Addie Lincoln is familiar with the sound of gunfire, but some shots
resound louder than others and linger long after the rest go silent.
She sometimes thinks the dale still resonates with the final blow that
puts her father down and submerges him in the ice, and on quiet evenings
she shuts her eyes, puts back her head, and listens to the muted pop! of
every shot she’s ever fired with the intent to kill. She feels the thrum in her
bones, the powder burns on her hands. There’s no guilt, no regret; “Don’t
you pull that trigger unless you mean it,” has long been her catechism, and
Addie means it every single time.
Still, the gunfire echoes back to her, sirens on a battlefield grown over
with new life. Pop, pop, pop.
The shots that aren’t her own rattle Addie more. They hurt worse than
the powder burns or the bruises that form when the rifle hits her shoulder.
The things she can’t control prove far more daunting for Addie Lincoln than
the things she can, and taking life and death into her hands is easier than
pretending she doesn’t care.
She sits in the poorly lit corridor with the smell of antiseptic slowly
seeping into her clothes, her hands sticky, her flannel shirt’s front stiff but
long since dry. They don’t leave seats in the halls in hopes of discouraging
persistent visitors, but Addie doesn’t mind; rolling her eyes at hospital
administrators seems a small and inconsequential hiccup in an otherwise
fucked up day. She squats and leans against the wall by the door, wary, and
no one who meets her eyes dares tell her off.
The doctor leaves, the nurses leave, and the hall is quiet. Addie breathes
in and can smell iron, can still feel the warm, thick pulse of Catherine’s
blood against her palms. She hadn’t looked scared, more annoyed if
anything. She’d been angry—and Addie shares the anger, that frustration.
One spent casing on a store roof across the avenue is their only lead, left
sitting pretty on the ledge in line with the bench as a mocking trinket. They
aimed for her, and though Addie is no stranger to death threats, she wonders
why.
She remembers an apartment, a table, a dog’s head on her knee,
Catherine’s perfume in her nose as the woman sitting across from her grins
wordless approval.
“I’ve shot and killed nine men and one woman in the line of duty. Does
that seem unlikely, too?”
 “No, it doesn’t.”
“Your information is worthless,” she says to the local detective on the
other end of her call. He sputters indignant invectives, and Addie lets anger
bleed through her tone. It’s an anger she often forgets festering in her heart
and thrums deep in her ears, like the shots she takes, the lives lost, the
steady creaking of a noose under the weight of a girl too small, too young,
too—. “You’re worthless. Is every detective in this backwater hovel as
utterly fucking incompetent as you, or have I simply drawn the shortest
stick in the bundle? Christ’s sake—.”
Addie ends the call, phone dangling between her fingers. She’s tempted
to throw the damn thing against the wall—but she’s burned through three
phones this year alone, leaving them in seedy motels on the hunt for
monsters or dropping them in rivers, rain gutters—and once a toilet, which
earned more than a few snickers when reported. She doesn’t throw the
phone, but she does let it clatter to the floor by her feet.
Catherine pushed her out of the way. Catherine knew the shot was
coming.
“I prefer taking care of my own problems.”
Someone pauses by Addie, and she lifts her gaze, meeting the shadowed
inspection of a lean surgeon in his fifties, bifocals sliding low on his
crooked nose, his empty hands open at his sides. The laminated badge
clipped to his breast pocket catches the light, and Addie squints to read
“Grisha Morse, MD., PhD., Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery,” before
he shifts and moves the badge from view. He watches Addie, head cocked,
curious bemusement glimmering in his sharp eyes. Addie watches him like
she watches all the doctors and nurses and staff who pass through, waiting
for him to balk and turn from her awkward, intense scrutiny—but the doctor
doesn’t wither. He lingers past the point of polite attention—and then
smirks, nods, and walks into the door at Addie’s side.
She wonders what a cardiothoracic surgeon is doing here; Catherine was
shot in the arm, not the chest, and the trauma surgeon on call made quick
work of repairing and sealing the damaged area. Addie’s hand shoots out
and sneaks between the door and the jamb, wincing at the resulting pinch in
her fingers, but she manages to lever the door open enough for her to hear
inside the otherwise quiet room. Medical machines groan and beep,
Catherine’s breathing near silent while the surgeon’s soft footsteps shuffle
about the space. A chair drags along the floor, then stops.
 Addie hears a sigh, then a thick Russian voice whispers, “Docha.”
Frowning, she listens as the surgeon speaks again—softly, fondly—and
when Catherine finally responds, her words come harsh and tired, but just
as fond, familiar. The wounded civilian administrator asks, “Why am I like
this? Why am I constantly tearing myself between the ideals of the monster
and the wishes of the woman?” Addie lets the door ease shut, her brow
furrowed.
It is an argument Addie mulls over more than once; none in her
acquaintance call her normal, and few would deem strange Adeline Lincoln
as anything genuinely human or worth walking about on two legs instead of
four. Some nights, she dreams of a world trapped in ice-cold monochrome
and feels the snow crawl against her face, down her throat, into her lungs.
She hears the wolves howl. It is not a nightmare; it is merely a memory, a
dream, and she drifts tranquil on the cusp of here and there before the sun
pours light into the sky again.
Woman is a monster in Addie’s mind. She’s a monster taught to blunt
her teeth and cut her claws, and most satisfy themselves with the routine or
enjoy that facade; there’s nothing wrong with indulging in a lie. The truth,
however, stares Addie in the face every morning as it must stare Catherine
in the face just the same. Woman becomes beast, becomes that primordial
thing scientists say all animals have inside and all theologians think man
shed long ago. The monster doesn’t cease to exist; she lives with it, sleeps
with it, tucks it under her pillow at night, and folds it into her back pocket
during the day. If you give her no other choice, woman will grow her claws
and file her teeth back into shape—woman, the monster. There is no
difference.
Addie doesn’t know how much time passes before the door pops open
again, and the surgeon steps into the corridor, his sharp eyes once more on
Addie. “Have you eaten?” he asks in that thick, Russian drawl.
“No,” Addie tells him.
“Well, that will not do. Catherine is resting for now. Come along.”
She has no reason to obey, but Addie nonetheless gets to her feet and
trails the strange doctor away from the patient rooms into the hospital’s
deeper recesses, stopping only when they reach an office tucked away on
the second floor with a view of the river. He flicks on the light and gestures
inside. “Sit where you would like.”
 Addie chooses the couch, sinking into the available space between the
arm and a stack of medical journals, sitting cross-legged on the cushion as
she observes the surgeon and his miniature domain. There is a clock on the
wall—analog—keeping time, and everything is in its place, from the fancy
pens aligned on the desktop to the painting on the wall of a long, desolate
road stretching below a lowering sky. She stares at the picture and can’t
seem to look away.
“It is a depiction of the Vladmirka in Russia,” the man tells her. “It was
once a main thoroughfare of ancient trade on the continent, called ‘the
greatest of roads,’ and thus a symbol of hope, prosperity. However, as time
is wont to do, the years turned its great purpose to darker uses, and they
traded goods for people, prisoners marching along its way to the katorga,
the prison camps in Siberia. A very dismal route indeed.” From the mini-
fridge, he hands her a plastic container filled with what looks like Caesar
salad. “Catherine hates it. She says it makes her feel alone.”
Addie hums under her breath, picking the chicken from the greens,
mystified by the turn of events. The surgeon leans on his desk, waiting.
“You haven’t asked who I am,” Addie comments after she chews.
“I do not need to, Special Agent Lincoln.” He shrugs. “Dedwich, though
a city in name, is set in its small-town mentality. The presence of strangers
spreads like wildfire, yes? And besides, you have not asked who I am,
either.”
“Well, this is a hospital, and you are wearing a name tag.” Addie grins
as the doctor touches the badge as if on instinct, having undoubtedly
forgotten its presence. “You called her docha.”
“And you eavesdropped. But yes, I did.”
“That’s Russian for daughter, isn’t it?”
“Do you speak Russian?”
Addie snorts, licking dressing from her lip. “Not hardly. I’ve picked up
a few words here and there from different languages based on repetition and
context. I’m fluent in Spanish swears.” She eyes him. “You’re not
Catherine’s father.”
“No?”
“Nah. You don’t look alike. They teach us half a dozen facial markers at
the academy to determine possible familial relationships, and she has none
of yours.”
 He makes a thoughtful noise and moves, shuffling over to the coffee
maker above his little fridge to prepare a fresh pot. “What is the expression?
‘The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’?”
“Most people say ‘blood is thicker than water.’”
“That is erroneous, and as Catherine tells me, most people are stupid.”
Addie pokes through the chilled lettuce, searching for more chicken as
she thinks and his words sink in. Dedwich is a dying city with the mind of a
small town, true, but Addie thinks Dr. Morse knows her from a better
source than mere gossip. Has Catherine mentioned her? Does Catherine
often speak with him about things she probably shouldn’t? Not that Addie’s
any better. Waitresses vomit when she forgets where she is and leaves gore-
filled case files open on the table.
She wonders at the covenant that brings Catherine and the surgeon
together.
“What’s wrong with her?” Addie asks because she’s never been good at
tact, and he means to tell her something, something he couldn’t impart in an
open corridor with quiet patient rooms surrounding them. He says nothing,
neither playing off her words nor ignoring them as he finishes brewing the
coffee and doctors a fresh cup to his liking. Morse crosses the room with a
mug in hand, sitting in one of the consultation chairs. He doesn’t wilt
beneath Addie’s uncanny attention, doesn’t balk at the sight of blood
staining her clothes. He sips his coffee and sighs.
“At the moment? No ailment a steady drip of morphine cannot handle,
and she will be on her feet attempting escape at first light. But that is not
what you are asking. Nothing and everything is wrong with Catherine,” he
tells her. “Catherine’s is a mind knowable only to herself—and perhaps a
very intuitive psychologist, which I am not, which she will not see. Should I
make an amateur diagnosis, I would say PTSD—dissociation, survivor’s
guilt.”
“Are you allowed to tell me this?”
“Catherine is not my patient,” he says, eyes sharp, smile cutting like a
scalpel’s small, honed blade. “She is my daughter, for all that she was not
born of my blood, and no confidentiality beyond my own conscience holds
me. Is it not a father’s prerogative to do what is best for his children?”
“Not for all fathers.”
“Da, this is true.” He traces his lower lip in thought, spirals of steam
rising from his mug, though the surgeon drinks with little regard to the
scalding liquid. “My own father once told me a story about a sailor who
would brave waters no other man would dare cross, a man of talent and
instinct who could chart a path through squalls and hurricanes and freezing
winters. He had no fear, this man, and because he had no fear, others often
forgot he was just a man and that a man often has trouble leading himself
from the dark. When the keeper, convinced of the man’s rumored prowess,
failed to fuel the lighthouse’s lantern, the man dashed himself above the
shore’s rocks.”
Brow furrowed, Addie stops picking at her food and stares at Dr. Morse.
“What are you telling me?”
He lifts a shoulder and lets it fall. “I am only sharing what I know.” His
coffee is finished with a final drink, steam rising from his lips as it had from
the mug.
“And what is it you know?”
The surgeon smiles again, and it is an affectionate look, warm instead of
cold. “It was Socrates who said a wise man knows only that fact; he knows
he knows nothing—though I paraphrase. I think myself wise enough not to
assume things. I can comment on what I observe. You sat in the hall for six
hours, did you not?” Addie sets aside the container and stares at her empty
hands, blood pooling in her cheeks. “Catherine took a bullet for you. I think
you should remember that, and the story I told you.”
Addie remembers only too well the feel of Catherine’s hand against her
back, the surety of the touch that undoubtedly saved her life. She knew it
was coming. All at once, Addie thinks she doesn’t know Catherine at all,
and that the windbag philosopher Morse mentions might have the right of
it; accepting she knows nothing opens her eyes to a different kind of
understanding, and it settles against her bones like a warm, familiar arm on
her shoulders. Catherine is not all she seems. Catherine saved her life.
Addie is not a woman for pretty words. She comprehends intent, and
while she can’t claim to understand all Dr. Morse tells her, he does feed her
dinner, gives her an update on Catherine’s condition, and urges her to look
beneath the ordinary when it comes to the woman he calls daughter. There
is intent in his motives, like there is blood in Addie’s nail beds, on her
clothes, on her skin. Doctors and nurses toss her wary glances when she
leaves the hospital, a local officer tailing her back to her shitty motel. The
blood clings when she tries to wash it away.
 Later, while Addie sits on the bed, while The Grapes of Wrath flickers
in monochrome on the television, she pulls her phone out from her
discarded jeans and flips it between her hands again. She dials a number
and holds it to her ear.
“Hey, La Loba, everything all right? No more trouble?”
“I want you to look up a name for me.”
“Eh? This have something to do with the shooting? Or the Hangman
case?”
“No. It’s something else.”
A pause, a shuffle of paper. “Sure. Go ahead, boss.”
“…The name is Bishop Eris.”
 xxv. companion
The things that anchor Catherine Themis to this life are few and far
between. They come in various shapes and forms: good literature, a
surgeon, the burn in her knuckles and lungs and legs, the seven-second
intervals waiting between measured breaths. She cherishes little things, the
normal things, and they find places in her life with startling ease.
She doesn’t expect to love a dog.
Ester is allergic to animals, and so Catherine’s childhood is void of pets
—aside from the ubiquitous goldfish in a plastic jar, dead and gone and
flushed too soon for a child to have any attachment to it. She learns to deal
with animals as she does people, with sharp words, commands, and
distractions pushing their attention from her and her designs. Humans find
her innocuous, as do their companions.
She is twenty-one and honed into a sharp knife-point when The
Hangman sees Troy Espinosa and finds in him a man worthy of her
gallows. He has gone to jail twice for assault, and he leaves behind a trail of
tired, scared women sporting downcast eyes ringed in black, bruises like
bursting flowers in a garden gone fallow with neglect and hate and abuse.
Other charges against him have gone nowhere—dogfighting and extortion,
burglary and fraud. No one’s seen his wife in months; he says she left him,
he doesn’t know where, and the police are hard-pressed to do anything
about it. The daughter says he’s innocent, says it can’t be true. No body, no
weapon, no crime.
It doesn’t take Catherine considerably long to trace his steps and find
Mrs. Espinosa. The decaying corpse half-buried in the Pennsylvania
wilderness is enough evidence for her to confirm guilt.
The moon is high, the weather warm, a sticky humidity filling the air
with the song of cicadas and humming amphibians. Catherine crouches low
to watch the house from the edge of the woods, hours flitting by, the lights
fleeing the dirty windows one by one until all lay in darkness but for the
patch of dirt before the barn illuminated by the security lamp. Jaw set, she
holds fast to the syringe clasped in her gloved palm as she steps from the
undergrowth and starts toward the house.
This place started life as a two-bedroom farmhouse in Dedwich’s wilds,
then changed as the decades passed it by. The land is too harsh for crops,
seized and sold off in parcels, leaving a crooked little shack in the
wilderness surrounded by one barn, several rusted cars, rickety sheds, and a
slanted carport. Condensation gathers and drips from the carport’s metal
edge, sloughing ugly brown patterns in the weeds, a single wind chime
hanging on the eave, sun-bleached and missing pieces.
Catherine is familiar with the place; her childhood home is much like it,
could have become this if not for the old Themis boys’ steadfast hands. This
is a nightmare vision of a home gone to rot; Catherine knows why the
daughter fled as soon as she was of age, knows she’s terrified of the man
she calls father, and that fear twists into loyalty, into love. The daughter
tells the police he’s innocent, and maybe she believes it. Maybe.
Kennels and animal crates crowd under the carport, making for a crude
gauntlet to the house’s entrance, the smell of dog piss and excrement heavy
in the already ripe, humectant air. It claws at the back of Catherine’s throat
until she feels the urge to spit. She doesn’t, of course. Most of the dogs
sleep, but one or two moves and Catherine hears them stir in their pens, ears
raised, heads swiveling. Too late, she realizes she must be upwind of the
house, and one of the mutts begins to bark.
She hunches low against the house’s shingled side, head bent, black
hood hiding her in the deeper shadows. The dog gives two more half-
hearted barks before falling silent—though the rest are unsettled now,
shifting and waiting, searching. Catherine bites off a single imprecation and
creeps away, dry brush crackling about her ankles as she rounds the house’s
corner and scans the other side. There—an open window, probably for a
bathroom given how small it is, almost too narrow for Catherine. She
spends several minutes measuring it with her eyes before sighing through
her nose.
The screen’s frame is bent and held on by a broken clip, and so
Catherine makes quick, silent work of popping it loose and leaning it
against the ratty hedge. She studies the opening, then grasps the edge and
hoists herself up, bending at the waist to thread her legs over the sill and
land feet first on the mat. She knocks the dust from her boots and makes a
mental note to take the mat with her when she goes, lest she leave footprints
—not that anyone would find them on the filthy tile and carpeting in the
hall. Disgusting.
Catherine passes through the bathroom, along the narrow corridor, into
the kitchen itself, a space that has not seen meal preparation in a long time
if the stagnant smell of backed-up water and stale beer is anything to go by.
Bottles crowd the table, a bulging plastic sack by the refrigerator evidence
of a paltry effort at cleaning up the mess. Moonlight through the crooked
blinds lights the way into the den and the corner where the hall abuts the
master bedroom. The door is shrouded in darkness.
There is a dog in the den. Catherine freezes upon spotting it, not
expecting another after seeing the main pack kenneled and caged in the
carport. It’s a border collie—strange breed for a dogfighter, she muses—
and it stares at Catherine with singular attention, gaze as hungry as its
arching ribs would suggest. Its coat is thin and dull and ragged where
wounds cut the flesh, tail tucked and curled between trembling hind legs.
There is no collar, only a bit of rope looped about its—his—scrawny neck
connected to the iron leg of an old, stained heater.
He doesn’t bark. His tail gives a small, anxious wag.
Catherine takes two slow, measured steps backward into the kitchen,
staring the dog down as she does so. Her hand lands on a wrinkled bread
bag, and she carefully pulls out a stale hunk, tossing it to the pitiful
creature. He falls on the offered meal, tearing into the hard husk, tail
thumping once, twice, on the carpet in appreciation.
She continues, rounding the corner, fingers brushing the door—and
suddenly, it jerks open. Her target stands at the threshold, wide-awake and
waiting for her.
The dogs, Catherine thinks at the moment before the aluminum bat
comes whistling toward her head. She’s spent too long in the city where
dogs bark incessantly in the background, and it becomes part of an ongoing
milieu, like violent white noise providing ambiance to her nightmares and
waking terrors. She remembers from her younger days living in the
county’s fringes how quiet these deep woods can be and how little things—
a dog’s bark, breaking twigs, crunching aggregate—can seem so much
louder and foreign than they do in the city.
You were careless, Grisha would tell her. You are getting too confident
in your abilities; the worst follies are committed by those who know only
success, docha.
She dodges once. Troy Espinosa swings again—fast, faster than she
expects—and the bat leaves dents the size of fists in the wall, incoherent
threats and swears spewing from the bare-chested man as he takes aim.
Catherine leaps backward from the hallway. She’s quick and agile and
limber in a way most people aren’t, but Espinosa is huge, and her knuckles
groan in protest when they land on his ribs.
 Disarm him—.
Her fingers fail to wrap about the width of his wrist, but she twists all
the same, digging into the softer pressure point, and Espinosa lets out an
explosive “Fuck!” as his hand spasms and the bat drops. It clatters by their
feet—bang, bang, bang. The dogs howl in the carport, the moon waiting at
the dirty windows, electric light pouring against his tall, bulky back. He
grapples for Catherine, and her prepped syringe falls like the bat, shattering.
Catherine’s foot strikes the outside of his knee, and he grunts, but
doesn’t fall. There is a shadow of all those who’ve come before in
Espinosa’s eyes, her ghosts grinning from an unfamiliar face, and when his
fist catches her unawares, Catherine hits the wall at her back and wonders if
her journey’s met its unfortunate end. He’s too heavy, the space too narrow,
Catherine too small and weak—.
Arrogance kills paupers and kings, Grisha whispers in her ear. She
shouldn’t have come to his house, should have waited for him to leave,
should have stuck to her usual methods—.
Thick fingers wrap about her neck with all the assiduity of a noose.
Catherine kicks as she’s hoisted into the air and slammed again into the
wall. Copper bleeds steady on her tongue and patters on the floor far below
her flailing feet.
“You think you can come after me, you little rat?” Espinosa snarls,
Catherine’s fist glancing against his cheekbone to no effect. “I’ll kill you!”
Something snaps and Catherine thinks, it’s my neck, but it isn’t, not yet,
she’s still breathing and kicking, nails scouring toughened flesh in a
fruitless bid for freedom. There is no growl, no bark nor howl; the only
warning Troy Espinosa or Catherine receive is the brush of something
ducking below her legs. Suddenly, there is a furred body between them, a
knobbly spine pressing into Catherine’s chest, and Espinosa screams.
Catherine gasps for air and crumples, her vision smeared in a rapid,
seething whirlpool, red on black, illuminated by the light still pouring from
the open bedroom. Espinosa struggles against a dog—the one from the den,
the skinny little border collie still wearing his own noose, the end chewed
through—and the dog throws its head back and forth, jaws clamped shut
over Espinosa’s throat.
It’s over faster than she thinks it should be; Troy Espinosa falls, limbs
jerking, and the dog savages his throat, his face, biting and snapping and
growling like a feral thing at his master. Catherine thinks he’ll turn on her
next and so holds up a trembling, bloodied hand to ward off the impending
attack—but it doesn’t come. Instead, the border collie looks at her with
wide, watchful eyes, gore dripping from his chops like it drips from
Catherine’s broken nose and busted lip.
“Good boy,” she wheezes, and the dog’s tail wags. Catherine searches
for breath, for equilibrium—inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, seven little ticks
between like the beat of a tiny hammer against her sore, throbbing wrist—
and a wet nose touches her cheek, smearing blood. His tongue licks the
tears she hadn’t known she’d shed. A warm body wriggles its way onto her
lap, and Catherine accepts it on instinct, folding her hands through thin,
dirty fur as the dog huffs and cleans her face. “Good boy.”
When dawn comes, Catherine does not leave the home of Troy Espinosa
alone. She carries with her a companion, who slumps all too happy in the
arms of a monster, his muzzle resting on her shoulder, and though she’s the
one taking him from this place, Catherine finds in him a strange sort of
guide, a protector, a friend. She doesn’t expect to love a dog, but there is
unbiased affection gathered in her hands, a creature recognizing her as
someone better than the monsters she hunts, and Catherine has no desire to
let it go.
Behind her, she leaves a quiet house carefully staged, boot prints
brushed away, blood wiped up or disguised, the dust and damage altered or
rectified. The door is open. She leaves Troy Espinosa—not quite dead,
almost—in a pool of blood and takes one dog from him. The others she
releases from their cages and kennels and leaves to their own devices, half-
wild as they are, vicious and famished from days, months, years spent under
their master’s thumb.
She leaves with a companion and pretends she doesn’t hear the tapping
of claws on a linoleum kitchen floor, the rumble of hungry bellies, or the
agonized cries that chase her into the daylight.
***
Dressed in wrinkled clothes and an ill-fitting sling, Catherine escapes
the hospital just after twilight, before Grisha can come to guilt her into
staying an additional night and before Addie Lincoln returns from work.
Someone thought to bring her purse, and so she pays for a cab ride to the lot
where her second sedan—the one registered under a name that is not
Catherine Themis—is stationed, and she inspects the area. The car is just as
she left it, the doors unmarked, the insides undisturbed.
 She follows a well-traveled path through grim alleys and graffitied lanes
to the backside of her apartment building. “Catherine” uses the front door,
but the Hangman is the only one who enters this adjoining door, and
Catherine has no desire to be herself at the moment. The Kaleidoscope
knows where she lives, and if he chooses to ambush her here, he’ll meet a
killer, not a wounded woman. She sinks into the cold, unyielding persona of
her violent alter-ego, savoring the Hangman’s control, and opens the rear
door.
She walks inside.
Old blood measures her steps, tracing a tread larger than her own, and
Catherine walks over the wreckage of an upturned bookshelf, a broken
mirror, a torn sheet. She stands in the aftermath of a child’s tantrum, her
possessions ruined, all but for Wuthering Heights, left on her desk by the
busted silhouette of Daphne and Apollo. Catherine turns the statue’s base in
her stronger hand and finds the safe key still taped there, overlooked. Fool.
Madman.
She walks to the bed. There is a smell in the air, a dreaded smell, a
familiar one, and cold blood drips, drips, drips along the rail to a puddle at
her feet. Catherine does not breathe when she reaches out and runs
quivering fingers through matted fur—and nor does the body thrown upon
her mattress. A torn collar glints in the window’s broken glass.
Later, she will find the note, the threat written in his hand, promising
there will be nothing left for Catherine Themis to hold onto, but the woman
does not see it as she looks upon her companion and tears drip onto his
unmoving face. She strokes bloodied fur, and something inside her snaps.
***
Later, the Rightwood precinct will receive a noise complaint from an
apartment near Catherine’s own. A woman screaming, the old man says.
Screaming like she’s gonna murder a fella, I swear.
In the absence of their wounded civilian administrator, the report is lost
among the clutter and never seen again.
 xxvi. mercenary
The rain comes down upon Dedwich City and trickles from the grubby
eaves.
Drip, drip, drip.
Catherine listens and thinks to herself how it sounds so comforting and
so like the splatter of blood on pavement.
Pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat.
Rain upon the earth, her heart in her chest—all of it a steadily marching
war drum to some unspeakable event horizon, and as Catherine walks
through the falling mist, she doesn’t think about rain or blood or
inevitability. She thinks about a strange FBI agent with knowing eyes, the
comforting weight of a border collie in her lap, a surgeon’s weathered hand
resting on her shoulder.
Pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat.
The rain slides along her umbrella’s domed top and drips from the
ribbed spines. Catherine ducks into the grocery on the street’s corner, closes
the umbrella, and forces her face into a pleasant expression. There’s
something too sharp and aggrieved lingering in her gaze to pass closer
scrutiny, but most people are disinclined to look into Catherine’s eyes even
on a good day.
“Hi,” she says to the clerk behind the busted counter, a kid too green to
hide his surprise at seeing such a put-together woman come wandering into
his dismal place of work. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for a
friend of mine. He lives in the neighborhood, and I haven’t heard from him
in a while. He’s British, about my height, brown hair, gray eyes? Have you
seen him?”
The clerk blinks. “Uh, I don’t—I don’t think I’ve seen anyone like that
around, ma’am.” His gaze lingers on her arm set loosely in the dark sling.
Catherine’s jaw tightens.
“Thanks anyway.”
She hears the same everywhere she goes: the drugstore, another market,
the gas station, the local Stop-and-Shop. Catherine is relentless; the rain
beats the earth as her boots beat the pavement, going from establishment to
establishment only to cross the street and start over again. She asks the
strung-out and the destitute, those sitting in the shelter of dismantled
porches and broken eaves, shelling out singles for information—and a
fractured hand for a man who thought he could take more from a lone
woman in a bad part of town. She learns nothing.
Chance brings her into the tobacco shop deeper in the district because
Catherine never smelled smoke or ash on Bishop, not to her recollection.
However, when she describes the Kaleidoscope to the heavyset man behind
the counter, he pauses, hesitates, and scratches his fingers through his
ginger beard as he thinks.
“Y’know, that rings a bell…he ain’t sound British like you say, and I
didn’t get a good look a’ his face or nothin’, wearing a cap and a hood as he
does, but he’s come in here a few times—this morning, a few hours ago,
even.”
“He doesn’t sound British?”
“Nah. But I had me a buddy from Kent, and he always smoked the same
cigs—Dunhills. Don’t really sell much of those, and I just found it odd he
wanted them.”
“Thank you.” It isn’t much to go on, but the Hangman takes leads where
she can, and it means the Kaleidoscope hasn’t yet abandoned this side of
town. The original base he inhabited has long been vacated, but even
strangers as innocuous as Bishop can’t hide forever in Dedwich. She will
find him. “Can I get a pack of those—Dunhills, did you say?”
He grabs them, and Catherine pays an exorbitant amount for what she
simply thinks is prepackaged lung cancer, and yet she nevertheless lights a
cigarette outside the store and breathes in the smoke. She memorizes the
smell before she crushes it under her heel and tosses the rest of the pack to a
guy asking if she has any to spare. She walks almost out of the district to
reach her car, and once there, she abandons her umbrella and her coat. She
binds back her hair, slides on a pair of contacts, and dons a formless hoodie.
The sling remains, but she uses it to disguise the knife in her hand.
Again she walks the dim, refuse-strewn streets, avoiding the main
thoroughfare for the narrower alleys and bricked paths, scouring abandoned
factories and burnt-down mills. She crosses through warehouses where the
roofs bend beneath the weight of time, and Catherine steps around the
puddles of watery sunlight dappling the rust-stained concrete. These places
all look the same to Catherine, but they are a distinct part of Dedwich,
unique scar tissue ringing an old wound slowly, slowly going to rot. She
knows these scars better than Bishop Eris; if he is here, she will flush him
out.
 He will not survive the encounter.
Twigs and fallen vegetation crunch and squelch under her boots as
Catherine climbs the crumbling steps into a post-development boom
remnant. It’s a cesspool of abandoned construction equipment and the shells
of small, subsidized tract homes that never have and never will see families
living within them. She walks into an old apartment complex, the front
entrance blown half to hell, burnt bricks lying like black, shed skin around a
body made more ugly for its molting, and Catherine comes to a stop.
The place is empty.
She comes across and seeks out abandoned buildings all the time and
knows places such as this are prime real estate for criminals and the
disenfranchised—as showcased by the drug paraphernalia left over from
what had to have been a lab explosion in the basement. They’re rarely
empty to such a degree. Fire has weakened the walls, and weeds grow in the
cracks, reclaiming concrete and wood and tumbling stone. The rain echoes
in the hollowed bones. Catherine listens, head bowed, face hidden in the
hood’s sodden folds, and she breathes in—.
There.
The smell lingers, that acrid note of carcinogens mixed with tobacco
leaves, the unique blend Catherine familiarized herself with earlier—and
it’s here, wheedling between the wet undertones of rain and mud and damp
garbage, faint but undeniably here.
Pit-pat, pit-pat. The rain drips from her hoodie, but her footsteps are
silent, and though Catherine’s heart races, eyes bright with rage and
anticipation, her breathing is calm, quiet. She climbs the steps, mindful of
the weak places where the supports groan, and she searches, looking for
cameras and traps, finding nothing but forgotten trash, rubble, and that
fading smell.
The rooms are empty. Catherine passes them one by one, frustration
growing, until she enters a final unit at the end of the row, tree branches
breaching the opening where a window might have found a home once, the
rain falling faster and faster as the afternoon wanes. A cigarette sits on a
folding chair, burnt to the filter, smoldering into nothing with a final gasp.
Wordless, Catherine tips the chair over with her foot, and as the
resulting clang echoes, her mind roars.
He’s not here. He’s not here, bastard, absolute ba—.
 Footsteps approach behind her—a heavy, lumbering tread—and
Catherine slowly turns to face two masked men entering the vacant unit.
Both are tall and well-muscled, the second larger while the first is grinning,
the ski mask stretched enough for Catherine to see most of his jawline.
Their clothes are worn through in places, jackets torn, hands rough and
unclean. They must have been waiting for her.
“He paid us a grand each to get you bloody.”
“Too fucking easy,” grunts the second, fists tightening.
“Wonder what he’ll pay if we bring back a few pieces….”
Catherine sighs, and in the confines of her hood, her lip curls.
They rush forward.
The first goes down in an instant, his feet swept out from under him,
thrown by a slight blow to the chest. He goes to rise—and Catherine’s heel
connects with his forehead, slamming his head into the concrete. He
slumps. The second tosses a single decent punch that Catherine turns aside,
his eyes blowing wide when she moves, stepping into him, the hard bones
of her knuckles striking his throat. He stumbles, choking, and Catherine
flings him to the floor with his partner. Her boot connects with his temple,
and he, too, collapses.
They’re nothing but thugs acting on the mere promise of a payout, and
as Catherine stands above them—unruffled, breath steady—she thinks of
how many others there must have been, how many victims, and she
contemplates how easy it would be to remove them both. It would take little
effort, and they would never attack another woman, another soul, would
never spew their filth—.
Her phone is ringing. It blears out, waiting for recognition. Her gloved
hand is on the first thug’s neck, squeezing, squeezing—.
The phone rings.
Pulling back is harder than she wants to admit; the Hangman clings to
her skin, her bones, wears her face, and she wants violence—violence for
herself, for Addie, for Virgil. What she really, really wants is to send the
Kaleidoscope a message loud enough to pierce his overinflated sense of
self-worth. He’s played her for a fool, again. If he wants the monster, then
Catherine will show him the monster—.
No. No, he’ll have nothing from me. It’s what he expects.
Her hand trembles as it slips the phone from her pocket, half-expecting
another deprecating call from the Kaleidoscope—but, no, it’s a number she
vaguely recognizes, something she’s seen before but can’t recall where. Her
thumb swipes to accept, and she holds it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Catherine?” Addie Lincoln responds, her voice stirring the fuzzy haze
encroaching upon Catherine’s thoughts.
“Hello, Addie.”
“Hey. I know you’re on medical leave, but do you want to do a late
lunch?”
Catherine breathes in, forces back the shadows plucking at the corners
of her vision, and stares not at the bodies but at the open wall where the
forest sleeps. The water drips, fast and methodical. Neither thug is dead, but
who’s to say? Head wounds are complicated at best, and for all of the
human body’s adaptability, Grisha has told her a multitude of stranger,
simpler deaths. “I, uh, sure. Yes. Yes, that sounds nice.”
There is a pause on the other end of the line. “You all right? You sound
weird.” Tact is a virtue withheld from Agent Lincoln, and for reasons
unknown to her, Catherine likes that about her.
“I’m fine. Where would you like to go?” Addie lists an address not far
from the precinct, and Catherine agrees. “I will meet you there.”
“See you soon.”
Catherine ends the call and straightens, tucking the phone away as she
looks down upon the fools on the floor. The temptation is there again—a
voice at her ear, asking, demanding, “What separates them from all the
rest?”—and Catherine thinks the voice sounds less and less like her own,
and more like the man who calls himself Bishop.
Is this your mercy, Catherine?
“No,” she whispers aloud, turning her back. Mercy is a knife to the
chest; her vengeance is sending them back to the Kaleidoscope with nothing
to show.
They’ll wish she’d finished them off in the end.
 xxvii. a lover scorned
A new text waits on the screen, green light blinking, and Addie lets a
bothered breath leave her lungs as she sets aside her hamburger and picks
up the phone.
Catherine continues to pick over her salad, physically present, though
Addie knows she’s not entirely here. Fatigue lays like fault lines in the
subtle grooves about her eyes, and though her attire is dry, her hair is damp,
curling at the end. Addie thinks she’s been out in the rain. An odd choice
for a woman meant to be at home resting.
Addie reads the text from Moreno. Fresh scene. Hangman suspected.
Address —.
“Damn,” she mutters. “I have to leave. Looks like another murder.”
Catherine’s gaze sharpens, hand pausing with the fork poised above her
plate. “Do what you must.”
Addie stands and, fishing wrinkled bills from her pocket, lays them on
the table to pay her part of the check. “Thanks for lunch. I, ah—.” She
fiddles with her fingers in a rare show of uncertainty. “And thanks for
saving my life.”
The corner of Catherine’s mouth lifts, though her eyes don’t brighten.
They dim like a back-country road caught in the storm, the starlight stolen
from the world one rolling thunderhead at a time. “I didn’t save your life,
Addie. They were just a poor shot.”
“Neither of us believes that.”
Catherine shrugs, focusing on her meal, and Addie’s phone pings again
—and again—in her pocket. “They’re playing your song, Special Agent.”
“Morbid way to cut a meal short.”
“It’s fine. Murder is an ironclad excuse.” Catherine takes a bite, chews,
and still Addie lingers, though she can’t say why. They sit in an innocuous
restaurant in downtown Dedwich with the rain lashing the window at their
side, the yellow shine of fluorescent lighting muted by the gray glow
seeping through the city’s streets. There is something beguiling in Catherine
Themis—and something tragic, like a car crash one can’t look away from, a
sight that stays long after the crushed metal is swept from the asphalt, and
nothing remains but gouges in the road.
Addie never takes much away from poetry, but she thinks poets write
lines about women like Catherine, solitary figures who don’t see themselves
as others do, oceans writhing under a glacial cap. While most are content to
skate across the ice, Addie keeps wondering about those deeper waters. She
wonders about that woman who smiled when she’s told Addie killed ten
people, that woman who beat Addie’s grade in every class they shared and
still turned down the valedictorian role.
Addie wonders if the summer ever comes for Catherine Themis, if that
ice ever melts, or if it has always been there.
She takes a breath—and says nothing. The other woman waits.
“I’ll—see you later, Catherine.”
“Until next time, Addie.”
***
A particular smell accompanies death that Addie has never gotten used
to.
Death is a nexus point facilitating many sights, sounds, and smells; it’s a
microcosm for life, parasites and carrion and fungi taking what has gone on
to begin something new, and there are scents aplenty to accompany the
complex spiraling of the mortal coil. It isn’t the blood or the body or the
dust that Addie smells. A stench lingers below it all, something she can’t
name, and sometimes she wonders if she imagines it every time she stands
before a corpse. She asks a partner once if they could smell it, and they say
she needs a psych eval.
Which, admittedly, might be accurate, but Addie thinks she can sniff out
the dead by following that invisible scent. It intrigues her just as much as it
horrifies others.
Yellow caution tape warbles in the breeze, and the smell comes again,
stirred by the shifting air, the noose creaking ever so slightly with the
weight of its burden. Another noose bearing a similar weight sways in
Addie’s mind, but the image is distant, the sound brushed aside as she looks
into the swollen, still face of a familiar boy above her.
“Jean Lovall,” Horn says, reading from his notepad at Addie’s side.
“His mother says he didn’t come home last night, but that’s not terribly out
of place in their neighborhood. Fourteen. Christ.”
Moreno seethes as he watches the techs move about, and a bright flash
flickers to life every few seconds as the crime scene photographer snaps
shots. “Seems the Hangman’s not just knocking off perps anymore. Shit,
he’s just a kid.”
Addie says nothing.
 Above them, hanging from the industrial crossbeam, young Jean Lovall
seems to turn his head to Addie and say, “I think she saved my life at that
park. I don’t wanna betray that. Not really.”
Addie paces, one foot in front of the other, placed with practiced ease as
she slowly meanders through the scene. The rain hits hard on the rusted
metal roof, and the sound echoes in the abandoned warehouse, providing
white noise to the horrifying image like a bad black and white movie—
except this isn’t a movie, and Addie isn’t entertained.
Jean Lovall mutters, “I didn’t see her face, I didn’t, I swear, but she told
me to run to my mama and that’s all I wanna say.”
You made a choice, Addie says to no one at all, walking in a wide circle
around Jean. You knew the risks, but the anger overcame you. Knight’s head
hit the window. You struck her twice, and you let him go. You sent him
home.
The Hangman is Dedwich’s poster child—publicly shunned but praised
at home like a Roman hearth god, a figure seeking vengeance for those too
weak or moral or just plain dead to do so. For all that the authorities cannot
pin down the Hangman, she moves in predictable ways.
Addie stares at Jean, and the dead boy stares back.
You sent him home. You sent him on to his mama. Why would you take
him back?
The camera flashes, bright bursts of light illuminating a place not meant
for such harsh light. Red paint splatters the concrete floor like blood, a
mockery of it, really, spelling out words in a haphazard semi-circle. “You
knew what I was when you picked me up.”
“It’s a quote from a story,” says Horn, flipping through his notepad
again, lips turning down. “Not sure which, actually. They go by different
names and come from different countries: the Farmer and the Viper, the
Cherokee and the Rattlesnake, the Girl and the Snake. The moral is some
shit about not expecting someone or something to act outside their nature,
even if they say they will.”
“It’s classic escalation,” Poole puts in with his nose in the air and his
expression pinched. “The Hangman’s been active for years, so I would say
they’re due for it, aren’t they? All killers escalate. First Viteri, and now
Lovall.”
“She,” Addie notes under her breath. Not they—.
 She pauses. Addie reaches out and brushes gloved fingers against the
taut, twisted rope secured to the steel beam, looped about the eyelets with
the same knots the Hangman always uses. She steps back, brow furrowed.
“This ain’t the kind of escalation we usually see, though,” Horn tells
Poole. “Not in this type of killer.”
Moreno grunts. “The Hangman’s what the Bureau calls an ‘organized,
mission-oriented’ killer, and they’re usually pretty damn strict about who
meets their criteria—but The Hangman’s a whole different ball game.”
“Do you think it’s because they’re supposedly a woman?”
“Maybe? Couldn’t say. They’ll be doing case studies on this psycho for
years to come once we catch her. She’s not as prolific as Bundy or
Ridgeway, but once the media gets hold of this….”
“Not a psycho,” Addie mutters, and again her team misses her remark,
her voice drowned by the heavy static of rainwater and crackling radios and
waving barrier tape. She’s said it before, and she thinks it again; psychotics
act on the mandates of their disease or the bidding of preternatural,
imagined beings, and the Hangman is acting under her own authority,
following her own voice. Moreno and the others lose sight of their quarry’s
humanity and forget or ignore the distinction; it’s a slippery slope Addie
avoids.
“Mama says that any kind of killing is a sin, but I don’t think I agree
with that, not really.”
Spiderwebs in an abandoned car window, glittering like gold in the
sunlight, a thousand splinters of light captured and projected through the
red smear where a head struck the glass.
“And sometimes cops just kill people minding their own business and
don’t go to jail or anything.”
Ten bodies in a morgue, laid one by one, limned in lead and a lack of
regret.
“I don’t really see the difference between what the Hangman does and
what you do, I guess.”
Addie breathes in through her nose in a way the others don’t dare for
fear of being sick, and the smell sinks through her lungs into her gut,
settling heavy and gruesome. She looks at the rope tied off with care, at the
column worn by time—and then at the floor.
“Poole,” Addie barks loud enough for him to hear. Startled, the younger
investigator picks his way over to her, growing nervous, movements
twitchy once he reaches her side. “Give me a file for a different Hangman
kill site.”
“W-which would you like to see?”
“Any.”
Uncertain, Poole goes in search of his briefcase and returns some
minutes later with a short brief, which includes the photos Addie wants to
see. She finds the one she needs and then holds it out at an arm’s length,
studying the image, comparing it to the scene before her.
Her own voice echoes back to her, “Almost reads like a gift to me. A
lover’s knot,” and Poole’s voice chases it, a throw-away comment made at
the diner, almost forgotten, “Perhaps the Hangman has an accomplice who
does the heavy lifting, so to speak?”
In the photograph, the floor before the steel support used to tie off the
rope is marred by fresh gouges. Before the column Addie stands by, the
floor is filthy but unmarred by anything aside from indistinct, hazy
footprints.
“…boss?” Poole asks, and Addie realizes he’s been trying to get her
attention. “Boss, do you have anything?”
Everything at the crime scene down to the brand of rope is the same, all
of it the same, and yet….and yet….
It’s all different.
“This isn’t the Hangman,” Addie says—and Poole frowns, as do
Moreno and Horn, who’ve come closer to investigate what’s happening.
“What the hell do you mean, Lincoln?”
Addie repeats, “This isn’t the Hangman,” and the disbelief in their
expressions doesn’t deter her. “Viteri was a love note, a declaration—a
lover’s knot. Someone wanted our perp’s attention and didn’t get it. This?
This is an act of spite. The Hangman saved Jean’s life, and his murder is a
different kind of declaration. This is a lover scorned.”
 xxviii. the line between
The news stations play the same story over and over again, stuck on
repeat.
Young witness found dead in suspected Hangman killing.
It follows Catherine wherever she goes over the next few days, trailing
her from radios and televisions, gossip and newspapers, hanging like a
funerary shroud in the precinct when she returns to work. In a sick way, it
detracts attention from her injury, because what is a wounded civilian
administrator next to a dead boy? More FBI personnel arrive, and what
began as a targeted search grows into a manhunt in the face of public
backlash.
Catherine sees his face added to the gallery of her undoing. She sees the
young boy—the innocent boy—pinned to a wall among murderers, rapists,
thieves, and she can’t apologize. Not yet. His shadow follows her like all
the rest, and though she didn’t put the noose around his neck, she feels as if
her hands were on the rope. A small shadow walks with her, and Catherine
swears to whatever God willing to listen to her that she’ll paint their tread
red with the Kaleidoscope’s blood.
Time moves too quickly and too slowly. There are patches in her
memory, discrepancies in her recollections of how she drifts from one point
to the next, and more often than not, she blinks and finds herself in that
room, in the museum of her darkest deeds, all caught in frozen images.
Sometimes, she’s alone. Sometimes, Addie Lincoln is there. Dark, tired
eyes follow her, and Catherine knows they see more than she should allow.
The wolves are circling closer, she knows. She knows.
Catherine holds the watch to her wrist and breathes, smiles when she
needs to, answers questions when asked, though it’s getting harder and
harder to pry the two guises of her being apart. She can barely tell who the
fuck she is anymore.
Unspeakable rage lurks inside the Hangman, and it lurks inside
Catherine, too. It blurs the line between the two.
She holds the watch and plans.
***
Two days pass, and she stands outside that dull cafe halfway between
here and nowhere, the air escaping her lungs in paltry silver plumes as the
lunch rush continues unabated. She wears her usual work attire, a skirt and
low heels, coat buttoned to her throat, hair caught in a tidy braid. If anyone
notices Catherine standing near the doors, they soon forget her, brushing the
young woman’s presence off as inconspicuous and uninteresting.
They stroll by a wanted serial killer, never noticing a thing.
Her face is stoic, composed, and yet her eyes glint when the
Kaleidoscope emerges from the crowd and comes to stand at her side. His
shoulder brushes her own. “This is a surprise,” he comments, hands in his
pockets, his pose relaxed. “You’re lucky I had my eye on you, or else you
might have been standing here for quite a while longer. Have you tired of
our play already, my Catherine? Did you miss me?”
Disgust burgeons inside her, finding a home in her lungs, in her mouth,
like venom pooling between her teeth, too poisonous to swallow. The whole
of her being ignites and burns, and yet, when Catherine turns her head, her
face remains blank.
The Kaleidoscope tuts under his breath. “How is the investigation
going? Hmm? It appears most criminals are on their best behavior in
Dedwich of late, what with the federal agents here to sort through the
rubbish, looking for the Hangman.” He smiles. “Hangwoman doesn’t have
the same gravitas, does it?”
Catherine says nothing
He tuts again—harder, sucking air through his teeth, the corners of his
mouth turning down in a snarl. “Perhaps I was mistaken in thinking your
presence here meant you’d be amenable to conversation. My, my. What are
you going to do, love? Attack me on your lunch break? Go ahead. Put on a
show for your witnesses, Catherine Themis.”
The crowd keeps moving. She leans closer to him, and for all his
bravado, the Kaleidoscope stiffens, his breathing slow, taut. “It’s your
mistake,” she whispers, “Thinking there is such a thing as neutral ground in
this city. My city. Just because you approach the woman, don’t assume you
won’t get the beast.”
The Kaleidoscope narrows his eyes, and brake lights from the road
gleam a dull, haunting red in his otherwise colorless irises. “Is that so?”
“I couldn’t think of how to find you at first, how to corner you,”
Catherine admits, tone lighter than the fire eating at her control. “But then,
it occurred to me there is more than one way to hunt. Sometimes the hunter
simply waits and lets her prey come to her.”
He raises his head, and his lips ghost too close to her own, breath on her
cheek. “You think me prey, do you?”
 “We’re all prey to something, in the end, Bishop. Be it attrition or the
monster under our bed.” She leans back. “You’re here because I spoke to
your egoism. You couldn’t resist a little chat. I’ve always been told pride
goeth before the fall.”
“I came because I love you, Catherine.”
She doesn’t deign him worthy of a response. He says it so easily, as if
he means it, and maybe he does. However, his sentiment can’t ameliorate
her hatred, her fury, because his sickness—his obsession—entitles him to
nothing. Catherine hates all her victims—men and women in name only,
monsters, filth left unattended, destroying innocence and youth and all that
is beautiful and free—but she hates the Kaleidoscope most of all. He tears
at her skin, her disguise, and makes Catherine look.
It’s mutual destruction, his need to live through the deaths of others, her
desire to break something before she breaks herself, and as their eyes meet,
a moment of understanding connects the Hangman and the Kaleidoscope.
They are two sharks circling blood in the water—the snake grabbed by its
tail, the spider fallen from its web. Catherine knows he’s the rock towing
her under, but she can’t let it go.
She hopes he screams before they both drown.
“So be it.”
Bishop steps away and breaks eye contact, putting a pedestrian between
them. Catherine follows, and though he sets a brisk pace, she matches it,
trailing closer and closer as the Kaleidoscope moves. He could cry out,
claim she’s stalking or attacking him, try to involve the thinning crowd, but
Catherine can play the victim just as quickly as he can, and Bishop knows
this. She stays behind him, an arm’s reach away—until an empty alley
interrupts the solid row of storefronts, and he darts through the opening, and
Catherine chases after.
It’s a brief hunt; most confrontations are, the outcome decided before
the dance begins, soldiers marching on even knowing the end is coming.
Catherine doesn’t have a gun—the area is too populated, too risky—but she
has a knife, and it gleams like quicksilver when it slides from her sleeve to
her fingers and lashes out. The blade barely skims the edge of his coat
before Bishop whips about, gloved hand on her wrist, twisting, and
Catherine quickly maneuvers free, stepping back.
He lunges, aiming to take the knife, managing to block when she
slashes again. She brings her knee up, angling for his groin, and the
Kaleidoscope’s knuckles collide with the deep bruise still situated above her
knee. The sharp pain takes her breath away—and she pivots, dodging the
second blow coming for her bandaged arm. Her shoulder strikes the plaster
wall behind her.
The Kaleidoscope runs. His footsteps echo, hollow, breaking slaps of
leather shoes on shallow puddles, the lid of a trash can clanging harshly on
the concrete as he throws it behind himself. Catherine jumps over it, the
pain in her leg slowing her until she catches up with him again. The knife
slices through his coat—and he jerks down, pulling, the fabric yanking the
blade free before she can redouble her grip. A calculated strike rips her
glasses from her face, and Catherine snarls, her fist glancing over his
shoulder when she tries to collapse his throat, and the Kaleidoscope lifts his
arm, pinning hers, readying to break it at the elbow.
Catherine’s faster, recoiling—and a final hard kick to her injured leg
brings it out from under her, forcing her to stumble. The Kaleidoscope is
gone in an instant, darting deeper along the dark alley’s recesses, passing
into the adjoining street like a phantom unable to be touched. The nerves in
Catherine’s thigh and knee tingle, new bruises layering one atop the others,
and she grits her teeth as she rises.
“Fuck,” she hisses with feeling, knocking grit and dirt from her legs and
gloves. She searches the shadows until she spots her glasses by a
dumpster’s corroded wheel. The rim is bent, the lens scuffed. She finds the
knife next, and when she brings the blade under an accommodating light,
she curses again as the edge glistens clean and unmarked.
The Kaleidoscope laughs low and long in her ear even when he’s not
there, not anymore, and the shadow of a boy she failed watches Catherine
Themis and the Hangman stand and tremble with impotent fury. It shakes
through her like tremors in the earth, but the breaking goes unseen; it
happens in the parts of her Catherine can’t rightly name, and the fault lines
dig deeper and deeper all the time.
Her phone pings, and she tugs it free of her pocket. “You’ll regret this,”
the message reads.
If he knew Catherine at all, he’d understand she regrets little aside from
allowing him to lay his hands upon her. She regrets being a coward, for
choosing her own life over his, because she could have shot him in the back
if she’d been willing to go to jail for it.
“Guilt is a very human thing to have, docha.”
 Catherine stares at the little shadow that exists only in her warped mind,
closes her eyes, and turns away.
 xxix. hunted
Dedwich has always been a place of dying things, and Addie knows it
will always be the same.
It’s an unwanted wasteland, and it attracts unwanted people, unwanted
dreams, deaths, beginnings, and ends. Addie grows up poor and still blinks
when she first comes to the city for university. Years later, and it hasn’t
changed. No matter how it decays, how it falls to pieces and crumbles at the
edges, Dedwich will always be Dedwich, and its populated ruins will
remain long after her own bones cool to dust.
She patrols old crime scenes in her off-hours and finds homages to the
Hangman everywhere she goes, papering old warehouses like shrines to a
harsh, vengeful god. Addie stares at the shoddy nooses strung from the
rafters, at the graffitied gospel on the walls. This is what society looks like
from underneath, when you drown yourself in the refuse, in the decay, and
peer upward through the murky waters. It’s hard to be moral when you’re
starving or freezing, or just so fucking miserable that life loses all sanctity.
The Hangman is the patron saint of those with nothing left to live for and no
champions willing to fight in their name.
Addie means to find anything suspicious to supplement the
investigation in her wandering—but everything in Dedwich is suspicious.
It’s a suspicious city, with suspicious buildings and suspicious people and a
police force too small to scratch the surface of what’s happening out there.
The Hangman is not the only murderer within the county’s limits—not even
close, and crime happens with depressing regularity. Addie stops three
muggings in one afternoon and finds herself annoyed by the interruption.
Summoning cops to take in three desperate petty criminals is not what she’s
here to do. In want of caribou, the wolf cannot chase every rabbit or
squirrel.
She cannot help them all.
She takes pictures of the crime scenes, of the shrines, runs her fingers
through the grooves at the bases of the pillars, and immerses herself in the
Hangman’s nightmare. Addie stands in that cramped conference room in the
Rightwood precinct late into the night and asks questions from the dead.
Who was it? Who did this? Who, who, who.
Catherine is there, too, though she shouldn’t be, because this district’s
station is under investigation. Addie knows this. The shorter, red-haired
woman can’t hide her interest in this macabre mausoleum, and maybe a
different investigator would have thought her morbid or sick for that, but
Addie thinks she understands. It’s reaffirming to see the dead, like a jolt to a
still heart, like watching horror movies in the middle of the night just to feel
the terror one more time. Catherine looks, and Addie looks at Catherine.
There are new scratches on her glasses.
Sometimes Addie spirals when speaking with the woman. Sometimes,
she holds her breath and thinks she can hear voices trying to give her
answers to questions she doesn’t ask, the low, obfuscating hum of intuition
like liquor in her veins. She can reach out and find the bruises without error,
and Addie wants to know where they come from, why they happen, but she
keeps her mouth shut. Catherine Themis saved her life—because she knew
the bullet was coming. She’s an overqualified civilian administrator with a
far too spotless record for Dedwich, and whenever Addie contemplates that,
her breath comes short.
“You’re not supposed to be in here, you know,” she says, and Catherine
stirs, eyes flicking toward Addie where she sits on the floor.
“…I know,” Catherine replies. She shifts, shoulders lifting as she
inhales, and then she holds out the plastic sack she has in her hand, bidding
Addie take it. The dark-eyed woman does, and inside she finds a sandwich
and styrofoam container of soup from the local diner. Their fingers brush as
the sack settles on her lap. “Remember to eat, Special Agent.”
There is a hint of teasing in Catherine’s tone, and Addie warms, the
harsher reality of death and murder forgotten for one moment as their eyes
meet, and Catherine turns away. She’s unsteady on her feet, subtly so, but
enough for Addie to know her arm hurts and her leg moves with stiff,
unwilling motions under her. Addie watches her leave before retrieving her
food.
Moreno, sitting at the table proper, half-buried in the recent incident
reports needing sorting, whistles low. “A woman who gets you dinner and
takes a bullet for you? Man, that’s the whole package, La Loba. When’s the
wedding?”
Addie tears off a hunk of her sandwich. “You’re not invited.”
He snorts a laugh that devolves into a weary sigh, papers shuffling, pen
clicking. “You know, I had a case in New York when I was younger. Just a
green agent then, so they had me doing grunt work at the station—shit, not
unlike now.”
“Hmm.”
 “That precinct was, I don’t know, three times the size of this outfit—
what else would you expect, right? For a place in New York? The city’s
fucking huge, and we weren’t in Manhattan, if you know what I mean. We
were looking for a real puta madre at the time, and I had to sift through all
kinds of incident reports.”
“Hmm.”
Moreno grunts, shaking his head. “I don’t know where I’m going with
this. I feel like I’m back in that shitty, badly lit archive room. The more
times change, the more they stay the same. But, this place—Dedwich—is a
drop in the bucket compared to New York, and I’m still shoveling through
more reports than I did back there.” He holds up a sheaf, loose pages
fluttering back to the overburdened table. “It should be open and shut, La
Loba, this case. Some small-town hick killer—we’ve reeled in bigger fish
before—but it’s all going to pieces. We’re running in circles, you almost get
shot, dragging our heels through gang violence and the drug trade garbage
we gotta pass on to the DEA. Shit, we’re in some upper level of Hell here.”
On the floor with her own growing pile, Addie eats her food and listens
to Moreno with half an ear. Her mind revolves around a pretty civilian still,
abrasions on the lenses of her glasses, green eyes glinting, slight bruising to
her skin. She remembers an average man of average height with his hand on
Catherine’s arm and the low hissed words, “You won’t like what happens
next, Catherine.”
She remembers the fury in his gray eyes when they touched upon her.
“Did you run that name?”
Caught by the shift in subject, the pen stops tapping the table. “Huh?
What name?”
“Bishop Eris.”
“Ah, yeah. Didn’t come up with anything, so I told them to run it again,
looking for anything with Interpol.” Moreno scratches his scalp. “Gotta tell
you, it sounds fake, though.”
“Yes.” She frowns as she downs the soup, swallowing noodles and
small bits of chicken. “Where’s Horn?”
“Badgering the lab, keeping people late, making them miserable—our
usual shtick.”
“Poole?”
“Actually waiting to hear from him. Kid’s been going through female
arrest records for the past decade, looking into violent offenders who fit the
profile.”
“The Hangman won’t be in the system.”
“We gotta cover all the angles, La Loba—.” His phone, hidden under a
manila folder, beeps. “That’s him now…let’s see…says we should meet
him at the hotel.”
“Tell him to come here.”
Moreno does as bid, and then receives a reply. “He says we need to go
there.”
Addie sighs, irritation bristling in her chest, and she throws what’s left
of her meal into the closest trashcan. For a kiss ass, Poole has the obnoxious
habit of pressing boundaries, searching for ways he can assume authority,
and Addie has little patience for the posturing at the moment. “Let’s go,”
she tells Moreno, and he grunts as he fishes out his keys for the conference
room so they can lock the door behind them. “If he’s wasting my time, he’s
going back to Washington with a transfer stapled to his forehead.”
“Shit, if I waste your time, will you send me home too, boss?”
“No, I’ll leave you here permanently.”
Moreno lets out a bark of laughter, and the pair of federal agents depart
the Rightwood precinct. They don’t travel far; habitable, low-budget areas
in Dedwich tend to cluster nearest downtown, adjacent to the darker,
inhospitable streets presaging the estate’s economic downturn. If she stands
on the roof, Addie thinks she could probably see the courthouse at the heart
of the city.
They have four rooms booked in a row on the second floor of the
shoddy place, Addie’s room by the elevator because the noise doesn’t stop
her from sleeping, not any more than Moreno’s snoring or the late-night
arguments Horn has with his wife over the phone sometimes. They continue
down the exposed balcony to the final room overlooking the parking lot,
and Moreno raps the door with his knuckles. Thick curtains cover the unlit
window.
There is no answer.
Moreno huffs imprecations under his breath in Spanish as he knocks
again, harder, the night swallowing down the sound as it echoes over the
lot. He yanks his phone out of his pants pocket and dials, brow furrowed,
another harsh reprimand on the tip of his tongue as he turns toward the
railing. “Idiot didn’t say where exactly he wanted to meet us, but I assumed
—.”
 Addie holds up a hand, and Moreno quiets. Distantly, the tinny sound of
an unanswered phone rings inside the shut room.
Moreno swallows, and Addie stays still, listening as her fellow agent
places the call again, and the noise comes once more without an answer.
“Do you have an extra key card?” Moreno asks, and Addie jerks her head to
the side. “Alright, shit, I’ll go down to the front desk—.”
He moves toward the elevator, but Addie remains, bracing herself. She’s
stayed in nicer, more upscale places where the doors have thick jambs and
deadbolts—but the doors here are little more than particle board stuck
together with cheap wood glue and sloppy paint jobs, so when Addie palms
her gun and jump-kicks the barrier, it bursts open, slamming hard into the
interior wall. She steps inside—and sees.
It is a familiar scene for a woman like Addie Lincoln: the blood, the
body, the casual disregard for human life. She looks even as Moreno gasps
and shouts, and the vibration moves through her, small quakes in the body
of someone not easily moved to tears or anger. Her shadow is long and
bleak, cast by the watery, phlegmatic glow of city lights trapped in the
clouds, giving grim illumination to the form sprawled upon the mattress.
Addie stares at the dirty counterpane crumpled on the carpet and the
knocked-over nightstand, the struggle coalescing in her mind like
developing polaroids.
She sees the last moments of Samir Poole’s life as no one else ever
would, a private theater shared between her and his killer. He was a trained
agent; he fought, but whoever came through the door overpowered him
swiftly. You checked who it was. You knew how dangerous this town is—you
looked, but who did you see, Samir? You stepped back. You let your guard
down. Who was it? Who?
Addie blinks, and already the blue and red police lights are spiraling,
dancing, glowing on a cooling patch staining the carpet, the arterial spray
on the ugly pillows, the phone left in mocking tribute on a dead man’s
chest. Moreno sputters codes and curses into his own phone, his voice gone
high, frightened, grief-stricken. Addie fixates on the phone left for them,
knowing Poole never sent those messages calling them back.
Like waving a red cape at a bull.
Sirens wail too late. Moreno places his hand on her arm, pulling her
back, and Addie blinks again. The noose on Poole’s neck is an artistic
addition; he died on his back, with a blade in his jugular, and when Addie
breathes in, she can smell Poole’s work burning in the bathroom, the fire as
fresh as the kill. Minutes too late.
She sees homages to the Hangman in her head—nooses hung on rafters
with dried flowers in the loops, small prayers on the walls, tokens of
gratitude shed like tears from tired eyes.
This is not an homage. This is an insult.
Addie’s palm sweats on the butt of her gun, and her fingers flex against
the trigger.
A single word stains the faded wallpaper, written in Poole’s cooling
blood.
HOWL.
 xxx. world-eater
In Catherine’s dreams, Kayla Hoffman sits next to her on a picnic bench
as the world burns.
Dedwich smolders in the valley’s basin, and they watch in the
mountains as the ash plumes rise black against an orange sky, storm clouds
thickening beyond the blaze’s rising heat. They are young, only children,
Catherine’s hair in a braid, Kayla’s hand sticky with something—jam,
perhaps—where it clasps hers between them.
“I never wanted this,” Kayla says.
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t have killed him. You shouldn’t have killed anyone.”
“I know.”
Her fingers tighten, and they are older, Catherine still bespectacled and
fragile as a bird, Kayla beautiful, forever young. “I never asked for
revenge.”
“I know.”
Isaak Peak takes a seat on Catherine’s other side, shoulder brushing
hers, face lost to memory and time’s abstraction. “Who are you?”
“I didn’t believe in revenge.”
“I know.”
Luke Elliott sits by Isaak Peak. “C’mon, stop messing around.”
Kayla’s nails bite into the back of Catherine’s hand. “Why did you do
this to yourself?”
Catherine doesn’t answer; the fire crawls nearer as the smoke shifts in
the breeze, and the grass upon the ascending slope begins to wither and die.
Ghosts inhabit the mountainside, swirling pools of nothingness growing in
the spaces between the flames, and the longer Catherine looks, the harder it
is to look away, to close her eyes.
Kayla disappears. Catherine turns to see ash in the air.
Her body burns with the city, blood on her hands—and she hates it,
despises the stains ruining her palms, and yet she holds hands with her
ghosts and lets the fire come. Above it all echoes the ringing laugh of the
Kaleidoscope’s gallows humor. She breathes in the chaos of it, chokes,
searching—.
Snow descends. Dedwich hides below a blanket of sleet, and Catherine
stares at a gray sky as someone leans their back against hers. She is alone,
cold, aside from that presence holding her up. “I’ve shot and killed nine
men and one woman in the line of duty,” Agent Lincoln echoes from her
memories. “Does that seem unlikely, too?”
“No,” Catherine whispers, smoke escaping her lungs, soot in her mouth.
The ice cracks and bleeds. The ghosts return, red in the snow, a clock
ticking in beats of seven. “No,” she repeats, an answer and a plea, because
it’s falling to pieces, she’s falling to pieces, the world shattering like a
mirror under her fist—.
Catherine wakes with a gasp.
She trembles in her bed, and the dream presses on her chest with
substantial weight, sweat clinging to her bare arms and legs, sheet on the
floor. She reaches for Virgil—but he’s gone. Her fingers tangle in a cold
collar left by her hip, and the metal digs into her palm. The apartment
reflects its owner: chilled, empty, left populated by battered pieces of
furniture like landmarks to a strange, alien world. The mattress—new,
because she couldn’t keep the other, not after what he did—is already
stained with perspiration. Catherine sweats with blind panic every night.
The watch on her wrist ticks, and she tries to breathe with it.
A noise in the otherwise silent dark stills her heaving lungs, and when it
comes again, Catherine moves. She slips from the bed to the floor, focusing,
and listens past the pounding in her chest and head. She crouches, her curls
sticking to her face and neck, sweat making her hands and the soles of her
feet tacky. Her heart pounds.
Air circulates through the apartment, cold and bitter, shoes scuffing
against the tiles in the bathroom as a heavy body shifts in the shadows—and
the moment after the masked man crosses the threshold into the bedroom,
he is on his knees, choking on a shout. Catherine growls with fury, her
hands on his neck, and she doesn’t think before her grip moves. The sound
of his neck breaking is surprisingly quiet.
Catherine is half-dressed, standing over a dead man, and her body
shakes as a scream burns white-hot in her chest. It sits incandescent beneath
her bones, and if she hadn’t known her heart to be a stubborn, frigid little
survivor, Catherine thinks it would burn to nothing in seconds.
She knows exactly who sent a midnight intruder spiriting through her
home.
Goddamn it. Goddamn him.
She rifles through his pockets, using the hem of the man’s coat to take
the grimy little army knife from his hand and shove it into his jeans. Loose
change spills on the floor, followed by crumpled fast food receipts, an
empty wallet—and a folded stack of clean, fresh bills strapped with a
rubber band. Catherine yanks one bill free from the bunch and takes it over
to the denuded lamp, holding it directly above the naked bulb as her eyes
strain against the sudden light. She studies the hundred but finds no
microprint, and the holographic image is off.
“Counterfeit,” Catherine mutters as she rubs a corner of the bill between
her thumb and forefinger. Impressive counterfeit. She knows the
Kaleidoscope pays off desperate, cruel thugs to make her life difficult and
tail her and the FBI agents—but she cannot fathom where the money comes
from. Counterfeit of satisfactory quality costs money regardless of its
authenticity and has to come from somewhere physical; it can’t be wired
from a bank or manifested through cryptocurrency. It is made, printed, and
unless the Kaleidoscope carries suitcases full of fake cash with him, he’s
finding it in her town somewhere.
Where in the hell is he getting it?
She yanks on a pair of pants and a jacket, pulling the hood over her
sleep-mussed hair. She pushes her feet into her boots without socks and
loosely ties off the laces. The door in the bathroom hangs open by an inch,
letting in the distant, ambient noises of the city, and Catherine slips into the
alleyway. She scouts farther down toward the lot where the car not in her
name is parked, and when she finds nothing unusual, she returns to the
apartment and finds her purse. Grimacing, Catherine takes her keys and one
of the pills given to her by Grisha, because her arm already aches, and she’s
little chance of getting the body out of her apartment otherwise.
Catherine gives the thug one final, unfeeling look over before she
kneels and pulls his considerable weight into a fireman’s carry, her knees
shaking as she stands but managing to hold all the same. Gritting her teeth,
she walks swiftly from the apartment, banging the rear door into the alley
shut with her foot before hurrying toward the communal lot. Her muscles
burn, sharp agony in tender skin like hot pins pricking her bones. Catherine
grounds herself with her steps’ repetitive motion and lets the pain chase
away those nacreous demons hunting her consciousness.
She reaches the lot and lowers the body to the pavement, leaning him
against the car’s side with the same attention one might show an inebriated
friend and not a thug they’d been forced to murder by a psychopath. The
keys find their way into her hand—and she pauses at the rear door, her gaze
riveted on the door’s handle. Dew coats the vehicle in a gossamer veil, but
not there, and not on the window, a patch swept clear by a careless hand so
Catherine can lean forward and see—.
A jacket thrown on the seat, nylon glossy in the hazy ambiance of city
lights, the yellow ‘FBI’ letters imprinted on the back stained a deep, velvet
crimson.
“Fuck,” she gasps, recoiling—too slow to avoid the shadow at her heels,
a hand snaking out to grip her wrist and pull hard. Catherine snarls, the keys
clattering on her own feet, her nails scouring flesh until—.
Her shoulders strike the side of her car even as the fingers of her free
hand dig into the Kaleidoscope’s throat. He grins, wild as a dog freed of his
leash, and he squeezes her wrist until the metal edges of her watch cut into
Catherine’s skin. She relents enough for him to breathe, but nothing more,
and his grip reciprocates.
“It’s almost too easy,” Bishop Eris croons. “Are you really this simple,
poor little Hangman? Where’s your fury now, hmm? Where’s the challenge
—?”
Catherine’s knee catches him between the legs, and the Kaleidoscope
jerks away, hissing, putting distance between them before Catherine can
capitalize on her cheap shot. Her fingers scrape across the ground as she
grabs the keys. The switchblade opens with an almost inaudible snick, the
light glancing across the knife, and Catherine lunges—stopping only when
she sees the gun aimed at her heart.
They breathe hard, two killers standing a few yards apart, and the space
yawns wider than it should, a moral canyon of conviction, a trench between
enemy lines waiting for the bodies to fill it. He can kill her in an instant, but
if he misses…oh, if he misses, Catherine’s little blade would find a new
home in his heart.
Neither move.
“We could be more than this,” the Kaleidoscope whispers. “More than
the anger and the resentment, more than simply you and I. Why do you
fight it, love? You’ve broken all the promises you’ve ever made to yourself;
why cling to this one when it is inevitably your end?”
“If you’re going to shoot me, do it. Spare me your trite melodrama.”
“What is it you think you hate about me, Catherine? What do you find
so repellent? Is it because I’m a murderer? My, that’d be rather hypocritical
of you, wouldn’t it?”
 “No.”
Heat curdles in his colorless eyes, his finger tight upon the trigger.
“Then what is it, Catherine? Hmm? Tell me.”
“It’s because you’re nothing,” she snarls. “You’re a child. You’re a
petulant, arrogant child who stands for nothing, who kills and maims and
hunts for nothing, and there isn’t a single fucking thing in your still, black
heart mirrored in my own. You have no purpose. You’re a mistake. You
think you understand me, but you don’t. You keep telling me to take off the
mask, but there isn’t a mask, there isn’t. I am not defined by the bodies I
leave behind. I’m not defined by them, by their ghosts, or by you. You stand
for all that I’ve fought against my entire goddamn life, you entitled,
malignant prick. What do I hate about you? Do you really want to know?”
“Enlighten me.”
Catherine bares her teeth and leans forward, hissing, “Everything.”
He sneers, anger etching cracks in his face—and it is the most real thing
Catherine has ever seen in Bishop Eris, more real than the avarice in his
touch, the scars on his covered skin, and it speaks to her in a way his voice
never has and never would. Catherine laughs. There is a dead man at her
heels, and her voice echoes like church bells tolling the hour.
“Finish what you started in the warehouse,” she dares, smiling. “Go on.
Because if you don’t, Bishop, this is only going to end one way.”
He glares, disdain marrying the anger, the rejection, that unspoken lust
and need, and the gun lowers just enough for a shot to be nonlethal. “No,”
he drawls. “No, I think not. I’m going to make you beg for it first.” In an
instant, the Kaleidoscope returns to the fore, and the monster leering across
the distance knows no weakness, no anger, no betrayal. It is a creature of
blind, undiluted chaos. “You’re a serpent eating its own tail, Catherine
Themis. The question is, are you the beginning? Or are you the end?”
The gun doesn’t fire and doesn’t move; the man who calls himself
Bishop Eris backs away until he dissolves into the dark once more.
“Coward,” Catherine curses below her breath, unsure if she’s addressing
him or herself.
She drags the body into the backseat, throws it over the bloody,
incriminating FBI jacket—and she thinks of Addie. The woman dominates
her thoughts as Catherine gets behind the wheel, starts the engine, and
drives. The jacket is too large to belong to the willowy special agent, and
yet Catherine speculates on the Kaleidoscope’s escalation, on Addie’s team,
and which member might not be breathing anymore.
“You won’t like what happens next, Catherine.”
They are all pieces on Bishop’s board, and it is not a game with winners
or losers, not a game of chess with ranks and denominations—no. It’s a
madman’s pastime, like pitching stones into the river just to watch them
sink, a murderous game of bizarre bingo without a prize, just tiles for the
Kaleidoscope to call out and shatter.
“It’s almost too easy.”
“He is a boy looking for new toys to break—do not play his games.”
Her fingers tighten on the wheel as the headlights dance by, garish
streamers in the tapestry of night.
Later, when the car sinks into the river, taking with it the body and the
evidence, Catherine stands framed by the distant lights of Dedwich with
unkempt wilderness at her back, gravel under her boots and exhaustion
written into the fine lines of her face. She stares not at the bubbling water
surging higher but at the watch on her wrist—the very same watch Bishop
Eris touched not an hour prior.
The same watch Catherine’s touched as well.
She stares, breathes in, and makes a choice.
***
Addie Lincoln wakes before dawn, torn from quiet dreams by the
ringing phone.
She arrives fifteen minutes later in the lobby of her shabby motel, and
the tired man behind the desk who summoned her proffers a small, lumpy
package left for her convenience. A familiar watch wrapped in a sandwich
baggie slides into Addie’s hand—along with a note.
I hope prints are better than a name. This might be a mistake, but I am
not his toy.
I’m sorry.
- Catherine.
 xxxi. the spider’s loom
For all that Adeline Lincoln is a wild thing reared in the woods,
baptized in pine sap and deer blood, she is no stranger to bureaucracy.
Paperwork and red tape are the bindings of the modern world; for every
step she takes, every perp she apprehends, every bullet she fires, there is a
page to be filed, a name to be signed, a document to collate. Her life exists
in two spheres, in boardrooms and in the field, in shitty, surreal towns like
Dedwich and in big, bustling cities. It exists in telephone conferences and
blood-soaked sneakers—in the world of sneering male counterparts and
sneering serial killers. For Addie, a stuffy office with a creaky chair isn’t all
that different from a crime scene; at least at the crime scene, she’s viewed
as an authority.
The same can’t be said of the office.
Addie’s boss is a man of middling stature standing on a pile of titles and
bodies stacked under his feet. David Canmore punctuates everything he
says with a pointed finger, and whether the finger is pointed at a board, the
table, or a person doesn’t matter. It is the finish line, the final word, God’s
law in a tiny little kingdom comprised of four walls, exhausted personnel,
and an overburdened table. As the lead agent, Addie is the one who bears
the brunt of his displeasure.
Canmore doesn’t want to be here. For all that he is Agent-in-Charge, he
struts with the same overbearing pomp of a silverback surveying his band
and despises the kind of negative press associated with a case like this, a
case quickly spiraling out of control. With an agent dead, Dedwich and the
Hangman find themselves spotlighted on national news. As eyes turn upon
this dying coal town, those higher up the ladder from Canmore and Addie
scream down its length, demanding answers to questions no one can answer
yet.
“I put you in charge of this shitfest,” Captain Canmore spits at Addie.
His finger comes down on the table’s edge after every word—thump,
thump, thump. “I put you in charge against my better judgment, and you’ve
got nothing for me, Lincoln—no suspect, no concrete motive, nothing but a
potential fucking leak out there!”
Now his finger jabs toward the wall separating them from the
Rightwood precinct, populated by detectives who have passed their
background inspections.
 “I’ve told you what I think, sir.” Addie doesn’t shrug, but it’s a near
thing, and those seated nearest her lean away as if to escape the blast zone.
“We’re dealing with two killers. One is the so-called ‘Hangman,’ who’s
been active for years and has a very clear, mission-oriented M.O.; the other
is a copycat. I believe they know one another, and the copycat is attempting
to frame the Hangman for more violent, senseless crimes.”
“It’s all senseless! You don’t have anything to back that up—.”
Addie shoves a report toward the man, and he shoves it back, bearing
coffee-stained teeth.
“I’ve read it. All you have are some fucking scuff marks on the ground,
and you’re telling me this is evidence enough to prove there’s two perps,
one a man and one a woman. To top that off, you’re basing the killer’s sex
on the word of a dead witness—who you want me to think was targeted by
the second killer after he snitched on the first. To me, it seems far more
likely the poor kid pissed off the sonuvabitch, and the uniforms failed to
protect him.” Again the finger comes down like a gavel. “The murders have
all the markers of the Hangman’s kills, Lincoln, and you have your team
out there searching for shadows while people are still dying! Someone’s
taking potshots at agents! This kind of cyclical reasoning is ruining the
case. Sometimes facts are facts, and you’re trying to read too much into it!”
“I’m not reading into anything,” Addie says with irony, because she
hunts predators and psychos and connects disparate shreds of logic in
intricate patterns, but her imagination’s shit, and she can’t invent what isn’t
there to see. “This is what I’ve learned, what I’ve seen—being in the field,
after all. Sir.”
She gives his title in afterthought, and Canmore bristles at the insult.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re a great field agent, Lincoln. Real great. Which is why
I’m relieving you of command, so you can get back into the field where you
belong. I’m in charge of the case now. Get out of my sight until I call you
in.”
The shrug she withheld moments before returns, and Addie stands amid
the silent stares, her expression blank—and so very different from the
prideful, heated growl roiling in her chest. Addie stalks from the conference
room and doesn’t stop until she’s outside, the cold biting at her skin, and
she breathes out, harsh, hands curling into fists.
“Lincoln!” Heavy footsteps chase after her, and Addie pauses long
enough for Moreno to catch up, a manila folder crushed under his arm.
Horn is with him, other technicians filtering out, Canmore having dismissed
the meeting after Addie’s dressing down. “Christ, it’s freezing out here. I’m
not gonna lose parts so you can mope in the parking lot. Let’s go get some
food. You coming, Curt?”
“No, I have some files I need to pick up, so I’ll be seeing y’all later.”
“Suit yourself.”
Moreno sets off at a brisk pace, and Addie follows, her hands shoved
into her pockets, hair loose about her shoulders. They enter a little diner the
next block over, the hour just late enough for the lunch rush to be over,
leaving the patchy, scuffed booths empty. Music from a local station plays
on the radio, and the bored waiter smokes behind the counter before he
spots them through the window and stubs the cigarette out.
“Do you think I’m wrong?” Addie asks as they find a seat, Moreno
dropping the folder on the grubby table between them. “Do you think
Canmore has a point?”
“Man, screw that racist pendejo,” the older agent snaps, dark brows
furrowing as he meets Addie’s gaze and holds it. “Do you know how many
times that asshole’s passed me up for a promotion because I’m Mexican?
All he does is sit in Washington and tell us what to do. I don’t think I’ve
seen him leave his office in ten years.” The sullen waiter pours them two
glasses of water, and they both order Cokes. “What I’m saying, La Loba, is
that you’ve made these crazy predictions and judgment calls before, and
you’ve never steered me wrong. You got pride, but not the kind that makes
you bull-headed or myopic. You say it’s a woman? Then it’s a woman. You
say there’s two killers? Then it’s two killers. Just because Canmore has a
flashier badge don’t mean he’s right.”
They sit in silence, waiting for their drinks, and when they arrive,
Moreno clears his throat and gives the folder between them a little push.
“That’s for you.”
“It’s not the lab results, is it? I just gave you the watch this morning.”
Print results simply didn’t come back that fast, no matter the pressure
placed upon a case.
Moreno snorts as if reading Addie’s mind. “No. I pulled stills earlier in
the week from the security cameras at the precinct like you asked, and I
have a buddy working at Interpol who managed to grease a few stubborn
wheels….”
 Addie flips open the folder—and stares at the image of a familiar,
forgettable face, two gray eyes glaring in the harsh, unforgiving light of a
mugshot. He is somehow younger and older simultaneously; the photo is a
decade old, and Addie reads that discrepancy in his face, youth softening
his cheeks and jawline, but the haggard cast of his pale skin coupled with
his rougher deportment ages the man in inexplicable ways.
“They don’t have his name,” she remarks, gaze flitting over the moniker
John Smith typed across the top page. John Smith is little better than John
Doe, and Addie thinks the man who calls himself Bishop Eris has probably
worn half a dozen different names in his life, all with the same blasé
anonymity. “St. Jerome’s Mental Health Ward?”
“Sounds nice, don’t it? My buddy told me it’s a publicly-funded asylum
out near Exeter for all the crazies the crown doesn’t want to handle or deal
with. They’re mostly harmless, but the occasional, genuine psychopath has
been known to slip through.”
“Hmm.” Addie flips a page, scanning. The file isn’t strictly legal; it
gives an impression of the person she’s looking for but can’t be used as
evidence. “There isn’t much here. He was admitted for the potential
ideation of suicide and exhibiting distressing behaviors.”
“See that bit there? The last paragraph?”
She does. Line after line in the patient dossier paints a picture of a
docile, repentant petty criminal making strides in bettering himself and his
community. That last paragraph, that comment added by consulting
psychologist Iosif Adkins hits the lily-white canvas of John Smith like red
paint splattered from a brush. “‘Plays head games,’” Addie paraphrases,
brow raised, eyes flicking back and forth. “‘Resents treatment…superiority
complex…I suspect Mr. Smith has committed violent crimes in his past and
will continue to do so in the future. I advise against release.’”
“Nasty piece of work—and they still let him out.” Moreno shakes his
head. “Why you interested in this guy anyway, boss?”
Her interest lies in her pocket, with a note folded and unfolded so many
times, the corners bend inward like wilting petals. I’m sorry, Catherine
wrote. Addie wants to ask why.
What are you apologizing for?
“Because,” she says as she turns to the photograph again. She delivers
her statement without inflection. “I think he tried to kill me.”
Moreno chokes on his drink, sputtering.
 “Because I think he might be the second killer. The scorned lover.”
“Jesus, Lincoln. Where the hell is this coming from?” He wipes his
mouth and chin, a look of pain crossing his tired face. “Oh, let me guess,
you’ve got nothing to back this up with Canmore? Shit.”
“Nope.” The sound pops on her lips, and Addie closes the folder, hiding
away those feral gray eyes. “I’ve nothing but my gut on this one.”
“…but if you think this guy is the copycat, then do you have an idea of
who the Hangman is?”
She stares at Moreno, and he shifts, caught under the weight of her
scrutiny. “No,” Addie says at length, and she can almost believe it. Almost.
“Nothing but my gut.”
I’m sorry. Addie’s fingers brush the front pocket of her jacket. I’m
sorry.
***
Lunch eventually arrives, carrying with it the odors of grease and well-
done meat, and the two feds settle in. A reference for Dr. Iosif Adkins is
listed within the folder, and so Addie leans into her seat after finishing her
drink and dials his office number while Moreno picks over his meal and the
waiter sneaks another smoke behind the counter. The cold of the window’s
glass presses against her back, and she kicks a leg onto the booth,
stretching, foot bobbing in time with the distant ringing coming through the
receiver.
The call continues, pauses, then switches to an automated voicemail.
“You’ve reached the London office of Pearce and Reed LLP—.”
Addie pulls her phone away and checks the number, dialing once more
with similar results. She tucks her hair behind her ear as her thumb sweeps
idle against the screen. “Weird. It’s forwarding me to a law office in
London.”
“What?”
“Exactly what I said.” She switches to the browser, her foot bobbing
faster as she waits for the lousy data reception to load the results. Moreno
asks something around a bite of hashbrowns, but Addie doesn’t hear him,
concentrating instead on the various links and pages on the screen. It takes
digging, delving into the third or fourth page of retrieved results to find an
archived article about Dr. Iosif Adkins.
“He went missing back in 2011. His partner closed their practice that
year when he couldn’t be found. Guess it’s a law office now.”
 “Who?”
“This psychologist, Dr. Adkins. The one who said Smith’s dangerous.”
Moreno breathes a quiet oath because they both live in a world of few
coincidences, and in their jargon, missing is often synonymous with
murdered. The man who pins Smith as a manipulative sociopath disappears
—and violence, new violence, terrible and surreal even in a hellhole like
Dedwich—dogs Smith’s footsteps. Addie remembers the parking lot, the
same scene Moreno pulled stills from. She remembers Smith—Eris—
leaning too close, Catherine crowded against her car, a small, deceptive
blade glinting in her hand.
Addie’s phone vibrates, then rings, Horn’s number illuminating the
screen. Sighing, she answers, “What is it?”
She expects his voice, that quiet southern drawl, expects how it thickens
and resonates when he’s irritated or pissed off with something Addie’s
done. Horn’s always the first to challenge her choices and her leaps, but
Addie sees herself in him, in his refusal to accept everything he’s told at
face value. Horn wants to chase the truth and doesn’t give a damn about
lies. He’s the first to challenge her—and the first to defend her point of
view. It is inevitable Canmore respects Horn more than Adeline, suffused as
he is with good ol’ southern boy charm, but Horn despises people like
Canmore, who look at the color of Moreno’s skin, or at Addie’s family, and
judge them for it.
She expects Horn’s biting comments on Canmore or the meeting or the
Hangman—expects him to say something, anything, and yet when Addie
holds the phone to her ear, all she hears is…breathing.
“Horn?” Addie says, her mouth gone dry. “Horn, are you there? Can
you hear me? …Curt?”
The breathing is harsh, shallow, followed by a rattling, glottal gasp—
then nothing. Dead air. The call drops.
“La Loba? Addie—?”
The phone pings before she can react, and Addie’s eyes widen at the
attached image.
“Addie, what—?” The phone slips between her fingers and clatters on
the table, screen up, and Moreno sees the picture just as easily as Addie
does. “Dios mío, no. No, Curt—!”
A car commercial plays on the radio, the waiter smokes, melting ice
shifts and clicks in their abandoned glasses, all while the two federal agents
bow their heads over a snapshot of their colleague—their friend, partner,
brother—taken with his own phone. He smiles from ear to ear, but not with
his mouth.
Upon his brow, painted in the blood taken from his opened throat, there
is a tiny noose. It hangs upon him like a malediction, and Addie can’t
breathe, can’t look away.
She won’t look away.
 xxxii. unspoken
A hitman lives in a boarded-up house three streets and one alley away
from Catherine’s apartment.
She knows this in the same way she knows many things—because
Grisha told her. Murderous, doddering gossip hound that he is, Grisha
doesn’t mince words; he tells her where the others are, points out the places
they hunt, though this was years ago, and now the Hangman out-shadows
what dregs of humanity still pillage this city’s gritty streets. Now Grisha
tells them to look out for her because Catherine hangs monsters like herself
with little provocation, and if they miss their step, if they tread on her tail,
she will bite.
The hitman doesn’t work in Dedwich—a professional choice, Grisha
tells her, because men like Ben Kazama treat lives like a trader treats
stocks: something to be left behind when the day ends before returning to
their private lives. Given his age and his discretion, Kazama must have
double the number of kills Catherine does, but she doesn’t fear him or
others of his ilk.
Pulling her hood low, Catherine climbs the step to the rundown
brownstone and knocks on the door.
The man who answers is shorter than her, somewhere in his fifties with
a receding hairline and something staunch and unfeeling in his dark eyes.
He cracks the door open and peers out from an unlit foyer, the streetlight
catching the slim line of a pale face and neck, black ink curling at the edge
of his buttoned collar.
“Yes?” he asks in a hushed, reedy voice. It laps like rippling waves
against Catherine’s ears.
“Ben Kazama?” She pitches her tone low, though it grates in her throat
and sounds forced. “I am an acquaintance of Dr. Morse.”
He stiffens, then retreats, edging the door open wide enough for
Catherine to step over the threshold and shut it behind her. There is enough
light issuing between the boards over the window to show Kazama
scrutinizing the stranger in his home before he walks to the front room. It’s
a cluttered space with an antique sofa and many books carefully tended to
on the shelves. There are no grisly trophies, no guns, no knives on display;
Kazama is a killer, but one would never know from the look of his home.
He turns on the desk lamp and not the overhead fixture, the resulting
illumination dim and oblique, Catherine’s face hidden in her hood’s
shadow.
Neither person sits.
“What do you want?” Kazama mutters, clearly uncomfortable. “Has Dr.
Morse a favor he needs?”
“No. Neither he nor I require your services at this time.”
He pauses. “Then why are you here?”
Catherine slides her hand into her pocket—slowly, Kazama tracking the
motion, his body tense—and retrieves a folded bill, holding it out to the
man without a word.
Though he is a professional, Kazama only operates on a small scale in
Allegheny and other neighboring counties, rendering large-scale money
laundering through item acquisition unfeasible. He cleans his income in the
time-honored fashion of many criminals; he owns a small business in town
that reports far more revenue than it actually makes. Catherine knows his
clients must pay in cash, and so she also knows necessity makes Kazama’s
eye keen in discerning various kinds of counterfeit.
He takes the bill, not touching her gloved hand, and twists his torso to
the lamp, letting the light stream through the currency. “It is a good fake,
but I have seen better.” Kazama makes a low, thoughtful sound, not quite a
hum and not quite a grunt. “I do not accept this kind of payment. Nor the…
movement of it.”
“I’m not paying you for anything. I want to know who makes it. It has
to be somebody local, and that is all I know.”
He studies the bill again, taking meticulous care, fingers moving and
testing with expertise Catherine lacks. “This…hmm. Ah. The person who
made this is not making them anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because he is dead,” Kazama replies, blunt and to the point. “He was
called Sadler. He made this, did work for the cartels from time to time,
moved things. He was one of my…vendors.” Arms dealer, Catherine
clarifies in her mind. “His people found him dead a week ago. Two weeks?
I am not sure of the exact date, and I was not informed about any missing
money. It is not my business.”
He gives the bill back, and Catherine crumples it in her fist. She wants
to scream in impotent frustration, her teeth grinding, her face hot under the
hood. Dead end. It hadn’t occurred to her that the Kaleidoscope might have
killed his counterfeit supplier, given the adage of how stupid it is to
slaughter the golden goose. Still, if Bishop Eris had been predictable,
Catherine would have caught him by now. He evaporates like vapor
between her fingers; he appears, taunts, threatens, and vanishes.
“Thank you for your time,” she manages to say through grit teeth. She
turns and makes for the door.
“It has been an honor, Hangman.”
Catherine freezes. Her back is to him, to the light, her gaze fixed upon
the darkened entrance to his man’s home. The urge blossoms poisonous and
deadly in her gut to face Kazama and pounce, to kill him for his perception,
but she does not. Catherine forces one booted foot in front of the other and
leaves.
***
Catherine leans against the steering wheel’s arch and sighs.
She parks in the lot allocated to her apartment block, seeking the
strength to rise and go inside, knowing that the Kaleidoscope most likely
has the building watched. For the past two nights—two? Three? Time is a
liquid, amorphous substance, hours draining and returning when Catherine
doesn’t pay attention—she has napped in her car between bouts of
searching, a duffel bag of murderous and incriminating implements tucked
under the backseat, her body aching. Hunting for the Kaleidoscope is an
exhausting endeavor.
Her hopes of finding him soon wavers. Catherine is learning her ghosts
are more tangible than a cunning psychopath who doesn’t wish to be found.
She needs to find a hotel because she won’t sleep here at her apartment. She
does, however, need a change of clothes.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she strips off her gloves. Catherine relents,
pulls the strap of her purse over her shoulder, and gets out of the car.
Her heart beats too fast and heavy in her chest, her thoughts careless as
if a child sits and picks at her mind—pluck, pluck, pluck. Cohesive meaning
and logic fall away like petals from the flower’s stem, and all she is left
with are feelings, nameless sensations of anger, irritation, fear, worry.
Catherine defines her life with control and routine; she doesn’t know how
the Kaleidoscope will strike, where he will strike, when. Her blood races
and she wants her watch—is desperate for it—but it’s gone now. It’s gone.
Catherine nears her apartment—and stops.
A shadow lingers at her door, spared exposure from the flickering light
on the neighbor’s unit, defined by the indisputable curve of a shoulder, a
head. They are seated on the ground by the crooked mat. Catherine palms
her handgun; if the Kaleidoscope chooses to ambush her here again—or
makes another futile effort at reconciliation—Catherine won’t hesitate to
shoot him where he stands and take her chances with the law.
The person turns, bringing their profile into relief, and Catherine
exhales. “Dammit, Addie,” she breathes as she approaches the agent, and
Addie’s attention strays to the gun before Catherine stows it away in her
purse. Unsettled, tired, and taken off guard, anger blazes white-hot and
instant in Catherine’s chest, clawing at her throat, and it is all she can do not
to shout at the woman sprawled by her door. The light is weak, but the red
in Addie’s eyes is evident, so Catherine doesn’t yell. She holds it in.
“Horn is dead,” Addie says without preamble, and Catherine blinks.
“They found him earlier this afternoon, in an alley next to our motel—our
new motel. He died in the car. The killer—.” She swallows. “The killer hid
in the backseat. They hid until Horn reached the motel, and then—.” Addie
draws her finger across her throat. “He was taken to the alley, and the killer
called me so I could listen to Horn’s last breaths. And then…he sent me a
photo.”
Catherine breathes a strain of obscenities as she unlocks the door and
takes Addie by the arm, hauling her to her feet. “Come, get inside.”
The apartment’s interior is dark but mercifully undisturbed, and
Catherine pulls Addie over to the table, urging her onto the only usable seat
remaining. The table itself rocks, unsteady with one leg broken and hastily
nailed back into place. Catherine leaves Addie there and heads deeper
inside, checking the bedroom, the bathroom, the windows, and the rear
door. Finding all untampered with, at least for the time being, she returns to
the main room and finds the federal agent looking at her phone.
“I don’t know what this means,” Addie says, the words still perfectly
composed, but brittle, weathered. The Kaleidoscope has put something sad
and desperate in Addie’s face, and Catherine despises him for it. “Horn’s
usually the one I ask about metaphors or—fucking messages. I don’t
know.” She holds out the phone, and from a distance, Catherine can already
see an image illuminated on the screen, seeming to blaze incandescent in
the surrounding dark.
“You’re not supposed to be showing me this, Addie.”
“Do you think I care? I wouldn’t be here if I cared!”
 “Then why are you here? Where is your detail? The protocol is to give a
detail to anyone under a death threat!”
“I’m not a dog in a fucking cage, and I don’t need a detail!” Addie lets
out a harsh breath. “I don’t care,” she insists. “Please, what does it mean?”
Catherine takes the phone, fingers brushing against Addie’s, and braces
herself. The photo the killer—Bishop, she reminds herself, hate seething
anew in her chest—took is as gruesome as one would expect, Agent Horn
half propped on the alley wall, his front liberally doused in his own blood,
his eyes still wide in shock or pain or just sheer terror. Catherine ignores all
this, as this is not what Addie wants her to see. Instead, she studies the wall
and the halo of smeared figures painted in red above the man’s falling head.
As Catherine thinks, Addie studies her—and then the room, noting the
changes, the degradation, the lack of possessions. “It’s birds,” Catherine
says at length. “Crows, specifically.”
“Why crows?”
“Because there’s seven of them.” Catherine leans her hip at the table by
Addie, watching each other by the phone’s wan glow. “It’s an old
superstition about omens of good luck, fortune, and whatnot. There’s
different rhymes. ‘One for sorrow, two for mirth. Three for a wedding, and
four for a birth. Five for silver, six for gold. Seven for a secret not to be
told.’”
“What secret, then? I don’t understand, Catherine.”
Catherine doesn’t tell her it’s a threat, that the Kaleidoscope is taunting
them both with his knowledge of Catherine’s identity, and that a man died
for no other reason than Bishop’s perverted sense of reprisal. Her hands
flex, fingers curling and uncurling because he’s killing them, killing her,
threatening everything—. “I couldn’t say.”
Addie catches her by the wrist when she goes to turn away. “What
happened here? What happened to your things? What happened to Virgil
—?”
Catherine snaps, “Don’t,” in a voice far harder than the one typical for
her bland, boring civilian administrator persona. Addie’s grip remains, firm
without being tight, and though Catherine can feel her gaze on her own
face, she cannot see Addie’s eyes without the light. She winces at her own
tone. “I—I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. Not with me.”
“I didn’t mean—.”
 “Catherine.” Addie’s free hand comes to rest on Catherine’s shoulder,
thin fingers grazing over her jacket’s collar, cool against the warmer skin of
her neck. Catherine places her own hand on Addie’s and holds it there, her
heart beating too quickly again, and her breath catches in her throat. Addie
pulls her down until they’re face to face, and Catherine closes her eyes.
There is no guile to her touch, no expectation; Catherine has lost no one,
and yet Addie offers her comfort, her skin almost too hot against
Catherine’s own, unfamiliar and yet—.
She is so tired. A simple summation of the toil in her heart and mind,
the weight of being hunted and toyed with, the neat rows of her life dashed
and torn. The Kaleidoscope once tells her, “There is nothing more exquisite
than to know and be known in return,” and for all his lying, his trickery, his
deception, there is truth in his words. She turns to Bishop for the first time
because she longs for more than the solid demarcation sundering her day
and nights. She is the Hangman and Catherine Themis; no one can
recognize her as both.
A single, caring touch renders her almost insensate.
There is little quality of life for Catherine now. She fights demons in her
nightmares and wakes only to the haunting reminders of the lives she’s
taken, those black spots assuming human shape slowly crowding out all
else in her view. Perhaps it is exhaustion wearing her control—perhaps it is
something more. Perhaps, if only for an instant, she wants relief from the
monsters who stain her life like ink seeping through a porous page. She can
barely breathe.
“Addie, I—.”
She shifts, and Catherine stills as warmth touches her mouth, gracing
her lips, then her cheek, and Addie pulls her closer, arms around her neck,
embracing her tight. The kiss lingers like the sting of a brand.
“I—.”
“It’s okay,” Addie murmurs, breath warm on Catherine’s cheek. “You’re
okay.”
I’m not okay.
At once, she’s pressing herself into Addie’s arms, fingers curling into
her sweater, clasping tight—and there are tears on Catherine’s face she
doesn’t remember shedding, a terrible, strangled sound erupting in her
chest, and Addie holds on. Her heart beats against Catherine’s, and her
pulse finally begins to slow.
 The night hangs cold in the air around them, but Catherine and Addie
don’t acknowledge it, and they don’t acknowledge the things that go
unspoken: Catherine’s attire, the gun in her purse, the pointed questions the
agent asks, because Addie knows too much and Catherine has let too much
go.
When the crying subsides, Catherine whispers, “I’m sorry about Agent
Horn and Agent Poole.” There’s no guilt in their deaths; she didn’t kill
those men, but she had the chance to end the Kaleidoscope, and she let the
opportunity pass her by. People are dead because Catherine inadvertently
brought the Kaleidoscope to Dedwich, and she owes them justice. She owes
Addie justice.
Addie nods, carefully tucking Catherine’s hair behind her ear,
straightening her glasses. Her fingertips ghost across her jaw, and the touch
lingers even after she moves away.
“Whoever did this—.” Catherine swallows, reaching out to take Addie’s
hand in her own. The other woman’s pulse holds steady, and Catherine
counts the beats. “Whoever did this…there’s only one end for them. They
will get exactly what they deserve in the end. I…I promise. I hope you
know that.”
Addie stares at Catherine, and there is no confusion, no uncertainty, no
fear or disgust. There is only gentle adoration.
Catherine looks into the eyes of the woman she loves and breathes in.
 xxxiii. madness
Grisha and Catherine have spoken of madness more often than she
wants to admit.
It’s inevitable, she thinks, for the subject to come up; they are both
killers, and Grisha warns her that sanity is a tightrope over madness’ well,
and while some walk the line quite well, others do not. Catherine knows
she’s in the latter category, has known for years that the rope beneath her
feet is slackening, shaking, her balance growing poorer and poorer with
every waning year. For some, madness is an abyss they carry across without
effort; for others, it is an inevitability.
“Hold on to yourself,” Grisha says when Catherine trembles and shakes
so hard that she wonders why she hasn’t shattered into a thousand pieces.
His hands are warm on her arms, grounding. “Be present. Remind yourself
of where you are, the day, the time. Remember who you are, docha.”
She never tells him how difficult it is to know herself sometimes. She
supplements sanity with routine: rise, wash, work, repeat. Breathe in, exist
—seven ticks on a clock, air in her lungs like a metronome—these are the
things that ground Catherine Themis when nothing else can. At night, she
surrenders to the ghosts, to the dreams, the sweat-soaked sheets and the
whimpering, scared mutterings of a girl filled with rage and fear, mistrust
and loneliness. In the morning, she opens her eyes, sits up, and shoves it
aside behind a cold, implacable stare.
Both are Catherine Themis.
Madness throws Isaak Peak into an alley wall, and madness bashes his
head against the bricks. Madness makes the pivotal choice for Catherine
when she breaks Luke Elliott’s neck. Madness overwhelms her when she
screams and when her fists lash out, when Grisha comes to shuffle the
pieces together, when Virgil sinks his teeth in her sleeve to get her to move
again. Madness is lost time, the seconds between one step and the next,
when Catherine blinks and wakes somewhere else entirely.
Madness comes on like the indolent haze of the lotus-eaters, sweet
nectar on the tongue, sips of oblivion in an otherwise tart, bitter existence.
She’s not mad, she’s not, not yet, but it’s a tightrope unraveling under her
feet, and Catherine sways.
Sometimes, she thinks she should jump.
***
 The next evening finds Catherine knocking on the door to Addie’s motel
room.
It’s a nicer place on the other side of downtown, the Bureau springing
for accommodations better suited to surveillance and security. Addie
answers with a bright, welcoming grin, and they embrace before Catherine
returns a sheepish smile of her own.
“Here,” she says, holding up a bag of take-out Chinese food. “Dinner.”
“Awesome.” Addie moves, letting Catherine inside, though the latter
doesn’t miss how she inspects both ends of the carpeted hall before shutting
the door.
Files and documents burden the table, and the agent sets about cleaning
them up, sorting the mess into its carrier with plastic dividers and clear, bent
tabs. “I’m supposed to be checking that it’s all there,” Addie explains as
Catherine sets the food down. “The DPD is relocating federal headquarters,
and Internal Affairs needs to collect and account for all copies of the files
before reissuing them to the agents.”
“Oh?” Catherine should feel either anxious or relieved at this news;
relocating moves the agents and their investigation farther from Catherine
and the FBI’s respective purviews. She won’t be as prevalent, as suspicious,
but like a blind man in the woods, she’ll lose all sense of direction when the
case’s details are removed from her grasp. Should the FBI’s sights turn to
her, she’ll never see the blow coming.
Catherine sets out paper plates and doesn’t blink.
She made her choice when she gave Addie Lincoln her watch.
“Do you know which precinct you’re moving to?” she asks as Addie
drops the carrier on the floor, and they sit down to share their meal.
Addie shakes her head, taking a plastic fork while Catherine uses
chopsticks. “Not me,” she says. “Them. My team—what’s left of it—is
being sent home. Moreno wants to put in for early retirement, but they
won’t give it to him. Both of us will land behind desks, and we’ll spend the
rest of our careers there.”
Catherine tilts her head. Sunlight pierces the gap on the horizon
between the earth and the storm’s bruised clouds, spilling careless bands of
gold through the open window. In that light, Addie sits half in illumination,
half not, and like a Fuseli chiaroscuro, the woman is all the more beautiful
for her stark, haunting edges—for the grief and anger and love that stirs in
her guileless countenance. There is a park beyond the window, overgrown
and untamed, the trees’ skeletons casting shadows where they catch the day,
and those shadows sit like a wreath of thorns around Addie Lincoln.
“I’m sorry,” Catherine says because she cannot think of anything else,
and she cannot tear her eyes away.
Addie turns like a wolf considering its next move. “They have…certain
expectations of me in the bureau. I failed to live up to those.”
I’ve shot and killed nine men and one woman in the line of duty. Does
that seem unlikely, too?
Catherine lays her hand over Addie’s on the table between them.
“Will you come to D.C.? Will you come to see me?”
You could leave, you know. See those places I mentioned. I could take
you.
Both Addie and the Kaleidoscope ask Catherine to leave Dedwich—the
former with desire, the latter with avarice. Dedwich is the totem around
which Catherine designs her life; she seldom leaves it and has never
traveled far. In her memory, it is always a touchstone close enough to brush
her fingertips against, and when she can trust nothing else, she trusts her
innate, animal knowledge of the city. They write her name on the walls here
—Hangman, Hangman, Hangman, three claps at the altar calling her
murderous attention down upon the filthy and unworthy. She is the goddess
of this ugly temple, and Addie asks her to leave.
“Yes,” Catherine whispers, and a weight slips from her shoulders like a
heavy, wet coat peeled from her skin. “Yes, I will.”
The light dances on Addie’s smile, and she flips her hand under
Catherine’s, folding their fingers together.
***
Catherine stays until the sun is all but gone, the food eaten and her
reasons for remaining running dry. She wallows in the surreal domesticity
of it all, nostalgia for a bygone age when Catherine didn’t know the feel of
a man’s neck breaking under her grip—but the Hangman calls her to the
gallows, and she cannot linger.
Addie embraces her at the door, and in her mind’s eye, the noose swings
empty, and Catherine thinks just once more, one more time, as she tightens
her hold on Addie. She’ll pull one more body to the heavens above this city,
and it will be done. She will place her hand in Adeline Lincoln’s and be
done.
She’ll kill the Kaleidoscope and be done.
 The door clicks closed. The hallway is cool and well-lit, and Catherine
walks toward the far end, where the elevator and Detective Gables wait, the
policeman stationed as part of the security detail meant to watch the
threatened federal agents and personnel. Catherine walks, silent, layering
the pieces of herself that sing for Bishop Eris’ demise over herself—and she
comes to a stop before a door three down from Agent Lincoln’s.
Agent Moreno’s room.
The door waits ajar, and Catherine pushes it open with two fingers, the
room beyond empty and cast into expectant shadow. “Agent Moreno,” she
says, to no answer. There, upon the bland carpet at her feet, red dapples the
fibers.
A speckled trail leads not deeper into the room but into the hall, and she
follows, heart beating too quick—thump, thump, thump—and her steps
maneuver around the scattered spots decorating the way like strewn rose
petals. Gables looks to be asleep by the elevator, slouched in his chair,
magazine forgotten in his lap—three bullet wounds to the chest, taken at
close range, a low-caliber shot with a silencer. Catherine blinks and passes
the man to the stairs, where the trail descends to the levels below.
Catherine follows—one step, two steps—chasing the blood like a hound
running the path down into Hell. She thinks about Virgil, her fearless guide,
and rage flickers white-hot in her heart as she bursts through the motel’s
rear exit.
There is a chain-link fence barring entrance into the state-owned park,
but the links have been pried aside, allowing Catherine passage. She doesn’t
have far to go before she stands at a familiar scene; there, in the dark, a
body takes to the breeze and tips like a pendulum going in only one
direction. The rope creaks against the straining boughs. Two bullet holes
glisten over his heart—without even being there, Catherine sees him open
the door, sees Agent Moreno’s wary confusion, sees the hooded figure in
the well-lit corridor fire twice without hesitation. He dies before he leaves
the motel, and now he is cradled by rope and by open air, frost already
gathering on his sagging shoulders.
Catherine stares at the dead man and tries to breathe.
You’re a serpent eating its own tail, Catherine Themis. The question is,
are you the beginning? Or are you the end?
On the ground, in a pile of dead leaves, sits something not meant to be
there. Catherine—quiet, numb, the roaring too loud in her ears—nears the
leaves and sees metal glint low in what sparse sunlight manages to pierce
the surrounding gloom. She sees a…stethoscope. A doctor’s stethoscope.
She has her phone in hand before she can register the movement and
dials a number. All around her, the Kaleidoscope is laughing, the
nothingness is pressing closer and closer, squeezing, and as the phone rings
—and rings and rings—Catherine spirals, the dread within her heart rising,
rising, until—.
“You have reached Grisha Morse, M.D. Please leave a message.”
She balances self-control one last time—and shatters. She prepares
herself to jump.
 xxxiv. killer
Grigorij Markov is seven years old when he first learns of mercy’s
reciprocity.
He learns in the abstract; he is a boy from a well-off family living on the
cusp of a dying, snow-bound town the Union’s abandoned. His father waxes
poetic in proper Russian about the party, about the Union, about Stalin’s
glory days and the woes of Krushchev—and always Grigorij gives him his
ear, if not his attention. He is born into a world of crises and cold wars, a
world of ice and hunger and need that Grigorij can see from his bedroom
window, lurking beyond the iron gates. The ice touches the glass, and he
can feel it, but it doesn’t touch him.
Not yet.
He feeds the hungry when he can, those poor boys from poor families
working the mills and factories and nowhere at all, limning the town’s hard,
empty streets like specters in a graveyard waiting to be filled. He thinks
himself good, just, righteous in what he does, because is it not the wont of
the generous to feed the poor? Grigorij hands out day-old bread from the
kitchens to the poor boys outside his iron gates, and he thinks it a mercy.
One boy always comes last. Grigorij doesn’t know why. Perhaps
because he limps, slower than the rest, perhaps because he works farther
away, perhaps because he wishes it so. Always the boy is last, and Grigorij
looks into his scarred face, green eyes swallowed by black circles, and he
holds empty hands aloft. There is no more bread, and the boy goes hungry.
The boy is not alone. The hungry are the majority, not the minority, in
that snow-bound Union town. The Markovs are a single family of plenty,
and Grigorij is seven years old when the older boys find him beyond his
father’s iron gates and take everything he has—his shoes, his belt, his day-
old bread. He scrapes his knees upon the frozen earth, his nose breaks under
careless fists, and through the blood and tears, Grigorij looks up into the
scarred face of the green-eyed boy who wraps his worn hands so tight
around his boyish neck.
Grigorij is seven years old when he learns mercy is not day-old bread
handed out to the desperate; it is the slackening grip of a hungry, furious
boy with nothing left to lose. It is a cold breath stolen under blood, tears,
and falling snow.
Mercy is forgiveness from someone who has no reason to give it.
***
 Grigorij Markov is still a boy when he goes to war.
They put a box with a cross upon its lid in his hands and send him out
among the men and the metal and the churning, roaring machines that seem
to break apart entire worlds. He is no longer the privileged son of his youth
learning lessons at his father’s knee; he is a boy among men growing up too
fast, running headlong into a world that lives far, far beyond his iron gates.
His new taskmasters are made of fire, steel, and disease.
The steady thump of combat boots on the rocks serenades like gunshots
in the night—thump, thump, thump. It’s at a distance, always at a distance,
the low drone of planes and the vibrations in the earth like God’s heartbeat
in his soles, and the boy from a small town lies in his camp bed listening to
Hell’s melody just over the horizon. There is sand in his pockets, in his hair,
his skin boiled red by an unforgiving sun, and always—always—the earth
shakes under his feet.
Days drag on, and the horizon comes closer, the planes fly lower, and
the war machines bellow like the monsters from his mother’s nursery
stories. Grigorij lies awake at night, unable to bear the noise of it all.
Typhoid cripples his unit, and he spends the hours among those moaning
with fever and pain and hunger, blood painting his gloves, drying to his
palms like a second skin. When they drag the shattered remnants of men
into the tent, he digs lead from their flesh, cuts through muscles and bones,
removes arms and legs, and watches the men scream like broken demons.
Their screams echo in his nightmares.
The troop crosses through a village of unsympathetic civilians,
searching for the mujahideen, knocking down carts and doors and those
who stand in their way. Grigorij and his unit wait in the peripheries—
medics always on the sideline until needed—and he pretends not to hear the
thump of rifle butts hitting flesh, wood breaking, children crying into their
mothers’ breasts. Hell’s droning continues in his ears—it never stops, it’ll
never end, the futility of wishing otherwise like poison in his gut—but
Grigorij thinks the sound has changed. He thinks it’s getting closer.
It is.
Shocked exclamations and short bursts of terror disappear into the
roaring engines, the air coarse with sand as it flies from the barren road, and
Grigorij covers his eyes against the bracing draft. The earth rolls underfoot;
when the bombs strike, the lack of sound doesn’t truly surprise him, the
impact lost in the piercing whistle, the bellowing skies, the screaming. The
whole of the world breaks, and Grigorij thinks he cries in terror—because
he is terrified, more terrified than when he stared up through blood and
snow into a pair of haunted green eyes and waited for the end to come. He’s
more terrified than his own mother had been when she kissed him goodbye
for what he will learn is the last time.
He prays to God for it to stop, and if his prayers find wing in the chaos,
he doesn’t know. Grigorij lies upon the ground, metal and salt upon his
tongue, and he worships like he’s never worshiped before, even while his
body burns and he finds Hell a man-made place.
Grigorij wakes bloodied and raw, skin torn by rubble and debris, two
fingers broken on his left hand, and his right ear deaf but for an endless,
keening ring. He alone stumbles upright—and once where a village sat
hunched at the hill’s foot resides a blackened ruin, crooked teeth like the
Devil’s maw coming up from below. It is red and brown, crimson where the
blood makes mud among the blasted stones, and the screaming—God help
him, the screaming—starts again.
His hands shake. They shake so hard, Grigorij can’t open his little iron
box with the cross upon its lid.
He isn’t there. The boy pushes the scene away and takes refuge instead
at his father’s knee. Outside, the snow falls beyond their iron gate. He
ignores the clay forming rivulets, ignores the pieces; Grigorij is inside his
father’s library in his cold Union town. He isn’t fumbling for bandages,
isn’t rearranging flesh and muscle and bone on his countrymen, isn’t wrist-
deep in someone’s abdomen; he’s in his father’s library, at the man’s knee,
in his snowy Union town, and his mother sits on the divan reading
Shakespeare like an angel from above.
“‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’” she whispers, and he imagines
her kneeling there with him in the sand and the sun and scorched viscera,
black hair pooling like ink around a beloved face. “‘Tis mightiest in the
mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.’”
The world comes in flashes, spots of vivid color between black waves
overcoming his vision. Men and women and children cry beneath the rubble
like the dead wailing from their graves. His hands won’t stop shaking.
Someone is yelling for a medic, but Grigorij cannot find them, cannot see,
cannot hear, cannot think. His hands are red and shake and shake and shake.
“‘His scepter shows the force of temporal power, the attribute to awe
and majesty wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.’”
 There is a man; he is one of the mujahideen they seek, given his attire
and the broken rifle at his feet—or, what is left of his feet. He sprawls upon
the rock like Prometheus bound, like Prometheus after the eagle comes to
feast upon his immortal liver. Grigorij pants in short, pained gasps, the
smell of offal in his nose, in his mouth, his lungs, a smell he swears will
linger with him always like the feel of the sun burning him alive and the
distant planes droning. Blood soaks into the man’s unraveled turban, but he
is still alive, and he stares at Grigorij.
“Mercy,” he begs in the common tongue. An hour before and this
insurgent would not have hesitated to shoot Grigorij in the back. “Mercy.”
“‘But mercy,’” Grigorij’s mother continues to murmur in his ear. “‘Is
above this sceptered sway.’”
The boy kneels and tries to make sense of what remains in his kit, the
bandages ruined by his blind, seeking hands, bottle shaken, thread torn,
depleted. There is nothing. Grigorij presses a hand to the gut wound as if to
heal it with his touch, and his vision wavers behind silver tears.
“Mercy,” the man whispers, and he looks not at the box of medical
things, but at the knife strapped to his enemy’s thigh.
Grigorij is not in the desert. He is not blood-soaked and quivering,
genuflecting by the side of a person torn to shreds. He does not have his
knife pressed to that man’s throat, and he does not cry in earnest for what
must be done. In his mind, he is in the library, and he listens to his mother
read from The Merchant of Venice while his father smokes his pipe and
Grigorij stares into the hearth’s enshrined flames. The fire sways, and the
snow falls outside.
The knife plunges.
In the sky above, black birds circle high, cawing into the wind. They
wait for their pound of flesh.
***
Later, Grigorij learns a simple miscommunication leads to all this
destruction. A memo is misplaced on the desk of a superior he will never
meet, and his troop is caught in his own country’s carpet bombing as a
result. The commander at the nearest base claps Grigorij on the shoulder
and says, “It’s all a misunderstanding.”
Later still, when he receives a missive stating his hometown has burnt
down, that the factories caught fire and no one could put it out, that the
library, the iron gate, his mother and his father are all gone, he sits on the
edge of his camp bed and listens to men make war on the horizon.
He buries home in the sands and carries with him the nightmare of
hungry crows and children disappearing into the earth.
***
The Union of his father’s golden years falls to pieces around Grigorij’s
ears when he returns from war and begins his crawl through medical school.
He fills his nights and days with texts and lectures to bury the bombs that
burst like the breaking earth in his dreams. He gathers degrees as the city
around him shatters, piece by piece, and the bygone aspirations of party
leaders dissolve as the new millennium steadily approaches. He—the son of
a family in a town no one’s ever heard of, a boy turned veteran in a
cauldron of boots beating the earth, beating a rhythm forever in his head—
is not untouched by the chaos.
Grigorij works through his insomnia, debt, and hunger at shoddy, back-
alley clinics, and one night he’s dragged out by armed men and shoved into
a car. He’s taken to a house much like the one of his youth, hidden safe
behind standing iron gates. They throw him to the floor in a room where an
older man half-dressed lies bleeding on a chaise, riddled with broken bones
and lacerations, the fine silk of his vest torn open and stained like split
wrapping paper shredded by a child’s careless hand. Thick rings glint on
crooked fingers.
His name is Mitya Borisov.
Grigorij acts without thought, fishing out his standard kit in its beaten
iron box with a cross upon its lid, ordering the guards to boil water and find
clean sheets, bandages, and gauze. The opulence glints in the room around
him, but he learns death comes for whoever it pleases—the poor, the rich,
the weak, the strong. It comes, and sometimes he pushes it back, but it is
inevitable; Grigorij is not any more impressed by priceless chandeliers and
bespoke suits than he is moved to tears by hunger in the streets. He simply
acts.
Finishing his tasks in the early morning hours, Grigorij bends his tired
neck for a moment, whispering a gentle prayer as an afterthought. He lifts
his gaze to find the watching eyes of his patient, bloodshot and pained but
otherwise alert. “Religious?” Borisov slurs.
“Yes, sir.”
 He laughs, and though the sound is rough like rocks under a tank’s
treads, his breathing eases and deepens. “Bah. You think everyone’s looking
for heaven, boy? Looking for God?”
“No.”
“Don’t waste your prayers.”
“Forgive me, sir, but they are mine to waste if I wish.”
“Open your eyes. You know what this is. You might not know my name,
but you know who I am.” They sit in the richest house in the richest part of
a city bound by slums and seedy, dying streets. Grigorij knows Borisov’s
name from the paper, but he doesn’t need a name to know who he is. He
knows who all of them standing by are. He knows what they are and what
they are a part of. “Do you think I deserve your pity?”
“Deserving has nothing to do with it, sir.”
Grigorij packs his little kit, and they show him to a bath bigger than his
home where he can wash before being escorted off the property. Returning
home, he passes through the iron gates, and Grigorij imagines he belongs
on this side of them more than he’d ever expected.
Two weeks later, a letter arrives asking if he’d like a job.
Grigorij agrees.
***
Brotherhood, Grigorij finds, is like mercy in that it is not always earned,
but it is something given, something precious, and when placed within his
hands, he holds on tight. Brotherhood is an escape from the bombs in his
mind, the pleading whispers of the shrapnel-riddled mujahideen; it is a
place to lay his head, a full belly, a quiet clinic where he can read and mend
the pieces of himself until they drag another bloody body before him.
He heals them all, those dark, wandering souls, men with eyes like
gasping pits and morals as loose as the wind is free. He heals murderers and
rapists and terrorists; he heals brothers and sisters, fathers and sons, the
good and ill alike, because he is not God, and it is not his place to judge the
flesh given to him to heal. They call him “Doctor,” when they place
themselves in his hands and “brother” when they leave.
They give him quiet, privacy, and dull the reminder of war and all it
entails. They give him purpose; they teach him more of the world beyond
the iron gates of his youth, teach him how to fight in a way the army hadn’t,
teach him how to survive in a world teetering ever more into stuttering
madness. Sometimes, they ask him to hurt instead of heal, and Grigorij does
this too. He does this because knowing how the body works makes him
uniquely qualified to understand how it doesn’t. He walks forward into the
light of his clinic when they drop men before him, and they wait for the
truth to spill like gospel from a priest’s mouth.
In the end, they get their truth, and Grigorij always gives mercy to those
never meant to leave his house alive.
“Good thing you’re not K.G.B., eh?” his brothers say when Grigorij
stands silent before the sink, washing blood from his arms. They lean
outside open doorways and laugh. “We’d be out of work, Grisha!”
Grisha, Grisha—brother, doctor, friend. He accrues titles and names
over the years, new faces and dreams and realizations. The war in the sands
is behind him, replaced by a quieter one waged on tired streets, and
sometimes he longs for the days in his father’s study or when he’d sleep in
his mother’s parlor and she’d sing “Bayushki bayu.” Mercy gives him a
chance, and brotherhood gives him a star on each shoulder, the hands of
God inked into his flesh, and a promise that he will bow to no one—though
he kneels often enough, seeking guidance where none can be found.
He goes to prison eventually, all crimes catching up with his brothers in
arms, his thieves-in-law, and Grigorij keeps their secrets in his chest.
“Patient confidentiality,” he laughs when the men in black break his jaw
and throw him into the dark. When he emerges, he again experiences the
division of the iron gate that haunts him throughout his life. He lives well
for a prisoner because he is connected, educated, a brother to a different
kind of faith, but the other prisoners do not. The guards put him to work in
the clinic, and Grigorij wears himself to the bone healing laborers who
break themselves over and over again. For penance. For fucking nothing.
A visitor arrives—a man in a silk vest, gold rings on his fingers, and he
calls Grigorij my son, for all that Mitya Borisov is not the doctor’s parent.
He is a different kind of father, a guide into a darker, grittier, realistic world
than the one Ivan Markov promised to his boy. Grigorij’s visitor, his father,
sits on the other side of the iron gate Grigorij finds himself chained to, and
Borisov looks at the bruises on the younger man’s face, the scars on his
hands, the light in his tired eyes, and sighs.
“Grisha, boy, still wasting your prayers for those who don’t deserve
them?”
“Da.”
 Borisov shakes his head. “Well, fuck them. Have a prayer for yourself.
You’ve always done well by the bratva, and we will do well by you. It is
time to get you out of there.”
Grigorij shifts, waiting, a black bird on a wire poised to fly. “They’ll be
watching me now.”
“We’ll change your name, and you’ll go where they can’t see.” Smoke
drifts from the cigarette in the man’s hand as he inhales, and the light glints
on golden rings. “Yaponchik is headed to America. Someone needs to look
after the son of a bitch. I hear the weather’s beautiful. Bet the view’s better
than whatever shit hole you’ve been looking at.”
Grigorij laughs, then nods. “Da.”
“Remember to send me a postcard, boy.”
***
Grisha Morse is a man entirely other from Grigorij Markov.
Years pass him by, years removed from the motherland, from his
childhood, from the iron gate, and he leaves Little Odessa eventually to see
what else there is in America. He drags brotherhood with him like an old
coat, familiar and comfortable, if a bit worn in places. His brothers dwindle
in the passage of time as they drift apart, go to prison, find absolution in the
bottom of a bottle—or in the trigger of a swallowed handgun. Childhood,
brotherhood—these are the mantles Grisha wears, though he hears boy less
and less as he grays, brother lost on the lips of dead men and felons.
Fatherhood escapes him until he is forty-five and walks into Bertholdt
Themis’ hospital room. He looks into a pair of haunted green eyes and
knows mercy.
Catherine was—and still is—a fragile creature. Though she turns her
broken edges outward, anger cleaves to her bones, and had Grisha not
offered the girl his hand, he thinks she would’ve followed in his brothers’
footsteps, wasting away in a grave or a barred cell. She snarls and pricks his
fingers, but Grisha knows exactly what she is when he picks her up, and he
girds himself against the gnashing, furious bite of her fangs. He earns her
trust one day at a time, holding her when she bleeds, when she breaks,
turning her mind toward normal things even when she can’t understand
normal anymore.
He is as much responsible for the Hangman as Catherine is herself. He
is her caretaker, friend, mentor, father—for all that he didn’t contribute to
her conception, it remains true. Fathers pick their daughters up out of the
dirt, bandage their scraped knees, and send them out into the world to make
their own mistakes, worrying all the while. And oh, how Grisha worries
about that keen, wild-eyed girl from the Pennsylvania mountains.
Above all else, Catherine is lonely. There aren’t many like her in the
world; even Grisha is a different creature entirely, his moral compass
finding true north in mercy and compassion, whereas Catherine builds her
world around revenge and justice. She is the daughter of a low-income
family who spends her childhood handling her mother’s depressive
episodes while trying to connect with Bertholdt, who hoped for a son and
can’t communicate with a daughter. Catherine is a vigilante first and a
murderer second, just as Grisha is a son, a brother, a father, and a doctor
before he is a killer—and he knows it’s quiet desperation that turns
Catherine to the Kaleidoscope against his better advice. The Kaleidoscope
knows this, too, and he capitalizes on it.
Alone, from the cradle to the grave.
Grigorij Markov and Grisha Morse have seen monsters like the
Kaleidoscope before—in the streets, in the army, in the brotherhood. They
are as rare as Catherine herself but operate on a different spectrum. They
slip into society’s cracks and shift below the surface, oozing out like foul tar
when one takes a wrong step. They are a parasite; they exist only on the
suffrage of others, eating and eating until they devour their hosts and
become—for what is existence if not a slow, inexorable osmosis of others’
lives and experiences?
He first hears the name Kaleidoscope whispered among his less savory
associates. They crack a joke, thinking the Chameleon would be a better
name for a killer who assumes the modus operandi of others—but Grisha
disagrees, because a chameleon is prey utilizing a defense mechanism
against prospective predators, and a kaleidoscope is a thing. It is a
contraption of metal and glass and plastic, an unfeeling mirage captured in a
tube, and its image suits only its maker’s desires.
A thing knows nothing of childhood, brotherhood, fatherhood. It knows
nothing of mercy.
And so Grisha has none to give it.
He is fifty-eight years old when he gazes out across the empty atrium
and sees the Kaleidoscope for the first time. Grigorij Markov is a boy when
he goes to war, a ghost when he returns, and a man grown when he takes
Catherine’s hand in his, looks into her wary green eyes, and quotes, “‘The
quality of mercy is not strained. It blesseth him that gives and him that
takes.’”
He is a son, a brother, a father, a doctor—but when he sees the man who
wants to doom his daughter, Grisha is none of these things.
He is only a killer.
 xxxv. false idol
As he ages, Grisha finds himself relegated more and more to the
university and its quiet classrooms than to the hospital’s busy operating
theaters.
It is a natural progression; not too long ago, he was one of those green
boys interning and working for residency, trying to edge out his older
compatriots. This is before the bratva finds him, before the brotherhood
gives Grisha new purpose and opens doors where none exist. He does not
mind; Grisha understands life is an endless metamorphosis, his role always
changing, as it will do until he is ashes gathered in an urn placed in
Catherine’s hands.
If she manages to outlive him. He worries she won’t.
Violence and killing are not needs Grisha must have access to, and so he
does not resent the gradual dwindling of his surgical duties. He does not
resent the smaller office or the pay cut, and he does not resent being an
educator. On the contrary, Grisha values academia’s timelessness in a world
of ennui; for all that it is a place of transition, it remains a landmark in
many people’s lives, and so Grisha does not mind being a small part of that
greater tapestry. He likens the quiet of an empty amphitheater to that of an
afternoon church in the middle of the week; there is something sacred about
those times in-between, and Grisha holds onto them.
He stands in the half-light of the projector in front of his class, twenty or
so bodies dispersed in an atrium capable of holding far more, and he recites
the lecture from memory, having given it more times than he cares to
remember over the years. Behind Grisha, the image of an open chest and a
beating heart superimposes itself on the wall, and twenty pairs of eyes stare
in rapt fascination.
Grisha doesn’t look.
He flicks through the images one by one, a crude and overly simplistic
guide of a coronary artery bypass graph’s procedure, though those gathered
here most likely won’t go on to be practicing surgeons. It serves to capture
their interest all the same.
“It is never as simple as it looks,” he tells them, voice echoing and
dying against the hard, concrete walls. They’re in a basement, the best place
for the larger halls to be built, and the cold bites hard at his joints. A
blizzard is coming, he thinks to himself. It is going to snow. “Whether it is a
CABG or something else, remember; every body, every person, you treat
and operate on is different. Your duty is to understand those differences and
act accordingly.”
They aren’t listening anymore, not really. Ah, Grisha sighs, because it is
late and it is cold, and he is just an old man in their eyes. Distant, the bell
rings, and they gather their things, waiting for his dismissal only as a token
mark of respect. A few of the inquisitive or more ambitious students come
to the lectern by the projector, and Grisha answers their questions as he
leans forward, elbows on the lectern’s lip, thinking about nothing and
everything in particular.
They dwindle soon, disappearing up the wide steps and the doors open,
opening and closing once, twice, three times—and then nothing. The atrium
lies in stillness, in muted quiet, and Grisha hums a low, thoughtful noise.
Someone rises from their seat.
The person approaches with slow, measured steps, and Grisha squints
against the projector’s shine to see the boy—the man’s—shape, a darker
delineation against the reflective strips highlighting the edges of the stairs.
He stops on the opposing side of the lectern, and Grisha finds he cannot
guess his age, obviously younger than the surgeon himself, but perhaps
older than his Catherine. Perhaps not. Colorless eyes meet his own and
waver, roving over his person, cataloging, assessing.
There is a gun in his hand with the long barrel of a silencer pointed at
Grisha’s chest.
“Ah,” Grisha says, palms flat on the lectern’s face, holding steady. “Do
I have the pleasure of addressing the Kaleidoscope?”
The man—the boy—doesn’t answer or react at first. Rather, he
continues to assess him, and Grisha assesses in return. The eyes waver still,
drifting from side to side, and the surgeon thinks of cement sloshing and
settling in a mold, trying to find shape, until he at last focuses on Grisha’s
face. The man sneers—then flinches, expression receding into obscure
blankness.
“Having difficulty finding the right persona?” Grisha asks as he tilts his
chin, and the light gleams upon his bifocals. “You need not bother to
impress me. I am about to die, da? I do not care who you are.”
The Kaleidoscope shifts, an idle roll of the shoulders, the muscles of his
neck taut. He considers Grisha, then seems to take the surgeon at his word.
“They call you the Doctor. How very original.”
 “Do they?” Grisha shrugs. He has come to know Dedwich better than I
would have thought. “I have had many names. As have you.”
“My names don’t matter.”
“Don’t they?”
He cocks the gun, and if he thinks to see Grisha wither and wince, he is
to be disappointed because Grisha has stared down many a man with a gun
before. The Kaleidoscope murmurs, “She loves you,” like a question, like a
statement, like an affirmation to something nameless and strange. “You kill,
and yet she loves you still. Your docha.”
Grisha gathers his notes, eyes never leaving the other murderer in the
room, and makes as if preparing to leave. He slots papers into his briefcase
—and with an easy trick of the hand, a move he learns from thieving boys
in cold, Union streets, he palms a scalpel.
“Tell me why. Before I kill you, Doctor.”
“You have not learned why?” He lifts a brow, and disdain deepens his
voice, curls the edges of his accent like flames eating away at something
solid. Grisha does not hate easily, but he hates this thing before him. He
hates it. “I think you have. Catherine will have told you exactly what she
thinks by now.”
Animosity lines the Kaleidoscope’s face—anger like gorges through
which the wind bellows wordless, furious, impotent. The sand cleaves from
the cliffs and forms dunes on distant plains, dunes made of rejection and
pride and spite. Oh, yes, Catherine has told him all of her thoughts,
doubtless with much vitriol and spat venom. Grisha laughs.
The Kaleidoscope steps forward.
“You picture yourself a god,” Grisha says as his amusement once more
fades. “Though you do not know what kind. There are as many as there are
hearts to follow them, worshipers to pay homage. That is all a god is in the
end. Without someone to love him, without someone to give him a name, he
is nothing.”
The light plays on the boy’s face, but it does not touch whatever black,
insidious thing looks back at Grisha from those gray eyes.
“You are nothing, Kaleidoscope; nameless, faceless. You have no altar,
no shrine, no followers. You are not God; you are only a false idol.”
In the instant before the gun fires, Grisha flicks his hand—and the
scalpel glitters, flies, and buries itself in the intercostal space between the
Kaleidoscope’s seventh and eighth ribs. He inhales and pulls the trigger in
the same motion, but his aim falters, surprise giving just enough leeway for
the bullet to wing Grisha as he dives for the projector and thrusts it from its
stand. The aging device falls, and the glass shatters on the concrete floor. It
plunges them into darkness.
Grisha hears the Kaleidoscope’s shoes scuff together as he himself
ducks behind the lectern, and the gun fires again, the sound muffled by the
silencer and the crack of splintering wood. Grunting, Grisha rams his
shoulder into the lectern—and the solid obstacle lurches forward, slamming
into the Kaleidoscope’s middle, forcing the breath from him. The gun falls
with a clatter.
Grisha’s hand plunges into his white coat and yanks forth another
scalpel, but the Kaleidoscope is swift as well, and the surgeon barely
glimpses the solid, white gleam of a knife in the boy’s hand in time to
dodge. The sharpened edge skates against his cheekbone and knocks his
glasses off—and Grisha ducks under the arm, rolls over the toppled lectern,
and brings his arm slashing upward.
A shriek leaves the Kaleidoscope as the scalpel pierces the flesh of his
back and cuts through the teres major. He lashes out, and Grisha is not quite
sure what strikes him—a foot? An elbow?—but it leaves his nose bloody,
his sight dazed, and he must throw himself back before the knife makes
contact. It buries itself in the lectern’s side, then slides from the boy’s hand.
The Kaleidoscope does not follow through; feet pound, the door crashes
open, and the gasping surgeon spies only the slim outline of a bloodied
figure sprinting into the light before he is gone and it is silent once more.
Blood streams from his cut face, and Grisha tastes the copper on his
tongue. Not for the first time in his life, he licks it from his lips and
swallows the pain.
“Vam nuzhno bol’she, chtoby ubit’ menya, mal'chik.” He picks up his
glasses and eyes the splintered lenses. The projector sputters, the image of a
heart blinking, sparking, and dying one final time. “You will need more to
kill me, boy.”
 xxxvi. father
The woman behind the desk stares at Catherine as if she’s never seen
her before.
Perhaps she hasn’t, not as she is at the moment, because Catherine
always approaches Joslin—the gap-toothed, often over-worked and tired
nurse who mans the waiting room station in Grisha’s section of Dedwich
General—with aplomb, dressed in the pretty, pale pastels of a civilian
administrator, and Catherine always smiles when the nurse forgets her
proper name. Now Catherine comes careening into the hospital and shoves
to the front of the line, dressed in a black jacket, jeans, laced boots, and her
glasses speckled with water.
Joslin gapes, and the people behind Catherine stumble to get out of her
way.
“Cathy—?”
“Where is Grisha? Where is Dr. Morse?”
“I—.”
Catherine slams her palms down on the counter between them and the
resulting quiet ripples outward in stunned breaths and scared glances.
“I—I—,” Joslin stutters. “He—he’s at the university today, giving
lectures—.”
Shit. Of course.
She whirls without giving the woman time to collect herself and runs,
clearing the foyer and main drive in seconds, and though a security guard
calls after her, Catherine ignores the man and keeps going. Black spots
clutter her vision, laughter, his laughter following her, always fucking
following her, too late, she’s going to be too late—.
Remember your breathing, Catherine.
She sucks air into her lungs and chokes, wincing at the pain stabbing at
her lungs. Twice more she breathes in, then out, and by the time she reaches
her car again, Catherine is cohesive enough to drive. Nausea churns and
kicks in her gut, heat in her neck, her face, and Catherine doesn’t remember
how she gets to the university, only that she’s there, and a sick, spiraling
sense of deja vu overcomes her as she runs again.
She is twenty-nine, looking for her father, chasing—.
And she is twenty, running to class, young, fragile—.
She is seventeen, fleeing a neon alleyway, blue lights blinking, red on
the bricks—.
 Twenty, Luke Elliott’s neck under her steady hands—.
Twenty-three, sitting below the hot sun, in a sweltering polyester robe,
her name cutting through the crowd, the music, the laughter—. “Ah, docha.
I am very proud—.”
Catherine is twenty-nine, breathless, keening, ignoring the stares and
odd looks she gets, sliding on the ice and the grime, knowing exactly where
to go, but not wanting to look, not wanting to know—.
The doors bang open, and the metal handles clang against the thick
cement walls. Panting, Catherine stands at the head of the empty atrium’s
stairs and looks down into the dark, her blood pounding too loud in her ears
for anything to penetrate the resulting war drum. She retrieves her phone
and places another call, another worthless attempt to reach the doctor, and
as it rings empty in her palm, Catherine advances into Grisha’s deserted
classroom.
The projector lies on the floor like a ravaged carcass, glass and metal
bits scattered from a forceful fall—and there is blood. It forms a motley
pattern on the concrete and toppled lectern, drying in tacky, brown
splotches, and Catherine brushes it with quivering fingertips. Gone, she
thinks, the panic like a black, numbing wave coming over her, dragging her
down, her ghosts clawing at her skin until she feels sick to her soul. Gone,
he’s gone, goddammit NO—.
Somehow, like a flint’s spark catching on thick, frazzled tinder, a hint of
clarity forces itself through Catherine’s agonized confusion, and she
snatches hold of it. She forces herself to see the room, to look for more than
the blood and the broken glass. There are two bullet holes; one cracks the
dusty blackboard, and the other is embedded in the lectern’s thick oak. The
blood splays itself over that same lectern, the floor, and part of the front
row, yet the array is disjointed. In some places, it pools thick, steady, a
wound held over the spots for an extended period of time. In other areas,
it’s sprayed thin, obviously shed during a confrontation.
Catherine lowers herself to her knees, breathing hard, hands splayed flat
before her.
She is seventeen again, dressed in sweats and an old t-shirt, and Grisha
Morse stands across from her with his fists held up. “No,” he says. “That is
not how you throw a punch. Try again, Catherine.”
She is seventeen—exhausted, sweaty, and the smiling doctor with his
scarred knuckles gently presses an icepack onto the worst of her bruises.
“You did well. Practice will help, da? You will get stronger over time.”
Grisha is more than he appears, but does the Kaleidoscope know that?
Did he underestimate Dr. Morse?
Staggering, Catherine leaps to her feet and searches the room,
clamoring over the lectern, throwing aside the desk chair in her haste. It’s
not here. Catherine stills, dials the phone again, and the line rings into the
resulting quiet as she holds her breath and counts in her head. It’s not here.
It’s not—Grisha’s briefcase. If the Kaleidoscope has him, why would he take
that? He wouldn’t. He—.
Catherine makes another mad dash for the parking lot, and though she
scours the faculty spots, jogging up and down the nearly empty lanes, she
cannot find Dr. Morse’s sedan. She bolts for her own vehicle again, turning
the engine, tires squealing as they skid on the pavement, and Catherine
pushes the accelerator as she pulls onto the main avenue and drives for the
highway.
She directs the car out of Dedwich toward the mountains, where all the
city’s darkest things are kept, and the night grows darker still.
***
Dr. Morse doesn’t live in the city.
Rather, he lives in an old, partly renovated farmhouse in the county’s
limits, an isolated home on a large plot of land crowded by hemlock and ash
trees, the grass yellow and dead, shriveling from the cold. Shutters frame
the old windows, and roof shingles peel at the edges like old skin after a
sunburn. Catherine once asks why he lives so far away, why he doesn’t
choose a nicer place in the city itself when his income—both legal and
illegal—could easily provide such a thing. Grisha replies he enjoys the
solitude.
He finds that in abundance there in the misty woods.
Gravel pops under Catherine’s tires as she speeds too fast along the dirt
drive, the house swinging into view—and there she finds Grisha’s sensible
car sheltered in the carport. Heart pounding, she doesn’t bother to pull out
her keys or kill the engine; Catherine leaps from the car, grits her teeth
against the ache in her arm, and charges for the door. It bounces open,
marking the wall, scattering shoes left tidy on the rack, the coat on the
hook, and Catherine yells—
“Grisha!”
No answer.
 “Grisha! Grisha!”
She finds him in the bathroom of all places, leaning toward the mirror
above the sink, and when Catherine comes barreling into the room, he
seems unconcerned. Her grief and terror twist into anger.
“Jesus Christ, Grisha, I called you! What the fuck—!”
“Ah, ah! Careful!” he barks as she grabs his arm, and the motion pulls
the surgeon enough for his face to come into view. Catherine sees in the
mirror how he holds a needle in his red fingers and carefully threads it
through his flesh. The gash is large and deep; it splits part of the cheek and
lopes upward, tearing through his brow and forehead into his hairline.
Iodopovidone paints the skin orange, and the surgeon carefully sews
himself back together. Grisha is stripped down to his slacks, and Catherine
can see the faded tattoos on his torso, bruises rising on his arms and spine.
His ruined dress shirt and white coat are wadded up on the white, tiled
floor, blood-soaked.
Catherine almost cries, hysteric, because of course the man who warns
her against the Kaleidoscope is the only one who can actually survive him.
Of course.
“Grisha….” She doesn’t know what to say. She has never been so
grateful to see him alive before.
He huffs.
“Stupid boy,” he mutters, a low strain of Russian swear words following
as he winces, piercing his flesh again, drawing the thread through. “Blin,
blin—ah. Would you check my arm, Catherine?”
Blinking, she does so, peeling back the impromptu tourniquet to reveal
a superficial flesh wound glancing the side of his shoulder. Wordless, she
takes the disinfectant, a spare needle, thread, and sets about closing the
gash. It takes her considerably less time than it takes Grisha to tend to his
face wound, as she doubts he’ll care much about a scar in a covered area.
She applies gauze and tape, covering the injury, then washes her hands in
the tub.
“He’s injured,” Grisha says once she returns to his side—and
Catherine’s lips part in shock. Grisha gives his head the smallest of nods.
“How injured?”
He ties off the last of the thread and finishes the stitches, a grisly line
trailblazing his aged face, but Grisha’s work is impeccable. The scar will be
faint, given time—time Catherine doesn’t know if either of them have. The
surgeon cleans his own hands, pink water spiraling around the drain, and he
slides on a new, clean shirt. “Severely, but not fatally. I took his gun from
him, but he could very well have another.” He faces her, blue eyes taking in
the fading marks and bruises placed upon her by the Kaleidoscope. “He
sustained a puncture wound here—.” He gently pokes her right side. “And I
cut his teres major here—.” His finger draws a clinical line up around her
ribcage and jabs at a spot not quite in her armpit, but under the scapula.
“Though I do not know if I severed it completely.”
Frowning, Catherine twists to feel the spot he indicates, and her hand
presses against a small, hard muscle that flutters and stretches as she moves.
“That seems…important.”
“It is. Come.”
Grisha leads her from the bathroom, through the bedroom, to his study.
It is larger than his office at the hospital but more vacant, as Grisha spends
little time at home. There is a safe, though, and as he speaks, he flicks his
skilled fingers over the dial to open it up. “It is a muscle vital to most
motions and poses of the arm, medial rotation being the most prevalent.
“What does that mean?”
“Plainly? He cannot use his arm or hand.”
Hope burns fierce in Catherine’s mind—just as fierce and quick and
sharp as Grisha’s knife must have been when he cut the Kaleidoscope’s
skin.
“He’s really injured,” she repeats, and the words bloom like poisonous
fruit on her tongue.
“Da,” Grisha replies, eyes on his task, not Catherine. The safe opens,
and he retrieves a stack of bills and a sheaf of paperwork from the interior.
“It is not the kind of wound one can hope to shake off, either. He will need
to get it repaired and at least patched for the time being.”
“He’ll have to see a doctor.” She nears the desk as Grisha continues to
sort through his safe, aided only by the antique lamp resting on a cabinet by
the safe’s side. The wind rises, louder, the open shutters rattling against the
siding. “And since he can’t stroll into Dedwich General, he’ll have to see
someone else—someone willing to work on a criminal. You know where
he’ll go. You know where he’ll be.”
Grisha stops long enough to smile, and he retrieves a spare pair of
spectacles from the top drawer of his desk. “Normally, I am the man most
people in the Kaleidoscope’s position would seek out, and now he will have
to go to my—competitor, I guess you would call him.”
“Who?”
The surgeon plucks one of his monogrammed pens from its fellows,
tears a note from its pad, and scribbles a name and an address. Catherine
goes to take it—and Grisha catches her hand, rough fingers encircling her
wrist. Frowning, Catherine glances up into Grisha’s face, and finds his blue
eyes focused upon her. Holding on, he places the note atop a manila folder
and extends the folder in its entirety to the younger woman before he
releases her. Catherine flicks the folder open—and finds the same
incriminating documents he once handed to her at the beginning of this
mess, the very day she walked into his office and told him about the federal
investigation.
Then, she gave the papers back. Now, she closes the folder and clutches
it—and the note—close to her chest.
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” she asks, voice quiet, uncertain. There is a
bag on the chair, and the money disappears inside, as do Grisha’s own
documents and various odds and ends stored in the safe’s confines.
“Da. It is safer if I disappear. Things will only get worse from here,
docha.”
“Where will you go?”
Instead of answering, Dr. Morse points at the folder in her arms, and he
is smiling again. The stitches stretch on his face. “Not too far. You have
what you need there. Ah, I am not the kind of man to abandon his daughter
to the wolves without showing her the way home.”
Catherine’s eyes sting and burn as she nods and gives Grisha—her
father—a smile of her own. “Thank you,” she whispers. “For…for
everything.”
Dr. Morse zips the bag closed. “Of course.” He lifts the strap onto his
good shoulder, and before he kills the light, before they part one more time,
the good doctor picks up a gun and drops it into her hands, just as he has
done so many times over the years. Catherine grabs hold of it with grim
determination.
“You will need that.”
 xxxvii. winter
Thirty-three days after Isaak Peak dies, Catherine Themis sits on her
porch and watches the snow fall.
It coats the trees first, laying thick veils of clear ice on crooked pine
needles, and then it consumes the earth inch by inch. The mountains
disappear, crawling under that frigid blanket like children surrendering to
Morpheus’ vice, and the air crystallizes in Catherine’s lungs. It issues
between chapped lips in white clouds reminiscent of summer days long
since gone.
The world is quiet. There are no crickets under the porch, no birds in the
woods, no life in the black house behind her. A sign in the yard catches the
breeze and swings, For Sale By Owner eclipsed beneath the brasher, bolder
Sold! sticker. A box sits open by her feet, wetness creeping through the
cardboard’s bottom, and wayward flecks of snow stick to the detritus
contained within: Catherine’s very first compact disc player, the sleeve for a
scratched Simon and Garfunkel record, a collection of colorful bottle caps,
Ester Green’s faded copy of Wuthering Heights, and an old kaleidoscope
once pressed into the hands of a little girl by her father.
She remembers the butterfly and the spider imprinted into the glass and
how they spiral on forever, one and the same, in a world of mirrors and
shattered light. She remembers rough, coal-stained fingers brushing her
own, the voice of a woman reciting Shakespeare, red hair like candied
apples in the sunshine, Kayla Hoffman saying, “Well, you are my best
friend, right?”
Catherine breathes in.
It has been seventy-three hours since Bertholdt Themis died, seventy-
three hours since Catherine sobbed, “I killed the man who drowned my best
friend,” into Dr. Morse’s shoulder.
It has been seventy-three hours since he pulled her back, looked her in
the eye, and said, “Good.”
Winter encroaches upon the mountains and threatens the city. It looms
at autumn’s end with all the immutability of night’s closing hours, and as its
snow slowly buries what was once the Themis home, the girl upon the
porch stands with a box in hand and steps into the cold.
Catherine breathes out.
She is seventeen, watching the snow fall, waiting for the end.
 Dedwich rests in the valley below, and sometimes she wishes it would
disappear.
***
The address Grisha gives her leads to a commercial complex adjacent to
Dedwich’s downtown. Most of the units are vacant, a common story in any
part of the city, though some venues—like Dr. Cormac Johnston’s private
practice—linger. Catherine steps inside off the cracked sidewalk, pushing
the glass door in with her gloved hand, but though the entrance isn’t locked,
the interior is dark, empty. Abandoned.
Hours have passed since Catherine fled the scene of Dustin Moreno’s
murder. The night swaddles Dedwich tight, and snow sticks to the office’s
windows, layering itself little by little until all slumbers beneath thickening
ice and the world blurs to gray. Catherine walks into the office, listening,
her boots silent on the rug, gun in her hand. Her finger waits upon the
trigger for an excuse to pull.
A hushed, gasping breath draws her deeper into the interior, down the
narrow passage to the rear suite where the tiny operating room is lit and
open. Like most people she encounters in the Kaleidoscope’s wake, Dr.
Johnston lies in a growing pool of his own blood, one of his silver medical
instruments scooped up from its tray and jabbed into his throat. Used gauze
and other detritus pepper the high table and the swiveling tray, and Dr.
Johnston has a wad of bandages pressed against his neck. The cut went too
deep and sliced the artery and probably the windpipe. He’s drowning.
Catherine sees the realization in the man’s eyes as he stares at her
standing in the doorway.
“Where is he?” she demands, gesturing at the gauze obviously used to
patch the Kaleidoscope’s wounds. He’s near. She knows that. “Where?”
He lifts a shaking hand and points at the wall. Catherine thinks him
possibly delirious in his death throes—until she sees the picture he’s
indicating and looks closer. Dr. Johnston is there with a younger woman, his
wife perhaps, his arm around her shoulders, the picture fairly candid as they
both lean against the side of a silver sedan.
The car.
It’s a simple diverting tactic; arrive in one vehicle, leave in another, and
she doubts he’ll go far in Dr. Johnston’s car before ditching it for another.
The scene is still fresh, and Bishop’s freshly stitched and operated on by a
late-night surgeon willing to keep his doors open for some under-the-table
financing. Spinning on her heels, Catherine paces to the doctor and kneels,
patting down his pockets, all while the man looks at her with wide, scared
eyes.
Death has long ceased to frighten Catherine.
She fails to find his keys. “Where is your car?”
Again, he lifts that trembling arm as high as it will go, and this time he
points at the window, and though ice encrusts the glass, Catherine still spies
the looming parking structure beyond its obscured pane. She nods, rises,
and Dr. Johnston sags against the wall as his eyelids flutter and his pupils
dilate. The blood comes slower now, welling in petty, thoughtless dribbles.
Catherine pauses long enough to look down on the dead man. “I’m
sorry.” Then, she is gone.
Fresh sleet crunches under her tread as Catherine crosses the complex
and darts for the parking structure. It’s relatively small in comparison to
others in Dedwich, three levels high and hemmed in on all sides by shorter
buildings and an industrial lot where old, rusted delivery trucks wait for
drivers who’ll never return. Catherine doesn’t go for the entrance, but
instead leaps the shorter wall barring the side, landing by a pickup that she
takes cover behind. Few cars populate the structure, but there are enough to
interrupt her view of the first level and provide a hazardous landscape.
Catherine bites her lip and bolts for the stairs.
She crosses the final step to the second level—and ducks, kicking out at
the shadow that jumps from behind a concrete pillar. Bishop snarls, curses,
and retreats, diving around the nearest car as Catherine lifts the gun and
fires.
“My, my, Catherine, is that you?” the Kaleidoscope mocks as the shot’s
echo dies, the reverberation dimmed by the falling snow. She swiftly rounds
the car, but the Kaleidoscope has already moved, scuttling away for another
vantage, and his voice seems to emanate from everywhere. “You’re going to
attract all sorts of attention with that gun, naughty girl.”
Pain slurs his words, and his breathing comes in short, breathy bursts.
Catherine savors these small indicators of his agony, and a smile graces her
lips, her teeth bright, clean, and hungry in the cheap, warbling electric light.
“Your meeting with Grisha didn’t go well? Poor, poor Bishop.”
“It appears we all make mistakes.” A shadow whips by, she pulls the
trigger—and the rear windshield of a pricey convertible cracks, glass
pinging on the seats. “I’ve warned you that you won’t like how this ends,
Catherine.”
She turns too late; he appears from the shadows again, surging with a
knife extended, ready to slash, and it punctures Catherine’s hand. The gun
fires—light bursting, blinding—and the Kaleidoscope’s shout hits louder
than the shot, the blade’s edge cutting deep. The gun falls, skids, and drops
over the level’s edge, disappearing into the night with a quiet, thoughtless
thud.
Police sirens sing in the distance.
Fuck!
They’ve done this dance before, met on this field and waged this war,
coming away bruised and battered and broken, with crooked teeth and sore
bones. The knife slides deeper, the Kaleidoscope using his weight and
height against Catherine—but he cannot move his right side, purposefully
turning it from her to keep Catherine away. She lets his switchblade sink
through her skin, lets the pain tinge her vision red, and lets Bishop lean
close, his breath on her face, body trembling with exertion.
They almost embrace like lovers, like friends.
“Just like old times, love.” The Kaleidoscope starts to laugh.
Then—Catherine yells, folds her fingers down over the blade’s hilt, and
yanks it from his grip. She rams her knee into his right side.
A gasp tears from the Kaleidoscope as he throws himself back, and
Catherine pulls his knife from her flesh, her hands slick with blood, her
pulse racing, urging her on—.
On the ground, Bishop clasps his ribs, and Catherine sees the blood
seeping through the beige coat, bleeding through like ruby-red poppies
overcoming the winter’s dead brush. She stands above him, vengeful and
furious, nothing like the fragile bird she is when she first kills, nothing but a
woman with a knife in her hands, ready to strike, violence a siren song she
hums like an infectious chorus.
Bishop licks his lips, tries to smile. “I don’t suppose,” he rasps, rising to
his knees. “I could interest you in some mercy?”
Catherine sneers. “Not a chance.”
Just as she raises the blade, ready, prepared to end this all—.
A voice fractures the stalemate.
“Freeze! F.B.I!”
 The Kaleidoscope doesn’t freeze; he lunges to his feet and vanishes
over the nearest rail, dropping to the building below. He is consumed by
snow and by the dark, leaving behind a red handprint gleaming in the
streetlight’s stark halo, gone as if he’d never been. Catherine feels the
weight of a gun trained upon her back.
“Hands up where I can see them!”
She lifts her sore, trembling arms above her head, knife still clutched
tight. Her breath streams in white torrents, and the snow spirals in the wind.
Catherine turns her head.
Agent Adeline Lincoln stands at the top of the stairs with her firearm
poised. Her face is void of expression.
“Hello, Hangman.”
 xxxviii. surrender
Sometimes, Addie Lincoln feels the wolf’s teeth at her neck, and she
resists the urge to lean in.
She’s not meant to be there, technically, but everything is chaos in the
wake of Moreno and Gables’ deaths, the agency’s authority in shambles.
She’s supposed to remain in her motel room, or at the precinct, or at the
crime scene—undoubtedly somewhere out of the way—but when she hears
the call come in over the dispatch radio for shots fired a few blocks away,
Addie doesn’t sit still. Intuition screams in her veins, the same screaming
that drives her investigations, that pulls her from bed in the morning and
fills in the shape of the monsters she hunts—.
“Agent Lincoln—!” the deputy at her door shouts as she snatches her
gun and her badge and bolts into the hall. Caution tape covers the door three
down from her own. “Agent Lincoln—!”
La Loba echoes at her heels in a voice she’ll never hear again, a voice
she failed, a friend who became part of the atrocity he sought to end. La
Loba, La Loba.
She takes a car to the scene, the PD affording three uniformed officers
Addie barely looks at, let alone learn the names of, and while they blather
on about procedure, about protocol, Addie gnashes her teeth, draws her
firearm, and runs.
She runs like a dog free of its chain and doesn’t look back.
“Agent Lincoln, wait! Agent Lincoln—!”
Sounds emanate from above, a single shot in the night, booming, hoarse
shouts in the distance from the officers—and flesh meets flesh, fists
bouncing, snarls tearing at Addie’s brain. She charges up the stairs and sees
two combatants, a man and a female, and when she shouts for them to stop,
the man bolts and Addie can’t get a clean shot because the woman—.
The woman—.
“Hello, Hangman.”
The cold cuts bitter through her clothes, and the gun weighs more than
it ever has before as she aims at the figure silhouetted against the
encroaching blizzard. They turn—light flashing upon hair like candied
apples, green eyes like venom pooling in a glass—and Addie sees Catherine
Themis as she truly is for the first time.
There is a knife in her hand, and she does not let it go.
 “Hello, Addie,” she says, just as she has every morning from her desk at
the Rightwood precinct, just as she says when she hands Addie coffee or
they meet for lunch or stare into each other’s eyes—hello, Addie.
“Catherine.”
Addie wants to be surprised, wants to think she didn’t see this coming—
but she knew already. She knew. She knew when Catherine smiled at her
body count, when she slammed Bishop Eris’ wrist into a diner table, when
she palmed a switchblade and prepared to use it. She knew that morning
when a red-eyed Moreno shuffled into her room and left lab results on her
cluttered table.
She knew when one set of the prints came back as a match for a crime
scene over a decade old. She knew when she looked up Isaak Peak and
found a murder charge that never goes through.
She knew when she found an old newspaper article about Kayla
Hoffman, a stub near the back with an old photo from a yearbook of two
young girls together, one darkly complected, the other with hair like
candied apples and green eyes that didn’t yet pool like venom.
They will, though. They did.
“Let me go,” Catherine states. “Let me go. Let me finish this.”
Addie is holding a gun on Dedwich’s infamous Hangman. Behind her,
police lights rove and radios crackle, footsteps in the stairwell coming
closer and closer; behind Catherine, the man who calls himself Bishop Eris
is disappearing—the man who killed Poole, Horn, and Moreno. The man
who shot at her, the one whose prints connect him to dozens upon dozens
upon dozens of unsolved crimes across the globe.
Addie’s grip tightens.
She has a reputation: quick-draws and gun smoke, missing limbs and
screaming perps, spooked therapists and commendations. Ten kills and no
regret.
They give her the worst cases because Addie’s the best. They give her
the worst cases because they pray she doesn’t come back.
She has a reputation—.
Slowly, the gun lowers until Addie points it at the ground, and there is
nothing between her and the woman she has been hunting for weeks.
Catherine drops her arms and approaches, a sinuous glide of black boots on
damp concrete, blood smeared and splattered, ice in her hair, bruises on her
cheeks, and Addie has never seen her so alive before. Those black boots
stop before her, and Catherine—the Hangman—reaches, touching Addie’s
cheek, brushing the hair from her dark eyes. Addie holds the gun down, and
Catherine doesn’t let go of the knife.
“I’m going to kill him,” she says. “For what he did to me, for what he
did to you. I won’t stop until one of us is dead.”
“…I know.” Addie closes her eyes and swallows. “I know.” Because
Catherine Themis and Adeline Lincoln share many things, and both kill
people who take and torture innocence, and so Addie knows better than
anyone else what drives the beautiful creature she gazes upon. After all, the
only thing separating their deeds is a badge.
Catherine leans, and her lips press into Addie’s, imparting the taste of
blood and skin, the smell of deadly, bitter things—war, grief, and triumph.
Addie kisses the snake, and the poison doesn’t kill her. It tastes sweet.
“I’ll come back,” Catherine whispers. “I’ll come back—not as
Catherine, not as the Hangman, but I’ll come back. One day, I promise.”
“Go,” Addie says, because the police are getting closer, they’ll be here
soon—because she doesn’t want her to leave. “Go.”
Fingertips glide against her jaw—tender, warm. The storm builds. The
sound of the howling wind almost covers Catherine’s retreating footsteps,
the rapid cadence as she runs, jumps the rail, and then—.
And then—.
***
Like a ghost, Catherine Themis abandons all that is worldly and goes
where Addie cannot follow. In the weeks that come, in the depositions and
interviews, when the news stations splash the photo of a woman across their
screens, when the desperate and downtrodden begin to chant Themis,
Themis—Justice, Justice!—and Dedwich tries to make sense of their
abandoned daughter, Addie says little at all.
They ask her, “Why didn’t you shoot?” They sneer, “Lost your nerve,
Lincoln?” and Adeline, calm and emotionless, replies, “I only kill
monsters.”
She fixes in her mind the image of a blood-stained knife clasped by a
small, fair hand. She feels the sting of snow dusting her face and lips upon
her own, warmth that invades her chest—her heart—and deafens her ears to
the sensationalism, the arguing, the worship. Catherine Themis is the tip of
the iceberg, and as it melts, stories of Russian mob expats and yakuza
hitmen, counterfeiters and dog fighters, child molesters and cover-ups,
college-aged rapists and police ineptitude flood the nation. Activists lobby
for posthumous charges to be brought against Isaak Peak, mobs yell
“Justice for Kayla!” outside city hall, and someone paints “Luke Elliott got
what he deserved” across Dedwich University.
A manhunt begins for a man—a murderer, a killer, a thing—whose
prints have appeared on the dead all over the world.
They compile a story of a woman they’ll never know, and Addie turns
away.
Sometimes, as she dreams, she still hears the gunshot that echoed
through the dale, but when she stands at the banks of the river, fifteen and
scared, Catherine remains with her, and the sound is not so loud.
Instead, Addie listens to the words; “I’ll come back. One day, I
promise.”
At night, she leaves the porch light on.
 xxxix. serpent heart
The boy who would call himself Bishop Eris is six years old when he
becomes.
He lives in a religious children’s home with many others just like him:
all of them alone, hungry, scared. Abandoned. The institute of Hollyhock
Refuge holds a particular grimness to it, the air always smelling of mold
and the barest kiss of decay. To the boy, it always stinks as if someone has
recently died in one of the many narrow rooms and their corpse has lingered
overlong, their rot seeping into the plaster walls, the wood floors, the
bowing ceiling. Death is an impression that remains long after the carcass
has been hauled away.
The boy sees death once, just once, when the older girl sharing his room
cries in the night because kindly Father Fredricks is not as kindly as he
seems, and the boy lays on his cot in the cool, damp room watching the
bruised girl weep nonsensical words into the worn folds of her pillow. He
sees the razor flash in the moonlight and thinks, My, that’s pretty, and her
veins open like ruby rivers, drip, drip, dripping on the grubby concrete
underfoot. The boy crosses the dark as the light flees the girl’s open eyes,
and though a part of him—a part of him that could have flourished in the
sun and could have once had a name all his own—is afraid, another part is
curious.
He kisses her weeping flesh and finds that the taste of the red river isn’t
as sweet as he imagined.
The Matron calls him an unholy thing, tells him repent, wretched sinner
—and yet the boy doesn’t understand what she means, doesn’t rightly know
what a sinner is, because the woman who calls herself the Matron, the
Mother, smells always of cheap gin and cigarettes and walks too loud with
her crooked cane, and the Father makes all the girls cry into their hands
while he sits smiling at the dinner table every night. His Mother, in her
white wimple, breaks her covenant, and his Father lies like the serpent, and
so when the Matron brings the boy over her knee and bruises his backside
with her cane, he doesn’t understand why she calls him a sinner.
He sits in the dark of the locked closet where he is meant to repent for
the things he doesn’t understand, and the boy who would be Bishop Eris is
forgotten there, spends days in the nothingness with his hunger and his
thirst and the acrid smell of his own body’s refuse. He is told to say his
prayers and he does, he whispers, “Holy Father, who art in Heaven—,”
until his voice cracks, tongue torn, throat dry.
The boy spends so long in the dark that he ceases to recognize himself,
begins to wonder just who exactly he’s trying to talk to every time he says
Holy Father, because he is the only one in the closet, in the dark, in the
world. He is the only one who could possibly answer. Holy Father. He
keeps sending his prayers into the black void that surrounds him, forgets
this is a closet, forgets no response is forthcoming, and the boy begins to
think he understands. He says his prayers, and because he is the only one
there is, he must be the one to answer. He is the boy who lives in the third
bedroom of Hollyhock Refuge and he is the dark that seeps into his lungs
and he is God, too.
When they let him out, the boy they thought they knew—the one who
loved sunshine and butterscotch sweets and could have been someone else
—is dead, or perhaps he never exists to begin with. When they ask, “Have
you learned your lesson?” The boy who became God smiles and says, “Oh,
yes.”
He sits at the dinner table, holding hands with the others, and says grace
with the most bitter kind of irony.
He sees Father Fredricks smile at the new girl with her red pigtails, and
he thinks about the red river drip, drip, dripping on the concrete.
He thinks he might want to eat his Father’s heart.
***
The boy who is—or was, or might be—Bishop Eris is fifteen when he
drags the razor across his skin for the first time to take the hair from his
chin.
He studies himself in the mirror, a gray-eyed lad with dark hair and
sharp, bright teeth. He wipes the white lather from his throat and traces the
lines of his countenance, trying to memorize it, fingertips hovering over the
nascent grooves touching his eyes, the dimples of his cheeks, the angle of
his nose. The face of God, he thinks, the face of no one. It could belong to
anyone.
The razor falls between his fingers. The blood is tacky on his naked feet
as he steps over the body. There is a spiderweb in the corner of the ceiling
with its resident arachnid shredding the wings of a captured moth.
He thinks about the taste of Father Fredricks’ heart and tries to
remember.
 ***
The man who calls himself Bishop Eris doesn’t have an age when he
first sees Catherine Themis.
He can recognize those creatures like him, those bright-eyed wolves and
sharp-tongued snakes and black-feathered ravens, can take their forms if he
so desires, but there are no beings truly like him out there. He only sees
those that mimic or aspire to his high ground. There are none alive who can
say what the man is, what he has become. Perhaps, in the moments between
their final exhalation and the sublimation of being into unbeing, they see
what the man is and they have a name for him, but they lack breath and
cannot say what it is they see. They take their secrets to the grave.
He tries to steal the noose from the one they call the Hangman, walks
out onto his gallows and looks down upon his audience, shivering wide-
eyed anticipation with his red smile and open hands—but there is
something about this one that the man does not understand until he sees
Catherine Themis. He sees the lights in her eyes and sees the ghosts that
aren’t ghosts bowing in her wake, those pitiful voids of infinite definition
swaying in the passage of a spitting adder. She is an adder, oh yes. The
venom bleeds through her veins like a hot curl of lust, and the man who
calls himself Bishop Eris wants.
He wonders what they see when they look upon her, those lambs of
God, those tired ewes and fatuous rams dying in the pasture. Do they only
see the soft colors of her dress? The affected smile, the fluttering, fragile
bird? How can they look upon the woman and miss the honed edge of her
leashed fury, a hatred so deep she could carve her initials on the roof of
Hell? How do they not see the coils, the beast, the liar, the killer in vogue?
He whispers femme fatale through wisps of cigarette smoke and the
answering chill excites him.
Catherine Themis is a predator, a snake, and he fashions himself a
serpent charmer. He is not Adam and he is not Eve and he is God,
inveigling that wayward dust-eater to rise up, to bite the flesh and share that
deadly, deadly kiss. She is, at once, the most beautiful and most ghastly
thing he has ever seen, and he wants nothing more than to destroy her like
Saturn destroys his son, bones breaking between his teeth, blacking out her
sun because he is the dark. She blinds him.
He tells her how, in the Bible, God punishes his most faithful, and he
thinks in his mind of all the ways in which he wants to punish her. Her body
becomes his temple—but he is not a worshiper, not a preacher. He is God,
and he has come at last to take his Kingdom, his House. The man who calls
himself Bishop Eris doesn’t know his name, doesn’t know his age, doesn’t
know how to love—only how to take.
She breathes in, breathes out, lays like Jormungand basking on his silk
sheets. At that moment, she is both the beginning and the end of his world,
both the Alpha and the Omega, and he runs his fingertips along the valleys
of her ribs, her spine, searching for the edges of the map. Freckled flesh
stretches like the spangled horizon, yawns between two shoulder blades,
disappears in the tangled curls red like the hot blood of the earth.
The man mutters scripture into her flesh, and Catherine Themis quotes,
“An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek.”
He laughs—but when he leans in to taste her, he thinks she might be
God, too.
***
It is the prerogative of the divine to ruin their believers because that is
what they are in the end; dashed hopes and broken smiles, turmoil and
strife, heavenly absolution denied on a whim. He is no different, nor is she.
They share something beautiful, and it could have been everything had
one of them been smaller, had one bent their spine to the gaze of the other,
baring their nape, letting teeth sink into tender flesh—but no. Mythology is
riddled with wars waged between gods and it proves Bishop right; God is
by nature a solitary force, and she might be God too, but they are not one.
Oh, but how he wants to be.
The man who calls himself Bishop Eris cuts at her earthly ties, and
Catherine Themis rages over every wound. She bleeds red until there is no
more blood to spill, and Bishop chokes on her fury, her hate—chokes until
the bile tastes like pennies and he spits red between broken teeth. If he
cannot have her, then he will take her; if they cannot be one, then there will
be none. They cut each other down to size, and he no longer knows if he is
the tail being bitten or the mouth swallowing it down. “Ouroboros,” he says
to her. “World serpent spinning tight; the end of the world is nigh.”
It is knife marks and split skin, gun powder and spent slugs, wordless,
tired rage ringing into the winter sky. They are too big for this little town,
this city on the edge of nowhere, the kind of place one goes to die—and the
irony isn’t lost on him. Bishop Eris is a nameless thing stealing lives simply
to be, and Catherine Themis is the dying shout of an angry little girl
collapsing like a neutron star; woman and killer, monster and victim, the
season is coming to an end, the year is new, and the snake needs to shed its
skin.
In the end, he gets exactly what he wants, if not in the way he desired it.
Dedwich is on the horizon behind them. He thought he found something
new, a beginning, and instead finds a conclusion; this is not the start of a
beautiful partnership, not the birth of something else. This is the end—the
night swinging low upon winter’s bending eaves, the epilogue of a god
surrounded by non-believers. The man who was Bishop Eris is bleeding
through his shirt, through his bandages, and holds himself still at the end of
a crowded train platform looking out across the rails.
The woman who is—who was—Catherine Themis stares. He gets what
he wants, but not what he desires; Catherine Themis is dead, but so is the
Hangman. Now there is only a hunter, and he makes for easy prey to a
woman who breathes blasphemy into her very lungs. They warned her away
from him, but maybe—just maybe—they should have warned him, should
have said watch out, if you jump, you’ll drown. He would have done it
anyway, if only for the thrill, the reminder of being alive, if only for these
last, fading hours.
She cuts her hair, dyes the red to black, stands on the opposing platform
waiting—just waiting, one hand in her hoodie pocket, though he can’t guess
if she holds a gun or a knife. Both spell a bloody end for the man who was
Bishop Eris. When the train comes, when they board for their journey, only
one will find their destination.
She trades a pretty face for black clothes and steel; she kisses goodbye
the woman she loves and lets go, because the stone has been rolled aside,
shedding light on the creature below, coils taut, forked tongue flickering.
There is no going back for Catherine Themis or the Hangman. This is her
beginning. She becomes.
This is his end.
He remembers a closet, screaming in the dark, the echoes of holy
witness shaking in his bones.
Bruised and bleeding, the man who was and will never again be Bishop
Eris forces a smile. “One last game, then, love.”
The monster looks back and bares her teeth.
He thinks he wants to eat that serpent heart.
END