I knew ahead of time he was not simply a rapist, but a killer. I could refer to a dozen signs he gives off that make it obvious. But the simplest answer is best. A killer knows another killer, and I have killed thousands.
He doesn’t shove me into the trunk but forces me to drive. There are holes in my story, and he senses them, like any dangerous man would. He wants to know everything he can before he kills me. He doesn’t want any surprises messing up his draft day.
In the car, he cuffs me to the steering wheel and digs the gun into my ribs. Yet I refuse to talk unless he lets me listen to the radio.
“What the hell?” he mumbles. “Are you nuts or something?”
“I like music. Don’t you?”
“Alisa, look, I don’t think you grasp what’s going on here.”
“Do you want me to turn right or left at the corner?”
“Left.” He shakes his head. “You are one weird bitch, you know that?”
“I like to think I’m unique.”
“How did you catch me? The truth.”
I glance at him and let my voice go cold. “You’ll see.”
He shifts uncomfortably at my sudden change in tone. He keeps the gun in my side, but there’s a tremor in his grip. My cold tone can be like ice to mortals. He no longer feels in complete control.
But he still intends to kill me, and rape me, I’m not sure in what order. We drive far into the countryside before we turn down a dirt road that leads through a patch of thick trees. I smell the swampy water before I see the green pond. He’s buried bodies beneath its surface. I smell them as well.
But my nose is more sensitive than a bloodhound’s. The spot is perfect for murder. Totally isolated, with a lake deep enough to hide a hundred corpses and wash away an endless number of fingerprints. Danny disconnects me from the steering wheel but keeps me cuffed. He orders me out of his car.
Now that he has me alone, his confidence returns. He forces me to the edge of the pond. The grass is tall and thick; it clings to our legs. The air is humid, filled with the faint buzz of insects. I can tell he’s excited, but I don’t need my vampiric skills to know that. His pants bulge.
He points the gun at me. “Strip,” he orders.
I hold up my cuffed wrists. “With these on?”
He cocks the gun. “Do it!”
“No. I’m . . . shy.”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “You’re shy? Do you see what I’m holding? Do you know what it will feel like if I put a cap in your belly? Trust me, you don’t want to find out.”
“I couldn’t afford real bullets,” I mutter.
“Huh?”
“The gun, it’s loaded with blanks.”
“You’re bullshitting me again.”
“Go ahead, shoot, I don’t care.”
“All right then.” He raises the gun, takes aim at my stomach and fires. I feel the wad of the blank’s paper spread over me like dry rain as the noise from the shot echoes through the woods. Yet I know, with my extraordinary hearing, that there’s nobody within ten miles of us to hear the shot. Danny probably knows the same. He’s not worried we’ll have company soon. But he stares at my gun in disgust.
“You were going to drag me to a Mafia hood with a gun loaded with blanks?” he asks.
I slip out of the cuffs as if I were Houdini. But I don’t snap them in two. I need them. Taking a step toward him, I let him see more of the real me. My eyes, I feel their heat and I know they must burn. He suddenly has trouble looking at me.
“What the hell,” he whispers.
“You see, I’ve just been acting the fool to fool you. All along I wanted you to bring me to this spot, to where you dump the girls you don’t let go. Only I didn’t know where it was. That’s why I let you give me directions.”
I have allowed my voice to change further, to take on the timbre of my true years. People, when they hear how ancient I really am, usually do one of two things. They freeze in awe or shake with fear. Danny isn’t in awe of me, not yet, but he begins to pale.
“Who are you?” he mumbles.
I reach into my black boot and remove my blade.
“Death,” I say as I come closer.
He holds out a trembling hand. “Wait a second. This has all been a misunderstanding. I’m not going to really hurt you. I was just playing with you. Honestly, I’ll drive you back to school right now.”
“No. Your school days are over with. You won’t be running any more races, and the NFL isn’t going to draft you next week.” I gesture to the lake. “You’re going to die here, and you’re going to stay in this pond with all the other people you left to rot here. The fish and worms and insects will find their way into the interior of your car, to your body, and over the next few months they’ll munch on your skin and muscles and organs until all that’s left of you is a slimy skeleton. Eventually even that will dissolve, and it will be like you never existed, Danny Boy.”
He trembles with fear. He has tears in his eyes. My voice, my words—the power in them shakes him to the core. His own voice cracks as he tries to convince himself he’s not going to die.
“But you’re just a chick. You can’t hurt me.”
“Then why are you so scared?”
“Because of that knife. Put that knife away and we can talk.”
“Where exactly would you like me to put it?”
“I don’t know, just put it—”
He suddenly stops talking, because I’ve shifted into high speed and thrown the knife so hard and fast it’s sunk up to its hilt in the center of his right thigh. He gazes down at it in horror as a thin line of blood trickles over his sweats. In the blink of an eye I’m standing beside him. I pat him on the back in a poor imitation of comforting him.
“You don’t want to pull it out,” I warn. “There’s a large artery that runs through each leg, and I’m afraid I just severed one with my knife. Pull out my knife and your blood will gush all over the place. You’ll be dead in two minutes, maybe less.”
He’s suddenly sad. “Can you help me?”
“I’m not a doctor.”
His whole body trembles as he points to his car. “Alisa, please, drive me to a hospital. My family has money. They’ll pay you. They’ll pay you whatever you want.”