Page 73 of The Arbiter
The physical connection breaks, and the sudden drop in temperature makes me shiver. He stands by the edge of the desk,his silhouette cutting a sharp, predatory line against the dim light of the hallway. He isn't moving toward the door with me.
"Dress yourself, Mali," he says, his voice dropping into that low, distant rasp that reminds me he is a ghost, not a man.
"Clean up your desk. File your reports. Be the diligent doctor the city expects you to be."
I stop, my hand hovering over the buttons of my scrubs.
"You’re leaving? Just like that?"
A faint, dark smirk touches his lips. It’s not the smirk of a lover; it’s the smirk of a puppeteer who knows exactly how taut the strings are.
"I have work to do," he says, taking a single step toward the shadows of the corner, away from the pool of light over the desk.
"You told Lucy you were alone. I’m simply making sure you aren't a liar."
The cruelty of it hits me. He’s leaving me here, in the middle of the night, surrounded by the smell of us and the silence of the dead. He’s leaving me to face the echo of my own lies to my best friend, trapped in the very sanctuary he just turned into an altar.
"When will I see you?"
The question escapes before I can stop it, sounding more desperate than I intended.
Deimos pauses at the threshold of the office door. He doesn't look back, but I can see the tension in his shoulders.
"I told you, Madeline. I’m under your skin," he murmurs, his voice a ghost of a caress.
"I’m never truly gone. I’ll be watching. I want to see if you can keep the mask on when the sun comes up."
And then, with the fluid, silent grace of a movement, he is gone.
The click of the office door closing is soft, but it sounds like a gavel. I stand alone in the center of the room, my hair a mess, my body aching, and my desk a graveyard of scattered files. The silence is no longer a comfort; it’s a scream.
I look at the phone on the desk. The device that holds my promise to Lucy. I’m alone, just like I told her. I sink into my chair for a moment, the leather still warm from his weight.
I clean up mechanically. Every movement is a hollow echo of the person I used to be. My mind is quiet, not peaceful, just empty. I think I’ve reached the stage of total numbness, where the capacity to decide how to feel has simply burnt out.
Before the fog in my head can make me forget, I move the body I autopsied, the one from before he arrived, into the cold storage. I can’t have a colleague walk in tomorrow to find a rotting corpse as a testament to my lost night.
When I finally walk out of the mortuary, the night air hits me like a splash of cold water. It feels more refreshing, more honest, than the suffocating tension he created inside those walls.
I drive straight home. Questions flush through my head, faster than I can answer them. He’s a serial killer, that much is obvious. But at what cost? What is this group he’s hunting? Does he have partners in crime, or is he a lone monster?
I suppose I’ll find out soon enough. He said he’s under my skin, but that works both ways. If he’s obsessed, it gives me power over him. Power over the man everyone else is too terrified to even name.
I need a hot shower. I need to scold the guilt and surrender off my flesh.
As I walk into my apartment, I start stripping, my clothes falling in a trail behind me. I head straight toward the bathroom, intending to face my reflection and count the bruises he left behind, but I’m caught off guard. My heart stops as I see the massive words smeared across my mirror.
Written in blood.
My lips part in shock as I read:
“LOOK IN YOUR BEDROOM, LITTLE STORM.”
The shower can wait. My skin goes cold, the adrenaline already pumping through my veins again. I can’t even guess what I’ll find. Is it him? Is it a body? Parts of one? Fuck.
I walk naked toward my bedroom, every nerve ending on fire. In the center of the dim room, resting on my bed, is a matte black box, wrapped with a precision that feels threatening.
I take a few slow, silent steps, my eyes darting to the corners of the ceiling. I can’t see any cameras, but I know he’s watching. He has to be.
