Leather & Lark: The Ruinous Love Trilogy (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, 2)

It’s been two weeks since I delivered Mr. Tremblay to God, and now He has rewarded my diligence. My servitude. He has moved the pieces across the board and cleared my way to righteous victory.

For I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.

And my plans are ready to come together.

I stand for a long moment at the door and watch the woman as she sleeps. The light casts lines of shadows across her body as it passes through the slatted window blinds. It illuminates every miniscule movement, every breath. I can almost smell the failure of her organs. The sterile environment and the industrial cleaners can’t mask the smell of impending death.

Almighty God, the shadow of death is upon her.

The tempo of her breathing changes. Perhaps a nightmare. Fluid collects in her chest and rumbles. She coughs, and when she opens her eyes, they pan across the room until they land on me.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“Who are you?” she asks. Her vision must be hazy with sleep and old age, but I still catch the suspicion in the milky depths of her eyes. I take a purposeful step into the room and pull the door closed behind me.

“Today, I’m known as”—I point to the stolen ID card I’ve pinned to my chest pocket—“Steve.”

“Today, I’m known as Bertha, so if you’re looking for Ethel, I’m afraid you have the wrong room.”

I grin at the old woman as I pull a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of my scrubs and slip them on. “You are not what I expected, Ethel.”

“I’ve been told that before. But men like you have been underestimating women like me since the dawn of time, so your surprise is not at all refreshing. In fact, it’s a little stale, if you’ll forgive the muffin pun.”

The old woman gives me a sharp and dismissive glare. Then she presses the button to adjust the incline of her bed. I stride forward, determined to stop her if she attempts to call for the nurse, but she only sneers at me. I know with that glance that she has either accepted her fate, or that she intends to attempt to fight me off herself.

“So,” she says over the whir of the bed’s hidden motor. “I assume you’re here to kill me?”

“I’m here to deliver you to God,” I correct her as I draw to a halt at the foot of her bed.

“On the behest of Bob?”

My head tilts.

“You know,” she continues, waving her crooked fingers in the air as though imploring me to catch on. “Bob Foster. It seems like his kind of thing, sending someone like you. So uncreative and boring. Much like his muffins. He was always a one-trick pony.”

I withdraw a black case from my pocket. Though I don’t open it, the woman follows the motion of my hands. “I’m afraid I don’t know Mr. Foster.”

A rumbling cough builds in the old woman’s chest until bloody phlegm spills out of her lips. I offer her a handkerchief and she takes it, holding it to her mouth. Her attention remains on me.

I nod, understanding everything she doesn’t say. “It is good to accept death. Do not fight the will of God.” I step to the side of the bed and open the case to pull the first of three prefilled syringes from within. “Do you repent before the judgment of the Lord?”

“I do have regrets,” she says. Her eyes drift away to the corner of the room. I wonder if she feels Him here with us. I do. I feel the Lord’s will in my hand. He keeps the syringe steady in my grip. His presence whispers to me, guides every beat of my heart.

“Tell me,” I demand. “Confess your sins before His angel of death.”

The old woman sighs deeply. “I regret …” She trails off as her gaze shifts back to me. It is fierce with resolve. “I regret not having stolen the recipe for Bob Foster’s banoffee muffins when I had the chance. Fucker took twenty percent of my market share when he launched Bob’s Banoffees.”

My eyes narrow.

“I regret not having gone home with Spencer Jones after Marcie’s party when I was twenty-three. Jenny Bright took him home instead and said he ate her ass six ways to Sunday. She wouldn’t shut up about it at brunch at the country club for a solid month—”

“Lord thy God, I seek refuge in you from the devil—”

“—I met my Thomas shortly after and in sixty-two years of marriage he never once ate my ass. Took me nearly a year to convince Tom there were more positions than just me lying flat on my back like a dead fish.”

I give her a heavy sigh. A cluck of my tongue.

And then I turn to the IV pump and pause the medication drip. I pinch the tube to keep the solution trapped.

I stare at the old woman. “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled—”

“Define ‘undefiled’—”

“For God will judge the sexually immoral and—”

“Define ‘sexually immoral’—do threesomes count? Because there was this one time with Jenny—”

“Enough.”

My hand trembles with the urge to hit her. She grins, a devil satisfied. Satan has stoked my sin to consume it. But he shall have no more.

“By the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls.”

I twist the protective cap from the port in the IV tube and push the saline from the first syringe into the port. I expect Ethel might try to fight. Perhaps she will pull the cannula from her hand. Though it would be futile, she could try to save herself. But she doesn’t try.

She only smiles.

Her eyes don’t leave mine. I feel them on my skin, even when I focus on the work of my hands as I remove the first syringe and exchange it for the second. This one contains lorazepam. Three times the dose for what I estimate her weight to be.

A thrill spikes in my veins. This is my calling, my mission from God Himself. He has granted me the means to avenge my brother, Harvey, and then He found for me a greater purpose—to kill the corrupt who protect His murderers and to destroy those who stand between me and the justice I seek. My God led me to stay in the same hotel as the Butcher and the Spider when I arrived with the hope of searching the wreckage of the house I grew up in. The police were so busy exhuming the bodies of Harvey’s victims that they didn’t put much effort into searching for who had killed him.

It didn’t take long. Not with a fake badge and a tight smile and God’s will.

A stolen blanket. An extra credit card charge. With a handful of questions, I had a fake name. And before long, I found a real one. Rowan Kane.

And now, as I remove the second syringe from the port and replace it with a final flush of saline, I feel Him within me, flooding my soul with peace.

“Some would say that my mother was a difficult woman,” I tell Ethel as I close the cap on the port and turn the IV pump back on. I replace the empty syringes in my case and pocket it. “But the truth is, she showed my brother and me the depths of the world’s darkness. She showed us its unforgiving nature. And she taught us how to survive. She showed us the other side of God. The reckoning before the light.”

“That sounds pretty ass-backwards, boy.”

I smile, then recite the words to the hymn I always sing to my offerings in their final breaths. My parting gift, one to usher their souls to judgment. “Abide with me—”

“I’d rather not.”

“—fast falls the eventide—”

“It would fall a bit slower if you hadn’t drugged me,” Ethel says, her speech slurred.

“The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, help of the helpless, O abide with me.”

I slowly pull the bloodied handkerchief from Ethel’s clenched fist. It’s like a magic trick. It will be the only material evidence of our encounter that I will take from this room. A reminder that magic is an illusion. Death, an illusion. Life, a fleeting moment of time in God’s will.

My eyes lock with the old woman’s. Her rasping exhalations are desperate, but she shows no fear. Only defiance.

“Touch my Lark and he’ll kill you,” she whispers.

I smile as I fold my handkerchief and slip it into my pocket.

“I’m sure hoping he’ll try.”

And then I watch until the last breath leaves her lips like a final, unanswered prayer.