His

My stomach growled. Even with the terrible reminder of the smell of meat, I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten since… well, since lunch the day before. Reluctantly, I opened my mouth. His eyes tracked my lips and did not leave them even as I chewed the cold chicken. My appetite came back with a crash after the first bite.

 

“Why not?” I asked after swallowing.

 

“Why not what?”

 

“Why don’t you believe in guns?” I asked. He offered another fork of food and I took it.

 

“If you shoot someone from far enough away, you can’t even tell that they’re dying. You won’t even get to see them die. You don’t get to see what you’ve done. It’s sterile, bland. It’s not a kill if it’s not up close. You miss all the good parts.”

 

I nearly choked on the bite of food, but managed to force it down.

 

He continued to feed me, small bites of mashed potato and beans and chicken. Cold leftovers, but I had never tasted anything so delicious. Even as his words made me shiver, his actions told me that he wouldn’t kill me. No, he would do worse. But maybe I could escape.

 

He sighed, looking off as I finished the bite.

 

“Guns make death inhuman,” he said.

 

“Would you call yourself human?” I asked, a thin line of bitterness running into my voice.

 

“Of course I’m human. Human is a species. I’m not humane, that’s all. I’m not a person.” His eyes seemed to change colors as he talked, grayish shades of green and blue that swirled around on the surface but never admitted any deeper.

 

“Then what are you?”

 

He shrugged.

 

“A persona. A character on the page, comprising as many dimensions as the edge of a knife. I kill, that’s all. That’s what I am. A knife.”

 

“Nothing else?”

 

I wanted to see behind the mask he was wearing. I was sure there was more to him, something that I could take from him. Something I could use to guilt him, seduce him. Something.

 

“What do you want me to say, kitten?”

 

“I don’t know. Something. Anything. Or have you just always been a serial killer?”

 

“I’ve been many things. A doctor, a healer.”

 

I coughed on the bite of food, and he chuckled at my reaction.

 

“Yes, a healer. Now, though, I don’t just sew up wounds. I stop the wounds before they start.”

 

“You kill bad men.”

 

I tried to make it seem like I understood. I wasn’t sure if it was working. He sighed.

 

“I suppose you could say that. I make them suffer. I take away their sins.”

 

“It must be hard.”

 

“Which part? The kidnapping part, or the torture part, or—”

 

“Afterwards.”

 

“After I kill them?”

 

“Aren’t you... don’t you feel bad? Guilty?”

 

“I don’t feel much of anything, kitten. I suppose you don’t know much about that. There’s something in me, a shadow. It dulls everything, makes the world black and white. I don’t feel guilty, or bad, or good, not once the shadow is there. I feel...”

 

“Numb?”

 

His eyes lifted to mine, and I saw a hurt in them that immediately vanished. It was as though he’d opened up a bit to me, peeked through the door, and then slammed it shut.

 

“Something like that.”

 

A tiny plop of mashed potato fell from the fork, down my chin. It landed on my chest, soft and warm against my bare skin. His hand moved down, and I thought of how he had touched me before. The memory stirred something in my body that I tried not to think about.

 

He wiped up the mashed potato with a single finger, strong and hard against the skin of my collarbone. Then he lifted the finger to my lips.

 

“Finish,” he said.

 

I didn’t dare disobey. I tilted my head forward and sucked at his finger, licked off the mashed potato. His eyelashes fluttered as my tongue touched his skin and there was a softening around the corners of his eyes, but he had no other reaction. I swallowed.

 

“Gavriel?”

 

His eyes went cold again when I said his name.

 

“Yes?”

 

“What are you going to do with me?”

 

The calmness with which he smiled back at me only made the answer creepier.

 

“Are you done with dinner? Yes? Then you’re going back down into the basement.”

 

He tucked the knife in his back pocket before releasing my straps. Before I could move, he had his arm around my waist and was helping me off of the table.

 

“How’s the ankle?” he asked.

 

“Better,” I answered truthfully. The pain was still there, but it wasn’t shooting through my leg any more when I put pressure on it. It was still nice to have someone to lean on as we made our way to the basement stairs. I limped down the steps and into the middle of the basement with him half-carrying me.

 

The window was covered with wooden boards screwed in on all sides. He let me go and I leaned one hand against the wall.

 

Gav reached out and clicked a handcuff around my wrist. I jerked my arm back, but he had already locked the other cuff onto the water pipe next to the window.

 

“What?” I looked down at my wrist dumbly.