She shrugged, returning to her microscope. “Five months, I think? Came with impeccable references. I swear, if I had ten more like him, this place would run itself.”
Five months. Rick forced his expression neutral. “How well do you know him?”
Gloria huffed a sigh. “Slade, he talks even less than you. Which is saying something.”
He nodded, a tight jerk of his chin, and walked out into the corridor without another word, a weight growing in his gut that no shrug could shake loose. The unease that had been pawing at him since last night sharpened into something colder, meaner—a shape finally stepping into focus.
Chapter Fifty-One
(9:27 a.m.)
Ash woke with his tongue glued to his palate, throat parched as if he’d been swallowing dust. His body ached from stone pressing into him, and for a few blind seconds, he couldn’t tell if he’d been out for an hour or a day. No window, no clock, only the stale air of the underground chamber and the faint pulse of the circle painted around him, those damn glyphs hemming him in like bars. The candles still burned along the floor, flames twitching in unseen drafts. The silo breathed with its glow, silhouettes stretching across the curved walls like phantom guards.
Gordon was there, too, slouched against the table with a sketchpad balanced on his knees, the shifting fires warping his features into uneven planes of shadow and light. Every so often, his pencil whispered across paper. His eyes lifted to Ash, not with lust but with possession, the gaze of a collector studying a rare prize.
“You really are spectacular,” he said softly. “I’ve been sketching you while you slept. Your face, your body… I’ve never seen such ideal proportions, such perfect symmetry. It’s like you weren’t born so much as engineered.”
Ash pushed himself upright, rolling his shoulders and flexing his arms to work the stiffness out of his muscles. “I’m thirsty,” he croaked, the words rasping out of him. “Bring me some water.”
Gordon set the pencil down, folding his hands over the pad as though he’d expected the request. “I can’t.”
Ash licked at cracked lips. He stood a moment longer, stretching his back until the joints cracked, then let his legs carry him in slow steps inside the painted lines. “Can’t, or won’t?”
“You need to be purified. Twenty-four hours without food or drink.” His tone was almost apologetic, though his expression stayed flat and glassy.
“Purified?”
“For the ritual,” Gordon said simply.
Ash gave a short, bitter laugh. His strides gathered momentum until he prowled the trap’s narrow confines with the restless energy of a caged cat. “You mean carving me up like a Sunday roast?”
Unbothered, Gordon smoothed his pencil over a page, shading something Ash couldn’t see. “You are the last. After you, it’s finished.”
“I’m honored.”
“You should be.” Gordon’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “I’ve been collecting the finest specimens I could find. But you…” He watched Ash with rapt intensity. “You’re beyond anything I imagined. If I’d known someone like you existed, I might never have bothered with the rest. Your grace alone would have sufficed.”
Ash halted mid-step, cocking his head. “Sufficed for what?”
The man let out a thin sigh, as if explaining a private dream to someone who could never understand. “Every face I took became part of me. David’s eyes. Elliot’s nose. James’s lips—he had such a beautiful smile. All of them live in me now, melted into something closer to perfection. But it’s not enough. Not yet.” His fingers ghosted over his cheek, tracing an uneven plane. “I’ve been sculpting myself, piece by piece. And with yours… I will finally have it. The ideal features. The flawless beauty.”
Ash froze, pulse snagging in his throat. For the first time, he really looked at Gordon, focused on his mouth, the way it curved faintly at the corners. And there it was—Jimmy. That crooked little flash he’d seen a hundred times across a bar table, thegrin that could strip the weight off a long night. Only now it sat wrong, grafted onto a stranger’s countenance, uncanny and obscene.
The truth hit him like ice water: Gordon wasn’t speaking in metaphors. He’d worn them—the butchered men—all folded into his own flesh, their allure harvested like organs and sewn into the patchwork of his skin. Piece by piece, until nothing was left of them but echoes staring back through him.
Silence stretched, broken only by the steady drip of pipes somewhere in the dark. Ash forced his breathing into rhythm, pacing left and right. “So that’s your angle, huh? You get my mug and walk off into the sunset. That it?”
Gordon closed the sketchbook and rose, the movement unhurried, relaxed. He held the pad against his chest as if it were scripture. The candlelight struck his visage in flickers as he crossed the chamber, his shadow rippling along the walls.
“You think this is about vanity.” His tone softened, frayed with something raw. “You don’t know what it’s like to be born wrong. To wear a meat suit that repulses even your own mother. To have your father walk out rather than look at you. To watch people recoil. To know no touch except in cruelty.”
Ash stopped pacing. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
Gordon’s lips twitched, but no answer came. Instead, he drifted nearer to the circle, staring at Ash with fervour of someone watching another reality seep into this one. His voice, when it returned, was quieter, confessional, as if the memory spilled through without asking leave.
“When I was a boy, the other kids jeered. They called me Quasimodo, The Elephant Man. I learned early that laughter cuts sharper than knives. I thought if I saved enough money, I could buy myself a new appearance. The surgeons promised miracles. They cut, stitched, shaved the bone.” His hand ghostedover his jaw. “But they could only make me slightly less hideous. Never normal. Never desirable.”
Ash realized he’d stilled, listening despite himself.
