It took everything I had to let her go tonight. To let her walk out of the club and into a cab out of my reach. Only the knowledge that I could track and surveil her in the privacy of her home finally allowed me to let her leave.
I’m used to watching her at a distance. She’s beautiful enough to make people on the street stop and stare. In person, she is more intoxicating than I realized.
I must go slowly. Of all the people I’ve hunted, she’s the wariest. She presents a strong face to the world, but inside the thick walls she’s built, she’s fragile. A clever hunter knows how to proceed with care, to trap the bird before it knows it’s in a snare.
She disappears into the shower and emerges minutes later with her wet hair braided down her back. Her golden skin glows. She faces the mirror to brush her teeth, then turns, admiring the marks down her back.
I lean forward in my chair. My lungs pump like bellows working overtime.
She arches her back, and her lips part. Her lids grow heavy. She reaches back and presses on a distinct bruise. One of the marks I left with the flogger. The cameras don’t transmit any sound, but I can tell she’s let out a small, sighing moan.
My chair creaks under me. Every muscle in me strains?—
There it is. Her cheek curves in a hint of a real smile.
It lasts only a fleeting moment before it’s gone, and she completes her routine. She pads naked to the closet and dresses in a simple sleep set. Then she takes her gun and clears each room in her duplex. She checks the armed security system and each door and window lock twice. She thinks this will protect her from the world. From monsters like me.
She’s wrong.
Her guard is back up when she settles into bed. She sets her gun on the bedside table but doesn’t go to sleep right away. Using her cellphone as a light, she sits and sketches in the notebook she keeps close to her at all times. My fingers cramp with the need to get my hands on it. Having every inch of her life on screen isn’t enough. I want to pry her apart, get under her skin. I want to know her innermost thoughts.
And I will. All the hunting I’ve done on the streets of New Rome has prepared me for this moment. For her.
I must go carefully. Tonight, I was just a top to her. A nameless, faceless stand-in who gave her the pain she needs.
She doesn’t know I’m always watching. That I’ve been hunting her for years. I’ve spent more time hunting her than all my other victims combined.
Soon, it’ll be time to reveal myself to her, and she will know me as I know her.
But first, I need to get her attention.
* * *
Inara
Smoke billows around me.My eyes sting with it. It’s all I can taste, all I can see.
“Inara!” someone is shouting.
I spread my arms, accepting my death. It has to be this way.
I’m ready.
And then?—
There’s a blast of excruciating heat. Strong enough to sear my flesh from my bones. I turn and leap into the cool air. I’m falling from a great height. I will not survive, but it’s lovely, this surrender. The darkness is cool and sweet.
But I know this is the end.
I know I’ve died. The pain and fall were too great for me to survive, but the dream continues. Death comes for me and folds me in a powerful embrace. And instead of feeling dread, I feel relief. In oblivion, I am free.
“Inara,” Death says my name. I reach up into the darkness, stirring the seething void like smoke, and the darkness begins to take the shape of a man?—
I jerk awake, my hands in the air like I’m holding off an attack. Or cupping a man’s face.
I dreamed of my death again. The first time this dream came to me, I was ten. Over the years, I’ve dreamed it again and again, returning to me like an old friend. And each time it takes over my sleep, it becomes more detailed. There’s more color, noise, even the grainy feel of thick smoke. One day, I will experience it fully, but I won’t be dreaming. I’ll be living my last moments. When I finally know how the dream ends, I will be dead.
I don’t know the day or hour I’ll die. I only know that I’ll recognize it when it’s here.
