When the screaming stopped, she turned to Volkov.
“One more?” she begged. Her chest felt tight with nerves and nausea. She felt sure he could see through her frozen smile.
He did not.
Instead, he grinned and held out the fishbowl. “One more.”
The chance to watch his previous victories with his future victim was too good for Volkov to deny himself. After all, these weren’t the sort of movies you could invite anyone to come watch.
If he sensed her fascination with his videos was a lie, he chose not to admit it to himself.
Catriona picked the red drive this time.
Volkov popped it into the back of the television and she watched a very similar story unfold. This girl also appeared to be a lady of the night. It made sense, of course, as fewer people would ask questions about missing hookers. This young woman was larger, possibly of mixed race. She fought hard, but still, Volkov outweighed her by a good seventy pounds. When he decided to attack, it wasn’t long before she lay on the ground, groaning, unable to rise.
He ended the fighting portion of his ritual with the same elbow drop. As soon as he posed over the girl, preparing to fall, Catriona averted her eyes.
Her skin crawled. Anxiety dreams of losing teeth were not unfamiliar to her, and the idea that it could happen for real—
“Again?” she asked, hoping to push her fate at his hands farther into the future.
Volkov moved between her and the television to place a hand on each of her cheeks. She felt the muscles in her face twitch with revulsion.
He spoke in the low, soft tone of a lover. “No. I don’t think I can wait any longer.”
Volkov removed the drive from the television and dropped it back into the bowl.
Catriona motioned to the screen. “What happened to them?”
Volkov opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out a bottle of baby lotion. He poured some into his palm and began to rub it on his arms and chest.
His tattoos were easier to see now: Eight-pointed stars at the tips of his clavicle, an enormous church spanning from belly to chest, coffins lining the front of the church. Over one kidney, a woman stood holding a fishing line, the hook grabbing the back of her dress to expose her legs. Two mermaids frolicked over his left hip.
He smiled, staring at her as he slathered his abdomen with the oil. “You’ll see.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What are you doing here?”
Fiona placed her keys on the marble kitchen island, scowling at Rune. He stood, hands in his pockets, staring through the glass wall overlooking Parasol Pictures.
At least, she assumed his eyes were open. Her father wasn’t the most predictable person in the world.
Rune spoke without turning. “One down.”
What? She was in no mood for his nonsense.
“How did you get into my apartment?”
No response.
Fiona’s teeth clenched. She’d been hoping her father would find her, hoping together they could accomplish quite a bit. But now that he’d arrived, acting as if he owned her, any warm and fuzzy father-daughter love she might have harbored for the memory of the man was fading fast.
Rune turned, the power of his pale eyes dimmed by his backlit form. Fiona could barely see his shadowed facial features, which she appreciated.
She didn’t like his eyes. She didn’t remember them being so icy.
“Sean is gone,” Rune said, scratching at the neck of his ridiculous high-buttoned flannel shirt.
“Gone? Gone where?”
He shrugged. “Where is the Highlander?”
“Where—?”
Before she could finish her sentence, Rune began to unbutton his shirt. He pulled it off, exposing his bird-breasted frame. To Fiona, he looked like one of the creatures scientists were always finding on the bottom of the ocean floor. Boney, pale, nearly translucent.
She didn’t remember her mother very well, but she held the impression she’d been quite the beauty.
She ought to have been proud to produce me and Catriona with this cave frog as the sperm donor—
“I’m hot. I need a shirt. Get me one I can wear.” Rune threw his flannel to the ground and rubbed at his throat.
Fiona’s anger skipped to a new level. She opened her mouth to tell him she was done being talked to in such a demeaning manner, but all she did was gasp.
Her father’s neck was covered in smiles.
Some thin, some thick, one overlapping the next, scars of varying darkness, each one running across his neck, the ends curling up as they disappeared behind his throat.
Fiona raised her hand to point. “What is that?”
Rune looked up to find her pointing. His hands once again raised to his throat.
“It’s necessary.”
“What’s necessary? Who did that to you?”
Rune held her in his steady gaze. “I did.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
She scoffed, tired of the mysteries surrounding the man. “The hell I do, you freak—”
Rune’s expression twisted into a tight knot. He took a step forward, a threatening advance that stopped Fiona cold.
He thrust his head forward, squinting at her as if she had morphed into a creature he didn’t recognize. “Have you learned nothing while I’ve been gone?”
Fiona opened her purse, looking for nothing, her nervous fingers desperate to find something to do. “What was it I was supposed to learn?”
“To travel we have to die. Nearly die.”
“Nearly—” Fiona paused, her hand still hanging in her purse. The source of Rune’s smiles flashed in her mind’s eye, swinging against a stark white background.
Nooses.
Rune had been hanging himself in order to trigger time travel.
What kind of sicko...?
This was the man on whom she’d hung her hopes? The man she thought was destined
