Page 81 of Love Me Darkly
Mateo’s throat seized and he was instantly transported to that dark bathroom with a rasping voice whispering in his ear. The scars along his torso burned and throbbed, phantom knives lodged into each one and twisting in the wounds.
Blood and breath.
“We come into the world amid so much pain and the shedding of blood,” the UNSUB went on. “And cry out our first breaths on a roar, a scream, a howl, declaring ourselves to the world. But little do we know it will end much the way it begins … blood and breath … blood and breath … blood and breath.”
Mateo heard the distinct sound of clicking. Rhythmic clicking that went on between each utterance of ‘blood and breath’, six clicks each time. Then silence.
“Save your religious drivel for the compliant idiots who believe in your bullshit,” Mateo snapped. “Tell me what the fuck you want.”
“Why, I want what everyone wants, Agent. Spiritual ascension and intellectual understanding. Power. Eternity.”
“Yeah? I got a case file that says otherwise. It says you’re a textbook malignant narcissist who’s just barely functional. You wet the bed until you were in your teens, isolated yourself from the other kids, tortured small animals, and jacked off to snuff films. You’re just intelligent enough to be dangerous, but stupid enough to think you can leave a trail of bodies in your wake without me following them straight to your doorstep. You’re a sniveling, impotent incel with mommy issues, compensating for lack of daddy’s approval. Every woman you rape, mutilate, and murder is just a proxy for her, isn’t she? A replacement for the woman you really want to degrade and obliterate. You want people to believe you’re some big, scary phantom, when in reality you’re just a sadist with a god complex and a superiority kink.”
The UNSUB’s laughter blasted through his ear, unsettling. The man laughed as if he’d never heard anything funnier in his life than Mateo’s meticulously cultivated profile.
“Oh, well done, Agent!” he boomed, and Mateo could hear him delivering a sarcastic slow clap. “There’s the man I’ve been waiting for! The cold, ruthless, calculating profiler with the flawless jacket. Never rendered an inaccurate profile, never failed to bring in a suspect alive. After our first meeting, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. You didn’t quite live up to the legend.”
Heat flared at the back of Mateo’s neck, and he took up pacing, a restless energy making him thrum from head to toe.
“Sorry to disappoint you. I can promise that next time I’ll live up to the hype, and without that Breath of Azrael shit in your system, you won’t have the juice to take me. You can count on that.”
More clicking in the silence that followed. Six clicks. Then twelve. Then eighteen.
“There’s that arrogance I so love about you, Agent. I thought that perhaps losing Mari would have humbled you, but I ought to have known better. Even now, after I have snatched the thing you love most out from under you, you think you are still in control.”
Mateo gripped the phone so tight his knuckles ached and his hand shook. “Don’t ever say her name again, you son of a bitch. Don’t you say her name!”
“Oh, we don’t have to talk about her,” the UNSUB crooned, as if soothing a cranky child. His voice rippled through the phone like a river, almost soothing, lulling Mateo into a trance. “In fact, I’d much rather talk about Agent Leah Williams. Such a good egg, that one. Did you know she volunteers for multiple victims’ advocacy groups? Truly, it is so touching the way she has dedicated her life to the pursuit of justice. And such a lovely woman … I’ve never had one with dreadlocks before. I think I might enjoy shearing them off her pretty little head. One. By. One.”
“You motherfucker?—”
“And how about Agent Smith? He ought to be coming up on retirement age, but he won’t be laying down his shield anytime soon. Not with his favorite supervisory special agent still at the helm of the ship. A true first mate, ready to execute your orders without question. I wonder if he can see the cracks in your facade, Agent … how close you’re coming to leading him right over the edge of a cliff. And young Agent Jones, so fresh and bright-eyed. So green. I think I’d like to make him watch me work, snuff out the innocence in those eyes by degrees.”
Mateo drove his fist into the wall with a snarl, then fell against it, feeling as if the world had fallen out from beneath his feet.
“If you touch them,” he rasped between ragged breaths. “I will end you!”
“That Jackson Donovan’s a true golden boy, isn’t he? A real boy scout with a promising career ahead of him. Did you know he has four younger brothers? More young, promising Donovans ready to take on the world. Of course, even the most deserving of us meet the cruelest of fates at times. Accidents do happen, and life is so fragile …so easily lost. When the breath stills, and the heart weeps no more, the door yawns wide. Azrael, in silence, takes the hand that trembles, and leads into the dark beyond the dark.”
Mateo sank to his knees on the carpet, where it was still soaked from his Scotch spill. The liquor soaked through his jeans, cold and biting. It was a match for his blood, which was frozen in his veins, hardening him from the inside. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He could barely hold his head up as the weight of the UNSUB’s threats bore down on him with crushing force.
“And I don’t know about you,” the UNSUB continued, his voice dropping and growing gruffer. “But I would consider Darcy the literal Hart of your team. A cyberspace warrior who spends her days stalking the scum of the earth through the dark web, reading their depraved confessions and deranged fantasies. Yet she never flinches away, does she? Never gives in to that urge to clap her hands over her eyes and preserve that last shred of faith and hope in humanity. Someone really should help her, save her from a lifetime of witnessing such horrors. Perhaps a spoon, pressed into the corner of her eye at just the right angle. Not too much pressure, just a little nudge and a twist, and the entire thing will just pop out like a cork.”
Mateo pushed himself back up to his feet, his breaths coming out in harsh pants, his fist trembling at his side. The overwhelming urge to tear the walls down around himself clutched him tight, and he trembled with the will it took to resist.
“This has nothing to do with any of them,” he ground out from between teeth clenched so tight his jaw ached. “You want to come for me? I’m right here. I’m not hiding or cowering from you, you pathetic, limp-dick little freak!”
The UNSUB laughed again, a low, menacing chuckle that sent a shiver down Mateo’s spine. “When are you going to realize that this isn’t about you, Agent? This is about blood and breath.”
Mateo roared, those fucking words thrusting through his gut and giving a savage twist, making him burn from the inside. “I swear to fucking God?—”
“I am your god!” the UNSUB screamed, the careful control in his voice slipping away in an instant. His voice stabbed through the phone now like a knife, piercing and guttural. “I am your alpha and your omega, your beginning and your end. I am your reckoning, Agent, and I will tear apart everything you hold dear and lay it all at your feet, my priceless offering. You think what I did to Mari was depraved? She was only another sacrifice, a vessel to the will of Azrael. But Angelica …” The UNSUB dragged in a ragged breath and then let it off on a wistful sigh. “She will be my masterpiece.”
Mateo tore the phone away from his ear and put it on speaker, slamming it onto the desk before he could hurl it across the room. He smashed his palms into the desk and leaned in, as if staring the UNSUB in the eye.
“I will find you,” he snarled. “I will hunt you down and drag you out of whatever dark hole you’ve slithered into and drain the life out of you with my bare hands!”
The UNSUB went on as if he hadn’t heard Mateo. “Such tender, soft skin children have. So supple. So unblemished. How delightfully they bleed. So pure and sweet. The smell of it … like copper and sugar.”
