Iron House

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Steam clogged Elena’s throat, hot water crashing down. She gripped the showerhead and felt metal pitted with corrosion, a tongue of wet curtain that licked her leg and stuck. She washed herself again.

Yet the smell lingered.

The images.

She lathered her hair, digging hard with her fingers, scraping as she saw so many things that had once been good: the yellow paint on Michael’s hands, the smile that lit his face when he spoke of the baby. Seven months condensed to a single moment as she saw his hands on her stomach, her breasts, and then on the skin of that corpse. He’d been so… proficient. The body didn’t bother him. The smell. The very fact that the man was dead.

There’s a chain there…

It was real, all of it.

Elena pressed a palm on her stomach, and then prayed as she had as a girl, not just for strength or guidance, but for God to reach down and make it right. But there was no easy fix, and deep down, she was ashamed of her need. Her father taught her to be strong, to count on herself, so she pushed the weakness away. She dug deep and found the core of who she was. She felt fear and sorrow, a blinding streak of bright, sharp anger. Michael was a killer, and in that word- killer -Elena found the threads of her strength. It seemed a small thing at first, this tangle of poor threads, but she gathered them up, pulled until she felt strong in her soul. She would recover, and the pain that lingered-the memory of his hands on her skin-that, too, would wither and fade. She promised this to herself, swore it; but lies are slippery and quick-that’s how they work-and some part of Elena knew she was being faithless. She loved him. There was no other man like him.

But the things he’s done…

She turned off the water, which died to a trickle as she smoothed hair from her face.

“I’m okay.”

It felt wrong the way she said it, so she tried again.

“I will be okay.”

That was better. That was real.

She opened the curtain with a metallic scrape, and reached for a robe that was no longer where she’d left it. She saw a man, instead-parts of a man, a blur of skin and hair and eyes. They were cold eyes, and blue, a look of amusement over thin lips and pale, fine skin. He stood a foot from the shower, his forehead high and square, hair wispy thin on the crown of his head. The moment was so unreal, so utterly unexpected, that she almost laughed. It was a misunderstanding, some hotel employee at the wrong place at the wrong time. But the look was wrong. He was too calm, too amused. Her robe was in one of his hands, something black and square in the other. It was only when his smile spread that the scream gathered fully in the back of Elena’s throat.

“You’re not okay,” he said.

And, Elena knew who he was.

Her arms came up, but his hand moved in a blur. Something blue flashed, and she heard a crack of energy as fire tore through her ribs. She felt agony, white heat, and then nothing at all.