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Flickering candlelight gleamed down the length of the blade where it hovered inches from Abrams’ clavicle. His trenchcoat was hanging in the cloakroom, left there when he’d walked in looking for a normal social call. His gun was on the other side of the room, dashed out of his hand in the moment it became clear this was anything but.
Now it was just Abrams, and Geist, and the knife in her hand, long and sharp and already slicked with blood.
Cuffing his hand to the tome had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now that damned book hung off his arm like a ten-ton anchor, locked in place by some kind of runic trap. She’d supplied the shackle for his other wrist. Geist had been very, very well prepared.
And now it was just Abrams, Geist, and that wicked knife. Just hovering right there in the woman’s perfectly-manicured grip. And it wasn’t inches from his flesh now. It was millimeters.
Abrams didn’t dare breathe when she reached out with that sickly green hand — but she only grasped his tie, tugging it loose expertly. All the while, those emerald eyes bored straight into his, disdain tugging faintly at her lips as if she was studying some kind of particularly repulsive worm.
She cast the tie aside carelessly. Her hand fell to his shirt. With one firm yank she ripped it open, sending buttons flying from collar to midriff.
“Detective Abrams.” Her voice was cold as ice. Bored, even. And even as Abrams’ heart raced, that hand holding the knife was still steady as a rock.
The knife edged just a little bit closer to his bare chest till his own pounding heart was enough to brush his skin against the blade. At the ice-cold touch he shrank back, but shackled to this armchair, there was no-where he could go.
He swallowed hard, trying to look anywhere but at that knife. “Is this how you treat all your guests?”
The point of the knife swiveled down to kiss his sternum dead center. He barely felt the prick before a scarlet drop welled up beneath it. Then blood bloomed along the path the knife traced down his chest, dripped down his ribs and soaked wet and sticky into his shirt. Pain came two heartbeats later when cold air hit exposed flesh.
“As a matter of fact?”
The knife twisted, tissue ripped, nerves screamed, and Abrams’ vision teetered on the edge of black, and as his sight came back to him all the details of the room he’d missed before stood out in sharp relief. The display case of scalpels. The jars of bleach. The black wool rug and the trace of scratch marks clawing out from underneath.
“Yes.”