Playing Dead: Book One of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 43

My back hit the wall hard, my head snapping forward onto my chest as I tried to brace myself against the impact but failing miserably and I cried out in dismay as my blades went scattering across the tunnel and sliding out of my reach. Sharp pain shot down my spine and I felt that broken rib dislodge a little more inside, forcing tears free from my eyes; tears I didn't want him to see. I blinked them away quickly and focused on breathing, which proved more difficult than it should considering every intake of breath was like a kick to the ribs.

I waited for the onslaught to begin, I waited for him to show himself and let rip at me with that monster that I knew was seething away just under the surface, but when I looked up he was standing further away from me, as if being too close disgusted him and he glared at me in fury, his chest heaving in and out as if breathing were painful for him too. His dark unruly curls hung over his eyes and they were still his eyes, the ones I remembered, not the ones tainted with the venomous amber that I had expected. In fact, he looked just like I remembered and I wished that he didn't. It hurt too much now that I knew the truth, because I knew only too well that this Brandon was nothing but a lie.

"Go on then," I hissed through gritted teeth. "Do it. You know you want to. I can see it there, just dying to get out and rip me to pieces."

His eyes narrowed. "Don't tempt me," he growled.

"Why not? What's the point in lying anymore, Bran? I know exactly what you are. And you know what I am. So go on, change yourself into that putrid beast you really are and get it over with."

His fists clenched and unclenched, fingers twisting into knots but he said nothing.

"What? Oh are you waiting for your friends to turn up and join the party? I forgot you like to do this kind of thing for the cameras don't you?" I sneered at him but could feel the tremor in my voice. "Where are they by the way?"

"They're not coming. You're mine, they know that." He angrily spat the word mine but his eyes radiated a territorial heat that unnerved me more than his rage did.

"Well you sent me to my death once, only fitting that you do it again I guess," I shrugged. "Signing your wife's death warrant seems as natural to you as signing our marriage certificate. Who'd have thought when I signed that paper, I was signing up to a whole lot more than a honeymoon in the Maldives and Egyptian cotton sheets?"

"I don't remember you protesting too much at the time," he snarled.

"No. You're right I didn't. But of course I didn't know what a repulsive, bestial piece of shit you really were. All that time, you were coming here, probably slaughtering people where I'm now standing and then you came home to me and pretended you loved me, that I actually meant something to you."

"You were everything to me!" he roared and I heard the echoes resounding in the darkness, quickly swallowed up by the shadows that loitered in the tunnels.

He pounded towards me and I shrank back against the wall, as if the seven foot tall beast were towering over me and not just Brandon. He stopped just over a metre away, as if there were some kind of invisible impenetrable barrier surrounding me that he could not cross. Or would not maybe. He stared wildly at me and a sheen of perspiration glistened on his skin. I noticed sweat seeping through his t-shirt too, soaking the fabric stretched across his chest and dampening his armpits. Now this was a different Brandon. Slightly out of control, close to the edge and nervous although what he had to be nervous about I did not know. This was his territory after all and I was on my own, lost in the Varúlfur catacombs and completely at his mercy, of which I was certain there would be none.