Time restarted slowly. Bill couldn't remember the last time he'd broken down like this.

He'd learned at a
young age that tears were a weakness his Mother would not allow. Had he ever cried like this? As that
thought pierced his brain there was a jolt of pain in his head. Bill gasped and his hand automatically
went to his forehead. He was used to painful migraines. This was reminiscent of them but not…

"I lost Elmer," he sobbed. The words came out stuttered between gulps of air.

His Papa cradled little Bill in his arms, his hand soothing as he stroked Bill's hair. He didn't say anything.
Bill shook with the force of his sobs. Elmer the patchwork rainbow elephant had kept Bill safe from the
monsters under the bed every night for as long as he could remember. How was he going to sleep
without him?

With a gasp, Bill jolted out of the memory. "Well shit," he said out loud. What had that been? He didn't
remember that. Except he clearly did remember it. Had that been real? Why had he only just
remembered it if it was?

As he searched his brain, his Mother's voice came to him. Tears are a weakness, child. Suck it up. He
hadn't thought about the day she told him that in years, but he could remember it as if it were
yesterday.

Bill stood in front of his Mother, his head bowed. "We don't cry in this household, do you hear me? Tears
are a weakness, child. Suck it up. And you," she continued, and Bill glanced up enough to notice that she
was now directing her words toward his Papa. "Don't you ever do that again. He's too old to be sleeping
with that ridiculous elephant. Don't encourage him."

"He's just a child," Papa tried to protest, but stopped at the look she gave him. "Get out of my sight," she
snapped at him. "William, go clean up your face."

Bill let out an odd strangled sound. Why hadn't he remembered why he'd been crying in the first place?
Elmer had been his sleeping companion for a long time. On the occasion the stuffed toy had crossed his
mind over the years, he never could remember what had happened to him. But now, as he thought
about it, the answer came to him. "I left him on the school bus," he said out loud. "Why the hell am I
remembering this now?"

Another jolt to the head, this time stronger, and Bill groaned at the thought of having one of his
migraines at a time like this. "Shit, not now," he whispered to himself, before a gasp left his lips at
another sudden sharp pain. This wasn't his usual headaches. This grew in strength with every passing
moment, and Bill was no stranger to pain but this wasn't cut of a blade nor the ache of a migraine, this
was - this was - he gasped again, and his hands clutched at his head -

He was outside in their yard. "Look what I found!" Bill proudly held up a small ladybug. He cried out in
distress as his Mother brushed it away from his hand. "They're not to play with, child. They're to be
squished. And stop talking like that. You sound like your Father, with that awful accent."

"Don't tell your Mother for me?" His Papa handed him a small ice cream cone. Bill nodded eagerly,
excited to try something that all the kids at his school raved about. His Mother had never allowed this
sort of thing.
"Why was there a doll in the tub?" Bill asked his parents at dinner. His Papa blinked at him in confusion.
"I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about. What doll?" His Mother sighed and Bill caught
sight of a fancy stick of some sort.

"I can see the whole world from here!" Bill declared. He'd never been allowed on the Farris wheel before.
"It's quite a sight," his Papa agreed.

He was in his house. He made his way back to his room when he stubbed his toe on the corner of a wall.
He gave a yelp of shock and pain. "I said quiet! Don't you ever listen!" his Mother bellowed. She came
through the doorway to Bill's left and grabbed him by the hair. Bewildered, Bill cried out. "Shut your
mouth," she told him as she marched him up the stairs and shoved him into the closet in the hallway. He
hit the wall almost immediately, the tiny space barely enough for his five-year-old frame to stand up in.
"Children should be seen, not heard," she snarled through the door. Bill could hear the click as she turned
the lock and then the sound of her footsteps as she moved back down the stairs. He kept his sobs quiet,
practiced now at the art of crying without sound. His stomach hurt something fierce and he wished his
Papa would come home from work early. Mother wouldn't let him out of this closet until right before
Papa came back and that was ages away. He wiped away the tears and settled down on the floor of the
dark closet.

He was in the playground. There was only one swing, and today he was thrilled that he had managed to
claim it first. He climbed on and smiled. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jessica approach. “Can I
swing?” she asked him shyly. “I was here first,” Bill said at once. Jessica’s face fell. Bill’s stomach hurt at
the sadness he felt all of a sudden. It ached and he didn’t like it. He climbed off and held out the seat.
“It’s okay, you can have it.”

He was in the classroom. The teacher’s assistant struggled to pick up several books but he couldn’t hold
them all. “Would one of you lot be kind enough to help?” he asked. No one answered. Bill could
physically feel the disappointment and sadness. He didn’t like this feeling. No one else he knew ever
seemed to feel like this. Was he the only one in the world who could feel like his heart was in someone
else’s chest? He got up. “I can help,” he said. The teacher’s assistant smiled at him and at once Bill felt
relieved.

Bill wanted a snack. He knew Mother didn't like when he asked her for snacks. Best to simply get his own.
To his surprise, his Mother was in the kitchen when he walked in, and she wasn't alone. "Hello," he said
with surprise.

"This is Chastity," his Mother told him. "She's here while her own Mother is at work, isn't that right
child?" The little girl nodded vigorously, but Bill wondered why she seemed frightened, her wide eyes full
of fear. "Eat your cookie," his Mother told the girl.

"May I have one?" Bill asked.

"These are special cookies for our special guests," she told him. "You may take an apple from the fridge."

Bill's eyes widened. An apple! Before lunch! He rushed to the fridge to grab it before she changed her
mind. "Thank you Mother," he remembered to say. She waved a hand at him in dismissal. "Run along
now," she told him, and Bill hastened to do as told.
It was two days later that Bill saw Chastity again. She was leaning up against a tree. He started to talk to
her before he noticed the way her eyes are glossed over and her clothes are covered in blood. He
instinctively knew she couldn't talk back. The dread in his stomach hurt so bad he whimpered, a small cry
that turned to a loud screech of pain as someone grabbed his arm. "William. You are not supposed to be
here." His Mother's voice was rough, low, dangerous.

"What's wrong with Chastity, Mother?" he asked.

"She wanted to hurt you, child. The devil prefers to wear a pretty face, William. Don't you forget that. I'm
the only one who can save you from the devil. Don't you forget that either. Run along now." She released
the strong grip on his arm. Bill rushed to do as told, but this time he couldn't help but look back. He was
confused at what he saw. His Mother was holding a stick. She was pointing it at him. It must not have
been important, for an instant later he no longer remembered any of it.

Bill was in a crowded classroom. Everyone around him was coloring. Some kids helped each other. They
laughed as they created their pictures. He was supposed to be helping Jessica, but his mind was only half
on their picture. He couldn’t help that his eyes strayed to Justin every few moments. Justin looked sad. He
wasn’t coloring. He sat by himself, and clutched a small stuffed Winnie the Pooh bear. Something hurt in
Bill’s chest every time he looked over. He left Jessica to finish the picture. She didn’t even notice. She was
intent on her attempt to get the flamingo just the right shade of pink.

“Don’t you want to draw?” Bill asked curiously as he approached Justin. The other boy shook his head. “I
don’t know how,” he mumbled.

“I’ll teach you,” Bill promised. He grabbed a coloring page and some extra crayons from the teacher’s
desk and sat next to Justin. “You drag the crayon across the page,” he explained. “The teacher says it’s
best to stay in the lines if you want a neat picture. I don’t know if she’s right. Want to try?”

Justin still seemed hesitant, but Bill continued to color slowly and waited, and after a minute he saw a
hand reach to grab a crayon. “Does it matter what color?” Justin asked quietly.

“No,” Bill said. “It can be whatever you like.”

Justin opted for blue. He pressed the tip to the edge of the sun and dragged it slowly across the circle. “It
works!” he cried out in surprise. Bill felt warmth spread in his chest. “You did it,” he said happily.

Bill was in his bedroom. He was in the middle of reading Freddie the Leaf for the fifth time when he
remembered he’d left his empty water bottle in the car. He didn’t want his Mother to yell at him for the
trash in her car. He carefully made his way into the garage. When he opened the door for the backseat
he yelped in shock. There was a little girl sitting in the same spot he’d sat a few hours ago. Her hands and
feet were bound and she had tape across her mouth. He glanced at the garage door, worried that his
Mother might have heard him, but she did not appear. He looked back at the little girl. She was staring at
him, and he could easily feel the words she could not say. “I’m sorry,” Bill whispered. “She has to do it. To
protect me, see? She has to kill you. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

He could feel the panic fill her entire body as his words reached her. Bill’s chest pounded and he felt sick.
He’d forgotten the reason why he’d come here in the first place. He shouldn’t be here. He closed the door
quietly and rushed away, only to trip on his shoelace. He fell heavily on his knee but pushed back up right
away. He needed to get some distance between him and the garage and the car and the doomed girl.
Bill was on the edge of the dock. It was a cloudy day. He was scared. His mother towered over him. "Get
in there," she ordered before her foot pushed him into the water. He couldn't swim. He panicked in the
water and couldn't stay above the surface.

Bill was on the edge of the dock. It was a sunny day. He was scared. His Mother scowled at him. "Why
aren't you showing any signs of power?" She kicked him into the water again. Panic overtook him,
familiar now that this had happened more times than he could count.

Bill was in his bedroom, a worn out copy of Redwall in his hands when he heard, “William! Get down
here!” Dread gathered in his chest. He didn’t want to deal with his Mother right now but he had no
choice. He walked as slowly as he dared down the steps. “You certainly took your time,” she rebuked him
as he entered the sitting room. It had barely been twenty seconds, but Bill bit his tongue. “What do you
need Mother,” he asked respectfully.

“I need you to help carry something,” she told him. “Come along now.”

He couldn’t say no even though he wanted to. Her tone brooked no nonsense but he knew what would
happen if he implied he didn’t want to help. The anger he could deal with. But the icy cold stare and the
way she would ignore him for days on end if he didn’t help he couldn’t handle.

He followed her to the garage, where there was something on the floor wrapped in a blanket. “Help me
get this in the car,” she instructed. Bill did as he was told. He knew what this was. This wasn’t the first
time she’d asked for help with such…packages. But he knew it was for his own good. He didn’t want the
Pied Piper to take him away, now did he? “Run along now,” his Mother said when they were done.
Grateful for the dismissal, Bill returned to his room.

Bill was being tucked into bed. "Papa," he said, "When is Mother coming back?" His Papa patted his
head. "Tomorrow, little lad. Her business trip was only two nights." Bill fiddled with the edge of the
blanket and then blurted out, "I wish she wasn't ever coming back."

Bill was excited. “Can we go fishing today Papa?” Bill pleaded as he bounced up and down. “Please?”

His Papa smiled at him but shook his head. “Your Mother and I are going house hunting today, little lad.
You’ll be spending the day with Amy and her parents.”

Bill sighed, and then brightened. “Can we play in the woods?”

“If Amy’s parents say it’s okay, I don’t see why not.”

“Are we going to live in our very own house? With a yard? Like Jessica does? And Justin too?”

“So many questions,” his Papa said, but he was smiling, so it was okay. Sometimes his Mother would say
that too, but she never smiled when she did. “Yes Bill, we’re going to find us a house with a yard. And
maybe even a garage like we had at our last apartment, wouldn’t that be splendid.”

Bill gave a squeak of delight, but he fell silent as his Mother walked in. “Come along boys,” she said
firmly. His Papa took hold of his hand and they left their apartment. Amy lived one floor down, in room
B12. His Papa had once laughed about that, but Bill didn’t think his Mother had appreciated the
comment. Her lips had thinned. Papa had cut his joke off quite quick.
Amy was nine, a year older than Bill, and very shy. She’d had an accident of some kind years ago, and her
body was covered in burn scars. Bill was proud that she was no longer shy around him. He didn’t know
why she had warmed to him, but they’d become fast friends not long after she had moved in last year.
Her parents were always nice to Bill, and he liked that there were always cookies in the little brown bear
jar that sat on the kitchen counter every time he came over.

They were granted permission to play in the woods as long as they didn’t stray too far from the
apartment building. Amy gave a shriek of joy and grabbed Bill’s hand, but he didn’t need her to pull him
out the door. He was eager to play in the abandoned tree house that they’d discovered last week.

Amy slowed down once they reached the woods. She touched some of the trees as they passed. Bill had
once asked her why she did that. She’d refused to tell him for weeks. One evening she’d blurted out that
she liked the way the bark felt. Rough, like her skin. She’d avoided eye contact when she said it. But Bill
understood.

The tree house loomed above them. Amy took a deep breath. Bill knew she was nervous. She didn’t like
heights. “I can go first,” he offered. Amy nodded. Bill grabbed hold of the rope ladder and climbed
quickly. Heights didn’t bother him.

He didn’t notice something was amiss at first. His eyes were cast down at the floor as he crawled up into
the tree house, the smooth light wood faded from weather exposure. He turned to look down at Amy.
“Your turn,” he called. She didn’t respond, but took hold of the rope in determination.

Bill turned back to survey his surroundings and froze. There was someone else here. She was lying down.
Was she sleeping? Bill looked back at Amy. “Wait,” he told her, and maybe something about the way he
said the word made her pause. She stepped back, away from the rope ladder.

The girl hadn’t moved at the sound of his voice. Bill stepped closer. “Hello? My name is Bill.”

There was no answer. Bill knew she wouldn’t answer. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he was
certain of it. He stepped closer and reached out. The moment his hand made contact with the cold skin of
her arm, Bill knew. “Hi Lola,” Bill said out loud. “I’m sorry you were hurting when you died.” He pulled his
hand away.

“Bill?” Amy called to him. “What’s happening?”

“Just a minute,” Bill told her. “Don’t come up.”

It occurred to him that Amy might be scared if she saw this. He wondered why he wasn’t afraid. Curious,
he touched her arm again, but a moment later he pulled his hand away as if burned. A startled sound
emptied from his mouth and then he was scrambling away, hurrying down the rope ladder, and running
away from the tree house, Amy’s startled “wait for me!” whistling through his ears from somewhere
behind him.

Amy found him sitting behind the greenhouse not far from the apartment building. “Are you okay?” she
asked quietly. Bill shook his head, his hands wiping across his face. He could tell that Amy was curious,
but she didn’t say anything else. Instead, she sat down next to him and rested her head against his. They
sat there for a long time. “Papa will know what to do,” Bill said quietly. “Papa always knows what to do.”

“Mine always does,” Amy said. “I bet yours does too.”

Bill slowly stood up. Amy followed his lead. “Can I have a cookie from your bear first?” Bill asked. Amy
grinned and pulled him toward the building.

His parents weren’t back yet, so Bill ate his cookie and started a Monopoly game with Amy. He relaxed
as they played, but the moment Amy’s Mom came to tell him his Papa was at the door to collect him, Bill
felt his stomach ache.

As they walked through the hall, his Papa told him about the house they wanted to buy. Bill didn’t hear
any of the words. “You okay little lad?” his Papa asked him as they got into the elevator. Bill shook his
head. “What’s wrong?”

Bill stared at the floor. He shook his head again. “Bill,” his Papa said gently as he kneeled in front of him.
“Did something happen with Amy? Did you have a fight?”

Bill again shook his head. “Why did Mother hurt Lola?” he asked in a small voice.

His Papa frowned. “What do you mean? Who’s Lola?”

“The girl in the tree house in the woods. Her name is Lola.” Bill took a deep breath and whispered the last
bit. “Mother killed her and Lola was in pain. And Mother enjoyed it. Why did she enjoy hurting her?”

“Where is this coming from, Bill?” His Papa sounded stern. “That’s not a nice thing to say about your
Mother.”

“You’re Papa,” Bill said. “You know what to do about anything, right? Lola would want her family to
know what happened to her.”

His Papa looked at him and didn’t say anything. Bill felt the stirrings of frustration. “Go to the tree house,
Papa! You’ll see. I just want to know why Mother hurt her.”

“Right,” his Papa said. “We’ll talk about this later. I think you need some sleep.”

“But Papa –”

“Bill.” His Papa’s voice was firm, and Bill stopped protesting. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“Yes Papa,” Bill said.

He was quiet the rest of the evening, and went to bed early. When he finally fell asleep, it was to dreams
of Lola pleading for someone to help her. Please, she begged. Please.

Bill jolted awake, her cries still ringing silently through his mind. He was cold. Sweat clung to his
pajamas. He crawled out of bed and quietly stepped over to the dresser where he kept his clothes. He
hadn’t yet opened the top drawer when he heard voices, and he froze. It sounded like Mother. He held
still, listening, and a moment later heard the sound of his Papa’s voice too. Curious, he carefully slipped
out of his room. He hid behind the large potted plant in the hallway. His parents were standing in front of
the door of their apartment. Bill could tell they were arguing, but their voices where hushed. His Papa
was talking.

“How long has this been going on?”

“I don’t understand why this is such a big deal,” his Mother said. “We all have hobbies. I knew you
wouldn't understand, so I allow you the privilege of not knowing. And since you and William were gone
for an entire afternoon last week –”

“He was in the emergency room, Elizabeth! You're telling me you'd rather do this than worry over your
own son when he's ill?”

“William was fine. The point is you left.”

“I didn’t – no, the fucking point is that you killed a child, Elizabeth! How do you not see this?”

“Of course I see it. I did it. How could I not see it?”

Papa stared at Mother for a long time. “I don’t know you at all, do I?” he murmured.

“I tire of this conversation,” Mother said. “I don’t understand why you refuse to understand. Some people
play sports or dance at clubs or play card games. I kill children. What’s the difference?”

“I’m leaving,” Papa said abruptly. “I’ll keep my mouth shut, but I’m taking Bill and leaving and you’re
never going to see us again.”

From behind the potted plant, Bill’s heart pounded. He could see that his Mother was smiling, but it
didn’t make him feel good. His stomach hurt from that smile. “Leave if you must,” she said dangerously.
“But William stays with me.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“That’s not up to you.”

His Papa didn’t answer, but turned and started to walk down the hallway. Bill froze. Papa would see him
if he came much closer. He didn’t want to get in trouble for eavesdropping, his Mother hated when he
listened in on things that didn’t concern him. But Papa had stopped. Bill held his breath.

“You’re going to walk out that door and never come back,” he heard Mother say. He looked over at her.
She was pointing an odd looking stick at Papa. “If anyone ever asks, you’ll say you abandoned your son
when he was five. You’ll say that you needed to get away from the boy’s mother. Say you understand.”

“I understand,” his Papa said. He sounded dreamy. Fear held Bill to the spot. He didn’t understand what
was happening, but he knew it wasn’t good. “Go pack a bag and leave,” his Mother said.

Bill watched as Papa walked right past him. He didn’t notice him at all. “Papa?” Bill whispered as he
watched him walk into a bedroom.

“Oh William,” a voice said, and Bill turned to see his Mother staring at him. “You’re supposed to be in
bed.”

Bill whimpered and shrank closer to the plant. His Mother smiled at him coldly. “Don’t worry child, you
won’t remember this.” Bill was confused, but then his Mother pointed the odd stick at him, and he wasn’t
confused anymore.
It was the sun that woke him. Bill sat up and blinked at his open curtains. Why were they open? He
thought he’d closed them before he slept. He shrugged and got out of bed. He was hungry. He hoped his
Mother would let him have Cocoa Puffs.

His Mother was sitting in the kitchen when he entered. A cup of tea and a muffin sat in front of her, and
she was reading the Sunday newspaper. “Good morning Mother,” Bill said, in just the way she preferred
him to great her in the morning.

“Good morning,” she responded.

“May I have Cocoa Puffs please?”

There was silence for a long moment before she said, “Go on then,” and Bill eagerly set about preparing
his breakfast cereal. He had finished his second bowl when it occurred to him that Papa hadn’t yet
walked in. He was usually up by now. “Mother, where is Papa?”

“He left, child.” His Mother sipped her tea calmly, her gaze on the newspaper open in front of her. “He
couldn’t handle having such a disappointment for a son. He’s gone.”

“He’s…gone?”

“And he’s not ever going to come back, child.”

Bill pushed away the cereal box. He suddenly didn’t feel hungry anymore. “He left because of me?”

“Yes child, you weren’t what he wanted for a son. He didn’t want you. So he left.”

Bill tried not to cry. His Mother hated tears. He couldn’t hold them all back. Two tears slipped down his
cheeks. “May I be excused please?”

“Come here,” she said, her hand extended. Bill obeyed at once, leaning forward in his chair so she could
reach him. She wiped away the drops on his face roughly, her voice stern. “Remember, tears are a sign of
weakness. Don’t cry.”

“Yes Mother,” Bill heard himself say, the words an automatic response. He wanted to run away. His
Mother’s touch had never been comfortable for him, and he’d never told anyone that. But he’d never felt
this, this felt like…felt like…he tried to remember but it slipped away.

“You may be excused now,” Mother told him, and Bill didn’t need to be told twice.

Bill slipped off his chair and was almost out of the kitchen before he heard his Mother say his name. He
bit his lip to keep the tears from falling. He turned around. His Mother looked at him, a blank look on her
face. “I promise I’ll never do that to you, William. I’ll never leave you. You may be a disappointment but I
will not shirk my responsibility to you.”

“Thank you Mother,” Bill said. She turned back to her newspaper. Bill left the room. The tears spilled
along his face as he walked away. He didn't make a sound. Mother hated tears, and hated the sound of
tears even more. He ran to the first place he could think of where he’d be alone. He sat in the tree house
and sobbed.
What had he done, to make his Papa leave? What could have he have done differently? How could he
have been a better son? Bill's head hurt as he remembered each thing he'd ever done that had made his
Papa upset or disappointed. His fault. His fault.

Later, after his tears had dried, he wondered why the tree house no longer felt safe to him, but he
couldn’t think of a reason.

He was in his room and Mother was yelling….

He was in the car and Mother was lecturing….

He stumbled over a bloody girl in the living room….

"I'll keep you safe from the devil, child, run along now…."

Bill felt his Mother's eyes on him as he watched the television and felt his stomach bubble with
something previously unknown….

His Mother threw out instructions as Bill attempted to figure out how to make the stick shift work, her
voice and the fear of crashing her car throwing him into a panic attack that grew worse at his Mother's
distain….

Bill rolled his eyes as his Mother's lecture turned to the topic of avoiding the inconvenience of causing a
woman's pregnancy, something he regretted a moment later when she slapped him for his disrespect.
"I'm gay," he threw out as he rubbed his cheek. "No need to panic over pregnancy." He regretted the
remark moments later. He really had grown too large to fit in the oven, but that didn't stop his Mother
from trying her hardest. She fiddled with the knob and Bill closed his eyes and prayed she didn't burn
him.

Bill couldn't sleep. He slid out of bed and stood by the window. His breath caught as he caught sight of
his Mother in the moonlight carrying a child to her car parked in the driveway. He turned away. The less
he knew the better. He couldn't risk his job. It gave him the excuse to be out at odd hours.

Bill stayed in the hospital overnight after the car crash “for observation” the doctors said. He kept
enquiring about his Mother, but all they could tell him was that she was “touch and go” and that they
were “doing everything they could”. His heart raced at the thought of losing her. He’d never considered it
before. He didn’t like how the thought made him feel. He didn’t think anyone else would feel…stop. Wait.
He didn’t feel that. He’d been through a trauma; it was natural to feel confused.

He was allowed to leave the hospital the next day. The doctors told him he was “very lucky” and that it
was “a miracle” that he hadn’t been badly injured. Bill wanted to roll his eyes at that. His entire body felt
like he’d been steamrolled over and his chest was sporting some pretty damn fine bruises and he had
dozens of small cuts from flying glass. It was the explanation into his Mother’s injuries that gave him
cause for understanding why the doctors told him he was lucky. Aside from the fact that she was alive,
she had not fared well at all, and not only would her recovery would take some time, but she would now
be confined to a wheelchair. “Paralyzed from the waist down,” the doctors told him.
The first time he was allowed to visit was nearly a week later. His Mother hadn’t seemed glad to see him,
merely given him a phone number and told him to ask the other person on the line to come visit her. Bill
escorted the woman into the building only an hour later. “Leave us,” she told him as soon as they
entered her room.

Bill nodded, but his curiosity made him watch though a crack in the door as the other woman handed his
Mother some sort of thin stick. “It won’t work Liz,” the woman said. “It’s been too long since your initial
injuries. Even we can’t fix everything.”

His Mother didn’t seem to believe her. “Thank you for your concern. We’re even now. You may go.”

The other woman nodded and turned to leave. Bill swiftly moved away from the door and ducked into a
supply closet until he was sure she had gone.

Bill tried to visit his Mother again the next day but the nurses informed him that she didn’t want any
visitors. They would give him a call when it was time to take her home, they said. Bill was shocked. He
stumbled away from the hospital. He thought he heard someone call his name as he got into his car, but
he didn’t see anyone.

It took three weeks before his Mother was ready to come home. Bill drove to the hospital and sat in the
car for ten minutes. He wasn’t a stranger to panic attacks but he hadn’t had one this bad in awhile. He
wondered why before he decided he didn’t want to know why. She was sitting in a wheelchair in the
lobby when he entered. The nurse kindly explained what the next steps were and when her next
scheduled follow up appointment was before he allowed Bill to wheel her gently out the double doors.

He had parked at the end of the loading zone just outside the doors. He helped his Mother into the rental
car and had opened the driver’s side door when he heard someone shout his name. He turned. A man
was walking toward him, his eyes lit up in recognition and hope, and Bill had a vague sense that he
should know him but could not place him.

“Bill! It’s me,” the man said as he walked closer, and Bill took a tiny step forward, but then something in
the man’s eyes glossed over and dimmed. He stopped and stood there for a second. Bill furrowed his
brow. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, fine,” the man said in a faraway tone. “I’ll just be going then. I just remembered…” He turned
around and walked away. Bill stared after him for a moment before he climbed into the car. He looked
over at his Mother, who was tucking that odd looking stick back in the pocket of her sweater. “Do you
need to stop anywhere before we head home?”

“No William,” she told him in a horse voice. “Let’s go home.”

Bill was at the grocery store. He watched the playful laughter of the young boy and his parents in line at
the checkout stand and his chest hurt. Once outside he sat on the curb with his bags around him and
sobbed.

Bill entered the house and shrugged out of his jacket. His Mother wheeled into the entryway and he
nearly stopped breathing at the words his Mother told him. "You had a visitor today. He tried to lie, he
told me he was looking for directions to some restaurant. He knows you, child. How does he know you?"
He stared at her. "I don't know who you mean, Mother." Her eyes sharpened. "Don’t lie, child. You know
who I mean. And you-"
"And I what, Mother," Bill said when the silence had dragged on much too long. She didn't answer him.
"No one," she said dangerously, "No one will ever take you away from me." Bill crossed his arms over his
chest, unwilling to examine that statement for its implied meaning. "You have nothing to worry about,"
he said. Her eyes flashed in anger, and he knew that had he been closer she would have hit him.
Somewhere, a part of him felt grateful for her wheelchair - but he cut that thought off just as his Mother
unleashed a hateful volley of words. He stood there and for the first time allowed his mind to drift away
from her and focus on something else.

The first thing Bill noticed when he came to was that he was still clutching his head tightly. He lessened
the pressure and noticed that there were only faint traces of pain now, the splitting migraine-like agony
almost entirely gone. "Well shit," he mused out loud. "What was that." That wasn't quite what people
had described as a "life flashing before their eyes" moment, and yet that was the only term he could
come up with for what had just happened. And none of those memories had taken place in the years
after Elizabeth's Earthly death, either. If Bill had ever thought to wonder what a "life flashing before his
eyes" moment would be like to experience, he'd have immediately known that Canice would feature
heavily. Yet much of these memories were from his early childhood and teenaged years. He didn't think
he'd seen a memory that had him older than his very early twenties. He scrubbed a hand over his face.
He was surprised to find that he was drenched in sweat. He knew instinctively that these memories
were a part of his past, and yet none of them were familiar to him.

"I should have fixed that." If the words themselves weren't enough to startle Bill, the fury in the tone
would have done it. He frowned in the darkness. The echo of his Mother's voice generally stuck to
taunts and comments about the people Bill encountered, the same as anyone else's self-talk, or so he
imagined. This was different in both words and tone.

"You should not remember, child. You should never have remembered. I researched this. There was not
any way for you to remember unless one of us with power destroyed your mind. And yet you remember,
and your mind is intact. How did I not learn of this power? How can I learn this power?"

"I don't - I don't-" Bill stuttered in disbelief. "I don't understand."

"It matters not. Stupid boy. You got caught. You've lost me my extra body, child."

Bill shook his head from side to side, and the wood beneath him gave him something to focus on and
ground his rapidly spinning mind. He was having a conversation with himself, was he not? His negative
self-talk was simply spinning out of control. He was going mad. He was stuck, about to die, it was only
natural that one would go mad, after all.

"Stupid boy. For one who believes in demons, you seem unable to grasp the idea that I am real. We are
having a real conversation, child. We always have been."

"Taunting me and the people in my life is not 'real conversation', Bill shot back hotly before the words
caught up to him. "Hold two ticks. What did you just say?"

"You heard me. Do keep up."

“This.” Bill’s voice failed, and he tried again. “This is real? But I thought it was happening in my head?”
Silence.

Bill’s mind whirled. He waited. The silence stretched on. “Come on,” he wheedled. “Now you go silent?
Now? After all this time? As you so pointed out, I’m stuck down here. I’m going to…die, what does it
matter? For once in your goddamn life tell me the fucking truth!” His heart pounded and he belatedly
hoped that God would forgive him for using His name in vein.

Oh child. She sounded amused. Did I not teach you anything? Just because something is happening in
your head, why should that mean that it is not real?

"But - how?" Bill said, bewildered. "I don't understand."

"Once again, for someone so willing to believe in demons and all that religious crap, you show a startling
lack of understanding. The world hides secrets you know nothing - nothing! - about."

"So tell me," Bill challenged. "What don't I know?"

"Power exists in this world like you have never dreamed of, child. They call it magic, but it is a power so
strong no weak squib such as yourself could imagine. I am a witch."

"I know you're a bitch," Bill muttered, for lack of anything else to say. He wasn't sure what to make of
her words.

"Witch, you ungrateful squib."

"Insults only work if someone understands the word used to insult," Bill shot back, and god it felt good.
He'd never dared to speak to Elizabeth this way growing up for fear of her punishments. But she was just
a voice in his head now, and he'd spent the last decade and more verbally sparing with Canice. It was
second nature to him, now.

Silence filled the air for long enough that Bill nearly assumed Elizabeth no longer wanted to talk. When
the response came, he could tell she was resigned, somehow. Her words seemed filled with the kind of
weariness she had displayed when Bill was a young boy and he had asked her a question.

"When you were born, I expected you to be a wizard. I am a witch with strong magical abilities, and
magic is often passed down through the generations. But magic can be fickle. I myself was from a non-
magical family. Magic chose me. I assumed my magic would be passed along should I bear any children,
but I had hoped to double my chances by breeding with a wizard. I had not intended on becoming
pregnant when I took up with your Father. I waited and watched for years - years! I always hoped you
would turn out like me." She sounded bitter. "I could have taught you so much. I had hope once. Your
blasted Father gave me hope when he told me that you’d known that I’d killed that child in the tree
house. I hoped…I tested you…and you let me down time and time again."

"The knowledge I receive from touch is a gift from God," Bill shot out. "Who needs magic when-" His
words were cut off by the laughter that echoed in his head. "Oh William. Your god does not exist. The
things you know from touch is a type of Seer ability, and not even a very useful one! Most Seers in the
magical world are, in fact, magical! And possess Full Sight! You technically are not a squib, as you have a
touch of Seer ability, but for all the good that did me you might as well be a full squib!"
Bill wasn't sure what to do with any of Elizabeth's claims. "You still haven't explained what a squib is," he
said, for lack of any other kind of response.

"One of your parents is magical. You should have been born with magical abilities. You were not.
Therefore, you are a squib."

"Except for, as you say, my 'seer abilities'," Bill said, skeptical. "Right. I don't believe you. My abilities are
a gift from God, a reward for my faith and the trials he gave me in the form of you."

"Oh for goodness sake child, you are not special. You were not chosen by some almighty god. You were
simply randomly born to a Mother who is a witch. There is no grand plan, William."

Bill didn't want to hear any more. He covered his ears as he softly recited St. Michael the Archangel's
Prayer in an attempt to drown out her words. "…be our defense against the wickedness and snares of
the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray…"

"Honestly William, do you think that will work? We're having this conversation in your head, you cannot
block me out."

"Watch me," Bill told her when he had finished his prayer. He began to repeat the words, a soft chant in
the otherwise still silence.

"Where even did this religious crap come from? I did not teach you this shit."

"Oh yes you did," Bill broke off his prayer to contradict her thought. "Who taught me that the devil
might come and take me away? Who told me that children had to be sacrificed so that I would not be
found by the devil? If the devil exists, Elizabeth, then so does God!"

"I told you I lied about all that!" The words were disbelieving, now. "Come now, William, don't you
remember? I did not erase that memory."

Bill felt his heart rate pick up as he tossed that last sentence around in his mind. Elizabeth, not one to be
patient, threw out, "Did we not cover this earlier? You should not have remembered all of those
memories! I modified your memory with magic - you should not have remembered any of that. The last
time in known history someone's memories were recovered, their mind was left in shambles! Yet here
you are, your mind intact."

Bill recoiled from the thought of Elizabeth digging through his head to remove whatever she wished
before a thought hit him like a lightning bolt. "That man- the one who took me - Harry something - he's a
wizard."

"Do you believe me now?" She was smug.

Bill ignored her. "He told me he had magic - that he had power I could only dream of - and he was
talking about things I'd forgotten - a block on my memories - this is what he meant! Those memories you
erased. The ones I just - they came back to me. He must have reversed what you used."
"It must be new magic." She was disgruntled now. "There was no spell to safely reverse memory damage
when I was in school."

"Why would you-" Bill cut himself off. "You know what? Just shut up."

"Now you want me to shut up? Too late, you can't change your mind. You wanted me to talk. You got
your wish."

Bill didn't want to listen anymore. "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle…"

"Would you stop with that shit? The devil does not exist, William! I made up those stories. And since the
devil does not exist, neither does your god you pray to! I told you I lied, remember?"

Bill remembered. Of course he remembered. But he didn't want to, didn't want to remember the day
the lies broke free, the way he'd felt, the way he'd tried to-

"Suck it up, William. You can't run here, and there's nowhere to hide. You have nothing else to do."

He didn't want to remember that day. But the thing about trying not to think about something, he'd
found, was that it made it rather damn impossible to actually think about anything else.

Bill yawned quietly as he glanced in the rearview mirror and then down to check the clock on the dash. It
was nearing six in the evening. He had another hour of driving. He slid his eyes over to the right to check
on his passenger before he faced forward once more. His Mother had hardly moved the entire drive. She
was still staring out the side window. She wasn’t crying. Bill didn’t think he’d ever seen her cry in his
entire life. The funeral they’d come from in Asbury Park had been full of people mourning; sobs had filled
the church service. Bill had wondered if he’d ever care for anyone enough to cry at their funeral.

Bill had never met the deceased. His Mother had never introduced him to her parents. He didn’t think
he’d even known their names until the day his Mother had announced that they would be driving to New
Jersey for her Father’s funeral. Apparently his wife had died long ago and he’d never remarried. Bill
wondered why his Mother had never spoken of either of her parents.

He heard the rustle of clothing and looked over at his Mother. She had moved to turn her gaze in front of
her. She seemed pensive. “My Father once talked to me about legacy,” she said abruptly. “He was a
military man, legacy was important to him. I was eleven. We were stationed in France at the time. I had
just been told that I’d been accepted at Beauxbatons Acadamy. Legacy is important, he told me. You’ve
got to think about what you’re going to leave behind in this world. Do you want to be remembered as
abnormal, as some kind of freak? Or do you want to be the beautiful wife and mother that you will
someday become?” The last sentences were spit out in fury. “I decided from then on that I was going to
build my own legacy. I would be more powerful than anyone else. I would learn to do the things that no
one else dared to try.”

Bill listened to her words, shocked. She’d never spoken to him about her childhood before. She rarely
talked to him at all, aside from the mundane what is your work schedule this week and pick up milk on
your way home, punctuated with random demands or lectures and a scolding here and there. He could
read her moods like the back of his hand, but he knew nothing about her past.
“I ran away from home that very evening. I attended Beauxbatons and I built my power from the ground
up, and I’ve spent my whole life building my legacy.” His Mother was quiet for a moment. Bill glanced at
her. She seemed to be thinking about what to say next.

“Having children,” she finally said, “is one way to build a legacy. But I’ve chosen a slightly different path.
A better one. Children pave another way for a powerful legacy, one that ensures that I shall not be
forgotten, that I shall never have to fear the thing that all others do.”

Bill frowned slightly as he remembered that she’d once said that to him before. “That child I saw. The
one you were digging the grave for that day you took me to the woods as a kid. That’s part of what
you’re talking about, isn’t it? You said that to me that day. That children pave the way for a powerful
legacy.”

His Mother looked at him then. Bill hardly dared to breathe. He kept his eyes on the road. Should he have
kept his mouth shut? She didn’t like him to bring up the past. After several long seconds he could feel her
gaze slip away from him. Out of his peripheral he could see she was looking ahead once more. “What
else do you remember from that day?” she asked him.

“I remember you told me that you’d done it for my own good,” Bill said. “You had to make sure I wasn’t
taken by the Devil or his servant the Pied Piper. You were doing it to protect me. I remember you took me
for ice cream after you’d buried the child.”

“Would you ever follow in my footsteps?” she asked abruptly. “Help me build this legacy, William. Would
you ever do that? I can teach you so much. You may be a useless squib but there are other ways to build
power, there are so many things I could teach you.”

Bill raised an eyebrow in confusion. His Mother had called him many things over the years, but she’d
never used the word ‘squib’ before and he had no clue what it meant. The disdainful tone was enough to
know that she did not approve. Perhaps she’d learned another new word while reading the Scrabble
Dictionary. She liked to read it before bed. It helped her sleep, she’d once said.

“I’m in the police academy, Mother,” Bill explained patiently. “The legacy you’re asking me to help with…
it’s not exactly legal. You know I understand why you have to do it, you’re protecting me from the Devil.
But I’ll be able to keep the Devil at bay much easier if I have access to the resources that officers do, and I
don’t want to risk losing all that.”

“One way or another, you’re going to have a part to play,” his Mother told him firmly. “I can guarantee
that you’ll never have to worry about losing access to your resources.”

Bill looked at her in confusion for a brief second. “What do you mean by that?”

“How many times have you come across one of the children I’ve sacrificed?”

Bill frowned in thought. “Half a dozen.”

“Wrong,” she said, and she sounded smug. “Seventeen.”

Bill gasped, and in his shock he lessened the pressure of his foot on the gas pedal. The speedometer
inched downwards several notches before he noticed and returned to his previous pace.
“The Devil and his servants among us are not the only ones who posses special abilities in this world,” she
continued, and she still held the smug tone. “I have power most do not, and the knowledge of the
Darkest parts of this power. Those children serve my purpose, just as you will too. Some call such
knowledge Dark, but they are blind to the light that shines within such darkness.”

“I don’t understand,” Bill said. “Are you…are you saying you know how to make people forget things?
You’ve made me forget things?”

“It’s so easy to manipulate your stupid mind,” she mocked him. “I can tell you whatever I want, and you’ll
believe me. I don’t even have to use my power sometimes. You were always so weak.”

Bill clenched his hands around the wheel. He felt the irritation bubble up and he bit his lip to keep calm.
“What are you playing at,” he asked in a low voice. “Did the Devil’s servants get to you? Or is this your
idea of a joke? This isn’t funny.”

“On the contrary, this is exceptionally amusing.” He glanced over at her and noticed the nasty smile that
played at the edge of her mouth. “Come now child, use your brain. Did I ever care to protect you in any
way? Why would I ever care to keep the Devil away from you? I had to think of something to tell you
when you caught me with that dead child. So I lied.”

Bill wrestled with his brain. He didn’t understand what she was playing at. He was confused. He didn’t
know what to believe.

“I could have simply made you forget, I know,” she said thoughtfully. “But I needed to teach you that the
sight of a dead body was normal, and wasn’t something to be ashamed of.”

There was silence for a moment as Bill struggled to follow. His Mother simply watched him. “I don’t
understand,” he finally said. “Why do you kill them if not to protect me from the Devil and the Pied
Piper?”

His Mother laughed. “Such a stupid boy. You do not see? Oh child. I am the Pied Piper.”

Bill jerked, and the wheel turned slightly in his surprise. He corrected his mistake automatically; he was
grateful that traffic wasn’t heavy at this time. Mind blank with shock, he blurted out the first thing that
popped into his head. “Why would you tell me that?”

“Because you have to know the truth for you to help me build this legacy,” she told him.

“I’m going to be a police officer!” Bill blurted out. “I’m going to help people, not hurt them!” His heart
pounded with his anxiety. He never talked back to his Mother. He wasn’t sure how he was able to do so
now. The world had narrowed to this Subaru and the woman sitting next to him. He felt as if in a dream,
or perhaps time had stopped. He didn’t want to believe this, not at all, he couldn’t believe this. He had
turned a blind eye to the dead children he’d come across. He had believed that their sacrifice was
necessary to keep him safe from the Devil, as his Mother had told him. If this was not true…oh god.

“I do not hurt people, they hurt themselves,” she told him coolly. “The capacity that humans have for evil
makes them alone unique.” Bill can see out of the corner of his eye that she had clenched her fists at her
sides, and he knew that if he wasn’t currently driving, she would have taken a swing at him. “Popular
belief is that love makes the world turn,” she continued. “But no, even animals have the ability to love
and show compassion. Humans alone have the ability for deliberate evil, William.”
There was a heavy silence for a moment. Bill kept his eyes focused on the road. After a moment he
realized his fingers were clamped onto the wheel so tightly they hurt; he loosened them and felt
immediate relief at the sensation. “The true gift that Satan gave Eve,” she said in the same calm tone, “is
the divine spark of evil. Do you not see this, child? To deny the ability to inflict evil upon each other is to
deny our own souls. I am doing what I was born to do. And if I raised you right, child, you will follow the
path that has been laid out for us for centuries.”

Bill tried to calm his racing heart by taking a deep breath. It didn’t work. He had no idea what to say in
response. He couldn’t do what she wanted. It was one thing to sacrifice a child if it were necessary, but
quite another to kill one in cold blood. The fear inside his body bubbled under his skin and turned into
something else, something he didn’t want to acknowledge that he felt.

“You will become a policeman,” his Mother said. “You will have access to information that will help us
along our path. You will earn their trust. You will be respected. And then you will come home and we will
use what you know to our advantage. You’ve been spending too much time away from home, William.”

“I’m…” Bill couldn’t get the words out, somehow. The emotion he didn’t want to face turned in his
stomach.

His Mother waved a dismissing hand in the air. “Yes child, I know you have a job and are attending the
Academy. But where were you early this morning, hmm? You were gone for two hours.”

“I was at the gym,” Bill said, his voice low. He knew he sounded scratchy, his mouth dry from anxiety. “I
have to be in good shape to pass the physical tests at the Academy.”

She didn’t respond to that. Bill glanced in her direction and saw she had gone back to staring out the
window. Flashes of her words flew around and around in his brain. God help us all. He hadn’t realized
that he’d said the words out loud until his Mother laughed coldly. “Satan and those with the power to
follow him are the Gods now, child. Your God is gone. You can call on Him all you like, but you’ll always
be alone in the dark. Satan is the way.”

“God is not gone,” Bill threw back at her, and he could feel that emotion crawling up his veins, burning
away the fear of her punishment for his sass. She laughed at him. “Oh? And how are you so certain of
this?”

“I can hear him,” Bill told her.

She laughed again. “Oh child. And what is he saying? Mercy? Oh please.”

Something about the sarcastic way she spit the words at him brought the fire in his veins rushing to the
surface. He wasn’t angry, no, this was something beyond anger, a white hot fury he didn’t think he could
contain, and it made him bold enough to speak his mind. “To be human is not about good or evil. It’s
about choice. To be your best self or to fall into the abyss. This is the sum of our Father’s faith in us. He’s
always with us, willing us to pass the test.”

Another laugh burst from her mouth, and Bill could hear the distain, the utter contempt for his words,
the full on dismissal of his thoughts in that one sound. “I see you have forgotten your duty,” she said
scathingly. “I gave you life, child. You owe me. It is your duty to do as I say, do not forget this. I pray you
choose to follow my footsteps of your own volition, for I shall then know that I have raised you correctly.
But you will follow me regardless.”
Bill’s hands trembled on the wheel, the rage within needing an outlet, and he wanted to scream at her,
scream for all the years of pent up fear and anger, but something held him back, some sort of self
preservation tucked away in the back of his mind.

“I always knew you were gullible,” she continued resentfully, “And it has frustrated me to no end that
you never showed any inclination to be full of the same power that runs though my blood. But I did not
raise you to be weak, William. You disgust me. I have beaten it through your head time and time again,
and if I have to keep doing it for the rest of your pathetic life I will do so. It is bad enough I ended up with
fate worse than a mudblood for a son, you filthy squib, but I will not stand for this weakness.”

His whole body was shaking now, and Bill struggled to keep the wheel straight as he turned his Mother’s
tirade over in his mind. She had fallen silent again, her gaze turned back outside the window as if their
conversation was beneath her. All of her hateful words thrown at him so calmly, so coldly, and yet all he
could think about was that she had lied. Why this was such as shock to him, he didn’t understand. “You…
lied…to me,” he said slowly, and he wasn’t speaking to her, not really, but of course she’d heard him, and
she turned her head to look at him. “What’s your point?”

Bill didn’t know what to say to that. He could see her head shaking in amusement from the corner of his
eye, and when she spoke her tone made clear that she relished his confusion. “Oh child, so naïve. Yes, I
lied about the Pied Piper, and I lied about the reasons why your pain was so necessary. Come now
William, you are old enough to understand that you are not the center of the universe. I do not cause you
pain to protect you from some imaginary harm or to keep the world from imploding. I don’t care about
protecting you, nor do I care if the world implodes. Your pain, your suffering, is necessary because I will it
so. Pain is weakness leaving the body. You are still so weak. I prescribe you more pain for your own
good.”

His heart raced with the terror of the knowledge of the pain to come, and underneath it was the current
of anger, no longer white hot but rather steady, slow, and as it slipped deep into his bones a dark
thought pulsed. It steadied his hands on the wheel and slowed his breathing. No more would he submit
to…those kinds of physical punishments, not if what she told him now was true, if his pain did not protect
him, and did not protect the world. Was it all for naught then, the way she made him feel only pain?

Silence enveloped the car again. His Mother seemed to take his lack of response for acquiescence, and
returned to watch the scenery flow past their Subaru. This was her mistake to make, Bill thought for a
brief second before he allowed the current of anger to flow unchecked. As the road curved gently to the
right, Bill smoothly twisted the wheel more than the turn called for and simultaneously reached over and
pressed the button to unbuckle the passenger seatbelt. As the belt automatically retracted, his Mother
looked over at him. She had time for a startled “what are you doing?” before the car shot across the
other lanes and hit the right guardrail. He had expected it, but the jolt still surprised Bill, and a startled
noise left his lips as the car tipped forward. For a long moment, the car held there, suspended with the
headlights pressed to the ground and the trunk pointed to the sky, and Bill inexplicably thought of that
day in school he’d learned about the disaster that was the Titanic, and the way it had pointed straight up
to the sky before slipping under the waves. Rather hysterically, he felt himself shaking with laughter that
gave no sound.

He had no memory of the car falling, or of the actual fall itself. He came to slowly, his brain foggy and
sluggish. He dimly registered the pain of the seatbelt that held his body in place, and that it appeared to
be the only thing that had saved him from the fate that had befallen his Mother. The car had flipped
completely over, the roof pressed to the ground, and he could see that she lay below him, her body bent
at odd angles. He was fairly sure she was unconscious.

Bill blinked his eyes several times. There was some sort of mist that obscured his vision. Everything
around him seemed hazy. His entire body stung in an unpleasant sort of way, almost reminiscent of tiny
pinpricks of thousands of needles that were simultaneously sinking through flesh. A low moan brought
his attention down to his Mother. Her eyes were closed, but her hand dragged along the roof of the car
to reach inside the pocket of the slacks she wore. She pulled out some sort of stick. Bill looked away, no
longer interested in her, and tested out his limbs. His arms and legs seemed to be fine. His hands felt as if
on fire, and shit, there were shards of glass all over them.

When a word spoken in a broken rasp filled the air Bill’s gaze shot back to his Mother. He had just
enough time to wonder why she knew Latin when a sudden burst of drowsiness hit him followed by an
intense ache that overwhelmed his entire body in the space of an instant. His eyes closed as his ears rang
and his vision turned into nothing more than black dots dancing under heavy lids.

In another instant, as if a switch had been turned off, the ache disappeared and Bill returned to a semi-
conscious state. “I said, can you hear me?” a booming voice shouted, and Bill moved his head to see a
heavyset man with a concerned expression peering into the car by the busted windshield.

“Ye-yes,” Bill choked out. He could see his Mother’s hand moving as if searching for something and
thought she must have dropped her stick. Her left arm was the only part of her body that moved as her
fingers scrambled around the roof, and Bill briefly wondered if she was unable to move the rest of her
body before the man spoke again. “I’ve called 911, help is on the way.”

Bill closed his eyes. “Right,” he managed.

“Stay awake for me son,” the man said. “Keep talking to me, yeah?”

“Tired,” Bill muttered.

“I know, but you have to stay awake. Talk to me son. What do you do for a living?”

“Training. Police.”

“No shit, really?” The man whistled. “I wanted to be a cop when I was younger. Ended up knocking up my
girlfriend instead. Three kids later and I’m too old to enter the academy now. Do you like it?”

“Sure,” Bill said. It was hard to talk. He was so tired.

“Stay awake son. Miss? Can you hear me?” The man attempted to address his Mother but she did not
answer. Bill wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t want to or because she couldn’t. “What’s your name
son?” the man asked him.

“Bill,” he managed to get out.

“Nice to meet you Bill, I’m Danny. What’s this lady’s name?”

The thought of attempting to say ‘Elizabeth’ was overwhelming, and Bill didn’t think he’d be able to get
out all four syllables. “Liz,” he said.

“Liz? Can you hear me?”

There was no reply. Danny held Bill’s gaze. “It shouldn’t be long for help to get here. Dispatch said that
there was a couple of different emergency personal nearby….and here they are,” he said with relief.
“Thank God.”

Bill closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he wanted to thank God or not. He’d not planned on surviving this
stunt. His Mother always said how useless he was. Apparently he was useless at this too.

A sudden cramp in his leg pulled Bill away from the sharp glass edge of memory of a car crash and into
the reality of a small wooden box in the darkness. Would it have been better, to die back then? Had he
succeeded in killing both Elizabeth and himself, the world would have kept turning. Good and Evil would
have continued to exist side by side, with or without his aid. God he was so tired.

"Now is not the time to wallow, William."

Bill could feel his eyes narrow as he pondered her statement with suspicion. There was an edge to her
tone that he didn't understand. "What's it to you, if I wallow?"

No reply was forthcoming, but Bill had more pressing things on his mind anyway. "You said you lied
about why you killed those children, you never said you lied about the devil. You spoke as if he were real
to you."

"You had no need to know about magic then. I used language you would understand. It was meant to be
metaphorical." The exasperation oozed out of every syllable.

He shook his head, unwilling to allow the voice of his Mother to challenge his worldview. Magic he could
accept. What were miracles, after all? But the thought that the religion he'd followed for as long as he
could remember might have flaws in its logic…Now was not the time for that shit. If he ever got out of
this mess, Bill thought wryly, he would need one hell of a therapy session. "Why did you never kill me,"
he asked, both as an attempt to change the subject and because he was truly curious.

"I would never sink to such a trite act. You are my child, and as such, the special, prolonged touch was
more suitable. You of all people should know how much damage the human body can sustain before
death comes knocking. It was an enjoyable experiment. All those years - such a pleasure to inflict pain.
Your barman and I share this trait, do we not?"

"Don't talk about Canice as if you know him," Bill burst out.

"Oh William. Let us not pretend as if we are any different. I had you first. You were mine first. All you had
to do was give me the same consideration you have given to him. Why were you never able to do so?"

Shock and anger and disgust warred within, but Bill had no words to speak. When he finally found
words, it was only to say "How can you actually believe that we had any sort of bond at all?" His voice
shook with the anger only years of abuse could build.

"Didn't we? I ruined all other women for you, did I not?"

"You did not determine my sexuality, Elizabeth!" Bill shouted.

"I do so wish you had not taken comfort in the arms of that barman, child. He seeks the lust of the kill.
How long before he turns that lust on you?"

"God delivered Canice to me to aid me in the Good Work," Bill tossed out. "In turn I can save Canice's
soul."

"I thought the same of your Father, child. I thought, given enough time to break him, he would mold
himself into the perfect man. I'll give you a little secret. Unless you can wave a wand and bend people to
your will, they will remain unpredictable."

"Is that what you did, then?" Bill taunted. "Molded him to your will? Your magic must not be very
powerful if it allowed him to leave us."

There was silence. It filled the air with a thick meaning that Bill did not understand for a long moment
before it dawned on him slowly. "That memory….you made him leave. You made him leave! He didn't -
he wanted to take me with him! You made him leave with your - you - he didn't-" Bill couldn't finish. The
enormity of the realization washed through his bones as he replayed the memories he'd lost. There was
silence as Bill looked at his past with new eyes. "He didn't want to leave," he whispered at last, and the
overwhelming emotion of this thought brought tears to the surface.

"You made me do it. If you hadn't told him about the girl in the treehouse, I wouldn't have had to do
that."

"No!" Bill lashed out. "I am not the same scared little boy anymore, Mother. You do not control me and
how I think and feel. Not anymore."

No reply came. Bill's anger took the unusual form of tears and poured from his face the way the rain had
poured in the jungle, when he'd taken a walk with Canice to find privacy away from the shared hut
they'd stayed in for a short time. He remembered huddling under a tree hiding from the rain, Canice's
arms wrapped around him, and god he needed that warmth right now but he'd never feel that again,
would he. He cried for that loss, for the loss of a Father he'd been deprived of, for the loss of a childhood
he'd only partly remembered. "You made me reject him," he choked out into the darkness. "Twelve
years ago. He found me. I rejected him because you'd told me-" His words cut off as he gulped for air, his
tears ugly and harsh in the otherwise silent space.

Elizabeth did not reply.

His tears eventually dried out. Exhausted both mentally and physically, Bill reached a hand almost
absentmindedly above him to touch at the cool wood, his mind drifting inexplicably to Canice, and he
drew a sharp breath in as he found himself strangely in danger of tears once more.

Bill had never understood why most people searched the world for someone to couple up with. What
was so appealing about finding so called true love? Chasing after some fairy tale? If his Mother had
taught him anything about love it was that the elusive emotion people so sought after was nonsense,
something children were taught to believe in simply to ensure the survival of their kind.

Perhaps he could understand it from a purely practical note. An extra body to share the burden of living
on a functional level, the mundane parts of life such as grocery shopping, cleaning the house, or an extra
income, especially in the City of New York where Bill had spent so many years living off of a policeman's
salary.

And yet.

There was another thing Bill had never understood. The need to cry over another person. But that
wasn't true, was it. He had, before. He had. And his Mother had taken it away, erased it like he was an
Etch-A-Sketch. How much of his childhood had he lost? Was it all a lie?

But here it was now, at last. The truth. This wasn't a lie. And Canice wasn't a lie.

His hand roamed over the smooth wood above him and that inexplicable desire to succumb to the tears
his Mother had so hated stole over him again, a wave that crashed across his toes as if he were standing
at the edge of where the sand met the sea. He'd never thought of Canice as the embodiment of the fairy
tale others desired. Canice wasn't some perfect prince and Bill certainly was no damsel in distress.
Canice was his Little Monster. Canice was bones, blood and screams. Canice was lies and hidden
meanings and hard lines and hands tightened around his throat in desire. Canice was his partner in
crime. Fairy tales and true love? Nonsense.

And yet. The truth. Canice was his. Canice would always be his.

Canice had been his long before Bill had realized it was so.

At twenty-three, Bill had been a semi-idealistic police officer in New York City and well-respected when
he'd found himself in the middle of a case completely unlike any other he'd worked up until that point.

He walked through the station, the maze of desks and boxed up piles of case files his only obstacles. He
took deep breaths as he went, conscious of the sympathetic looks the other detectives sent his way.
"Bill," a voice from behind said, and Bill turned to see Misha, the detective who'd been first on scene, her
face as compassionate as her voice had been. "Do you want me to go in with you?"

Bill shook his head, a weak reassuring smile on his face in an attempt to show his gratitude. "Thanks
Misha, but I have a feeling…" He trailed off with a meaningful look, and she nodded. "Make sure he
knows we're in his corner," she said softly. Bill nodded and turned his footsteps back toward the office.

When he knocked on the door, Captain Keller's gruff "come in" made him wince internally. Another deep
breath later and he was fully inside his Captain's cramped office. He shut the door quietly behind him.
Captain Keller was seated behind his desk. His desk was completely clear, and Bill's surprise must have
shown on his face, because the first words out of Captain's mouth were, "I'm taking a few days off to
deal with the funeral arrangements," and Bill nodded his understanding. "Am I to report to you upon
your return, or another?"

Captain sighed. "Officially, I am to recuse myself. Unofficially….well. The Deputy Chief and the Chief are
both brand-spanking new to their positions, and Commander Bryce has told me privately that I may end
up directing the show regardless. I trust you and Misha, so I'll allow you leeway to use your judgment as
you see fit unless there seems to be a reason to step in."

"Yes sir," Bill said.

"What have you found so far?" Captain asked.

Bill hesitated for only a moment before he answered. "Sir, we found a broken doll head at the scene."

Captain's face went pale, and Bill could physically feel the despair that showed on the man's face. No
other words were necessary. With that one phrase, Bill knew that Captain understood that his daughter
had suffered an inhuman amount of pain before she had died. Bill waited until Captain Keller motioned
him to continue before doing so. "There is evidence that she may have been turning tricks, sir."

The Captain didn't seem surprised, but Bill could hear the tremor in his voice and the struggle to keep his
words even. "I suspected she was still in that life. She was trying to make it through acting school and
wouldn't accept any money from me. I know she waitressed at a club but that can't have paid much.
That fits from what we've seen from the previous - victims. This bastard appears to be preying on people
that are likely not to be missed."

"Yes sir. She has stamps from a few different local clubs and bars that are well known for those sorts of
dealings. Misha and I plan to divide them up and check each one out to scout for any leads."

"Anything else I should know?"

"No sir," Bill said. He paused before he added, "I'm sorry about Mollie, Captain. We all are."

"Thank you," Captain Keller said, and Bill could tell how much the sentiment meant to him. He was
dismissed with a wave of the hand.

Despite the five different leads, each club and bar that was canvassed lead to zero clues. Misha swore
that one of the bartenders she'd talked to had seemed to recognize the photo she'd shown, but had been
unable to find any ties to the Keller family and the man had been working the night of the murder. Bill
obsessively combed through the growing case file on what the press referred to as "the Dollmaker
murders" as often as he could, so much so that Misha started to tease him about it. He took the ribbing
in good nature. Misha spent countless hours with him brainstorming new theories and pointing out
possible trails to follow. As much as he was loath to admit it, the killer they searched for was not of the
same caliber as many of the criminals Bill had dealt with before now.

"We need more to go on," Misha told him more than once. "We need them to make a mistake."

Bill sipped his tea in the passenger seat of the Crown Victoria with more calmness than he felt. In the
driver's seat, Misha was jittery and anxious. "When I said we need more to go on, was I tempting fate?"

"A serial killer is on the loose, Misha," Bill reminded her. "These types of people rarely stop on their own."

Misha sighed softly as she pulled into a parking spot. "This is new," she commented.

Bill looked around the parking garage. "The killer generally prefers dark alleyways. Why a well lit parking
garage?"

"The broken doll head was placed under a security camera," Misha observed as they walked under the
crime scene tape. "Also broken, clearly."
"We'll need to check with the building manager to see if that was broken before last night," Bill noted.

"I'd hazard a guess that the answer will be no," Misha said. "All the other cameras I noticed before I
parked appeared to be undamaged."

Bill nodded absently as he took in the crime scene. The body was more intact than the usual Dollmaker
scene, but that wasn't surprising given the more public location. What was surprising was the lack of
blood. "She was killed somewhere else and then dumped here," he vocalized. Misha took in his
observation silently. A moment later she jerked her head. "We have company."

A look over to his right showed him who his partner was referring to. A local news crew was setting up,
and a small crowd of people were gathering. "There's a non-profit organization across the street," Misha
said. "I'd wager these look-e-loos are heading to work. It's about that time now."

Bill covered his mouth to hide a yawn. "How lucky for them, getting to go to work at 8am," he said wryly.

Misha laughed quietly. "I know you're not a morning person, but look alive. I think we'll find ourselves on
the six pm news tonight."

Bill nodded to show his understanding. "I'll start on the crime scene photos."

As he set up the camera, Bill surreptitiously eyed the crowd. There was a steady stream of people that
walked past. A few curious onlookers had stopped to watch, and Bill guessed that they were non-New
Yorkers or at least fairly new to the city. The news crew was shooting B-roll while the anchor talked on
the phone. From the few words that drifted his way, Bill thought she was talking to her teenaged kid.
Something about the crowd made Bill anxious and he didn't know why. He was used to being watched by
the public, especially as the Dollmaker scenes had started to become more publicized in the media, but
the last couple of scenes he'd worked he'd felt like he was being watched by more than simple curious
onlookers. That same ominous feeling prickled the back of his neck now.

Bill took one last glance of the crowd and settled into photographing the scene. It wasn't until he'd
finished that he looked back at the crowd again and saw that the only people left were the news crew.
And, he noted, he no longer felt the ominous prickling from before.

"All right there, Bill?"

Bill jolted slightly at Misha's words. "Let me ask you something that might sound crazy?"

Misha looked at him curiously. "Go on then."

"At any of the Dollmaker scenes, have you ever recognized anyone in the crowd of onlookers, or thought
you did?"

Misha shook her head. "No, sorry. What's this about?"

"I don't know," Bill said. "I can't explain it. I just have this odd feeling at some of the scenes lately."

"Your odd feelings tend to be accurate," Misha said. "I'll pay more attention to the crowd next time."
Next time turned out to be both unexpected and smack dab in the middle of Misha's vacation. Bill
grumbled to Officer Jerome about how he wished he too was on some beach in the Bahamas as he took
the crime scene photos of what looked to be a drug deal gone bad. The victim was a known street walker
who traded her body for drugs, as evidenced by the multiple times she'd been busted. Jerome rattled off
her rap sheet to him as he finished up the photos. Something about the whole thing didn't feel right to
Bill.

"Why so messy?" Bill wondered out loud. "This isn't your typical drug deal killing."

Jerome shrugged. "The new dealers on the scene must be bloodthirsty. We've seen a lot more violent
killings since Jagged Pill took over this territory."

Bill frowned but didn't argue. His attention moved to the medical examiner's rig that had just pulled up
before a shiver tingled across his skin. Someone was watching. He searched the scene: a short, dead-end
alleyway deserted except for the officers on scene, the body lying in a pool of blood at the end of the
alleyway, and the medical examiner now ducking under the crime scene tape. His eyes searched the
buildings on either side, but he didn't see anyone in the windows.

"Jerome? Did any of the officers find anything unusual when they canvassed the scene?"

"No sir," Jerome answered.

"Bill, you should take a look at this." Bill's attention turned to Dr. Platt. He was kneeling by the body, his
eyes focused on a small slip of paper held in his gloved hand. "This was in her mouth."

Bill looked at the paper that Dr. Platt held. He took a sharp breath as the words registered. "No need to
tell the public about this one. This one is just for you," he read out loud.

"That doesn't seem like something a drug dealer would leave behind," Jerome commented. "Unless they
wanted to throw us off their scent? That's an odd tactic though. And not one we've seen from the Jagged
Pill so far."

Bill shook his head. "This wasn't the Jagged Pill."

"Then who?" Jerome wondered.

Bill looked up again. His eyes searched for the figure of a person in the windows again but did not see
anything. The ominous feeling of being watched was so strong he wondered how Jerome and Dr. Platt
didn't notice. Out loud he simply said, "That's what we need to figure out", but his intuition was
screaming with the knowledge. This was the Dollmaker, Bill would bet every cent in his bank account.
What Bill didn’t know was why they hadn't wanted the public to know about this one, or what they
meant by that last statement. Was this 'just for you' as in the police department as a whole? Or was he
singling out Bill in particular? It was no secret that Bill was the detective in charge of the Dollmaker
murders. This had been reported in the press multiple times, although Bill didn't know how the press had
found that out. It wasn't department policy to disclose the officers who worked on a particular case. They
were a team, and won and lost as a team.
Misha agreed with his assessment when he'd finished filling her in upon her return. Bill had covered his
bases, and followed up with the initial gang drug violence theory, but all avenues of research led him
back to his original conclusion: The Dollmaker had wanted to send a message and had wanted only the
police to understand it.

"But I don't understand it," Bill said in frustration. "Why does he not want to take public credit for this
one? And what does 'just for you' even mean?"

"The Dollmaker does generally speak less cryptically," Misha mused. "The letters they've sent to the
precinct before have been fairly straightforward, if nothing else."

"The letters have been…." Bill trailed off as a thought occurred to him. "Hand me the case file, would you
please?"

Misha handed it over silently, well used to his random thought connections by now. Bill rifled through it
until he came to the letter he was looking for and triumphantly spoke the words he was looking for out
loud. "The names given to us are unique, a way to show the world who we are and what we do. I'd
caution anyone against making fun of such a special honor, one of the highest given to those of us in this
line of work."

Bill looked up at Misha in excitement. "That's it!"

"You've lost me," she said.

"This letter was sent right after the murder of Destiny Snowchild."

"I remember that one," Misha said. "Captain Keller sent me to grab food from a nearby café on that one.
We were at that scene for hours."

"Right," Bill said, his tone distracted. "The point is, Captain Keller made a random comment to me while
at that scene about the ridiculousness of serial killer names. He mentioned Jack the Ripper as one of
them…."

"…And this wacko believes that he's the direct descendent of Jack the Ripper," Misha finished.

"Right in one," Bill said. "What a coincidence that the day after that remark we're sent a letter talking
about how he's related to a famous serial killer and how the names given to serial killers are special."

"So you're saying…." Misha looked at him with dawning realization. "The Dollmaker is watching us. At his
crime scenes."

"Well…" Bill paused. "Well yes, I suppose he is. But that's not the point."

"It's a pretty big point," Misha said. "How are you not freaked out right now?"

Bill ignored that remark, unwilling to explain that he'd lived with a murderer his entire life. "The point is,
who was the Dollmaker's next victim?"
Misha gasped. "You think…"

"Yes," Bill confirmed.

"Okay," Misha said, disbelief colored in every corner of her tone. "Okay. That's a plausible theory, that
Mollie Keller was killed in retaliation for a comment made by her Father. But let's return to the other
point. If the Dollmaker is watching us, that means we need to go through every crime scene photo and
any video we might have from any nearby cameras. Maybe we caught him on camera and didn't know it
at the time."

Bill nodded. "That's a good point. Let's do it."

Misha jumped up. "I'll grab the box from the evidence locker."

Bill laughed. "You sound a little too eager about that," he said, teasing laughter in his tone. Misha
blushed but didn't respond as she bounced off, and Bill shook his head, still chuckling. It was an open
secret that Misha was arse over tits over Oliver, the socially awkward but adorable evidence technician.
The smile slowly slid off his face as he remembered the part of his realization he hadn't told Misha. Bill
had also complained that serial killer names were ridiculous. If Captain Keller had been a target….did
that mean that Bill was too?

Was that what that note had meant? Was 'just for you' in reference to Bill? Had that been a threat?

It took the two of them several days to comb through the combined photos and video footage from every
one of the six known Dollmaker crime scenes, seven if one counted the recent "just for you" murder. Bill
couldn't help but wonder how many more innocent lives had been taken by this man that they were not
aware of. And they were sure he was a man, now. Misha's eye for detail spotted what looked like the
same man at three of the crime scenes, judging by his height, weight, and an identical dark hooded
jumper that obscured any hope they had of capturing his facial features.

It was the dark hooded jumper that clued him in.

Bill felt that ominous feeling of being watched as soon as he stepped out of his vehicle at the next
Dollmaker scene. He glanced at the small crowd that had gathered and internally rolled his eyes.
"Capitalism at its finest," he remarked.

"Oh that won't encourage our perp at all," Misha said, the sarcastic tone layered with disgust. "The
Dollmaker obviously likes attention. If he's here watching…."

Bill sighed. "Can't be helped. Even if he's not here he'll find out. That news crew will make sure of it." He
held the crime scene tape for Misha before slipping through himself. A last glance at the crowd made
him shake his head at the ridiculous spectacle. A vender had set up shop not far from the scene. A queue
of people waited in front of his table while a young boy, likely the man's son, called out things like "get
your souvenir 'I survived the Dollmaker' mugs here" and "Murder & Mayhem T-Shirts for sale".

"Really gives you the scope of the tragedy of it, doesn't it," he muttered under his breath. He shook his
head again before he turned his attention to the scene around him. The alleyway was narrow, with a
seedy-looking apartment building on one side and some type of restaurant on the other, judging by the
half-lit sign above a small nook with a door that looked liked it had seen better days and the smell of the
three large dumpsters he passed. Unlike the usual preferred dead-end alleyway of most Dollmaker
scenes, this one was open on both sides.

"He really went to town on her," Misha commented. Her voice was steady, but when Bill glanced her way
he saw the sadness in her eyes. He nodded in acknowledgement but didn't reply. "I'll start with the
photos," he said.

Misha sighed as she looked around. "You'll have your work cut out for you, no pun intended," she shot at
him, and Bill rolled his eyes at her. "Perhaps you could make yourself useful and check to see if either
building has security cameras?" he suggested dryly.

"Fine fine," Misha said in a long-suffering voice, but Bill knew she was grateful to be sent on an errand
away from the grizzly scene. Bill set up the camera quickly. He still felt as if someone nefarious was
watching him, but his scan of the scene and of the crowd yielded no results. He took photos slowly, and
worked his way from the furthest-strewn body part in. By the time he'd reached the torso, Dr. Platt had
arrived, a collage intern in tow. The bloke looked a little stunned at the scene before him but held his own
as Dr. Platt threw out instructions. The two of them worked outside-in, as Bill had done, so as not to
interrupt his photos.

As he finished up, Bill took another glance at the crowd and felt his heart race. The dark hooded jumper
might as well have been a flashing neon sign, and Bill flicked off the flash to surreptitiously take a couple
of photos in hopes that they could enhance them later. He returned his attention to the torso in front of
him. "I wonder if you could tell me anything," he murmured quietly. "The story you have to tell…" He
crouched down under the guise of taking another picture and briefly allowed the skin of his wrist to brush
against a finger that lay on top of the torso. His eyes fluttered involuntarily at the pain and
overwhelming fear that invaded his body.

Bill stood up, unable to stay still, and walked slowly away. His steps took him closer to the crowd. The
victim's stripper name had been Pearl Gates, and she'd chosen that name for a reason. Underneath that
pain and fear of her last moments there'd been a flash of something else. Defiance. Hope.

He'd never allowed himself to use the emotional knowledge he gained from touch at an active crime
scene before. Of course he couldn't help the inevitable knowledge gained from the oft-expected
handshakes when interviewing family and other people from a victim's social circles. He couldn't help the
fact that turning down a handshake was seen negatively. Besides, this talent had been given to him for a
reason. It seemed rude to ignore it, especially when it could help solve crime. Occasionally, to solve a
particularly difficult case he'd slip into the autopsy office and briefly hold a victim's hand. What was the
harm in that, if it could help bring justice?

"The Dollmaker is an unusual killer," Bill murmured to himself. "It's time to think outside the box, to use
unusual measures." His eyes scanned the ground as he walked. She'd fought back, he'd felt her
desperation. He stopped as he saw an odd drop of blood on the pavement. It wasn't typical of these
scenes to have one single drop of blood in an area away from where the initial murder happened. It
almost looked as if it had been poured deliberately, perhaps in an attempt to cover up something.
"Perhaps your own blood instead?" Bill muttered. "What was going on inside your head?"
He remembered the woman's brief flash of hope and defiance. The pain of something held between her
fingers. It was a long shot, he knew. The Dollmaker was careful, meticulous. He'd never left behind any
physical evidence aside from taunts. But he could feel it. He could sense something in Pearl's last
emotions. He kneeled down, his eyes drawn to a small crack in the side of the wall. He reached a gloved
finger in and was rewarded with a small pearl earring, the post stained with what Bill would bet was
blood. The killer's DNA at last?

Bill bagged and tagged the evidence quickly. He happened to glance up at the crowd as he finished. The
person in the dark hooded jumper had disappeared, and Bill had one moment to wonder where he'd
gone before the sound of a gunshot called him to action. The evidence bag fluttered to the ground at his
feet as he drew his service weapon. He assessed the scene quickly: no open windows, no shooter on the
roof. The other two officers on scene were both attempting to clear out the civilians, and Bill could hear
one of them over the radio (“shots fired shots fired, no one hit, send back up to…”). The news crew was
scrambling to take cover while actively recording and the people who'd been watching the police work
were desperately running away. The man in the jumper was not among them, and Bill knew he wouldn't
be. He could feel it. He was being watched. Bill looked at the only hiding place in the alley, and turned his
steps in that direction. The three dumpsters were not placed flush against the wall, and were slightly
angled. Bill would bet that their gunman was using them for cover, but why had he not shot again? Why
had he not…he was just past the last dumpster when he made the connection. He spun around, his
weapon up and at the ready, the safety off.

There he was. The man in the dark hooded jumper. He was walking quickly, nearly at the end of the alley
where he would soon be out of sight. He couldn't quite make out the object in his hand, but Bill knew
that he would be well within his rights to call out, tell him to stop, to perhaps shoot a warning shot if
necessary. Many of the civilians had cleared.

But something in him made him pause.

As if he could feel Bill's gaze, the man stopped just shy of rounding the corner and turned. The man was
too far away, and his face was hidden by the hood of the jumper, but Bill could feel him watching. He
glanced over to where he'd dropped the evidence bag to confirm his suspicion that it was no longer
where he'd left it before he returned his gaze back to the man. He lifted his eyebrows, his mouth
somehow turned into a knowing smirk, and even as he wondered at his own behavior in the moment he
found he couldn't stop it. There was an intensity to the air that Bill had no hope of identifying but was
caught up in all the same.

The man in the hooded jumper raised his free hand, and Bill noted the light skin tone before a finger
made a come hither motion, and the message couldn't have been clearer: Catch me if you can. Bill
caught a breath. His heart was doing double time in his chest. The man spun around and was around the
corner before Bill returned to his senses.

"He really does his homework," Misha commented the next day, as they went over what they had
learned from the scene of Pearl Gates' murder. "Both buildings had not yet replaced their security
cameras and were using decoy ones that were just for show instead. I think this is why he felt safe to use
this alley, instead of his usual dead-end alleyways."
"We're looking for someone who's been doing this awhile," Bill said. "I think we need to contact other
law enforcement agencies with the Dollmaker's MO and see what comes back at us. I know we did a
basic search but I think we need to dig deeper."

"It would help to have a suspect," Misha said. "All we have is a basic description."

"Approximate height, weight, and race isn't much," Bill acknowledged. "I wish the pictures I'd taken of
our dark-hooded suspect had given us more to go on. But gender and race narrows it down somewhat,
at least."

"And we know he is watching closely," Misha mused. "And he isn't afraid to take the risk of making
himself known to steal evidence."

Bill nodded. He'd caught her up on the events of what she'd missed, although he'd omitted the fact that
he'd essentially let the Dollmaker go without giving chase. He couldn't explain to himself why he'd done
that, let alone explain to his partner. "I still don't understand why he simply shot into the air," Bill said.
"He could have taken any one of us out easily with that shot. And given that I had found the evidence he
did not want found, I was the target he should have shot. Why didn't he?"

Misha frowned. "I don't know," she said grumpily. She rubbed her eyes, her petite frame small in the
large chair she sat in next to Bill's desk, and Bill shot a glance at the analog clock on the corner of nearby
desk. It was well past lunchtime. "Let's break for lunch," he suggested. Misha yawned and agreed. She
wandered off to the break room, one hand scrubbing at her short jet black hair, the red tips of her spiked
ends nearly faded away, and Bill recognized it as the unconscious habit she had when frustrated.

Bill hadn't brought his lunch today. There was a little food vender not far down the street from the
precinct, and he often preferred to stretch his legs during the short walk it took to make his way to the
popular lunch spot. He had been looking forward to the break, but the moment he stepped outside of the
building he wished he had packed a lunch. The ominous feeling of being watched was back. He glanced
around as he walked, careful to make it seem as if he wasn't observing every little detail that surrounded
him on the busy sidewalk. Nothing suspicious jumped out at him. This wasn't a crime scene, and thus far
the Dollmaker had not been stupid enough kill his victims in a busy throughway, which meant…

God. This case was getting to him, wasn't it. The monster they were looking for was not interested in him
specifically, was he? Except…he had a suspicion that was not the case. The way that dark-hooded man
had stared him down, had taunted him with the simple crook of a finger, seemed to imply otherwise.
God. He was going crazy, wasn't he.

He ate his sandwich at his desk and debated if he should mention anything to Misha. But she would
likely want to inform the Captain and….Bill closed his eyes. Why did he feel - protective? He froze in
shock, his sandwich halfway to his mouth as he processed the emotion. Slowly, he took a bite as he
contemplated that and decided that he was simply protective over the case. He'd been assigned this case
from the start, before he'd even known that New York had a serial killer on their streets. The broken doll
head found at that first scene had been assumed to be simply random junk that had collected on the
street. Misha had only been assigned to aid him after the third victim had shown up and the press had
gotten wind of the connection.
Bill was pleased to discover that the ominous feeling of being watched did not materialize as he walked
part of the way home that day. The feeling did not last long. The next morning he felt it as he stopped for
coffee on his way to the station. This time he allowed himself to search the crowd as he waited for his
latte, and nearly had a heart attack as he spotted a man in a dark jumper. But then he blinked and the
man was gone. Or had he even been there in the first place? God. He was seeing things, wasn't he. The
pressure was getting to him.

Misha commented on how jumpy he was that day and Bill laughed it off but decided he needed to find a
way to let out some of the tension that this case had created. He still had that gym membership from the
days when he'd been training for the police academy, he remembered. Perhaps he'd go take a swim.

Neither the treadmill nor the swim afterword helped ease Bill's paranoia. He could feel someone out
there the entire time. He dried off by the side of the pool, his breath short and heavy from both the
prickle of anxiety and the workout, and tried to pinpoint where he felt the eyes but aside from a few
teen-aged rowdy boys and the collage-age female lifeguard, no one else appeared to be in the building.
Bill tried to shake it off. Tried to pretend he didn't notice.

But notice, he did.

At first it was just when he grabbed coffee in the morning, or grabbed food down the street from the
station, or went to the gym after work. Over the next week and a half, it progressed to the occasional
crime scene he was called to, none of which had anything to do with the Dollmaker, and sometimes at
night he'd swear someone was watching him through his bedroom window. By the time the next
Dollmaker victim showed up, nearly two weeks after Pearl Gates, Bill was on edge and exhausted.

"Her name is Candy Leigh," Misha informed him. Bill snorted. "Please tell me that's her stripper name,"
he commented.

"Unfortunately, no," Misha replied. "It seems her parents had an odd sense of humor. She used it as her
stripper name though. Seems she was a dancer down at Venus."

"Mollie Keller had a stamp from the Venus, remember? Think that means something?"

"Could be something, could be nothing. Do you want to check it out?"

The moment Bill stepped inside Venus, he knew their serial killer was there. The dark, ominous
atmosphere he could sense matched that feeling he would get at the Dollmaker’s scenes. On a whim, he
hid himself carefully in the DJ's booth. It was empty, the music in the room coming from a jukebox near
the bar instead. He observed the club patrons and the employees that bustled about and his eyes kept
drifting to a taller, well-built man behind the bar. He didn't know how he knew it. But that man - that
man was the monster he'd been looking for. He was charming, Bill admitted to himself, as he watched
the man serve the patrons at the bar. He couldn't hear the words spoken but that didn't matter. He could
read the body language plain as day.

Bill slipped out without being noticed and the next day asked Officer Jerome to gather Candy Leigh's
employee file from Venus. Misha had agreed that it would be best if it seemed as if they had no interest
in Venus other than their routine checkups of a victim's place of work, and sending a lower level officer
would simply drive that point home. Bill didn't want to make the employees suspicious, and Misha
followed his gut instinct with no hesitation.

With a clear picture in his mind of his suspect, Bill wasn't surprised to discover that he saw the man
occasionally, but what did surprise him was that it was during moments of the day he hadn't realized he
was being watched. A bicycle that followed his taxi for a short way, a person in line at a hot dog stand
while Bill took a stroll in Central Park, a passerby on the street who ducked into an antique store.
Something about the knowledge that he knew what the man looked like but the man didn't know that he
knew was enough to ease the anxiety he'd felt from being constantly stalked. He and Misha dug into the
Venus and its two dozen employees and one by one ticked them off the suspect list until Bill looked up
the DMV photo for a Canice Lawson and felt his heart race. "This is him," he told Misha. "I know it."

Barely two weeks after Candy Leigh's messy scene, Bill found himself at another Dollmaker crime scene.

"Meet Bethany Franke," Misha said. "Officer Jerome told me that she's well known in this part of town,
but people around here know her as 'Minister Marsha', and she's danced at half of the clubs in the city.
Seems she's been living a double life for awhile now. She's got a husband and two kids, and her brother
and husband are both big shot lawyers for some firm downtown."

"Why would she be in this kind of life then," Bill wondered. "She can't have needed the money that
badly."

Misha shrugged. "We'll do a financial check. Perhaps the Franke's were less well-off than they
appeared."

Bill nodded. "It seems odd that the Dollmaker would choose someone who would absolutely be missed by
society. Aside from Mollie Keller, who was likely revenge motivated, none of the other victims are people
likely to be missed by family or society in general."

"It's possible he didn't know. There wasn't a lot of time in-between this victim and his last."

"No," Bill said with certainty. "He knew. He's detail-oriented and incredibly careful. I think he wants the
extra publicity. The added pressure on us to find him."

As Bill photographed the body parts on scene, he kept an eye out for his suspect. He didn't feel as if he
was being watched, but he no longer trusted that as a sign that he wasn't being actively stalked. He
could hear Dr. Platt and Misha talking nearby but paid no attention until he heard Misha call out his
name. He turned and hurried over at the expression of excitement on Misha's face. She pointed to a hand
lying on the pavement, and Bill understood right away. "He wants us to know," he said. "He's taunting
us."

"I'm right here, why can't you catch me," Misha said in agreement. "He needs the validation, somehow."

"It's no coincidence," Bill said. "Look at how mutilated his victims are. And yet he 'forgets' to destroy the
stamps of the clubs these women go to? Including Venus?"

"He reminds me of the Zodiac," Misha commented. "The mind games. This is a game to him and we are
simply pawns in his game."
"But two can play that game," Bill said thoughtfully.

"What are you thinking?" Misha asked.

Bill gave her a devilish grin. "He's inviting us to play a game. So let's play. Let's visit Venus."

"You want to force his hand." Misha looked thoughtful. "I think you should bring the Captain with you
then. Not me. It makes a statement. It says that you're taking him seriously. That he's so important that
even the Captain is involved in the grunt work to catch him. It will feed his ego, and if we can feed that -
it might make him trip up at some point in the future."

Bill shrugged. "It's worth a shot."

They presented their plan to Captain Keller later that day, who agreed with their train of thought. "We'll
go tomorrow," Captain said.

"Yes sir," Bill said.

That night Bill went to the gym. It was late. He'd had to sneak out. His Mother thought he was in bed. He
swam laps in the pool and felt eyes on every move he made. For the first time, this thought no longer
provoked fear. If this was a game….well.

Even pawns could checkmate a king.

Days turned into months. He played the words of a retired detective who'd contacted him about a case
he'd worked regarding the murder of a Tracy Lawson over and over in his head: "Either stop now sonny
boy or take him head on. This ain't something you can half-ass." That Canice Lawson had likely killed his
wife and gotten away with it struck a nerve, and Bill didn't understand why.

But Bill wasn't one to half-ass anything. He wrote in his journal that he almost could admire the
dedication the monster had to his craft. Even a killer had qualities that one might call positive, he wrote.
Perhaps this was a test of God. Perhaps he needed to learn that kind of dedication. He hadn't said this to
Misha. He didn't think she would understand it.

He flipped through pages as he made his way to a fresh sheet of paper in his journal. He felt the urge to
write again, to rid his mind of the thoughts of demons that so consistently plagued him these days. He
had turned to a blank page before his mind caught up with his eyes. He frowned and turned the page
back to his last entry. There was slanted writing on the corner of the page, and it wasn't his. "Oh my dear
inspector," Bill whispered the words in disbelief. "Haven't you realized it yet? We're on the same team."

There were no other words, and no signature, but Bill knew exactly who had written them. He hadn't
realized that his monster had been watching him this closely. Bill's head snapped to the window and then
back at the journal in his hands. He glanced over the entry that his monster had written under. It was one
he'd written about an evil demon that he'd bumped into at the grocery a few days ago. "Haven't you
realized it yet? We're on the same team." Bill whispered the words again. "We're on the same team…."
He trailed off as his brain attempted to make the connection. Obviously the monster was trying to tell
him something, but he wasn't sure he understood it. He closed the journal in his hands. The urge to write
had left him as quickly as it had come.

He had some thinking to do.

Bill started to follow the monster. He was tired of the defensive game. It was time to turn the tables. He
watched him at the bar. He followed him home. Followed him to the gym. Followed him to the grocery
store.

"You've got dark circles under your eyes," Misha told him once. "Are you getting enough sleep?"

No, he wasn't. But he wasn't going to tell her why. "I've been having weird nightmares," he told her with
a wave of the hand. "It happens sometimes. It'll stop eventually."

He started to let the monster catch glimpses of him when Bill followed him. He started to notice more
about the monster than where he went or who he talked to. He started to notice. He started to
appreciate.

"He's fit," he said absentmindedly to Misha one day. She laughed. "You really need to get laid if you're
noticing that about a serial killer," she told him.

Bill laughed with her but ignored the suggestion. He'd rather follow the monster.

He thought he had started it this time. But God, he wasn't sure anymore. Did it matter? They were in it
now.

Bill leaned against the rail in feigned nonchalance. The multi-level shopping mall was busy, but not overly
so. It was easy enough to keep his eye on the Monster. He was on the floor below him, in line for a
pretzel. He studied the man. The red hair, the toned body, the way his eyes never seemed to stop
roaming. God, he was sick for thinking like this, wasn't he. Of course he couldn't manage desire when it
stumbled into his lap at the bar last night. Quite literally. The bloke was two sheets and completely
obvious as he propositioned Bill last night. But Bill's eyes had only been for the Monster, who'd been
bussing tables across the room. What the hell was wrong with him? What self-respecting man turned
down the chance for a night of fun to watch a Monster wipe tables?

And yet.

Bill groaned under his breath. It wasn't like he hadn't known he desired this man. But shit, he was trying
to catch him out for God's sake. This was so inconvenient.

And most certainly a conflict of interest.

And morally wrong.

But what did that say about him, that the morality of it all wasn't even the first thing he thought about?

For the first time, Bill wondered if he was sure he wanted to see where this path led.
He glanced back at the pretzel stand below and decided that this was what a heart attack must feel like.
Canice was nowhere in sight. Bill cursed himself for getting lost in his thoughts. He was a trained police
officer for God's sake. This wasn't like him. Behavior like this would get him killed. Of course, he had a
sneaking suspicion that this Monster wouldn't kill him. But he shouldn't test this theory out. Where was
his sense of self-preservation?

He scanned the room, and his gaze touched the floor below before he slowly turned to survey the people
on his level. The mall was filled with laughing teenagers and crying children and cheating men buying
gifts for their mistresses and women gossiping about what so-and-so did at Karen's birthday party. Bill
filtered out the noise around him and focused. Some instinct made him turn his gaze to the left. The
Monster was standing in front of the window of a shop. Bill watched him openly, uncaring if he was seen.
The shop was some nerd store with a pun in the title and a display in the window advertising something
to do with Hobbits. Long seconds ticked by before the man turned. Bill almost stopped breathing as their
eyes met. Furious at himself, he looked away and turned his body slightly. He unconsciously leaned on
the railing at his side, his body mimicking the way the Monster would lean against the bar when they
chatted. When Bill realized this, he turned further in blind panic until he was gripping the railing with
both hands. He looked at the people bustling about on the floor below but didn't see them.

Maybe he really didn't want to see where this path led. He could stop. He could turn this case over to
another officer. He could stop. He could.

"Fancy seeing you here, Inspector."

Bill's hands gripped the rail tighter before he could stop himself, but it was the only reaction he allowed
that gave away how startled he was. He looked over to see the Monster standing next to him. Bill
quirked an eyebrow as he digested those words. "They haven't called us inspectors for a long time, or
haven't you heard?"

The question was rhetorical and Bill knew the Monster knew it. "I consider myself a bit old-fashioned."
The reply was given with a slight upturn of the mouth, and Bill moved his gaze away quickly.

Not quickly enough. The Monster let out some sort of quiet sound. Bill looked back at him, but the man
had controlled himself too fast and Bill couldn't get a read on him. "Old-fashioned in what way?" he
questioned, if only for something to say. The air seemed thick with something he couldn't quite put his
finger on.

The Monster didn't respond for a long time. He seemed almost lost in thought. When he did speak, it
wasn't to answer his query. "The word 'inspector' means one who views or observes."

There was silence. Bill waited, but there were no more words forthcoming. "Your point?"

"When one 'views or observes' another person so often, the term 'inspector' doesn't quite seem to fit,
now does it?"

Bill frowned. "I'm still not seeing your point."

The Monster gave a low laugh. "I would think a police officer such as yourself should be able to
determine the difference between an inspector, and a stalker."
Bill's chest pounded at the implication. He wasn't quite in control as he threw out, "The difference
between the two is the intent."

The Monster properly laughed then, and Bill wasn't sure what to do with that reaction. "Oh my dear
Inspector, you don't see it do you?"

Bill turned his body to face the other man, one hand still gripping the railing. "Only one other person uses
that term for me," he said, triumph thrumming through his tone. "Is there something you want to
confess, Mr. Lawson?"

Bill expected to see some sort of fear in the face of the man who as good as confirmed that he was
indeed the Monster he'd been hunting. Some sort of shame, even if only shame at having been tricked
into the admission. What he didn't expect to see was his own triumph shining back at him. Bill stared at
that expression and for once didn't know what to say. The silence dragged on and on, the background
noise of the hustle and bustle around them unable to pierce the quiet, thick with meaning that Bill
couldn't interpret.

Or perhaps, was afraid to.

"There are other words for stalker," the Monster said at last, and the delight in which he spoke gave Bill
chills that wasn't entirely unpleasant. "A tracker, a lurker, a follower, a pursuer - they all can be used to
describe someone who observes another person obsessively."

Bill crossed his arms. "Did you come over here just to give me a language lesson?"

As before, the Monster didn't answer his question. He leaned into Bill's personal space, almost intimately
so, and Bill didn't dare breathe, his gaze caught by the intense expression. "Some might say that another
word for stalker….would be a monster."

With one last look full of mirth and meaning, the other man straightened up and walked away. Bill
watched him go, completely stunned, unable to even move a step, and his Monster turned a corner and
was out of sight before Bill shook himself awake again. His Monster. Bill shoved his hands in his pockets
and slowly walked away from the railing. He blindly followed the flow of the other people around him.
His Monster.

Because he was his monster now. His.

Bill still wasn't sure he wanted to know where this path led. But it didn't matter anymore, did it. He could
no more hand this case to another officer then dig his way out of his own grave. His Monster had chosen
him to play this game. Him.

And his Monster didn't play by the strict rules of propriety that guided all officers of the department.

Bill couldn't walk away. He couldn't. But if he was to go on he couldn't play the game with one hand tied
behind his back. Not anymore.
Maybe the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. But he couldn't step off this path now. Bill found
his way almost mechanically out of the mall and hailed a cab. As he reached for the door handle he saw
him again. His Monster was standing on the sidewalk across the street, watching him. Bill stared. His
Monster stared back.

And it was that look in his Monster's eyes. Part challenge, part knowing, part hunger, part...desire.
Desire. Bill smiled as the knowledge of the way forward rolled through him, and he waved in a mock
salute before he ducked into the cab. He snapped out an address to the driver before he looked out the
window. His Monster was still looking at him. Bill smiled again and faced forward as the cab started to
move. It's time to play by my rules, Canice, he thought.

As the weeks passed Bill found himself humming at work, a habit that he'd never had before. Misha
teased him relentlessly about his "new man", and Bill laughed along with her and didn't think much of it.
He spent hours at the bar engaging his monster in conversation. He was thankful that their work
schedules did not overlap. His monster worked the night shift. It made it easier to slip out of the house
without his Mother being any the wiser. He spent more than one lunch break watching his monster
watch him. He didn't think either one of them was sleeping much.

Bill's twenty-forth birthday was celebrated by his coworkers with a cake and a card signed by every
officer in the station (Misha confessed that she'd stayed late the day before to catch anyone on night
shift, and Bill nearly cried at that; no one had ever cared enough to go to such lengths for him before). He
made the mistake of greeting his Mother with a smile that evening, and she lectured him for an hour
while he made dinner about how happiness was an abomination.

His spirit lifted as he walked into his bedroom that evening and saw a birthday card on top of his pillow.
He knew who it was from before he read it: 'Forgive the lack of cake, but I didn't think you'd eat it if it
was from me. Perhaps we can change that in the future. Still think you can catch me, my dear Inspector?'

Bill didn't dwell on why he had a craving for a mixed drink that tasted like a chocolate cake the next time
he visited his favorite bartender, but the knowing look his monster shot him as he mixed the drink made
him feel fuzzy and warm all over.

He blamed the feeling on the alcohol he hadn't drunk yet.

Some weeks later Misha wondered why the Dollmaker had slowed down. "There are larger gaps
between his victims now, did you notice? I wonder why that is."

Bill shrugged and didn't tell her the likely reason: Canice Lawson was spending so much time stalking Bill,
and Bill was spending so much time following Canice Lawson in return, that there wasn't a lot of time
leftover to look for other, easier prey.

With fewer victims came a price: Captain Keller pulled Misha off of the Dollmaker case and put her on a
complicated bank robbery case instead. Bill missed her more than he'd expected. He spent even more
time at the bar, ended up embarrassing himself by kissing Canice Lawson after a few too many drinks,
and discovered that he was too addicted to Canice's attention to allow embarrassment to keep him
away.
Sometimes he could almost forget that his monster he was hunting and the charming conversationalist
he flirted with at the bar happened to be the same person.

It was more difficult to forget when at an active Dollmaker crime scene.

"What's the time Doc?" Bill angled the camera as he spoke. His finger depressed the shutter several times
as he took multiple shots of the mangled mess of the latest victim his monster had left in the middle of
an alley.

"Somewhere between eleven and midnight," was the response. "This is an odd one though, even for one
of the Dollmaker's scenes."

Bill paused in taking photos and stared at Dr. Platt. He was young for a Medical Examiner, but had an
eye for detail that impressed Bill from the very first scene they'd worked together. "Odd how?" he
questioned, curious now.

"All of the bodies I've worked on from this killer have had wounds clearly made from a right-handed
individual. And most of these marks are consistent with that. But you see this one here, on her left leg?
This appears to be from a left-handed person."

"Perhaps the killer is ambidextrous," Bill mused. "It's not an incredibly common trait, so they may have
been careful so as not to give away an identifying piece of information."

Dr. Platt hummed in response. Bill snapped a few more photos of the body. Another hum made him
pause. "What is it Doc?"

"I think your killer has been studying. These cuts aren't as willy nilly, so to speak, as usual. These are
almost precise, surgical type wounds."

Bill frowned. "You think he may be in the medical field?"

"Very likely your killer has at least had some medical training, even if they aren't in the medical field. And
fairly recently too, given that none of the other bodies had marks this precise."

"Thanks for the insight Doc," Bill said thoughtfully. "An ambidextrous person with recent medical training
might narrow things down a bit."

The official autopsy report took some time to get to him, but the moment Bill received a copy he settled
at his desk with a cup of tea and a sandwich and eagerly read every detail before he combed through the
rest of the case file. The last few pages were of particular interest to him, as they contained all the notes
he'd written regarding any observations he'd had while talking to his prime suspect at the bar.

And, midway through the second to last page, there it was: 'Watched CL deal with unhappy customer.
Overheard part. Was told by super to remake drink for free. Rattled. Noticed when remixing, used left
hand. Returned to usual right after difficult customer left with drink.'

Elated, Bill grinned. There it was. A small bit of proof that pointed at the fact that his monster was
indeed the Dollmaker. He flipped back to the autopsy report. 'Precise, surgical cuts'. Bill frowned. He'd
been following Canice for quite a while now. Nothing he'd done recently would suggest educational
studying of any kind, but certainly nothing in the medical field. His Mother was a psychologist or some
such thing, not a surgical doctor, and his Father was - what was his Father? Bill flipped through the file.
He didn't have much on him. It hadn't seemed very important at the time he was looking initially, given
that the man was locked up in some mental institution.

After some digging, Bill discovered that Sean Kassidy had interned at a hospital as a teenager. He didn't
seem to have continued in that career path. Bill sighed and gulped down his now-cold tea. He'd already
dug into the few people that Canice interacted with and none were even remotely connected to criminal
activity of any kind, and none worked in any field that might require medical knowledge that detailed.
Canice's parents were the only people in his life that had any connections to the medical field, but both
were extremely unlikely to have given him the knowledge. "Probably learned it from some online site,"
Bill muttered. With that thought, he decided to put in a warrant request for Canice's online activity
records.

While he waited for that though…Bill took a bite of his corn beef sandwich and shrugged. He might as
well clean up loose ends, even if they wouldn't go anywhere. He picked up the phone. A five minute
phone call later, Bill put down the phone, his brain whirling. Perhaps Sean Kassidy wasn't a dead end
lead at all.

"Officer Bellingtine, what are you still doing here?"

Bill glanced over at his Captain and then at the clock on the wall. "Sorry Sir, I didn't realize what time it
was."

"Go on home. Whatever you're working on will still be here in the morning."

"Yes Sir, goodnight Sir," Bill said. He reluctantly closed the file and set it aside before readying to leave.
As he left the building, he caught a glimpse of his monster walking down the street. Unable to deny the
urge, he followed. Canice took the nearest subway station, which so happened to be the one Bill had
planned to take home. When he got off at the same stop that Bill normally would, Bill frowned.

His frown deepened as he followed his monster right to Bill's own home. He watched, shocked, as Canice
produced a key and proceeded to open the door and walk right in. He stood where he was, just around
the corner, and did not know what to do. At last he carefully walked into the house, quiet enough that he
wouldn't be heard. Canice was chatting with his Mother in the kitchen ("Bill gave me the key, he forgot
his wallet this morning and wasn't able to get it himself"), and Bill left the house as quietly as he'd
entered, afraid to be caught. He watched from across the street as Canice walked back out the front door
and locked up behind him. The entire visit had barely taken five minutes, Bill thought, so he knew that
Canice had not harmed his Mother. Something like disappointment flickered within and he stepped out
from the shadows. He didn't move, simply allowed Canice to notice that he was there, and Bill knew that
whatever Canice read from his expression surprised him by the way that his mouth parted and his steps
halted. Bill watched as the surprise turned considered, thoughtful, before his steps continued. Bill let him
go, an idea flying through his mind. Perhaps it was time he met Ashley Lawson.

It took him a week to discover that Ashley Lawson was apparently living in the same home as her son,
but he'd never seen her around the house during the occasional times he'd followed Canice home. Some
digging and some careful observation of her activities showed him that she was an extreme homebody.
She lived and worked at home and almost never went out.

Bill's chat with Ashley Lawson several days later was enlightening, but he knew that he'd likely not be
able to sweet talk his way into the home again. He opted to take a page out of his monster's book
instead, rules of propriety be damned.

It was easy to sneak into the basement. There was a window at ground level left unlocked. Bill guessed
his monster left it unlocked because the shed blocked the window from view. It had been a bit of a tight
fit, and Bill knew that someone of Canice's stature would not have been able to fit between the shed and
the window enough to slide though. Once inside, Bill brushed dust off his clothes before he took in the
room. It was large for a basement, perhaps the size of a two-car garage. Unlike what Bill had seen of the
rooms he'd glimpsed as Ashley had led him to the sitting room, the walls of this room were cluttered.
Floor to ceiling diagrams of the human body, not unlike those one might see in a high school anatomy
class, covered much of the available space. All were labeled with the clinical names of each part in and of
the body. A bookshelf against the right wall was filled to the brim with textbooks, most related to human
anatomy, with a few oddball titles here and there, and an entire shelf dedicated to texts related to Jack
the Ripper. Bill flipped through a couple of them. He observed the notes in the margins of the books with
interest. Most of the handwriting he didn't recognize, but there were a couple that he thought may have
been written by his monster. The way Canice wrote certain letters was fairly unique.

The rest of the room was quite sparse. A large bearskin rug covered the middle of the floor, but the rest
of the concrete was left uncovered. A couch was set not quite in the middle of the room. The drab gray
did little to add color to the space. A desk with an ergonomic chair was set in the corner opposite the
bookshelf. Both surfaces were littered with notebooks of all sizes. Not in a messy way, Bill could tell that
there was some semblance of a system to the clutter, and he wondered if his monster was naturally
messy or if he'd simply not had time to clean things up the last time he'd been in the room.

Curious as to the content of the notebooks, he moved to open the top one. "Shiiiit," he whispered as he
turned page after page. Photographs stared up at him, young women who were quite clearly dead, their
bloody bodies lifeless, battered. None of these women looked familiar to Bill, and he wondered how
many of his monster's victims the police had missed. He frowned as he looked at the title of one photo:
Mary Katherine, September 1970. "1970…." Bill muttered. "Hold up, 1970…how could that be right?"

Bill closed the notebook and opened the next one. These were all dated from 1969. Curious, he pulled
another notebook and opened it at a random page. Instead of photos, this one appeared to be a journal
of some sort. He noted the handwriting was elegant, unlike the notes they'd received at the precinct. He
whispered aloud as he read: "The boy did well on this hunt. He has proven himself to be quick-witted
when thrown a curveball. I thought perhaps this one would get away, but this proved not to be the case.
He is not yet strong enough to tie up a whore while it struggles. This shall come in time. For now, I shall
be satisfied with the progress he has made on his cuts. My son is well on his way to becoming the next
Ripper."

Bill frowned and skimmed several more pages. The other entries appeared to be much the same. He
looked at the dates of the entries: 1988. By his calculation, Canice had to have been about nine or ten
when this was written. "You were raised by a monster," Bill whispered, and the puzzle pieces started to
click together in his mind. He set aside the journal and opened the notebook with pictures from 1970
again. This time he studied the marks on the bodies, a theory already on his mind.
A glance at his watch told him he didn't have long he could stay here. He skimmed through the other
notebooks in the stack. With each scrapbook of bodies and each journal entry read, Bill understood more
about his monster and the monster that made him. He jotted down the important bits to remember in his
own notebook for later examination. As he set aside each new notebook, he sorted them into categories.
All the journals appeared to be written by Sean Kassidy, except for one small brown book with only two
entries that Bill deduced was Canice's from when he was perhaps eleven, judging by the dates. It
appeared his monster didn't care for documenting his thoughts, as his Father clearly did. Most of the
scrapbooks of murdered women belonged to Sean's body count, given the dates, but there were a couple
that appeared to be from before Sean was born, and Bill guessed they were most likely the victims of
Sean's Father.

And then there were Canice's scrapbooks. There were three, and the distinct handwriting drew Bill's eyes
as soon as he spotted them. His monster clearly didn't care much for the documentation side of his work.
Whereas Sean's gave names, dates, and the methods used to subdue and kill, Canice simply labeled his
photos with a name and date. Bill studied the marks on these bodies, curious to know if his theory was
correct. There were dozens and dozens of photos before Bill came to one dated in 1993, and he stopped
in his tracks. Excited, he flipped through several more pages before he allowed himself a grim smile of
satisfaction. His theory appeared to be correct.

As Bill continued to flip through Canice's scrapbooks, he realized that while Canice didn't care much for
documenting the details of his crimes, he did like to scribble random notes on the corners of the pages.
Fragments of thoughts like "Why am I still hiding my talents?" and "Front page but anonymous. I hate
it." and "How should I connect them?" jumped out at him. A few more pages later, Canice had written,
"Dad never found his Inspector Abberline and hid his entire career. How pathetic. I will not suffer his fate.
Perhaps I will find my destined Inspector once I stop hiding. Whomever they are, they won't find me
while I remain hidden." The very next page Bill turned, the victims now attributed to the Dollmaker
stared up at him with lifeless eyes. It seemed Canice had grown tired of being anonymous.

The last notebook was part journal, part scrapbook. Bill quirked his eyebrow at what appeared to be the
life story of the Victorian Era serial killer Jack the Ripper, including pages and pages of a family tree that
appeared to show every single male descendent of the man, right on up to the current time. Bill caught
his breath as he saw Sean Kassidy's name, and right underneath his name was his son. He snorted.
Ashley had said that Canice had changed his full name, while she'd only changed her last name. No
wonder his monster had preferred to pick a new first name. He'd have wanted a new name too.

A note at the very end of the Ripper notebook caught Bill's attention. It appeared to be written in poem
form, and Bill softly murmured the almost melodic words. "From Father to Son/through the ages thy will
be done/victories celebrated but wars not yet won/plead of ye take up the mantel one by one/within the
shadows light must be shown/never ye fear for ye not alone/ye Peeler once found shall bring ye work
above the unknown."

Bill copied the words into his own notebook and carefully replaced things as he'd found them. He took a
cursory glance around at the rest of the room but found nothing else of interest. He looked at his watch
again and knew he should leave now. He needed to get back to the station before his usual lunch break.
He didn't want Canice to suspect that he'd snuck out of the precinct without his knowledge.
It was safely back at his desk, his usual lunch from the vender down the street in his lap, when Bill
allowed himself to dwell on the information he'd learned. None of it was admissible in court, of course,
but no matter. The strict rules that guided officers of the law were only a hindrance in this case. He pulled
out the notebook he'd used while trespassing into the basement. His fingers traced the note he'd written
halfway down one of the cream-colored pages: Canice created DM. Father added recently. Cuts distinct.
Canice appears ambidextrous from cuts in photos, Father right handed.

Bill turned to the open case file on his desk and consulted his notes. The admin assistant he'd spoken to
at the mental institution had advised that Sean Kassidy had been "accidently released" (that was the
fanciest term for "escape" Bill had heard) about seven months prior, and hadn't been heard from since. It
wasn't the first time Sean Kassidy had escaped, either, but the other two times he'd been caught a few
months later, once from an anonymous tip and once by having the unlucky coincidence to stop by a
convenience store run by a retired cop who still kept up on the "most wanted" list. Bill took a bite of his
ham sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. Ashley Lawson had said that Canice had stopped Sean from
killing her - he consulted his notes - when Canice was fourteen. Sean had been in prison, and then later in
the mental institution, ever since then, which had left Canice to his own devices. And, Bill reasoned, given
the scrapbooks he'd seen and the journal entries he'd skimmed, Canice had continued the legacy his
Father had taught him, if being a serial killer could be considered a legacy.

Bill took another bite. He'd have to sneak into the basement again, of course. He wanted to copy the
family tree he'd found. The jar of cow meat the Dollmaker had sent as "proof" of his Ripper heritage may
have been a false family heirloom, but that didn't mean that the story was entirely false. Perhaps Sean
Kassidy and Canice Lawson really were decedents of Jack the Ripper. Perhaps tracing the genealogy
would uncover the true identity of the mysterious Jack. The individual who'd started the family tree had
not seen fit to write down Jack's true name.

He turned back to his notes. Based on the observations he'd made studying the scrapbooks, it appeared
that Sean and Canice had different methods to their madness. Sean liked careful, precise cuts. Neat,
almost surgical in nature. Sean had taught this method to Canice, as evidenced by Canice's earlier
victims. But once Sean had disappeared as a guiding force in Canice's life, Canice appeared to have
experimented until settling into his messy, haphazard habits that were now associated with the
Dollmaker name. Sean appeared to have hidden below the radar of law enforcement, preferring to
operate in the shadows. Canice appeared to crave the spotlight, given the open way he taunted police
with the notes sent to the precinct and how none of the Dollmaker victims were hidden. And he'd taken
to leaving his calling card at every scene, a way to make sure his victims were known, a way to claim
them as his own. Bill wondered what the significance of the broken doll head was to his Monster. He
hadn't seen any notes that regarded what such a thing meant in Canice's scrapbooks.

Bill would bet every last cent in his bank account that Canice, while the original Dollmaker, was no longer
operating as the sole Dollmaker. It would explain the changes in the last crime scene that Dr. Platt had
observed. Bill picked up his pen and wrote at the bottom of his notebook: Sean Kassidy found his son.
Would such an intrusion be welcome, the man who tried to kill his Mother? Is Canice now a part of a
willing team? Or a forced partnership once more?

Bill stared at the words he'd written. Something about them niggled at him. A thought that wanted to
make itself known but sat just at the edges of his mind, unable or unwilling to step forward. He shook his
head. It was no use trying to force it. He turned back to the notes he'd written about his observations on
the scrapbooks that he'd determined were Canice's with a slight sigh. He read them twice before he set
them aside and rubbed his eyes. It was really too bad, he thought idly. These victims were innocents.
Street walkers and the like, sure, but they were all just humans attempting to get by, the same as
everyone else. It really was too bad Canice wasn't putting his talents to better use. The demons that walk
among the innocents of this world…they deserved this. Not these people.

It took three days for Bill to make the connection.

The subway was not his preferred way to travel, but he decided to shake up his routine in an attempt to
shake off his tail. Canice Lawson was a persistent sonofabitch. It seemed everywhere Bill went, there he
was. He wondered if Canice was even sleeping at all. Night shifts at the bar, daytime stalking. It had to
be exhausting.

As his stop rolled up, Bill pushed his way through the crowd. He had just exited the doors when someone
brushed against him in their hurry to leave. Bill stopped in his tracks as a darkness so total filled his
bones he almost couldn't breathe. Even his monster hadn't felt like this. This was the sort of evil only Hell
could unleash. Bill blinked and looked around as he came back to himself, but could not pick out who
that demon may have been. He forced himself to move.

His footsteps were heavy as he made his way up to the street above, and each step of the steep staircase
seemed to take more effort than it should. What was he doing with his life? How was he even helping the
innocent out there? His work as an officer of the law was more about paperwork then helping the people
that needed him the most. He showed up to a crime scene where some innocent person had already
been victimized in some way by demons so evil they belonged six feet below, not out there freely able to
do such unthinkable things…

Like a true New Yorker, Bill barely registered any of the hustle and bustle around him as he walked. It
wasn't until he had a hand on the door of the precinct building that some sixth sense prickled. He turned
around. Canice stood only a few feet away. One hip leaned against the short iron railing that created the
barrier between the building and the sidewalk. His arms were folded. He quirked an eyebrow as their
eyes met, and Bill read the message clear as day: You're not as clever as you think. I'll find you. I'll always
find you.

Bill removed his hand from the door and sent his own message in return: he gave a small shrug, his arms
open at his sides. It was worth a try, the gesture said. I'm not the prey you're used to chasing.

A grin broke out on Canice's face at that, and his white teeth shone in the morning light. Bill shivered
slightly, something about that look almost sinister, and yet Bill found it difficult not to respond in kind.

"Stop! Thief!" The shout that reached Bill's ears made him look just down the sidewalk, where a lady
shouted at a hooded figure running away with a purse held in hand. Bill didn't pause to think. He gave
chase, grateful now that he'd taken the subway. If he'd taken a taxi to work as usual, his legs would be
stiff from the journey. He caught up to the figure quickly, but somehow they evaded him by some sort of
gymnastic-worthy move using the side railing to swing around and start running back the way they'd
came. Bill gritted his teeth in frustration and gave an about face to continue the pursuit. As his steps took
him back towards the precinct, Bill glanced over to see Canice standing in the same place as when he'd
left. He jerked his head on instinct. Canice followed his instruction without hesitation: he gave a sidestep
directly into the path of the running figure. They collided, both of them falling to the hard cement. Bill
reached them just as the hooded figure was attempting to get back up, but Bill pushed him back down.
"Oh no you don't," he said as he handcuffed the man. He glanced over to the side as he did so and met
Canice's eyes from where he still lay on the sidewalk. This time, he was the one to raise his eyebrow in a
silent message of: Are you okay?

In return, Canice gave the same gesture Bill had given him earlier: A shrug, his arms spread wide. Bill
read that message as, I'll live. He continued to hold their gaze even after Canice's arms dropped to his
sides. This Monster in front of him was a compulsive hunter, a demon who took pleasure in the pain of
others. And yet….in this moment….it almost felt as if they were on the same team.

Same team.

Bill blinked as he remembered those words left in his journal over a year prior: Oh my dear Inspector.
Haven't you realized it yet? We're on the same team.

Something in his expression must have given away his thoughts, because Canice gave a slight quirk of
the mouth and a nod. Bill looked away, simultaneously elated, confused, and somewhat afraid of the
knowledge that he now understood the message Canice had sent him. He hauled the suspect up just as
the lady who the purse belonged to reached them. In all the confusion, Bill had lost track of the purse,
but he watched as Canice stood up and handed the purse back to the woman. The woman babbled her
thanks as Bill turned the steps of his suspect and the rest of the group to the entrance of the police
station. It was only as the doors closed that he realized Canice had slipped away unnoticed.

After a moment of hesitation as to if he should give chase, Bill let him go.

The thought prickled at him every spare second he had. He found himself fantasizing about the moment
in time when Canice wasn't the monster he hunted and he wasn't the cop sworn to bring him to justice.
Canice's attention had been all on him.

What if he…

Bill shoved the thoughts away. But even as he did so, he knew he would follow the road he was on no
matter where it led.

He followed Canice to work. He waited an hour or so before he entered the bar. He could play it cool. He
could. He purposefully waited to talk to his monster. He watched him but kept his distance. His monster
knew that he was being watched. He kept glancing over his way, little flicks of the eyes that others
missed but Bill saw plainly, even from across the room. Perhaps if Bill hadn’t been watching Canice so
closely, he would have noticed that Shane Pryor was also focused on Canice. Bill had checked into the
man after witnessing his rough treatment of a couple of ladies some weeks back. He’d had plenty of
complaints against him over the years, but nothing stuck, which as far as Bill could tell was simply by
sheer dumb luck combined with a couple of friends in high places.
.
Some repetitive pop song Bill hated started to play as he saw Canice duck into the men’s room. He
sighed. If his monster didn’t work here, he wouldn’t frequent this place as often as he did. Their taste in
what qualified as decent music wasn’t always up to snuff. He wondered if he was able to request music
from the DJ. Perhaps he should ask Canice. It would be a good way to strike up another conversation.
His eyes flicked back to the bathroom door just in time to see Shane Pryor throw Canice against the wall
a few feet away from the sign that depicted the typical stick figure indicating the men’s room. He half
rose in his chair, but his monster easily pushed the other man away and held him. Bill could see security
already on their way. He sat back down before anyone noticed his half-raised position. Some dark
emotion seethed within, and that emotion was what made him fully stand only a few seconds later.

He took a longer route to reach the bar counter, not wanting to reach it before Canice. As he passed by
the security guard roughly pushing Pryor toward the doors, he let his arm brush against the man. He
briefly thought that even the man’s face gave him the shivers before he felt the real shivers kick in. Only
years of practice saved him from gasping out loud at the deep, dark sensation that flooded his body at
the touch. He hadn’t felt this kind of darkness in quite awhile. This wasn’t the kind of darkness that
surrounded his monster, no. This was much more sinister, this was…demonic.

Pryor didn’t notice him at all. He was struggling against the security guard and complaining loudly. Bill
rubbed his hands against his legs as if to wipe away the pure evil he’d felt from the man. This wasn’t the
first person he’d felt that kind of evil seeping from their very bones. Each time he felt such a thing he was
overcome with an overwhelming sense of helplessness. He’d become a police officer to get rid of such
evil, and yet…they always won, didn’t they. Bill found himself shaking with anger. He turned his head to
see Pryor being dragged out the door.

Some drunk woman stumbled into him and pulled Bill’s attention away from the darkness that had filled
his mind. Right. He was still in this bar, and it wouldn’t do to lose focus now. He took a deep breath and
continued to move in the direction of his monster, who had already returned to his station behind the
counter. He seemed calm, but something about the look Bill could see as he walked closer left Bill with
the impression that Canice was suppressing some emotion that looked an awful lot like what Bill had felt
only moments ago.

He meant to make a comment about the music, although the tune that now blared wasn’t half bad, but
another emotion rose within, something he didn’t quite understand, and the words that left his lips
without his volition surprised him. “How’s your back?”

The conversation that followed was short but by the end of it, Bill understood the cliff's edge he stood on,
a razor thin wire balanced between the man he'd thought he'd wanted to be and the man his Mother
had raised him to be.

He wasn't his Mother. He didn't want to become his Mother.

But nor was he the man he'd aspired to be, the day he'd signed up for the New York Police Academy.

He could feel the shadows, the fifty shades of gray in the possible consequences of the actions he
questioned. He temporarily avoided the bar and avoided the temptation to follow Canice. He stayed
away from alcohol. He slept all night for the first time in months. He needed to know that the career
change he craved was made without distractions.

Distractions or not, Bill knew where he stood after he and Misha interviewed a young sexual assault
victim two days later only to have her refuse to cooperate the next day.

"There's nothing we can do, Bill."

Bill stared at his Captain. He wanted to rage at him. Scream that it wasn't fair. And maybe something in
his face betrayed his thoughts, because Captain Keller sighed and raked a hand though his hair. "Look,
I'm sorry. But Elyse Hugh recanted her statement and refused to press charges. There's nothing we can
do. No evidence to fall back on."

"She only did that because-"

"Because Pryor is well connected, I know," Captain Keller interrupted. "It's not the first time this has
happened, you know that. And you know that if we had evidence, I would take this to the DA without
hesitation, friends in high places be damned. But we don't have a leg to stand on, and the DA would
laugh in my face if I brought this to her."

Bill pressed his lips together. He gave a nod and turned to leave. "I understand Sir," he said curtly. He
returned to his desk. The file for the latest case against Shane Pryor seemed to taunt him from where it
sat on top of his keyboard. He sighed and set it aside. What good was it to fight crime with one hand tied
behind his back? This wasn't why he had become a police officer. Red tape and paperwork and fucking
corrupt politicians who shielded the demons that walked among the innocent.

He gave another sigh and pulled the case file back and opened it. He peeled off a red sticky note and
placed it on the top page. In careful cursive he wrote down the words: Case closed pending cooperation
of complainant. "Idiot," he muttered, still upset, but part of that anger was directed towards himself and
he knew it. He should have foreseen that Shane Pryor would have taken the rage at being thrown out of
the bar the other night and used it to sexually assault a fourteen-year-old kid who happened to be in the
wrong place at the wrong time that night. What good were these fucking visions for if they didn't help
him protect innocent kids from demons like Pryor?

Thoughts of the bar brought Bill's attention to the case file for Canice Lawson. He shuffled around some
papers on his desk until he found it. This file was well worn, and had a coffee stain or two from a couple
of Bill's late nights as he diligently poured over every detail. He flipped through until he found it: on a
yellow sticky near the back he'd made himself a note. Word for word, he'd written down the thought his
monster had left for him to find in the journal hidden under Bill's bed at home: Oh my dear Inspector.
Haven't you realized it yet? We're on the same team.

Bill brushed his hands across the letters, pensive. Did it matter what the consequences were, in the end?
If he could save people from this kind of pain, if he could save children from the kind of pain that would
fuck them up for their entire adult lives, what did it matter, the means it took to do so?

That night Bill pulled his journal from its hiding place and poured out the entire story. Ink stained his
fingers but with every letter written he allowed the incident at the bar to stain the white pages and his
frustration and anger towards Pryor and Captain Keller and the corrupt friends in high places bled from
his fingers. When no more words would come, Bill stared down at the page and almost couldn't breathe.
The story was unfinished. There would be no justice, no ending, no comfort for the victim. Fourteen.
Fucking fourteen. And he was buried in red tape.

Air squeezed through his lungs, his breath quick and shallow. Bill set aside his journal and pulled his
knees to his chest. He rested his forehead on his kneecaps. The world was ending. The feeling of doom
hurled through his body. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. He wasn't a stranger to panic attacks.
The world gave him plenty of cause for these moments of sheer terror. But he'd never quite learned how
to deal with them other then let them run their course.

When he looked up at last, the room was dark. He shivered and reached to turn on his bedside lamp.
Once adjusted to the brightness, his gaze fell upon his journal. Without thinking, he reached to pick it up
and turned the pages back so that his monster's note showed. 'We're on the same team,' Canice had
written. Bill closed his eyes and allowed the fantasy to take hold.

What if he could have what he wanted.

What if he could rid the world of demons.

What if he could mold his monster to be a demon slayer instead of hunting the innocent.

What if he could take every drop of desire he saw in those heated eyes.

What if he could live freely without his Mother looking over his shoulder.

What if.

Bill opened his eyes. He replaced his journal back in its hiding place and switched the bedside lamp off,
but stayed kneeling on the floor. "Please Lord, show me the way," he begged. "You're in control. What
path do you want me to take?"

Bill held his position for long silent moments. His knees hurt from the hard wooden floor, even through
the large throw rug placed alongside his bed, and at last Bill moved to get up. As he did so, a cloud
moved and allowed the moonlight to shine through the glass of his window. Bill followed the path of the
light with his eyes and there it was. His sign. "I understand," he whispered. "Thank you."

The light of the moon was shining directly on his service weapon sitting innocently on top of his
nightstand.

A feeling of immense smugness filtered through his brain, a feeling that Bill knew did not belong to him,
and irritation at the interruption flared. "How are you doing that?" he demanded.

The reply, when it came, was shot through with exasperation. "I told you. Magic."

Bill growled in frustration. "What do you have to feel smug about? These are my memories, ones you
had nothing to do with, I might add."

Amusement shone through clearly at Elizabeth's response. "It turns out I did raise you right. You chose
this life out of your own volition after all."

Bill's stomach dropped. "I am not like you," he snapped back. "I am doing the Lord's work. And I don't kill
innocent children. I am leaving this world a better place, which is more than you can say! How many
defenseless children did you kill in your time as the Pied Piper?"
"It matters not what you tell yourself," Elizabeth told him, still smug. "You cannot hide from me. You may
have taught your barman to kill people who, in your eyes, were worthy of death. But your barman taught
you to take pleasure in the kill, did he not?"

The sharp breath and Bill's damning silence was enough of an answer for Elizabeth, it seemed. The
smugness became stronger. Bill wanted to tell her she was wrong, and the words were there, on the tip
of his tongue. But he couldn't say them, somehow. "They deserve what they got," Bill finely threw out,
too little too late.

"Don't fight it, child," Elizabeth's words were infused with pride, and Bill hated himself for how much he
wanted to hear that pride. Elizabeth had never, not once, made him feel as if he were worthy of
anything more than a scapegoat, a slave, a plaything to be used. The desire to hear his Mother's pride in
him and who he had become was something he'd craved, even as he'd rebelled against her teachings.

"They deserved what they got," Bill repeated. He mentally shoved at the ugly part of him that craved his
Mother's approval, disgusted at his own weakness. "You deserved what you got."

"I am not angry at the pain I have endured as you've killed my host bodies," Elizabeth said. "I would not
agree that I deserved such endings, but I needed them as much as you did, child. Didn't it feel good, to
enact your revenge on me time and time again? Didn't your heart sing as you and your barman worked
together to rid the world of me? Didn't you enjoy the-"

"Shut. Up." Bill growled, low and intense. "Get the fuck out of my head!"

Elizabeth simply laughed, and the low vibrations shook the inside of his head in a way that wasn't
exactly painful but wasn't pleasant, either. "Oh William. You saw my books on possession of the soul. Did
you never think I had done it? Do you remember any of your dreams, those nights I tried? Did you feel
anything, that day of the crash?"

"I don't-" Bill started, but he was interrupted.

"Did you really think I wanted you? Did you really think I wanted to be a mother, William? Breeding
wasn't ever about some perfect family fantasy. I simply needed a sacrificial lamb, someone to ensure
that I lived forever."

It wasn't like Bill hadn't known that he was unwanted. Even before she'd made it clear in spoken words
when he was young, he'd understood that he wasn't wanted. The words still hurt, the inner child inside
his soul still craved approval, still wanted to feel wanted. "No one can live forever," he challenged. "Or
are you telling me that you can, with magic?"

Elizabeth did not reply, and Bill recognized it as the silence she'd use when she wanted him to figure it
out for himself. He thought about her words, thought about the memories her words evoked, and he
understood. "You can live forever….because you used magic to possess me?"

"Your squib brain would not understand the nuances, of course. Even in this you somehow managed to
fail me. I knew how destroyed my body had become, when I came to after you crashed the car on
purpose, and I attempted the spell for a type of possession few before me have had the courage to try.
My attempt was only halfway completed when I was interrupted by that man who stopped to help us."
"Is this….this is the reason why I can hear you in my head," Bill said slowly. "I don't remember ever
hearing you like this before the car crash."

"There were some unintended effects," Elizabeth admitted. "The research I did afterward indicated that
the combination of two minds can make possession unpredictable. If I'd had a full-blooded magical child,
the effects would have been different. You never stop failing me, do you child."

Bill mentally waved away Elizabeth's insults as the puzzle pieces clicked in his brain. "The headaches! I
never suffered through migraines so blindingly painful before the crash."

"Pain is weakness leaving the body," Elizabeth said, and he could clearly feel the shrug in her words.

Bill ignored that. "It never stops with you, does it," he whispered. "Even after all this time. Why,
Elizabeth, why? Why would you do any of it? Why kill innocent children, if not to save me from the
devil? Why hurt me, if not to save me? Why take away childhood memories? Why - any of it, just -
why?"

"Are you not grateful for all I have done for you?" Elizabeth seemed puzzled. "I only did what any other
parent would do. I raised you the way I saw fit. I taught you the lessons you needed to face the world. I
shaped your worldview to fit what I thought would be best. I raised you to be exactly who you are. You
should be thanking me on bended knee, not questioning my choices."

"My therapist has given me the tools to recognize that the way you raised me is not 'what any other
parent' would do," Bill said heatedly. "And I've spent time out in the world now, years away from your
influence, I've watched other parents interact with their children, and you, Elizabeth, were not my
Mother. Your may have raised me, but you're not my parent!" His voice had risen to a shout by the end.

"I am your blood, your family-" Elizabeth snarled at him, but Bill broke in, enraged. "You are not my
family! Blood does not make you family! Canice is more my family than you EVER will be!"

"You ungrateful child," Elizabeth snapped out. "I won't to stand for this."

Bill laughed, the sound ugly and harsh. "Then shut up," he bit out.

The pounding headache that appeared moments later seemed to be Elizabeth's idea of a reply, but Bill
could only feel relief at her silent treatment. Questions popped into his mind as he pondered everything
he'd learned from her recent revelations, but there was no way in hell he planned to ask them now, not
when she'd gone quiet.

He rubbed his aching head and thought about what he'd told her about Canice. It was true. Canice was
the true family he'd chosen. They were connected by stronger bonds than shared blood. They were
bonded by shared desires, shared trauma, shared purpose, and shared kills that gave them an intimacy
unmatched by anything Bill had felt in his life. The long road that had brought them together was full of
fear, confusion, pain, and more than a few road blocks, and the road they had walked side-by-side along
for over a decade now was full of the same painful emotions and bumps. But what were a few cuts and
bruises among partners in crime? Life was messy, life was pain. He'd learned to hold on tight to the
nuggets of pleasure and contentment that came amongst the commercial breaks between trainwrecks.
Bill had never applied for a passport, and Canice wanted to travel outside the States. The necessary
paperwork was sent off before they left New York. Bill arranged to pick up the finished product in Alaska
on a random whim. Canice laughed but indulged him and it was decided that they would travel through
a few states as they made their way there.

Bill's contact inside Katrina's organization informed him of a couple of people in Vermont that had
escaped justice. Their flight landed in the evening. Canice insisted on spending the night in Montpelier
before they traveled on. Bill had never stayed at a hotel before, and marveled at every little thing he saw
from the lobby to the room. Canice laughed at him but Bill didn't care.

It wasn't until he was inside the room, and Canice announced he was going to shower before bed, that
Bill's mood shifted at the implied invitation.

He hesitated just outside the door. The pounding water from inside was both familiar and frightening. He
wasn't accustomed to the anxiety of - well. Whatever this was. He wasn't afraid of Canice. It was the
unknown of his sexuality. The naked man inside the shower, with all that implied, was still an
intimidating prospect. The churches he'd attended had been clear on one thing: Sin of the flesh was to be
avoided outside the bonds of marriage.

But oh. Oh.

What happens when an unmovable object meets an unstoppable force?

The unstoppable force that had clouded every other thought from his mind that night they'd reunited in
New York was undeniable. The way Canice didn't even have to touch him for Bill's mind to derail into the
depths of desire…Oh.

Sin be damned. He would follow Canice into Hell for this any day of the week and make up for it in
confession.

He opened the door and the steam blast warmed him from head to toe. Grateful that Canice didn't poke
his head out from behind the curtain nor say a word, but simply continued to hum a tune he was
unfamiliar with, Bill stepped out of his clothes and gathered his courage. He peeked past the barrier
between them. He could see the flair in Canice's eyes as he registered his hesitation, but Canice simply
held out a hand and waited. Bill reached out to grasp warm wet skin and stepped close. He heard his
own shallow, quick breaths and felt the pounding of his chest.

Arms encircled his waist to gently to pull him close. Bill sunk into the embrace easily. His eyes closed as
he rested his head on a solid, warm shoulder. Canice continued to hum. Bill relaxed further. He allowed
the man who held him to fill his senses and soothe his irrational worries away.

When Canice softly pressed his lips to the side of his neck, Bill couldn't help the breathy "oh" that fell like
the water around them. He could feel Canice's smile as he repeated the action. God. He'd never
understood why the people around him seemed to crave this. He could appreciate a fit bloke as much as
anyone else, but hadn't been able to translate that attraction into actual desire. But this. Oh. Oh!

Bill tightened his arms around Canice and, shyness forgotten, reached for that mouth with his own. The
last coherent thought that went through his mind was a silent prayer: Please God, don't ever let him
leave me.
Christmas Eve found them at the Orlando International Airport for a two-day layover. They checked into
the hotel, conveniently located inside the airport not far from the terminal where they'd landed. Bill was
wired and unable to sleep right away. While Canice took a nap, he wondered around the airport stores in
search of supplies. Canice had mentioned that he missed the Christmas tree his Ma would put up every
year. "Sean never allowed us one," he'd explained. "It became a new tradition of ours in the years after
he was locked away."

Bill didn't know how, but Canice would have his tree one way or another. It took an hour, but at last Bill
found both a suitable substitute for a Christmas tree and a small Christmas gift wrapped in the brown
paper bag from the store. He smuggled them into the hotel room, careful not to wake Canice as he hid
them. The exhaustion hit him as he watched his monster sleep. Too tired to undress, he simply crawled
onto the bed and fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

When Bill woke next, a look at the clock showed nearly twelve hours had passed. He yawned, somehow
still tired. "Merry Christmas, sleepyhead," Canice teased him from where he sat on the couch, a book in
his hands.

"Happy Christmas," Bill responded through another yawn. He remembered his Christmas tree and slid
out of bed, suddenly no longer tired. One command hook later, a large Christmas tree ornament hung
from the side of the wall.

"What's this?" Canice asked as stood up to inspect Bill's work.

Suddenly shy, Bill looked away from Canice's gaze. "Your Christmas tree this year," he said softly.

Canice walked away, and for a second Bill felt his chest fall before Canice returned with a small wrapped
package from his suitcase he placed on the floor underneath the tree ornament. Bill couldn't help the
relieved smile that spread across his face. He retrieved the gift he had bought the day before and placed
it alongside Canice's package on the floor. The hand that slid into Bill's moments later gave him the
courage to meet Canice's eyes. No words were exchanged out loud, but there didn't need to be.

"Breakfast first?" Canice asked, and the moment was broken. Bill nodded in agreement.

Two full stomachs later, they strolled leisurely back to their room. Bill held out his hand and waited.
There was a moment of hesitation, but Canice slipped his hand into Bill's as they walked. "It helps when
you know that none of these strangers will likely ever see us again," Bill said quietly. Canice squeezed his
hand in response.

Unwrapping gifts didn't take long. Bill was elated at the special eye mask Canice had given him ("I know
it says for use on your eyes, but it can be used for those headaches of yours, heat it up in the microwave
and you'll smell the warm scent of lavender"). In turn, Canice was enthusiastic about the handy multi-
purpose tool Bill gave him ("I lost mine a few years ago and hadn't replaced it, however did you know").

Their next stop took them through Minnesota. Katrina had supplied Bill with a list of Shane Pryor types in
the states he planned to travel to, and Bill made sure to confirm each name on the list with an
"accidental" touch before he allowed Canice free reign. At first, Bill was hesitant to join Canice past the
stalking phase of a hunt. Canice understood why, but Bill said the words out loud anyway. "I'm afraid I'll
become my Mother," he said. "What if I like it so much I start to kill the innocent children I'm trying to
protect?"
Canice simply took his hand. "You want this," he said. "You want this."

And Bill understood Canice's message in that phrase: I won't let you become her. I'm here to protect you.
Let go of your fear.

Letting go was easier said than done. Canice didn't push him. Bill wrestled internally with his own
demons as the stalking phase ended each time. He was afraid of the unknown. He was afraid to unleash
his own monster inside. He remembered the flash of savage pleasure he'd felt when he'd shot Shane
Pryor. He'd chosen this life. He didn't want to go back. But fear wasn't always rational or logical. It had a
mind of its own.

Canice came back to him after every kill flushed with energy, eyes bright and so alive, and Bill came to
crave that vibrant spark. Canice would cook for him, elaborate meals that often took hours to make, if
only because Bill insisted on helping and Canice could not keep his hands to himself, his spirit passionate
and powerful. Bill came to associate the end of their hunts with pleasure so intense the only way he
could describe it was like a drug.

It was inevitable that Bill would eventually crave to prolong the addiction however he could.

They were hidden in the shadows outside of a small home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming when Bill told
Canice, "I'm coming with you," and the smile Canice turned on him was so bright it could have powered
the sun, as far as Bill was concerned.

As a police officer who'd worked the Dollmaker scenes, Bill understood the brutal physicality of what took
place better than most. He was prepared for that. What he wasn't prepared for was how the shine in
Canice's eyes and the flex of his muscles and the clear contrast between Canice's energy and that of their
demon swirled inside Bill's soul with an emotion so powerful he couldn't pinpoint an exact word for it. It
was pleasure and pain, death and life, hope and despair all rolled into one and the combination was so
heady that Bill had no hope of containing the explosion. He let it all out the exact way Canice had shown
him, all these weeks. Something inside had unlocked. Had clicked into place. "You want this," Canice
whispered in his ear as Bill shattered into pleasure, and all he could do was grip Canice tighter and shout
yes like some kind of pornstar.

Bill had always imagined that he'd walk through life alone. He had accepted it. He had assumed he
wouldn't see Heaven until he died.

But this. This was Heaven on Earth.

As they hunted demons and pulled each other into tourist destinations and slid into a routine in their
partnership both inside and outside of the bedroom, Bill embraced every aspect of it all without the
reservations or fears that had held him back. As well as he'd known Canice, he found new things to
discover every day, intimate details that simply stalking a man could not show. How Canice liked to sing
in the shower, how he enjoyed the outside pod of a pea but not the little peas inside, how he liked to
listen to radio shows but would often fall asleep to them.

They reached Alaska by Groundhog Day. The small city they settled into was charming in its own way.
Canice wasn't fond of the cold, but Bill didn't mind it. They rented a month-by-month small apartment, in
anticipation of their move abroad. Bill picked a name off the list and a new hunt began.
Later, Bill would wonder if he'd picked a different state to pick up his passport, if things still would have
slip-slided away.

A small crowd appeared to have gathered not far from the place where the land met the sea. The rocky,
rough gravel shoreline was generally not littered with people, one reason why Bill enjoyed their regular
walks along the shore of Earthquake Park. The regular intervals of airplanes above their heads from the
nearby airport was not at all annoying, as one might imagine it to be; somehow the roar of an engine
above was soothing. Beside him, Canice watched with wide eyes as a large passenger plane passed, its
nose pointed up as it climbed higher into the heavens, and Bill smiled internally. His little monster's
nearly childhood glee was infectious.

"I wasn't allowed toys," Canice told him as they walked, the plane now far off in the distance, and his
voice still sounded full with a kind of childish wonder that Bill hadn't heard from him before. "Sean was
against such things. But the Christmas when I was five, Ma pressed a tiny model airplane into my hand,
no bigger than my palm. I would hide it under my bed and when I knew Sean was asleep I would take it
out and pretend that I was on that plane, that it would take me far away to distant lands I'd only ever
heard Ma talk about."

Bill felt his chest compress with something he couldn't quite name. He could hear the genuine wistfulness
within Canice's tone and knew that for once, Canice's words weren't part of their game. They were a kind
of truth that they didn't normally practice, and Bill had no words to respond to that. Instead he took
Canice's hand in his own as they paused their steps to watch the next plane as it flew overhead, and
joined in with Canice's loud, gleeful laughter that rose above the whirl of the engine. As it, too, gradually
faded into the distance, Canice turned towards him, his eyes alight with a type of victory Bill knew
exactly how to interpret. "We're here," Bill murmured. "We're here, Canice."

Canice's eyes held his before they darted around, and Bill knew that Canice was checking to see if they
were safe to show this sort of display. Bill knew the habit was a hard one to break. It never really went
away. But most of the people nearby seemed to be focused on someone or something else, and Bill
allowed Canice the time to realize this and turn his attention back to him. "It's all behind us," Bill
whispered. "We're here, Canice."

Canice reached out to grab the front of Bill's heavy jacket. "Mine," he growled softly as he pulled Bill into
him, and the words exchanged with the press of lips and the swipe of tongue were filled with the sort of
relief one could only feel after years of oppression and fear and longing and dreaming and scheming that
had led them here. Here, in this small city in Alaska while they waited for their appropriate paperwork to
be processed to go abroad; here, on this odd excuse for a beach while they waited for their current target
to get sick of staring at the ocean and return to her home; here, wrapped around each other in a way Bill
thought neither one of them had ever believed possible, even while they hunted and plotted to make
their partnership a reality. These first couple of months away from it all seemed like a dream, and Bill still
couldn't believe they'd done it. The last weights that had dragged them down were gone, they'd found
their way back after all the scars and screams and comatose silence, the New York sky now a near
distant memory, and life was theirs for the taking. Literally.

A loud shout broke them apart, and Bill could see Canice's eyes fill with panic before they both realized
that the shout was not directed at them. As one, their heads moved to check out the source of the noise,
and Bill gave a quiet sigh of relief as he spotted the group he'd noticed earlier. The loose circle of people
clapped and cheered as the man and woman inside the circle grinned at each other. They stood close
enough to see the slip of a ring on a finger before the couple wrapped themselves around each other,
and Bill smiled softly. He looked over at Canice who was smiling too, but shaking his head as he did so,
and Bill nudged him. "What?" he asked.

"So cliché," Canice whispered, and Bill laughed as they continued their walk. "Quite so," he agreed. "Go
on then, how did you do it, Mr. Un-cliché?"

Canice raised an eyebrow at him, and Bill could sense that Canice was slightly taken aback at the casual
way Bill mentioned Canice's deceased ex-wife. Bill just raised an eyebrow back at him and waited. It was
a waste of time and energy to be insecure about past partners. Canice hadn't cared that Bill had come to
him with no history of partners to speak of, and Bill hadn't cared that Canice had a past littered with one-
night stands and a previous marriage.

Another plane flew overhead and they paused to watch, and as the Super Cub drew near Bill looked over
to see that childhood light in Canice's eyes once more. As the engine faded away Canice returned his
gaze. His sheepish grin told Bill all he needed to know, and he burst out laughing. "No," he wheezed out.
"You didn't!"

Canice joined him in laughter. "In my defense, I knew she wanted cliché. I figured she'd be more likely to
say yes if I gave her the proposal of her dreams."

Bill hiccupped his laughter into silence as they moved to continue their stroll. Neither one of them was
worried about losing their target. They knew where she lived and had her schedule down by heart now.
The sound of the waves against the rocks mingled with the sounds of children playing. A woman's voice
called "come along now, come here," and Bill's eyes followed a couple of small children as they darted
back to their nearby mothers. One glanced their way, a fearful expression on her face, and looked away
quickly as she realized she'd been caught staring. "I really wish they wouldn't shove it in our faces," Bill
heard the other woman say, and the familiar tinge of shame filled him. Canice had heard the words too,
and he started to pull his hand out of Bill's in response, but Bill held him tight. Canice jerked to a stop. Bill
held his hand firmly and turned his body so they stood face to face. "Canice. Look at me."

Bill waited until Canice's gaze met his own. "Remember that cliché couple back there with their marriage
proposal?"

Canice nodded, somewhat meekly, and Bill shoved his own shame away. He'd come to terms with the
realities of his sexuality long ago, but that didn't mean that he was immune to the side-eyes and the
snide comments and the deliberate aggression. He'd learned to deal with it in his own way. But for
Canice, this was still very new. Learning to live out loud in a way that so many others took for granted
took time and courage.

"That," Bill said slowly, deliberately, "that was more a blatant display of shoving it in people's faces.
We-" he paused here to take a deep breath, "we have just as much right as anyone to exist."

Canice nodded, and Bill could see the fire return to his eyes. "I want to hunt them," he said quietly, the
anger and shame clear in his tone, and Bill reached out to take his other hand too. "I know," Bill told him.
"I know. But they have children, remember?"
Canice gave another nod. "I know. But hell, I need…" he trailed off, but Bill understood. "Let's go hunt our
demon," he said. The look Canice shot him was all the answer Bill needed. They walked back the way
they came with a leisurely pace. Bill squeezed the hand in his in reassurance and allowed the smell of the
sea air and the sound of the waves against the rocky shore to wash away the traces of shame.

Their demon had left the area, but they didn't need to follow her to know that she was headed to her
regular animal shelter volunteer work to spend a few hours before she would head home to the house on
the south side of the city. Canice drove them to a spot nearby where they parked in a small, hidden
alcove sheltered by trees while they waited for the time to pass. Canice seemed restless and uneasy.
Attempts at conversation were quickly abandoned. Bill watched Canice out of the corner of his eye and
almost couldn't breathe from the waves of tension.

As the minutes ticked by, the restlessness seeped into his own skin and searched for an outlet. Bill
reached a hand out and gently ran his fingers through the soft hair of the man next to him. Canice tensed
further at first, and Bill held his breath but didn't stop. He rubbed gentle circles along the scalp and
waited for Canice's approval or rejection. After a moment he felt Canice relax. He continued the touch
and marveled at the simple pleasure of it. This touch had once seemed so out of reach for them.

The first time Bill had touched Canice had been the first time they'd spoken in the bar. Canice had handed
Bill back the photo of Bethany Franke and the brush of hands had induced a shiver of dreadful
understanding followed by a rather upset stomach that made the continuation of the conversation
difficult. Not the worst reaction to a criminal he'd had, oh no. Not by a long shot. He'd not needed the
confirmation, not really. The first moment he'd seen Canice Lawson, he'd known who he was. Their first
conversation, he'd known what he'd done. But that first touch. He'd felt the darkness that resided within
that handsome exterior. The need, the drive to continue that darkness.

A sigh from Canice brought Bill back into the moment and he followed Canice's unspoken cue. He took
the proffered hand and massaged it carefully, slowly. He worked from the inside of the palm outward to
the fingertips. He kept his eyes focused on Canice's own closed lids as he did so. Bill's fingers knew this
game well. He sent a silent prayer into the heavens above, thankful that he so rarely felt that underlying
darkness when he touched Canice now. It seemed familiarity helped ease it somewhat, made it easier for
Bill to focus on something else. Bill had never had cause to touch a demon more than once. He suspected
that it would be more difficult to ignore in another person. But Canice. Well. Desire was a most delightful
sensation to focus on, was it not?

Bill took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He allowed his thoughts to blow away like wind as he did so,
somewhat discomfited at the turn of his thoughts. Ever since their partnership had become a true reality
he'd found it difficult to think for long on the darkness that resided within his monster. He glanced down
just long enough to orient himself as he switched his massage efforts to Canice's other hand. When he
looked up again, he found his eyes caught by Canice's relaxed gaze.

He supposed he should be used to this now. He and Canice had looked at each other from across many a
parking lot, across the counter of a bar, across roads and through windows and journals and scrapbooks.
Bill remembered one of the detectives he'd partnered with once made some quip about how 'the eyes
were the window to the soul'. Bill hadn't understood that. For him, touch was the window to a soul. One
touch and he understood the depths of the darkness of a soul, the levels of hell that could be contained
within one body. Eyes? They could lie. They could look with such earnestness and yet still contain nothing
but deception and lies.
But Canice. This man was the only person that showed Bill what that detective had meant. As Bill looked
at him now, all trace of the agitation from earlier that day was gone. A curiosity shone now, layered over
the serene depths, and Canice's silent question settled between them. Bill gently lowered the hand in his
and shifted slightly in his seat so he could reach both hands to place one on each of Canice's cheeks. He
allowed his gaze to shift just enough for Canice to understand the message before slipping his hands
through soft hair again. Canice drew a quiet breath, and Bill laughed softly. He raised an eyebrow, but
Canice shook his head once, a quick dart of his eyes to the window and back. Bill smiled ruefully. They
really should look into a car with tinted windows next time.

Bill allowed his hands to slide down to massage Canice's face. He closed his eyes for a moment to savor
the feel of skin, but a tap on his arm had him gazing back into the face before him. 'I want to see you',
Canice's expression implored. Bill could feel his traitorous cheeks turn red and didn't quite understand
why. The look in Canice's eyes turned sneaky, and Bill caught a breath as Canice's hands moved to cover
his own where they had been gently massaging Canice's jawline. He didn't move them, simply encased
Bill's hands and held them there, and Bill understood the game by the way Canice's eyes turned
predatory, hints of mischief at the crinkled corners.

Time narrowed as they held their positions, and neither one of them moved save for their facial
expressions. Bill had lost this game last time they'd played, but he held his own this time, and it was
Canice who caved, one hand bunched in the front of Bill's jacket as he reached for Bill's mouth with his
own. When they broke apart Bill raised an eyebrow to silently ask a question he'd brought up only days
before. Canice shook his head after a moment of hesitation, and Bill grinned. That second of hesitation
was enough for him to know that there would be a 'yes' at some point down the road. Bill spared a
moment of regret that Canice wouldn't allow them to take advantage of the soon-to-be empty house
before he glanced at the dashboard to check the time. Not long now. He leaned back in his seat, his body
sore from twisting to touch Canice. A moment later he felt a hand grasp his own and something like
satisfaction stole over him.

When it came to fruition, the actual climax of their hunt was satisfying, although Bill refrained from
saying so. His gaze drifted from his task as he watched the way Canice lit up from adrenaline and
endorphins. While this was not their first hunt together, it was the first time they'd been afforded the
time to fully plan and take their time with the aftermath, and Bill almost missed the frenzy of their
previous few. There was, however, a certain charm in this: time to completely bleach the blood from the
floor, time to package the body to hide, time for Canice to roughly snog him senseless in the middle of
the sitting room.

The drive home was almost euphoric. Canice belted out the lyrics to Something In Your Mouth when it
came on the radio. His hands worked in a drumming motion and Bill couldn't help but join in singing.
Canice knew every line with perfection and Bill only knew the chorus but it didn't matter. The energy was
infectious. Bill watched Canice and a wave of something he could only describe as gratefulness stole over
his veins. He'd never felt so free in his entire life. As the song faded away Bill wished this moment
wouldn't end so soon. Canice fiddled with the radio dial for a minute before he shouted out with glee and
turned the volume up. "Oh hell yeah," he said over the soft tones of a classic feminine tone. Bill didn't
know this particular song at all, but he couldn't help but laugh as Canice loudly sung make your own kind
of music even if no one else sings along, and he thanked the Lord above for every moment of Hell that
had guided him to the Heaven he now knew with his chosen partner in crime.
As they set about dinner, Bill threw on an old record in the hope that Canice would continue as he had in
the car ride home, and he was not disappointed. "Rock and Roll angels bring hard rock hallelujah,"
Canice belted out, and he barked out a laugh as he realized he'd missed a word before he continued on,
"Demons and angels all in one have arrived."

Bill was familiar with Lordi but didn't know enough of their lyrics to join in with confidence. He hummed
along, bobbed his head in time with the beat, and allowed Canice to occasionally spin him around the
kitchen. Bill almost wasn't sure what to make of Canice's sudden carefree behavior. While Canice could
not be described as shy in any way, his lighthearted moments generally were edged with a distinct
sextual undertone. Although, Bill thought wryly, it wasn't like he was any better. For the first time in his
life, Bill understood why society focused so much on sex.

They ate a somewhat burned vegetable stir fry over slightly overcooked teriyaki flavored noodles and Bill
wasn't sure he cared. They sat on the floor. Canice had said it didn't make sense to buy furniture when
they planned on moving abroad so soon. Bill had asked for one exception, however, and the actual bed in
the room down the hall was well worth the future hassle. Bill grinned at the thought of that bed, but
pushed away the thought for after dinner. They ate in comfortable silence, the Lordi album now finished,
and Bill watched the way Canice ate, somewhat messy but with a precision that spoke of years of
training layered with proper punishments over every little misstep. Or perhaps he was projecting a little
bit, but hadn't they both grown up with a parent who had insisted that every small detail be done a
certain way?

A satisfied sigh made Bill fully aware of the present again, and he looked to see Canice set his bowl to the
side. Bill took his last bite and did the same, and his hand reached out, his intention to pull Canice into a
suggestive embrace, but Canice took his hand in his own and let their joined hands rest on his knee.
"Bill," he said softly, and something in his tone alerted Bill to the fact that Canice was not, in this
moment, on the same page as he was. There was something he wanted to say. Something genuine,
something that was outside of the scope of their usual banter. For an odd, fleeting moment, Bill wanted
to pull his hand away. But then Canice spoke his name again, and the moment passed.

"Bill," Canice said, and paused until Bill met his gaze. "Will you marry me?"

Bill blinked, and his entire body jolted as if shocked. Bizarrely, the first thing that came to his mind was to
make some joke about how this was the furthest from cliché that one could get, but he stopped the
words from flying out of his mouth just in time. Some sixth sense told him that now was not the right
time for that remark. He opened his mouth but he had no idea what to say. He closed it again.

"Marry me." Canice repeated gently. "Marry me, Bilbo." The expression Canice wore was
uncharacteristically open, and Bill could see the scared little boy hidden underneath this man's face.
There was an undertone of amusement, too, that shone through in the slight upturn of Canice's mouth
and the quirked eyebrow and the way those eyes sparkled. Canice was amused at Bill's complete shock
and inability to form a response.

Form a response. Bill blinked with another jolt of shock as he realized he needed to come up with a
response. He'd seen enough media to know that the expected, almost demanded, response to this
question was a resounding 'yes'. For a moment, he let himself wonder. The smile on Canice's face at a
'yes'. The incredible sex that would follow. The knowledge that his demon hunter, his partner in crime,
would forever be tied to him. Bill's mouth opened again as the realization hit him. This wasn't him. This
wasn't what he wanted. He couldn't say yes.

His parents had been married, Bill remembered. But that hadn't stopped Luke from walking out the door.
All it had meant was a legal hassle for his Mother while she was most heartbroken. What good was the
supposed commitment of 'till death do us part' when someone was so determined to walk away? The
label that defined what Bill shared with Canice was full of so much more trust then some legal piece of
paper. Partners in Crime. They were committed under the shadows of blood and bone, in screams for
mercy and graves dug for demons. He closed his mouth.

By the time Bill turned his focus from inside his head back to the man sitting in front of him, he could see
Canice had understood the end goal of the silent journey Bill had taken. "I'm sorry," Bill whispered. He
wanted to explain, somehow, but the sight of Canice's face as it shut down took his breath away in the
worst possible way. The real punch to the gut, however, was the bewildered pain that Canice's eyes
spoke of, and Bill tried to express his apology another way. He squeezed Canice's cold hand where it still
rested in his own.

Canice's stony expression turned away as he ripped his hand out of Bill's grip. Bill felt the ice spread
inside his stomach and didn't know what to say, how to fix the damage his silence had caused. "Let me
explain," he tried to say, but Canice cut him off before he could get any further.

"Do not." The words were almost thrown, and Bill swayed back as if he'd been punched. He watched,
helpless, as Canice shifted his position until he was sitting with his knees pressed to his chest, his arms
wrapped protectively around himself. The shallow breaths were quiet in the otherwise silent room.

"I'm not rejecting you," Bill said softly.

At that, Canice's eyes snapped to his. The fury in them surprised Bill. "How the fuck is this not a
rejection?" Canice spit at him. His nails dug into the sides of his own legs. He was rocking back and forth
lightly, and his eyes burned with a fire Bill hadn't seen directed at him before.

"I'm not rejecting you, I'm rejecting-"

"Yes you are!"

"Let me explain-"

"What the fuck is there to explain?"

"This is more than-"

"I don't want to hear it!"

'We're partners in crime!" Bill finally threw out, his voiced raised in frustration. "We don't-" He broke off
at the look on Canice's face.

"DON'T YOU TELL ME WHAT WE ARE," Canice screamed. He sprung up to his knees, his hands clenched
at his sides. Bill shrunk back, startled, but didn't back down. "If you'd just calm down and let me-"
"CALM DOWN? CALM DOWN? You just told me-" Canice left the sentence unfinished. Bill jumped to fill
the ringing silence. "My parents were-"

"WE ARE NOT OUR PARENTS," Canice yelled, and his hands flailed wildly before he grabbed the bowl he'd
set aside earlier. Bill had just enough warning to turn to his side as the bowl flew at him. The jolt of pain
shot through his shoulder and he cried out.

"Like how that feels?" Canice taunted, and Bill stared at him in shock. "Hurts, doesn't it?"

Bill sat, frozen. Canice pinned him with his gaze as he spoke, and each word dropped heavy and furious.
"You don't trust me, do you."

At this, Bill shot up to his knees to mirror Canice's pose. "I trust you with my life, and with my life's
mission!"

Canice stood slowly and stepped close to where Bill kneeled. In a different context, Bill would get a thrill
from their power play. But there was no thrill here. Apprehension filled every bone in his body as he
watched Canice, and for the first time Bill understood what it meant to partner with an apex predictor.
His close proximity did not mean he was safe from his monster's claws. He'd thought he'd understood
what it meant, to trust a monster. He knew what he was getting into when he chose this path. But as he
stared at Canice's face, alight with a look he'd never before experienced directed at him, he realized.

He'd never had any clue at all.

He knew every inch of his monster's body. He knew more details about his monster's past than anyone
else aside from Canice himself. He'd spent months investigating this man, and had outright stalked him,
hunted him. He'd seen how Canice interacted with his prey. Shit, he'd experienced it before, even. Canice
had hunted him, had made him a piece in their game long before Bill had chosen to play.

"But not, apparently, with the legal ties."

Bill focused back on Canice. "I trust you in every possible way there is to trust, Canice."

Canice reached a hand out to cup his cheek. "So that's a yes then."

The warning couldn't have been more clear. But Bill was never one to accept the easy out. He didn't say
anything. He knew he wouldn't need to. And as Canice withdrew his hand mere seconds later, Bill did
something he'd swore he'd never again do with Canice. He automatically switched into police officer
mode.

The change was subtle, but Bill registered the posture modification and the focus of mind in the same
moment that Canice did. Canice gave some sort of noise of shock, and Bill raised his hands quickly. "I'm
sorry I'm sorry, that happened without any conscious thought-" The breath left his lungs as he fell to the
floor, his back now against the carpet, and it took Bill several seconds to understand that Canice had
pushed him down. His monster stood over him now. "Don't," he said, "Treat me as if I were one of
THEM." He hurled the last word at Bill, and his voice shook in anger.
"I swear I wasn't-" But Bill broke off as Canice dropped to his knees beside him and grabbed his hands.
"You aren't like them, Bilbo, right? Everyone else has hurt me, but you won't, right? You won't ever hurt
me, because you're not like them."

"I swear I won't hurt you," Bill cried out in his attempt to reassure. Canice looked to be on the verge of
tears as he babbled out, "You can plan the ceremony, however you want, whatever you want. Just - say
yes, Bilbo, say yes. Please don't hurt me."

Bill stared at his monster's shiny eyes and pleading expression. "It's not even legal," he said. It was a
stalling tactic. He knew he'd have to outright say the word. For the first time, he was afraid to say it.
"Here or where we're moving to, it's not even legal for partners like us."

"What's one more law broken?" Canice breathed. "We'll find a way."

"I don't want to get married, Canice!" The words came out louder and more forceful than Bill had
intended.

"To me," Canice said.

"To anyone-" Bill tried to say, but something in Canice's expression stopped him. He watched as Canice
stood and turned away from him. His harsh breaths filled the space until it was all Bill could hear. His
stomach churned. This was the first time Canice had made him feel like…but Canice wasn't Elizabeth, not
even close. He got to his feet, but stood there, uncertain. How could he defuse this tension?

"Oh child."

Bill stopped breathing. "Not even you," he choked out, "would stoop so low."

Canice turned to him. Some kind of malicious glee poured from his gaze. "Does it hurt, Bilbo?" The false
innocence dripped from every word. "Oh child."

The anger that filled him froze him to the spot. "Not even you," he repeated, his voice thick, and with
shock Bill realized he was crying. He rubbed his eyes roughly, shame and anger mixed in his veins, but
had bearly lowered his arm before he stumbled backwards. Again, his mind took a minute to catch up. By
the time he understood what had happened, Canice had pushed him again. Bill's body hit the wall
roughly, his ears ringing from adrenaline. He felt his head bounce and was pushed again as Canice
screamed at him, the sound terrible and almost inhuman, before words poured from his monster's mouth
- "You don't deserve to cry, you're the one who hurt me, and you don’t see me crying do you? Suck it up,
child, suck it up-"

"DON'T," Bill screamed out, "CALL ME CHILD." He pushed Canice back and tried to slide away, but Canice
laughed manically and grabbed him by the waist. Bill found himself shoved so hard the breath left his
body. Fury rose within, burning away any fear. Just as Canice knew what would hurt him the most, so to
did Bill, and two can play that game. "Do you like that, Canice? Do you like my pain?"

"You're not hurt," Canice dismissed his words with another shove. "You're the one who hurt me, why
won't you say yes, just say yes-"
"Elizabeth would do that too," Bill threw nastily. "Elizabeth liked to see me hurt. You're just like her."

"Fuck you!" Canice cried out. Dazed, Bill registered the slap across his face in the space between the first
and the second one. Without conscious thought, he ducked his head and attempted to use it as makeshift
battering ram against Canice's chest. His attempts to escape Canice's hold seemed to ratchet up Canice's
fury. "DON'T YOU DARE WALK AWAY FROM ME," Canice screamed out, and Bill did what he could to curl
his body away from Canice's fists. The wall received a fair amount of Canice's rage as Bill tried to
anticipate Canice's next move. "Stop," he choked out more than once, but Bill could have been talking to
the wall for all the good it did. A particularly vicious punch to the stomach left him winded, and he
gasped for breath as Canice pushed him heavily against the wall and held him there.

"Look at you," Canice said. "Lost for words. You and I both know the answer is 'yes'. Now now, don't
speak. I think we'll have a long engagement, what do you say? Say fifty years? It takes time to properly
plan a ceremony, after all."

Bill didn't say anything. He looked at Canice and knew his expression spoke of his refusal, he could feel it
written all over his face. Canice simply returned his gaze calmly, all trace of his anger evaporated into
thin air. "Why do you want to get married?" Bill said at last, his voice somewhat shaky from shock.

"It doesn't matter why, don't interrogate me!" Canice snapped out. "Shut your mouth. You've already
said yes, there's no need to talk any more about it."

Stunned, Bill felt his mouth drop. "I did no such-"

"Fifty year engagement," Canice talked right over him. "I think we'll keep it to ourselves though, hmm?
No need to shout it to the world. We wouldn't want to shove it in anyone's face, now would we?" The
bitter tone of his last sentence couldn't quite hide the wobble to Canice's voice. Clearly, he was still upset
about the thoughtless remark earlier in the day.

"Telling people that sort of thing isn't shoving it in anyone's face, no more than that other couple-" Bill
started to say in an attempt to comfort Canice, but Canice cut him off with a quick peck on the lips. "I'm
so glad you agree," he said brightly. He released Bill and started to pick up the dishes that lay strewn
about the floor. "Honestly, Bill. You really should learn to pick up after yourself."

Bill remained where he was, his weight now sagged against the wall as he watched Canice move the
dishes to the sink and start washing up. The tenor voice drifted through his ears and with a jolt he
realized that Canice was singing again. Make your own kind of music/sing your own special song/even if
nobody else sings along…..

Bill hesitated, unsure what to do. The last several minutes seemed like some kind of dream, a nightmare
that he simply needed to wake up from and all would be well. Pain laced through his veins, some of it
physical and some of it the deep hurt left by Canice's callous remarks, but Bill was no stranger to either
type of pain. He'd not expected to feel this from his monster, his partner in crime, and the betrayal stung
more than he could have imagined. But he'd never imagined it. For the first time since he'd made the
decision to change careers, Bill wondered if he should have stepped off this path long ago.
But did it matter? He was here now. There was no going back. He'd partnered with a known monster. He
did not have the right to be angry that Canice actually was the apex predictor he'd hunted. He'd known
that. He'd caught him anyway. He could no more return to his previous life than he could go back in time.

Bill took a deep, settling breath. Carefully, he pushed off the wall and mentally dusted himself off. He
took stock of his injuries quickly. Nothing broken or hurt beyond what he was sure were to be some nasty
bruises. Another breath. He moved to join Canice in the kitchen and picked up a dish towel decisively.
Canice continued to sing as he washed the dishes. Bill dried them and put them away as he gathered his
courage. When he spoke at last, he kept his voice soft but firm. "Do not ever treat me that way again,
Canice. I'm not one of your targets. Not anymore. That time has passed. Same team, remember?"

Canice froze in the middle of his task, and Bill held his breath, unsure how Canice would react to his
statement. "I'll treat you however I damn well please," Canice growled. A breath later and Bill gasped as
a sharp white hot pain sliced though him. He stared at Canice in shock. The knife Canice had been
washing up was clenched in his monster's shaking hands. Bill looked down at his shoulder. His shirt was
torn and blood was seeping down his arm. Distantly, he could hear Canice say something but in his shock
wasn't able to process the words. Oddly, he didn't feel any pain. He stared at his arm, unable to look
away, and he could hear Canice now, his words filtering through as if on the other side of a long tunnel.

"I didn't mean - I swear - I'm not Sean - I'm not I swear - I didn't mean to Bilbo, I'm not Sean I'm not -"

Bill listened to the words and drifted though time. He remembered ropes tied to the bedpost and his
Mother's screams and then his own, long slow drags of pain and his incoherent begging for it to stop,
Sean's crazed eyes filled with glee from each scream and the slow progression of Canice's own pleasure
from Elizabeth's screams faded, turned to uncertain horror at the sound of Bill's agony.

"-I swear I'll never hurt you -" Bill could hear Canice's horrified babbling, muted as memory ruled, return
to his ears slowly. The shock of the moment faded and the pain hit him at full force. He heard Canice's
words cut off as Bill gasped aloud at the sheer ragged agony of it all, and then Canice was scrambling -
"Let me, let me, I'm -" And Canice was there, right there, wet towel in hand, helping Bill out of his shirt
and then cleaning him off, and Bill couldn't help the tears that trickled down his checks, the shock and
pain mingling with something else, something powerful in his chest at the care with which Canice was
treating his wound. This emotion wasn't something he could place but somehow it amplified the sharp
ache of the cut. He watched as Canice wrapped his arm tightly in gauze. "I didn't mean it," Canice
whispered to him more than once.

Bill reached with his uninjured arm to touch his fingers to Canice's cheek. Canice took a sharp breath and
his eyes darted up to meet Bill's gaze. The unspoken message couldn't be more clear. Canice looked away
first, a broken, muted cry of "I'm sorry Bilbo," on his lips as he sunk to his knees. Something about the
sight filled Bill with an almost desperate need to sob, the emotions of the entire night in search of an
outlet, but he fought it, unwilling to further lose such composure in front of his monster.

Canice looked up at him and it surprised Bill that he couldn't read the expression in his gaze. "Let me
make it up to you," Canice said at last.

Bill couldn't speak for fear of losing what little restraint he had left. He knew if he opened his mouth
those disastrous tears would flow. He instead asked the question with his eyes: how?
Canice answered in kind, and Bill understood how much it cost Canice to offer this, to willingly give away
power in such a manner. They'd talked about their preferences one night, their sleepy post-orgasmic
words drifting through the air, and Canice had made clear his own desires after Bill had expressed a
fantasy of having Canice on his knees before him. Desire and despair warred within as Bill looked at his
monster. He'd wanted this. But not like this.

He knew he would let it happen.

So did Canice.

Bill gave a nod after a long pause that only delayed the inevitable, the pain and anger and uncertainty
now smoldering, each ember alighting the room in a new but familiar dance. Bill didn't understand how
Canice could view this act as giving away control. Canice drew out the suspense of the moment in the
most tortuous of ways, each half-touch and near-taste maddingly delightful as the necessary garments
were removed. Near incoherent with desire and desparate to feel anything good after their fight, Bill
scrambled to tangle a hand in fiery hair and surrendered his thoughts to the mindless pleasure of it all,
slick warm and yes-yes-yes.

Far too soon Canice pulled away, cat-got-the-cream look in every corner of his expression as Bill
struggled to stay upright on his boneless legs, his weight almost entirely held by the kitchen counter.
"Feeling right as rain?" Canice asked as he stood up. His tone matched his expression, and Bill shot him a
lazy grin. "Never better." Bill didn't think he would ever get tired of this feeling, the hazy satisfied
weightless euphoria that came from sex of any kind.

The feeling in his body returned slowly. As awareness returned to his various limbs, Bill noticed his arm
felt sticky and he glanced over to see blood steadily oozing from the tight gauze. "I think I should head to
the clinic," he said, as the earlier emotions of the evening filtered back into his veins.

"Such a random thought," Canice told him, and Bill looked up sharply to see confusion written on across
his monster's face. "You're right as rain you are, I don't see a scratch on you."

Bill stared at him, at a loss for words.

Canice shrugged. "If you feel the need to take a drive, would you grab some milk while you're out? We're
nearly empty."

"Right," Bill responded automatically, his brain on autopilot as he stared in disbelief at his monster.
Canice simply smiled at him and turned back to the sink, attention returned to the dishes. Bill listened to
the sound of humming and it all felt surreal, the normality of the domestic scene juxtaposed with the
blood dripping down his left arm and the stickiness of cooling sweat and saliva and his trousers and
pants pooled at his feet.

Déjà vu reigned the moment Bill took a deep, settling breath. Carefully, he pushed off the kitchen counter
and again mentally dusted himself off before he adjusted his clothing. He grabbed an extra shirt and
towel on the way out to mop up his arm for the drive.

There was, Bill remembered, a small convenience store just down the road from the clinic.
Perhaps the peace offering might afford Bill the same ability to return to the ease of normality.

Whatever 'normal' had meant for them before Bill’s refusal of marriage changed. Bill didn't notice at
first. The change was subtle. Days and then weeks and then months passed. The views outside their ever-
changing hotels, apartments, and occasionally rented homes changed occasionally, as did Canice's
moods.

Some days, Canice would come home from work and accept Bill's hug in greeting. Other days, Bill would
be called suffocating and needy. Bill vowed to read Canice's unspoken cues better only to fail days or
weeks later and beat himself up for it. He didn't understand why he kept failing. He knew Canice's body
language like the back of his hand. But maybe he didn't as well as he'd thought. He was still learning new
things about him as they traveled together. Canice preferred the toilet paper roll to be under instead of
over, couldn't stand mint toothpaste, and did actually like the peas in their outer pod covering, Bill must
have been mistaken before.

As they traveled through Ireland and Scotland and the surrounding UK countries, Bill used his contacts to
check to see if Lucas was still working at the hospital Bill had stayed in. He wasn't, a fact Bill was grateful
for, as it meant he wouldn't have to actively avoid the man. His dear Father had moved out of the UK
entirely, from what his contact had been able to gather, but had been unable to find any other
information other than a record of a plane ticket from London to New Jersey.

The week after they'd found a place to stay in the UK, Bill came down with a cold. He blamed it on the
rain he'd been standing in for hours as he watched Elizabeth come to life in the form of a young woman
who'd passed him on the street. He didn't understand how he knew it was her. She'd been dead for well
over three years now. But Bill was used to knowing things no regular human knew by now. He accepted
his secondary mission to kill Elizabeth's host bodies with less fuss than Canice, who didn't seem to believe
him. But Bill knew that he'd never have to convince Canice to kill a demon. Canice thrived in the hunt.

But the hunt would have to wait a few days. Bill lay in bed with a fever and chills while Canice spoon-fed
him chicken soup and pilled him with blankets every time he complained about being cold. It took him
two weeks to fully recover.

A month later, the stalking phase of the hunt completed, Bill visualized Elizabeth's soon-to-be second
death while on the treadmill. Canice burst into the room a half hour into his jog, a plate with a strong
smell of apples held in his arms. "Try this," he demanded, and Bill stopped the machine in response, his
other hand already outstretched. The first bite was absolute bliss, and Bill closed his eyes to better savor
the perfect blend of apple and spice. "Perfection," he said as he took a second bite. "That blend of spice is
right brilliant."

"I added a touch more ginger than the recipe called for," Canice told him. "I think it added to the taste
nicely."

"I quite agree," Bill agreed around his fourth bite. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"The waiting makes me antsy," Canice rolled his eyes. "I know tomorrow is the best time, but I've never
been good at patience."
Bill stepped off the treadmill and grabbed his towel. "That surprises me," he admitted. "Canice Lawson,
not a patient person? I'd argue that hunting takes a large amount of patience."

"But that's hunting," Canice said. "This is that bit in-between hunting and killing. I don't like this part."

Bill chuckled as he finished wiping the sweat off his face. "I'll grant you that point. Perhaps we should
find ways to make this space of time less agonizing."

"Hence the apple pie cookies," Canice laughed as he set the plate down. Bill could feel Canice's eyes as he
followed Bill's cool down routine, and his stomach bubbled pleasantly. Their partnership was no longer
brand new, but Bill still sometimes was caught off-guard at the sensations that made up his desire for his
monster.

"Do you ever wonder," Canice said abruptly, and then paused.

"Wonder what," Bill asked curiously.

"If you were to choose a way to connect your demon kills, how would you do it?"

"Consecrated soil from churchyards in their mouths," Bill said without hesitation. He'd idly thought about
it awhile back and had wished he could do it. But just as Canice could no longer use his doll heads, he
also couldn't do anything that would leave the police a calling card. Any such similarity would be like
leaving the authorities a flashing neon sign: Look at me! These kills are connected!

Canice blinked at him blankly for a moment before he raised an eyebrow, and Bill hurried to explain.
"God's power lives in the Earth, in the ground, in the soil. By filling the mouth, His power can stop the evil
demon from escaping the host body."

A beat of silence, another raised eyebrow, and then: "You do you, Bilbo."

"Go on then," Bill said. "What's your reasoning? Why doll heads?"

Canice shrugged, but it took him a moment to speak, and Bill knew the answer he'd get wouldn't be the
full truth. "It gives some flair."

"Flair," Bill repeated, a question in his tone despite the knowledge that now wasn't the time to push.

"We all have to have some flair," Canice said, and his face shone with mischief. "Little Lizzie had her
song, and Gacy was a clown, the Zodiac had ciphers…a little flair makes us stand out, you see?"

Something about the words made Bill's stomach drop, but he refused to dwell on the why of it all. "But
they were freaks," he pointed out. "You shouldn't lump yourself in with those monsters, you're…" He
searched for a word for a second before Canice jumped in with, "Smarter? Stronger?"

"Angelic," Bill finally settled on. "You're helping me fulfill the good Lord's work. Rid the world of the
demons that walk among us."
He froze as a hand pressed lightly against his hip, and Bill stopped his stretch to straighten up and stare
at Canice. The teasing glint had disappeared to be replaced with heat. "I like…" Canice paused, his hand
moving up and across Bill's sweat soaked undershirt. "That you see me that way," he finished, his
fingertips now tangled in Bill's messy locks, and Bill closed his throat around what would have been an
embarrassing noise indeed. "I only speak truth," he managed around the spike of some unknowable well
of desire.

Canice laughed softly. His eyes shone with something Bill could only describe as victorious as he leaned
forward to whisper in Bill's ear, "did you know, other words for truth are honesty, candor, accuracy, and
genuine."

"Your point?" Bill asked, his entire body tuned to every slight movement of Canice's hands, both of which
seemed intent on their mission to drive him mad in the best possible way. "Truth…." Canice paused
again, and through the haze of molten want Bill saw several micro expressions flit across Canice's face,
but he was too far gone to have a hope of understanding them. When he spoke again, he did not
continue with his last train of thought. "Didn't you say something earlier about finding ways to make this
space of time less agonizing?"

"Is this you asking, Mr. Lawson?" Bill's attempt at coy fell short, his tone breathless with need. "Are you
giving the game up that easily?"

Canice moved his hands to Bill's shoulders and pressed down roughly. "I don't ask," he said haughtily. Bill
took his cue, and Canice's hands slid in his chocolate-brown curls once more as he settled himself on their
shaggy carpet floor. He reached out but Canice slapped his hand away. "Patience," he cautioned, and Bill
curled his fingertips into his palms in the effort to keep himself from disobeying. Canice moved to thread
his thumbs under the wide straps of his tank top and pulled. The fabric peeled slowly from his skin, sticky
with cooling sweat, and Bill automatically lifted his arms to aid in its removal.

Bill squirmed at the attention focused on him, uncomfortable still with showing Canice his scars,
irrational though the thought may be, given that Canice had been there that night. He knew exactly how
each and every one of them had happened, knew the sound of Bill's screams of agony as intimately as
the sound of Bill in the throes of pleasure. "Look at me," Canice told him.

Bill obeyed with some difficulty. He met Canice's eyes with a swirl of his stomach that was both pleasure
and pain and was rewarded with the sight of darkened eyes and the sound of a belt unbuckled. Bill
watched as Canice unzipped with one hand, his other reaching to tap the side of Bill's jaw. He opened his
mouth obediently, but Canice surprised him: With a smirk and an ordered "stay", he left the room. Bill
gave a jittery sigh, too keyed up to be annoyed. Games were who they were, and their ever changing
rules brought a charged excitement to every part of their lives, including the bedroom.

Or, as Bill looked around the room, whatever room they happened to be in at the time. Their exercise
room was still somewhat of a mess. They'd moved into this terraced house in Wales a month and a half
ago, and neither one of them had yet to find the energy to finish the set up of this room. Bill hoped that
when he published his first novel in six months the money would be enough to quit his shitty job. Canice
wanted to continue bartending, but Bill wasn't made for bussing tables and washing dishes while shitty
managers yelled at their employees for problems they themselves had created.
The reappearance of Canice effectively cut off that train of thought, and if Bill's mouth hadn't already
been open, his jaw would have dropped at the sight of his monster. Canice wore a smug expression and
nothing else. There was a small pop as the jar in his hands opened, and Canice didn't have to speak for
Bill to know where they were headed. He started to turn to his hands and knees, but a sharp "no"
stopped him in his tracks. He met his monster's eyes. Canice was amused at his assumption.

"Oh no, Bilbo," he said, and he was laughing as he spoke. "We're missionaries, aren't we?"

Bill groaned, and what he meant to sound exasperated instead came out eager, and Canice winked at
him. "I never knew your sense of humor included puns," he threw out in an attempt to keep himself in
control. Canice had made it clear from the start of this part of their partnership that he usually preferred
to be the one who held the cards, the one with the ultimate power. Bill wondered if Canice understood
that the submissive role Bill often slipped into held a type of power that Canice could not handle. He
didn't think it was prudent to ask. Honest conversations weren't their style, and Bill was more than fine
with that.

No response was forthcoming, but Bill found his attention otherwise occupied as limbs adjusted and
hands brushed skin. Thoroughly distracted, when Canice spoke, it took Bill a moment to process his
words. "Do you want to know another word for truth?"

"Is now -" Bill choked out at last, his brain fuzzy from the slick slide of fingers, "the best time for a
language lesson?"

"Gospel," Canice said. "Another name for truth is gospel. And who spreads gospel, Bilbo? Hmm?"

"Oh bloody hell," Bill let out, and again, his exasperation only sounded breathless with the fire that
threatened to consume them before they'd properly started. "Don't say it, oh bloody -"

Canice laughed in delight as he proclaimed, "Missionaries spread gospel, my Bilbo."

Bill threw his hands up to cover his eyes but only for a second as he felt Canice adjust their bodies and
line up in preparation. "Of course," Canice said, "Truth is easily distorted." Bill had half a second to
wonder what that meant before he promptly forgot to wonder about anything at all as Canice pushed
forward. For a good while, the only thought that crossed Bill's mind was, if this was heaven, the Heaven
that awaited must be quite brilliant indeed.

Of course, to get to Heaven, one must walk through Hell first.

Bill woke Canice early one morning to tell him he was going to the market for breakfast food. Canice
growled at him for being woken and hit Bill in the eye. Bill found some eye make-up while out to cover
the bruise and promised himself he'd never wake Canice up so early again.

His early morning shopping trips stopped altogether.

Bill took Canice on a vacation to celebrate his first book being published. They spent time in Salt Lake City
and Bill was astonished at the grandeur of the churches in the area. The book tour took them through
the States. Strangely, something about the book tour gave Canice nightmares. Bill woke to Canice's cries
more than once. Bill would dry Canice's panicked tears and fight away whatever fears roamed Canice's
brain with soothing arms and whispered words neither of them spoke of in the daylight.

He started writing a second book. His first one continued to rise in popularity until he was asked to
appear on a radio show. Bill fumbled through it and decided it was time to ask for anxiety medication.
The panic attacks were exhausting.

An odd noise woke him one night. For a long moment he lay, and his ears strained to hear anything but
the breathing of the man next to him, but after some length of time had passed without another sound,
Bill relaxed. He turned his head to look at his companion and discovered that Canice was awake.

"Watching me sleep?" Bill whispered.

Canice didn't respond at first. Shadows shone in his eyes, a lost look with a desperate edge. "You're
mine," he said, and the intensity of the emotion behind his words was so strong that Bill's usual mental
barriers weren't enough to keep the waves at bay. The rush flowed through him when he reached over to
touch Canice's cheek. "I'm yours," Bill confirmed. He didn't know how else to respond. The force of
Canice's anguish nearly took his breath away.

"I think I'd kill myself if you ever left me," Canice murmured.

And perhaps it was strange, but warmth flooded through him at those words, and Bill felt completely,
wholly, utterly seen, in that moment. "I want this," he choked out, and he didn't know if it was his own
wild desperation or if it was all wrapped up in Canice's emotions, but the fierce, animalistic clash of their
lips moments later was unlike anything Bill had ever experienced before.

"We need each other," Canice told him, after. "We cannot survive without each other."

Canice didn't talk for three days after that night. Bill didn't understand what he'd done wrong. "Talk to
me," he pleaded. "Please talk to me."

Canice ignored him.

On day four he nearly cried when Canice hugged him from behind as Bill made dinner and asked if he
could help. "Can I trust you with the spaghetti?" he asked jokingly, but he was sure the relief was clear in
his tone.

"Seems like it might take a fancy rocket science degree," Canice joked back at him as he reached for the
box of pasta. Bill laughed and felt a weight lift from his chest. All was well.

All was not well.

The sound of glass as it shattered greeted Bill's return from the grocery store. He stepped into the kitchen
to find Canice laughing maniacally as he threw their collection of cups to smash against the hard floor.
"What are you doing?" Bill said, bewildered.

Canice did not answer. Another glass was thrown. "You're hurting yourself!" Bill cried out as he noticed
that Canice was in bare feet. He could see several cuts that were actively bleeding.
"You made me do it," Canice snarled at him as he threw another glass. Bill didn't understand. "What are
you talking about?"

"You left. You can't leave. You can't."

"I didn't want to wake you!" Bill said, frustrated. "You needed the nap, you didn't sleep the night before!
I wasn't leaving. We simply needed food."

Another glass shattered. "Learn some fucking respect, Bill," Canice growled. "Fucking tell me when you're
getting food." He threw the last glass and stormed from the room.

Bill sunk to the floor. His ears rang and his chest hurt and he felt the panic attack take hold. He didn't
know how long this one lasted. But it faded in time, as all his attacks did, and he picked himself up and
put away the groceries and cleaned up the mess Canice had made.

He never left the house again without notifying Canice where he was headed.